He Got Over

Nineteen sixty nine.
It came as no surprise, this interruption of my school day, during the last two months of my senior year at Nordhoff Union High School. Draft registration. And being a bit passive about such things, I did as directed and reported to the office.
I found my self in the school counselor’s office signing a form to register for the draft. Naive as I was that April, I signed it. The counselor, a pale bland sleepy eyed man, looked it over, blinked so slowly I thought that he might fall asleep. He nodded and dismissed me.
Blink forward. Graduation. Top ten percent of my class and I cared not a whit. Didn’t know what I wanted to do or go or who I was or anything. I spent the last 6 months of high school stone cold sober, breezing through college prep material, standing anti-war vigils on Sundays. Had a scholarship to prestigious UCSB. And cared not one fig. Ignored the invitation to the baccalaureate breakfast, turned up my nose at the Senior Party at Disneyland. Feigned disinterest in everything around me.
Till my Dad hugged and kissed me after we got home from the graduation. The squeaky, off key marching band rendition of Pomp and Circumstance still echoing in my head, remembering cute little Gail Gartrell walking next to me in procession, my hair protruding every which way from under the blue mortar board. “I am so proud of you son.” And hugged and kissed me right there in the driveway.
I shook off his admiration and confused and dazed and lost jumped into my Bug and drove into downtown Ojai. There, I parked myself on The Wall, a hang out for hippies, Hare Krishnas, and ne’er-do-wells, and watched the evening traffic trundle by. I was by myself most of that evening, doing next to nothing. Nothing.
Nothing made any sense. The War in ‘Nam. My brother in the Air Force. My father’s on-going struggle with depression. My raging hormones and girlfriends. The drug scene I had left six months before. My athleticism gone to waste. My intellect idling, no challenge with academics. My best friend Stephen boarded out to a school in Colorado when his parents found his drug problems.
Nothing. Odd jobs for elderly ladies. Summer jobs for a rich Sierra Club member, clearing brush and putting up barbed wire fences and painting his water tank. Meditation group at a Presbyterian Church. Still it made no sense. I planted my first garden.
In the fall, I registered for classes at the local community college. English Composition, Black Studies, Volleyball, Geology, French. For what? I was drawn to writing and gardening. But after a month I could not stand the stuffy academia, the smoking in the classrooms, the pointless exercises of writing, the relative hardness of fingernails versus diamonds, the agony of black America in open rioting in the inner cities, the “je ne comprend pas.”
I quit. I knew the risk. I also knew I felt stifled. I dropped out, told my parents who told me the school of hard knocks was a valid place to learn, till I wanted to go back. Quit.
Naturally, I had to let the local draft board know. II-S was a dream deferment. Soon as you had that, you were locked out of the draft. Safe. Student. Isolated from the heat and the hell and the death.
Viet Nam.
I knew of two guys who had died there. I knew the Army would have my number. I knew I loathed everything that the military stood for. Not because I was religious or anything. I wasn’t. Mom and Dad had given up trying to get me to go to church with the rest of the family. Of course, smoking a joint in the bathroom at the First Baptist Church just before youth group spoke volumes about my priorities.
I hated violence and armies and suffering and death. I was a committed pacifist. I would lie down in front of invading armies. I would never take up arms. I would try to talk to aggressors and understand them. I was committed. And hopelessly naive. I would take a bullet, but never fire one.
My draft number was 147. The top third of a random lottery by date of birth. One four seven. I knew the risk. I knew.
“Greetings.”
There was a plain brown envelope on the table one afternoon. Official looking and plain and brown with precise printing on the address.
“Greetings” Followed by instructions to report for a preinduction physical. I had thrown away my student deferment. I was now One-A. I-A. A1 cannon fodder. A1 prime ripe for remolding into a soldier. I was going to have none of it. I would be no part of body counting. I would not kill my Asian brother. Even if he were pushing a feces covered punjee stake through my throat. No sir.
I argued my pacifism in the waning days of my senior year. I slammed the war mongers in the press with heated letters to the editor. One gentleman responded that perhaps the Hungarians could have thrown marshmallows at the invading Soviet tanks. I put an American flag decal upside down in the window of my VW Bug, right opposite a peace sign. In the year book, right below my picture was my slogan. “Peace, now.”
I upset my Dad for my disrespect of the flag.
I distressed my grandmother with my long hair.
