Fifty years ago next month, Sept. 19, 1966, I was inducted into the United States Army. Before dawn on that morning, I was dropped off in front of the induction center in Cleveland, and walked through the door into the rest of my life.
I had been drafted before the lottery, at a time when all eligible men were called. It didn’t occur to me to do anything but comply. Not because I was courageous or patriotic. It just seemed that one obeyed the law. I knew too little about the war in Vietnam to mount a cogent moral argument against it. At that time there were a few scattered protests, but wide resistance was a year or two away.
My close friend and swimming teammate Fred West had enlisted in the Marines a year or so earlier and was killed in combat within days of his deployment. That sad fact neither inspired me to fight anyone nor to do anything to avoid his fate. It just made me realize what was possible — and I had a few nightmares.
But I don’t write to tell my military story in detail. It’s not that interesting. I became an Army officer, served three years, and got lucky. I spent a year in Thailand and only flew over Vietnam, oddly earning a combat medal by virtue of flying over the war at 30,000 feet on my way to and from Thailand.
My friend Willie didn’t fare as well. He was among those in the induction center on that September morning. I’ll never forget his huge Afro atop a 6-foot-5 frame, draped in a Sly Stone polka dot shirt with a big collar. I had no reason to believe we had anything in common. Just days later, both of us were bald headed and in standard olive drab fatigues. His vivid blackness and my careful suburban whiteness disappeared and we blended into our commonalities. I saw him reading Khalil Gibran on his bunk bed and our friendship began. The Army does that — and it’s a good thing.
We survived basic training in Georgia and advanced infantry training in California together and hitchhiked across America. Then he went to one Officer Candidate School and I to another. He, like I, had grown wary of the morality and legality of the war by the time we went our separate ways. A lot had changed in those six months — in us and in the world around us. Resistance to the war was mounting. Thousands were fleeing to Canada or seeking conscientious objector status. It was too late for us. We both felt that the only ethical way to resist would be to refuse deployment to Vietnam and endure the consequences. I never had to make the choice. He did. He chose combat as a matter of honor, despite his pacifism. He felt an obligation to use his leadership and training to support and protect other soldiers. He paid a heavy price.
Several years after discharge, I reconnected with Willie. He had regrown his pre-draft Afro and graduated Howard University Law School. He had been a gentle and funny friend. He was now a bitter veteran. With little warmth and some suspicion, probably bred by an awakening forged in the racial fires of the times, he told my wife and me of his service in Vietnam. This gentle poet decided that if he had to be a soldier, he would be the best soldier possible. He decided this because he knew others’ lives would depend on his skill and courage. He restudied his military manuals. He took his M-16 apart and reassembled it in darkness, over and over again. He relearned how to call in deadly artillery strikes, knowing that a minor error in coordinates could cause his own men to die. He saw death. He smelled death. He caused death. And he was a broken, confused man as a result. He left our house that night and I never talked to him again.
I write this because of Donald Trump. He is my age — Willie’s age. As Valley News readers know, I am a progressive and no fan of nationalism or contrived patriotism. But I deeply believe in honor. It was honorable to serve, as Willie did. It was honorable to resist the draft — to get arrested — to pour blood on draft records. It was honorable to get lucky, as I did, or to get a high lottery number and never serve at all.
It was dishonorable then and it is dishonorable now to use privilege and deceit to evade responsibility to the nation and world. The hard work of democracy requires engagement, service, dissent, putting oneself on the line. A soldier who serves and an anti-war activist are both patriots. Trump was and is neither.
There are many reasons to object to Trump’s candidacy, but this one is particularly important. Many people excuse his arrogance and his crudeness and see him as an entertaining character. I see a man with no character.
Willie knew what character is.
Steve Nelson lives in Sharon and New York City, where he is the head of the Calhoun School, a private school. He can be reached at steve.nelson@calhoun.org.