Feb 4, 2018 3 min read

This week in 1965, the first U.S. combat troops, a Marine Corps Hawk air-defense missile battalion, were sent to Vietnam, paving the way for America’s first “class war.” By that I mean there was a certain socioeconomic class of young men, mostly well-off, well-educated and with family connections, who mostly managed to avoid fighting in Vietnam, leaving the bulk of the fighting and dying to poorer young men with far less education, wealth and family connections.

From 1965 to 1973, some 27 million American men were draft eligible. Eleven million of them either volunteered or were drafted, of which around 2 million fought in Vietnam. Meaning that there were 16 million – 16 million – able-bodied, draft-eligible men who avoided military service through a variety of legal, semi-legal and outright illegal measures. Of the many legal and semi-legal avoidance measures, most were possible because of family money and connections, and access to higher education.

Legally, for example, there were college and graduate-school deferments, and young men of means and education flocked to institutions of higher learning. And when graduate school deferments ended in 1968, divinity schools were deluged with applicants, as was the National Guard, a home-defense institution that in 1968 had a waiting list of 100,000 men.

Semi-legally, those with means and family connections quickly connected with high-priced attorneys who gave them legal advice on draft avoidance. They also connected with high-priced doctors who helped them feign various maladies, thereby gaining 4-F medical deferments. In addition, many would starve themselves into skeletons or stuff themselves into balloons, thereby medically disqualifying them from service. Also, some medical boards were more sympathetic than others. In Ann Arbor, Mich., a hotbed of anti-war activism, it was much easier to gain a medical deferment, and, like lemmings to the sea, young men headed there to establish residency.

Illegally, taking banned drugs also would temporarily incapacitate them, including amphetamines and whatever else would send their blood pressure skyrocketing. They also faked psychological problems, and even homosexuality. And, of course, thousands of “draft dodgers,” again mostly young men of means, deserted to Canada to avoid the draft.

The result truly was a class war that was smugly justified by one of those educated, wealthy, connected young war-avoiders as follows: “There are certain people who can do more good in a lifetime in politics or academics or medicine than by getting killed in a trench.”

Easy for him to say, since he had the means and opportunity to go into politics, academia and medicine, which was denied millions of others, tens of thousands of whom did get killed “in a trench” in Vietnam.