THE POOR TOWN NEWS
Pictures and Short Stories from the PoorTown Books
© 2002 James D. Pearce and Rebecca P. Pearce

Number 41
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This Week's Picture

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Teeny Mizelle of Colerain (the fellow at the left) was drafted

Associated Press photo in The News and Observer, WWII

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This Week's Stories

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'I NEED 2-B HERE'

"I need for you to classify me 2-B. I have a lot of plowing to do. I will need 2-B here when they go, and I will need 2-B here when they come back." ~ (Hertford County farm boy facing a 1940 draft board.)

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CLEM'S DIATRIBE ON THE DRAFT

© 2002 James D. Pearce

"Clem," said the young fellow, "I hear they used to have something called the 'draft,' when they needed a lot of fellows to fight wars.

"Now I hear that we might have some more wars, with some possibility of the need for a new draft.

"How about telling me something about the draft in the old days."

"Young fellow," said Clem, "just sit and listen a spell. I can tell you a whole lot about the draft. I really got sick and tired of the draft.

"I had granddaddies drafted in the Civil War, uncles drafted in World War I, and uncles and buddies drafted in World War II and Korea. And I became acquainted with the WWII draft myself, in a manner of speaking."

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Clem said:

First place, back in the Depression when nobody had a job and not much to eat, all the fellows would have loved to join the Army or Navy, but they weren't wanted then. Didn't have a war at the time and there was a surplus of "volunteers." Drafts don't come along in depressions and peacetimes ~ only during big wars and threats of big wars.

The World War I draft was a lottery ~ really a game of chance, where they just pulled names from a fishbowl. They thought they could do it better in World War II.

In World War II, each county in the USA handled its own draft, and that made for some inequities which they attempted to fix by a patchwork of regulations.

What resulted mostly was that some fellows who thought they had "escaped" the draft in 1940 would find they were "1A" again in 1941 and 1942, when the county "pools" of eligibles began to dry up.

It was kinda hard to keep ahead of the changing rules, what with one county resorting to drafting 42-year-old married fathers of four to fill their "draft quotas," while other counties were still drafting single men only. At the time, it wasn't safe to move from one county to another.

At the beginning, in 1940 and 1941 (the draft started before the war), it was fairly easy to be deferred. Getting married could do it. By 1942, you either had to be a father, crippled, tubercular, a severe asthmatic, dead or in the Merchant Marine to escape the dreaded 1A.

By 1943 they had lowered the minimum age from 21 to 18 (volunteers at 17) and raised the maximum age from 26 to 37, and being a father no longer helped.

Sufficient to say that by 1943 and 1944, most men between the ages of 18 and 45 had given up all hope of staying out of the military. They then began to resort to efforts to make the best of a bad situation. The thinking was that if you had to go, the thing to do was to try to get the best possible duty once you were gone.

Some preferred dry land. Some preferred the cleanliness of the naval vessels. Some liked to fly and jump out of airplanes. But most had one thing in common ~ they really didn't want to fight anybody.

And being in the Merchant Marine, or being drafted and being assigned to the Paratroops, the Infantry or the Marines was considered tantamount to being handed your own blank death warrant, to be filled in at some later date.

An important point to remember about the draft is the distinction between "exempt" and "deferred." To be "exempt" from the draft, you really had to have something wrong with you. Like needing a head doctor, being in jail, or not in possession of all your limbs or eyesight. You were never "exempted" for a minor reason ~ like having children or pneumonia.

The other possibility was to be "deferred" ~ to be "deferred" meant they would leave you alone for a while, but they still had your number and your address, and the odds were they were going to get you sooner or later. For instance, your wife might leave you and take the kids with her, or you might recover from the pneumonia, and in that case Uncle Sam wanted you.

Also, you could be "deferred" temporarily if you were a "war worker" ~ building ships or airplanes someplace where you had found favor with the boss and they hadn't yet been able to round up some one-legged fellow to replace you on the job.

You also could get out of the "fighting" if you were a Quaker, but that really didn't help much, because then they would put you in a "Conscientious Objector" battalion (you were derided as a "Conchie"), and they might send you up to the front lines to dig trenches, check out minefields or perform other onerous tasks under fire.

The really best deal was to get an appointment to West Point or Annapolis for four years. That usually could easily be arranged if your daddy was a governor or a senator (House of Representatives didn't carry much clout), or if you were a cracker-jack football player. That Army-Navy football game was really something back in WWII.

If your daddy was dead or otherwise couldn't get you into West Point ~ but you were still wealthy enough to pursue higher education ~ you could enlist in one of the many military programs at colleges around the country, (You really needed some right-fair scholastic grades as well as money to do this.) In most of these programs, they would let you go to the university, in uniform, for a while. But even this wasn't so great for those who started these programs too soon (the draft and the fighting lasted for over five years). When they finally came for these fellows, lots of times they made them 2nd lieutenants, a position quite often fraught with peril to life and limb.

I started reading newspapers before 1940, and from the time I fully digested that front page about Dunkirk, I knew I was going to be "drafted." My confident mama kept saying, "Oh, no, this war will be over long before you're old enough to be drafted." But she was wrong (it lasted right on past my 18th birthday). So, at the age of late-17 with the draft staring me in the face, I swallowed hard and "enlisted" for active duty with the Seabees, the pick-and-shovel branch of the Naval Reserve.

At the end of World War II, when this nation had about 140 million people, there were about 14 million people in the military. That meant that one of every 10 people in the country was wearing a uniform, practically every one of them (except the ladies) under the duress of the "draft."

