My Private War

Jan and I and our friend the Zen priest Dosho Port were driving back to Long Beach from Fresno, when Dosho asked “How did you avoid the draft during the Vietnam war?” I hesitated. I always avoided that question.

For years it wasn’t hard to redirect the conversation. Although that seemed to be changing. A year before this conversation when talking with the spouse of a UU minister colleague who asked about the war and the draft and how I had not been in the service, pressed, I just lied. It was the first time I was unable to finesse the question. And that conversation and that lie continued to haunt me.

And now, the question was raised again.

This time I just said, “Actually, I didn’t. I joined the Marines.” I didn’t feel relieved by saying it out loud, which I kind of, vaguely, anyway, hoped might be the case.

Still, my spiritual discipline for many years now has been integration, binging the disparate parts of my life together. And as I mature into that part of my life where I am also a spiritual director, it seems important to try and be transparent, at least as transparent as I can. I don’t have a lot of secrets left, little that I am unwilling to share. This may be the biggest of those hanging on. At least in my heart.

I was in High School, if I recall correctly, the fifth High School I’d attended as our family followed my father’s always changing dream of the next best thing. The war was raging. At home I felt trapped. Hormones raging, the isolation of our constant relocations, my father’s on and off troubles with the law, I could no longer stand staying at home.

And so I said to my family I wanted to go into the service. Today, I have no idea why it was the Marines. Probably they had the best ads on television. As I was only seventeen my father had to sign off. I wanted to enlist for the minimum two years, but my father and the recruiter tried to talk me into four. We settled on three.

And off I went to Marine boot camp. It was, how can I say, hell. After the testing, I was interviewed as a possible candidate for officer training. Of course as a High School drop out the route included new extended commitments extending on for years. I declined to pursue it. So, I was past surprised when the training was over that I was given a promotion to private first class.

Before I was to be sent off to specialist training a call was put out for a typist. Along with a couple of others, I put my hand up. I tested fastest, and was temporarily assigned to the front offices at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot.

As I cast my memory back some fifty years, I realize most of the details have faded into the mists. The short of it was I felt isolated and unsure of what to do in most any given situation. The constrictions of my upbringing left me with no social tools, and I was simply overwhelmed by it all. I went AWOL twice, and twice was sentenced to a month in the brig. The second time my family stepped in, in retrospect surprising as while I know they cared, they lived lives mostly controlled by others, with little self-direction. They hired a psychologist, and presenting my case for terminal immaturity, I somehow managed to win an honorable discharge. The whole thing soup to nuts lasted for thirteen months.

Exhausted and ashamed, I moved back home, and following how I dealt with my first learning of my father going to jail, once again retired to bed. This time I read the entirety of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Half a century later, I remember them better than any of the details of my military experience.

I then got out of bed, dusted myself off, and found a job at Holmes’ Book Company in Oakland.

I was eighteen years old.

And my life continued.

Do I have a take away from that experience? Not a lot. Mostly it was an example of the constricted life I lived, with too few options. And, yes, terminal immaturity. Well, I guess not terminal. I lived. And I have grown. And, also, it tells of some amazing luck that sometimes is thrown our way in a mix of things too hard to name anything other than, well, luck. Who knows what would have happened if I were shipped off to the killing fields in Vietnam?

Instead, I was given a pass, allowed to pursue other things, which would soon lead me to a Buddhist monastery.