I earned the admiration of a sibling or two for being different.
It had to have been November or so, 1969. I responded to the I-A status with letters to the draft board. I. Was. Not. Going. I told them so, in letters of deep thought and grave emotion. I could not kill, it violated everything I believed in. I could not support the military in any way, not by serving as a soldier, not by working in a munitions factory, not as a non-combatant. NO WAY. Killing was wrong. Wrong. So wrong. It didn’t matter that my beliefs had no religious foundation. I said no. This was my life, no one was going to tell me what I had to do with it. Did you hear me? I SAID NO.
Canada? No way. Canada was for cowards. I requested a hearing.
One day I found myself before 6 or 7 elderly men. All proper men, ties and sport coats. Pants with creases. In a room with no windows, and the only woman was a transcriber. The Board. The Draft Board.
Yes, yes, number 147. Come in, sit down, 147.
Why was I so adamant about what I believed? Would I serve as a medic? Would I work in a munitions factory? Yes, we have that all right here. Please explain again. I believe we have enough. Glances all around the table. Yes, I think we do. No. No. Don’t repeat yourself. Its all right here in your letter. And in this one. And this one. And this one.
(He’s one-A.)
Please leave now. There is no due process here at the draft board.
I went to the local draft counseling service and met with smiling relaxed blue jeaned peers. Flannel shirts were hip. There was not a tie in sight. Not one polished shoe, nary a crease in any pants. Beards. Hair below the ear. We talked in earnest murmurs about what I believed, about The War. About the meaning of it all, my beliefs, my rights as a C.O. A conscientious objector. About my brother who was away somewhere in the Air Force, crunching numbers instead of heads. Payroll specialist, something.
What could I do? What were my options? I had to take the physical. Not showing up was grounds for immediate legal action. Put another way, arrest and prosecution. Besides, the physical didn’t automatically enlist me.
I talked with my counselor some more. He so relaxed and intelligent and gentle with words. I could go north. Way north. As in Canada. I could refuse induction. Geeze. What choices.
Run from the government.
Or.
Look. It. Straight. In. The. Eye.
I chose the latter. I would take the physical. And when called up, I would take the bus to induction and refuse to step forward. See. There was this swearing in ceremony and when you stepped forward it meant you agreed and you were in. In the Army. I would stand still and refuse induction.
It scared the crap out of me.
One late fall morning I rode with Dad in our 1967 yellow-green VW bus to the Greyhound station in Ventura. We didn’t say much, he and I. Our relationship was one of few words just then. Had been for a while. Was for a while longer. The generation gap.
Sheesh. Look at us. Dad’s hair was high and tight and white around the edges, a remnant of 21 years of Army service. My hair was growing out, curling around my collar, unruly. He wore creased slacks, a tie, a sport coat. I had jeans, work boots, a tee shirt.
So he dropped me off at the bus station. We said something, a few words. But it was his eyes that spoke volumes. They crinkled around the corners and there was a tiny note of sadness in his voice. But what he said I can’t remember. Something kind and caring but not too specific. That was how he was with me. Just then.
There was a crowd of men my age, mostly strangers, milling around, shuffling their feet, all bravado and attitude, smoking, joking, all with one thing in common.
“Greetings.”
We boarded a big dark colored bus, that too early damp morning, and rode with our uneasiness to Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Induction Center. Five or six stories of gray and brown and drabness and dirty windows covered with thick protective wire mesh, and concrete floors.
“Greetings.”
It began with a short lecture on the process. We would go here, then there, and after that up there and finish up here. An intelligence test. Multiple choice and we were given pen refills, no pen, just the refills, to make our marks. Now that was smart.
Don Foster from my high school sat a few chairs over. On the heavy side, Don was known in high school for not being known for anything. But I knew him as a young man seeking to make his way in a cruel social circle, masking his unhappiness with cigarettes and a cutting wit. He spoke with a strange lispy style and his hands fluttered when he talked. Like birds trying to detach themselves from his arms. He would agree with anybody, just to try to win a friend.
Feet shuffled on the floor, uneasy coughs, hands reached up to scratch scalps, rub weary faces. The test took about 45 minutes and then we sat while they started checking our answers. Don gazed into space, glanced around.
“Don Foster.”
They made him stay and take it again. The rest of us were herded out. Out into color coded hallways and into a changing area.
