Talmanson raced up the staircase of the Unitarian-Universalist church in hopes of declaring “sanctuary” from the pursuant police force riding his heels. After failing to win a Supreme Court case a week earlier, the fugitive was attempting to utilize the medieval tradition as a last-ditch effort to avoid the military draft (Hoffman, 1968). This extreme case of draft evasion tactics represented a significant portion of youth in America during the disputable Vietnam War era. The counter-culture movement and its anti-authoritarianism coupled with the fresh-water economist’s neo-liberal individualism, catalyzed by the unclear purpose of the costly war in Vietnam, all proved a distinct concoction of sincere draft evasion in various forms.
Thomas Lynn O’Dell was raised in the very small town of LaGrange, Indiana. Surrounded by the extremely conservative Amish communities, LaGrange filled the role of the proto-typical naïve 1950’s small town. Tom and his twin brother Bill were experts in exploiting the gullibility of the community as they became infamous for their insidious pranks. Unofficially law-breakers, the twins filled the role as modest “delinquents”. By the time their eighteenth birthday arrived the conflict in Vietnam had escalated to all-out war. The youngsters faced inevitable conscription, since those deemed “delinquents” were typically the highest priority to be inducted (Card & Thomas, 2000). Musicians at heart and by trade, the boys were already actively involved in a band. “I was too busy to listen to the news and really form any sort of opinion on the war (O'dell, 2011)” categorized many of the peers of Tom and Bill. Tom also remembers his father commenting on the media’s representation of the war being very unfavorable. Grotesque pictures of victims of the war were shown on the nightly news, this indirectly affected Tom’s perception of the war. Even though Tom never claimed to have been “against the war” he never felt there was a clear “reason” for its inception and continuation. Rationales ranging from mineral rights, to human rights, to “stopping communism” were discussed amongst his friends and relatives. One acquaintance of Tom even suggested that President Lyndon Johnson’s ties with a military contracted company had something to do with it. Whatever the reason for the war, it was clear; patriotism would be short-lived amongst the common citizen. Conscription ended up being a heavy tax laid on individual to push forward the political machinations of the bureaucracy. After all, liberals of the time saw military service as obligatory pay-back for the plethora of welfare programs being offered by the federal government (Cowen, 2006). This attitude proved unrealistic in its implementation. Tom described friends who went out to war in Vietnam and came back very different, and in some cases “crazy”. Forcing young under-trained sheep at gun-point to slaughter human beings from the side of a helicopter promulgated unfortunate outcomes in the lives of those involved. These once innocent minds were recklessly engaged in aggressive behavior for the majority of their lives. Tom recollected plenty of individuals where this proved true. These experiences formulated underlying, perhaps subconscious, motivations that Tom relied on to avoid his own call to arms.
The first call for induction came when he was eighteen years old. Tom’s shoulder length hair enjoyed the cool breeze from the passenger windows of the bus heading to Indianapolis. The mixed emotions of those three long hours penetrate his memory. Arriving at the conscription office, each individual was inspected meticulously by a medical doctor. Tom watched as his twin brother was labeled “4 F”. Bill had failed the eye exams. Those light blue eyes that wore thick-framed glasses were unfit for service. Tom wondered if he would be drafted alone. After narrowly passing the eye exam, all that remained was routine measurements of height, weight and build. “1 Y” declared the officer, “3 lbs under” in a tone that meant to inflict disappointment. “It didn’t though” Tom remembers. He was then instructed to return home and eat as much as he could for two weeks in preparation to be re-evaluated. “I lived off coffee and cigarettes for two weeks, never remember being so hungry in all my life”. He escaped induction. For the next two to three years Tom was alerted in advance of re-evaluation, and for those two weeks prior to the physical examination his diet was “coffee and cigarettes”.
Avoiding the draft took many forms during the Vietnam War. Tom recalled a friend who claimed he was a homosexual in order to slip past conscription. The officer questioned “have you had any homosexual relations recently?”. “Of course” Tom overheard him say, surprised by the news from a man who had girls attached to him constantly. Tom also remembered reading news articles that people broke their own limbs to evade the draft, others fled to Canada. Another unintentional effect of the draft was increased college enrollment. A comprehensive study conducted by David Card of the University of California at Berkeley “suggest[s] that draft avoidance raised college attendance rates by 4-6 percentage points in the late 1960’s, and raised the fraction of men born in the mid 1940’s with a college degree by up to 2 percentage points.” This was due to the fact that men who were in college could obtain deferments that delayed their eligibility for induction.
The attitude that is associated with draft evasion during Vietnam is starkly contrasted to that of overwhelming volunteerism during World War II. The draft existed in both cases, but when the causes, purposes, and goals of the war were made clear and reinforced to the public, the paradigms produced were proportionally more positive in terms of accepting the high cost of war. The Vietnam fiasco served as a rallying point for leading a charge against conscription. Milton Friedmen played a fundamental role in ending the process. In a debate that took place on a college campus, Friedman described how the audience was, at first, supportive of his collectivist opponent “up until point 11…when the expression of my opposition to the draft brought ardent applause and lost him the audience and the debate (Cowen, 2006).” It was this common ground shared by modern neoliberal capitalists and rebellious open-minded youth that fundamentally changed the way military service was perceived. Soldiers who willingly pursue war now occupy the turrets. Conscription is constricted, and perhaps its end is what incentivized the rapid increase in military technology. Fewer soldiers are needed to win wars when robots, machines, and computers are implemented. The worth of a soul is great, and war has a tendency to forget this sublime truth. Tom O’Dell never had to kill a man “and that’s the way I wanted it”.
