Most people learn about war, treason and consequences from the safety of a classroom or through the pages of a glossy textbook. There were however some who were forcibly removed from everything they knew and shot into the most gruesome job of man, war. This war was known as the Vietnam War but now it’s more commonly and maybe more realistically known as the unwinnable war. During this dollop of war time the government was not listening to it’s patrons. The government essentially put a blindfold on the public eye and told them to trust the system. But, maybe the government was the one wearing the blindfold. If they had listened to and read the rage that the angry citizens were spewing from their mouths maybe, just maybe, the war would’ve ended differently. What the citizen of the Vietnam War were going through and how life really was for them was documented through personal accounts, periodicals, art and more. It’s through those channels that we can learn the real people’s history.
As a country we have always had the draft as a backup plan or safety net but when it was put to use in the 1960’s it was all too real. Boys not a day older than 18 were up for grabs via their “patriotic duty” to protect the nation. Through the draft came draft dodgers who had limited means to escape this dreaded fate that was pushed on them before they ever had the chance to live. It was the first adult opportunity they had but was ultimately just another choice that was made for them. Around the nation there were a bunch of “18 -year-olds who had about one chance in ten of eventual exclusion from the draft”(“Escaping Draft”, 1960). The rest of them didn’t stand a chance. If they didn’t go to war there were only a few options a young man had, “…like going to Canada, having a good lawyer, or being a moviestar”(Jaekel). Although these methods worked for some, these options weren’t available to “…a poor kid from Watts”(Jaekel). It was estimated that 1,430,000 men would reach draft age which was a huge increase compared to the previous years estimation of 1,290,000 (“Escaping Draft”, 1960).