“Everything off except your shorts. Put everything into the bag and take it with you.” Humorless men with pressed together lips and hard eyes. They had either seen too much bullshit from draftees or cared too little. Or both. Or were they thinking of where most of us would be in three months?
Hell and heat and death.
We stripped there. Tighty whities abounded. Boxers here and there. Dropped our stuff into the bags. It was not that different from phys ed. But here we followed color coded lines down one hall to another, up a flight of stairs or down, into this room or that. All under the glare of caged lights.
And not a female in sight. Not one.
Urine specimen here. Chest x-ray there. Fill out your medical history here. Explain it to one doctor here and then to another one there.
“Inhale. Let it out. Inhale. Again.”

One guy, draftee, was a biker of some kind. He refused to take off his colors, his denim vest with the bike club patches on it and he walked with some kind of walking stick. Crap. He was big and unpleasant looking and the “colors” only made me be sure to keep my distance. So he walked around in his tighty whities like the rest of us. And his “colors”. With his clothes in a bag. Partial nudity was the great equalizer.
Don caught up with me later.
“They made me take the intelligence test over cuz I missed so many. I just circled answers at random. Never read the questions.”
Don was not dumb but what he did just then was remarkably stupid. Everyone knew that if you scored low, and were drafted, chances were you’d see Nam from the grunt perspective. Infantry. Foot soldier. Grunt. Cannon fodder. And he had deliberately tried to flunk the intelligence exam. He was three breaths from induction and a quick trip to Nam.
Shit.
I could only look at him in amazement. After my years of superior grades, a scholarship, college prep, I took every test as a challenge to which I could rise. And beat. Don thought that if he scored low enough he would get a deferment. No such luck.
For a while we rambled the halls side by side till one test or another separated us. Then we came to the final few examinations. An eye doc peered into my eyes and grunted.
“What’s that in your left eye...” as much to me as to himself. I could feel his breath on my cheek as he moved in and out with the ophthalmoscope. “Well, I’ll have you stay over and see the specialist.” There were long pauses as he talked to himself, made notes on my papers, made a phone call.
“Well. I won’t make you stay over tonight. I’ll just put down what I think it is. Cataract.”
Cataract? What the???
The best was yet to come.
In a large room they drew twenty of us into a loose circle.
“Put your bags between your feet and drop your drawers to your ankles,” shouted one of the colorless faceless docs. And then he made the rounds with one gloved hand, going from one crotch to the next, probing with a warm finger. “Cough.”
Cough.
Cough.
Even Mr. Big Biker Colors had to
Cough.
Then, “Turn and face the opposite way, bend over and grab your cheeks. Spread em.”
There was a long embarrassed silence as he made the circle silently. At least he wasn’t poking us with the gloved finger. Just. Looking.
Mr. Big Biker Colors had piles.
They let us pull up our dignity. Then, like dancers, they had us raise up on our toes and settle down flat with our weight evenly on our feet. Again the silent circle, peering down at our bare toes.
In front of me, the doc paused. “You have flat feet son. You’ll be permanently disqualified.”
“Pardon?” Like my father taught us.
“Pardon?”
“You have flat feet. You’ll be exempted. Permanently.”
The army doesn’t want you son. Now shut up before I change my mind. Go home. You’ve been permanently disqualified.
He made a note on my papers and handed them back.
“Follow the yellow line back to the changing area. Turn in your bags.”
Other guys were moving on to other areas, other exams, tests.
You’ve been permanently disqualified.
From the changing area I was told to follow the red line out, handing in my papers as I went. I had trouble focusing for a few moments.
“Which way out?” I asked one nameless faceless.
He pointed along the red line. I stumbled along it, trying to feel my feet and process what I had been told. Behind me I heard derisive laughter. Directed at me. And I cared not a whit. I followed the red line to the exit and a waiting bus.
Permanently disqualified. It echoed in my head, like the reverb of a bad hippie rock band.
I ran into Don. Disqualified for his weight. And Frank Hall, son of a local plumber. Disqualified for being too skinny. He was painfully skinny. Had been all through high school. And had this weird pigeon chest, like a prow protruding where his sternum should have been. Now it served a purpose. Like my feet. Both were due to return in the near future with instructions to lose some weight. Gain some weight. Neither intended to do any such thing. They lit cigarettes.
“How ‘bout you?”
Permanently disqualified.