Duress was absolutely necessary to the War Effort, because most fellows of the time were like me. Absolutely did not want to die on the Godforsaken beaches. And by 1945 practically every still-potential "draftee" had figured out that the military was top-heavy with higher-ranking muckety-mucks who wouldn't have the slightest compunction about standing back and ordering him and others like him to quickstep right straight into situations where they were virtually certain to be blown right straight into Hades.

Under such conditions, duress was a vital element.

The "big" draft ran from early 1940 until not too long after The Atomic Bomb, when forced call-ups were abruptly terminated upon the realization that here was a really cheap, convenient way that a very few people could kill a whole lot of people all at once without too much bother.

The Atomic Bomb was expected to just about put the individual rifle bullet out of business, except for minor domestic use.

So all the draftees and forced volunteers who didn't want to become "regulars" were very soon persona non grata ~ just like they had been back in The Big Depression. (The politicians figured we'd never have another ground war, never again need an army or navy, and they wanted to spare the expense.)

The draft was reborn in 1948 as "Universal Military Training" when the Russians blockaded Berlin. It again was quickly terminated after Stalin chickened out and some rich kids got called up, leaving the military with more reluctant members walking around picking up cigarette butts than were wanted ~ what with the high cost of vittles and uniforms.

Then, lo and behold, North Korea went south in 1950 and General MacArthur told President Truman that by golly, if he wasn't going to be allowed to use The Big Bomb, then Truman was just going to have to round up some more rifle-toting bodies, willing or unwilling. So back to the draft card and the rifle bullets.

After the hell in Korea cooled down, there came Vietnam, where use of The Atomic Bomb again was rejected. Since at the time of Vietnam there was a much larger "pool" of potential draftees than there was need for cannon fodder, the draft quickly became more of a "class" matter. Oftentimes, a matter of a college class or the price of a first-class ticket to Canada.

And ~ well, I guess you know the rest.

Nowadays, we have professionals to fight our wars for us. All volunteers. They get paid. Their families get medical care ~ probably a bigger item for the military than the salaries, which don't exactly put soldiers in the same pay-grade as Wall Street CEOs.

The rest of us can just stay home and watch the guided missiles on television.

Probably never have to "draft" anybody else again. Ever.

Have to wait and see about that.

One thing ~ I expect that at age 75, I'll be too old for the draft next time.

"I hope," said Clem.

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ATTENTION-GETTERS

One day in 1945 several of us were walking across the grinder in training camp when we were all called to attention by the loudspeaker, for an address by President Truman.

He said that we had just dropped a new kind of bomb on Japan, and if they didn't quit quickly, we were going to drop another.

They didn't, and we did, and then he made another speech over the loudspeaker saying it was all over. It was really hard to believe, but, Lord, we were happy.

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Except probably for the people who built the atomic bomb, VJ-Day came as a bit of a surprise. There were a lot of servicemen overseas, getting ready to go onto the Japanese beaches.

A lot of cities back home wanted to celebrate, with parades and such, and they had a hard time rounding up enough servicemen.

Calls were made to the training camps, and a lot of still-raw recruits like me, who had absolutely nothing to do with winning the war, were pressed into duty to carry flags and wooden rifles and march down streets among throngs of cheering Americans who probably were misled into believing that we were some kind of heroes.

It was kind of hard to do at first, thinking about Morano on Iwo Jima and Nick on Guadalcanal ~ and the others ~ but after awhile we got used to it. What the heck. We had offered to help.

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This Week's Verse

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I just learned from a guy who heard
from a guy next door to me,
the girl he met
just loved to pet
that fits you to a T.
O, don't sit under the apple tree,
with anyone else but me,
'til I come marching home.

Don't sit under the apple tree
with anyone else but me,
anyone else but me,
anyone else but me,
no, no, no.
Just remember that I've been true
to nobody else but you,
so just be true to me.

Don't go walking down lovers' lane,
with anyone else but me,
anyone else but me,
anyone else but me,
no, no, no.
Don't start showing off all your charms
for anyone else but me,
you must be true to me.

I'm so afraid that the plans we made
underneath those moonlit skies,
will fade away
and you're bound to stray
if stars get in your eyes,
so don't sit under the apple tree
with anyone else but me,
'til I come marching home.
~
(1942. Lew Brown, Charles Tobias, Sam Stept)

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This Week's Definition

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DELIBERATION, n.

The act of examining one's bread to determine
which side it is buttered on.
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(Ambrose Bierce)

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This Week's Mailbox

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Your extensive research is greatly appreciated and enjoyed. Thank you so very much. ~ Doris Schimming

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I love the writings of Ambrose Bierce, (and) also enjoyed the Florida vote joke (No. 40). ~ Valerie Sumner, Northern CA.

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...... I will keep The Poor Town News in my favorite places. The letters and stories are great. ~ Patti, Ohio (transplant from N GA and W NC).

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Thanks for another fine story. I was delighted to see one Jonathan Tayloe among the dignitaries in the story of the Cornerstone. Also loved the Royal T and Elmo story ...... I may have to move to Alabama also to get some voting that will count. What a disgrace. ~ Norma, Florida.

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It’s nice to be celebrities ~ "published" authors in an influential journal (No. 39) ...... We enjoyed No. 40. Elmo’s message is timely. Thanks for adding us to your mailing list. ~ Ericksons, Upstate NY.

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