Is there anyone on DU-3 who lived through Vietnam War Era..whose life was changed by the DraftWar?

[Art_from_Ark]

53. My experience was similar to flexnor's

My memory goes back a couple of years farther, to 1963, and I remember JFK's assassination and watching the funeral on TV and seeing John Jr., and hearing the commentators talking in solemn, hushed tones.

My memory of Vietnam probably dates from around 1966, which was a pivotal year for me, as I was starting to become politically aware by watching the Sunday political talk shows (Meet the Press, Issues and Answers, and Face the Nation) with my grandfather. One broadcast of Meet the Press was particularly memorable as the guest was one of my state's senators, J. William Fulbright, who by that time had become opposed to the Vietnam War. There was a lot of talk about "doves" and "hawks" and he had become a "dove" (much to the consternation of my grandfather).

The nightly news programs in those days (we mostly watched the Huntley-Brinkley Report, which later became the NBC Nightly News) featured a lot of news from Vietnam, with daily body counts which showed us and our South Vietnamese allies kicking the crap out of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong (it always seemed like NV/VC casualties were 10 times higher than ours).

Like me, most of my classmates were fairly removed from the events in Vietnam, but I did have two friends who had much older brothers who were over there. One friend's brother was killed, the other friend's brother survived but never came back to the US.

As the war dragged on, my mother started saying that she was going to send me to Canada if it came to that, especially after the revelations about My Lai came out. We watched the draft lotteries on TV and were a bit relieved to find that my birthday was around #240. As it turned out, we never had to worry about that anyway, as American involvement, and subsequently the draft, ended before I reached draft age.