Memoirs of a Citizen in Uniform: 1968 - 1973

By Alan Jaroslovsky

Memoirs of a Citizen in Uniform is the brief account of an ordinary college student dealing with the draft and the Vietnam War, from his attempts to avoid service in 1968 to his release from active duty as a naval officer after seven months of combat in 1973. It is told from the perspective of his 73-year-old self, aided by his wartime journal. He neither glorifies nor denigrates his experiences, but rather chronicles a young man's maturing in a difficult and tumultuous time and under stressful circumstances. Told conversationally and with the author's sense of humor occasionally showing through despite the situation, it is the history of a difficult era from a youth's viewpoint.

Originally conceived as a strictly personal narrative, Memoirs of a Citizen in Uniform attempts something more. The author, who holds a master's degree in history, has combined a youth's journal with a mature man's reflections and researched history.

Subjects include:

The draft, draft evasion, the elimination of student deferments and the draft lottery, and antiwar demonstrations on campus.

The Easter Offensive of 1972, a chapter of the Vietnam War little understood by a war-weary America.

Operation Thunderhead, a highly-classified CIA attempt to rescue American prisoners of war held in Hanoi.

The day-to-day life of a destroyer officer, at home and in war, together with the popular culture of the early 1970s, from Country Joe and the Fish to Joan Baez to Jane Fonda.

Written mainly as a description of military service for the author's contemporaries who did not serve, Memoirs of a Citizen in Uniform may also be of interest to students of the history of the Vietnam Era as well as young people contemplating military service.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098397494

Book preview

Chapter One: UCLA

Roommates

In 1968, I was a sophomore at UCLA and very much a typical middle-class college student: a Jew, a dormie, a political science major, clueless. My only contact with the military was my first roommate, all five-foot-two and 120 pounds of him. He had been in some sort of paramilitary organization in high school and joined Army ROTC² as soon as he got to UCLA; it didn’t take a psych major to figure out he was trying to compensate for his size. Just joining ROTC was not enough for him; he volunteered for every maneuver and training session they offered, often returning late Sunday night black-faced and covered in brambles. Every dormie got a nickname; his was Captain Midnight. Captain Midnight got so wrapped up in ROTC that he forgot to go to class. In what must be an award-winning state of denial, he pulled all-nighters before each of his finals and then announced that he was so sure he did well that he did not submit grade cards. He was four weeks into the second quarter before he discovered that he had flunked out.

The fall of 1968 was a stressful time for male college students, as there was talk of ending college deferments and a draft lottery. Demonstrating the cruel sense of humor common among 20-year-old college students, we took great amusement in sending a fake induction notice to fellow dormies, hanging out around the mailboxes to watch each recipient erupt in horror and panic even though the notice clearly said SAMPLE in large letters and the name box was caked with white-out from previous uses. As soon as we talked each victim off the ledge, he of course joined us in deciding who was to receive it next. One victim, who received the notice when none of the senders was around, was packing for Canada before we got word to him through his mother that it was a joke. The draft weighed heavily on everyone.

My second roommate, Bob Drakes, was in Navy ROTC. He told me that due to a severe shortage of officers the Navy had instituted a special two-year ROTC program with four years of studies crammed into two, and just a three-year service commitment after graduation and commissioning. Correctly sensing that I would not do well in the lottery, I applied, figuring that they were probably not interested in a liberal Jew anyway and, even if I somehow was accepted, the war would certainly be over before I was called to active duty. It was the first of numerous miscalculations.

Two factors, unknown to me at the time, conspired against me. First, somebody high up somewhere decided that naval officers should better reflect the society at large so Jews should be considered even though the Navy officer corps was traditionally a bastion of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. Second, I evidently got a high score on the aptitude test given to all potential inductees (at times, the passing grade was as low as 25%). A product of good public schooling and affirmative action, I was accepted as a future naval officer.

I sometimes reflect on what I would have done if I had not been accepted into ROTC. My thinking had been sound, as my number in the lottery was 37 so I would have lost my student deferment. Canada was never an option for me, as I wanted to be a lawyer; violating the law was not something I considered. In fact, many lawyers who had, in their youths, fled to Canada or otherwise violated draft laws were able to practice only because of pardons or amnesty later granted by presidents Ford and Carter. Moreover, my parents and grandparents would have been mortified; my father had served in World War II, my mother had been a USO hostess, and my grandparents were immigrants from Eastern Europe who wanted only to be good citizens, even if that meant risking their eldest grandson. Many of my contemporaries got medical certificates based on real or fictional infirmities, but I was healthy and faking a disability seemed too dishonorable for me to consider. I think I probably would have relied on my smarts to get myself into a military specialty which would make service in combat unlikely. Which is essentially what I did in joining ROTC.

The Physical

Having passed my mental test with flying colors, the last hurdle between me and the sanctuary of ROTC was a physical. I was told to report at 7:00 am to an address in downtown LA which I assumed was a military hospital or something. It was not. I found myself in a huge warehouse in an industrial area along with hundreds of other men my age taking the induction physical.

Each of us was told to undress except for underwear (mostly briefs, some boxers) and shoes, then directed to follow a green line painted on the cement floor. Most of it is a haze, except for a memory of sitting in a booth watching an orderly use a veterinary needle to take most of my blood. Leaving the booth, I remember wondering what the dozen army canvas cots were for on either side of the green line. The next thing I remember is being roused from one of the cots by smelling salts. A few seconds later, I was again following the green line.

The strangest part was the hernia/hemorrhoid examination, fifty men in a square, with underwear at the ankles, in the center a doctor who appeared to enjoy his work, commenting on the appearance of several johnsons. One heavily-tattooed biker, when asked why his was so red, replied, Must be lack of use.

The last examination, after about two hours, was alone in a small room with a doctor who asked me how I felt. I answered fine and thereby passed the physical.

One interesting sidenote of the physical was the revelation that my eyesight was very good, considerably better than average. As a result, I was offered a position in flight school in Pensacola, Florida, upon my graduation. This was very easy for me to turn down, as it involved an extra two years of my military obligation. Aside from that, however, I knew that I did not have the right stuff to be a naval aviator. The wisdom of my decision came clear to me in 1972 when I encountered Bob Drakes, the dormitory roommate who got me into ROTC in the first place. He had gone to flight school and washed out, as many (if not most) did. Such officers were given the crappiest jobs in the Navy. My erstwhile roommate found himself assigned to a tanker which transported aviation fuel, so explosive that his ship was always assigned the most remote berth or anchorage so that it would not take any other ships with it if it blew up. The entire ship reeked of jet fuel. That probably would have been my fate had I accepted the invitation to flight school.

ROTC

The summer of 1968 was supposed to be a boot camp for all of the two-year ROTC members nationwide, about 100 of us, to be held at a single college campus. Our drill sergeants were actual U.S. Marine gunnery sergeants, in order to insure we got the Full Metal Jacket--R. Lee Ermy introduction to the military. However, the campus selected was UCLA, our barracks was my regular dorm, and our sergeant was 90 days away from retirement. The experience was not as demanding as the military intended.

One of the many things not made abundantly clear to new ROTC members was the fact that we had technically enlisted into the military, at the lowest possible rank, upon signing up for ROTC. We only became aware of this when we were told to get dressed in our dress white midshipman³ uniforms and put on a bus to San Diego, where we were to be escorts for a debutante ball at a fancy country club where they probably did not allow Jews as members. Anyway, we were told that we would each be paired with a 16-year-old deb, go through the receiving line arm in arm, and then we were free to