We waited on the bus in dirty downtown LA while most of the rest of our group boarded, one by one, straggling in. I don’t remember the ride back much, except for sitting by the window in utter disbelief and elation. Permanently disqualified.
The bus disgorged us, back at the same station in Ventura. Forty-five guys went in forty five directions. Though Frank lived only a few miles from me, I somehow didn’t get a ride with him. Or Don. I hiked up Ventura Avenue to the on ramp for 33 going east. There was one other guy there from the trip to LA. He grinned and waved half heartedly. Cars zoomed past, most ignoring us. Hitchiking hippies. A biker stopped near me on his flatulent hog. I waved him past and the guy up the ramp took the ride. And the risk. Helmetless on a fast open machine.
Eventually someone stopped for me. And dropped me off in Miramonte about a half mile from home. I was still stunned, and finally beginning to grasp the full meaning of “permanently disqualified.” Never going to Nam. Never going to Canada. I could tell my dad that I wasn’t joining the military and for a reason he could truly understand.
I was back home in time for dinner. And gave mom and dad the news with a barely suppressed grin. It was hard not to jump up and down and gloat. But my elation was tempered by the thought of those guys who were still I-A. And where they would be going. Still, inwardly, I glowed. It was like being at your first live rock concert and your first really good kiss and an A+ on a chemistry test and Christmas when you were seven years old all put together. Only better.
Were Mom and Dad relieved? Yes, bears do crap in the woods.
Sometime later that evening, after dinner, with Dad sleeping in his platform rocker in front of “Combat” on our black and white, and Mom mending clothes, I wrote a letter to my older brother, now stationed in Okinawa with the Air Force, doing payroll and helping the locals with harvests and getting radicalized with the local commies. He actually came back wearing a Mao cap and carrying a Little Red Book. Yikes.
Dear John,
I failed my draft physical today. I am permanently disqualified.
love,
Chuck
My letter was much longer, several pages was my usual letter to John. Written long hand on college ruled notebook paper with a medium point black ball pen. I wrote about my elation, the lines and exams and tests, my gardening jobs, anything I could think of to my older sib now some 6000 miles away.
Dear John,
I failed my draft physical today. I am permanently disqualified.
love,
Chuck
Within months, I had moved out on my own, staying in an ashram for a month, then renting my own first house out near the orange groves. I started my own business doing gardening, and mowing, almost by accident. And my Dad fed me jobs from the savings and loan to keep up property that was in foreclosure. I had girlfriends galore. And wrote my brother long letters. Sent him care packages of nuts and dried fruit.
A year and a half later, my father died of a massive heart attack. John came home from the service on a hardship discharge. We pulled together, we the Dietzels. And 35 years later, John told me about sharing my letter with friends in Oki. He must have felt the same elation as I did...and among his friends he said, “He got over!”
See, I could walk with him on a hike and walk him right into the ground. Never a complaint from my flat feet. And my vision? 20/20.
It was a bittersweet victory. I got over.
But 50,000 of my brothers didn’t. And now there is a wall to their honor and memory. A shiny black wall, of two sections, joined at right angles with the name of every young man who died in Nam. You can look at the wall and see yourself reflected amid those 50,000 names. And if you want, a National Park Service employee will help you find a name.
I saw that wall in 1997. Stood before it with a handful of acquaintances, on the Mall for Stand in the Gap, a gathering of Christian men. I stood there and saw myself amid those names, now 28 years older than when I was resisting induction. Saw myself amid those names and began to weep. And put out my hand to touch the engraved letters, trying to reach for what I knew not. Solace? Erudition? Justification?
I got over. But it was a bittersweet victory. One way or another, I had lost. Yeah, I dodged a bullet, literally and figuratively. But I also lost so many of my brothers who I had never known. Fifty thousand men. Men from all walks of life had gone to Nam, only to come home in body bags, or gone MIA, never to be found. Or they had come home paraplegics, amputees, drug addicts, crippled by PTSD.
So now I live with the dichotomy. I got over. I got away. I had my freedom. But 50,000 of our best and strongest and handsomest and dumbest and, well. They are names on a wall. And I got over. Some have said, God had another plan for you. One man said that I shouldn’t have resisted so hard, after all, it was a chance to serve my country. My father never said a word one way or another. Except to grin his gratitude when I became 4-F.
And the guys who went to Canada? They had no idea. They ran.
I looked the government…Right….In….The….Eye.
I got over.
So what.