The Draft for Vietnam

Since the 1950s, the United States had been sending a steady stream of military advisors to a little-known country in southeast Asia that was seen as susceptible to communist influence. By 1962, the number of advisors had reached 11,000. U.S. involvement escalated rapidly in the mid-1960s, until by 1969, there were more than 540,000 U.S. military personnel battling communist rebels in Vietnam.

To feed the war machine, about 400,000 men a year were called before their draft boards in the mid-1960s. The Selective Service System, which had received high marks from the public for fairness in previous wars, began to be seen as biased against the poor and minorities. Protests against the draft became common on college campuses--in the academic year 1969-70, there were 1,800 anti-war demonstrations--and draft evasion increased dramatically.

A little-known truth, though, is that only about 16 percent of the servicemen in Vietnam were drafted. Those who were drafted were often assigned the most dangerous jobs. (For instance, 88 percent of infantry riflemen were draftees.) And that meant that draftees were killed in disproportionately high numbers. Draftees accounted for more than half of the U.S. Army's battle deaths. Before the war was over, President Richard Nixon moved to end the draft and convert the armed services to an all-volunteer force.

-Colleen Kelly
October 26, 2006