Page 340 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
to be, that of a person so disabled that he could not serve (4-F), which I wasn’t, or that of a person disabled but not disabled enough to be dis- qualified entirely (1-Y), who could be called to serve in a war (which, for some reason, probably the absence of a formal declaration of war by Congress—think George Ivan Joseph—the fighting in Vietnam was not, even though it was universally referred to as the “Vietnam War”). I failed to make that grade as well. Most middle-class men who would be 1-A were then struggling to get into the National Guard, which was not likely to be sent into active duty, or to get into a service other than the army, and thereby avoid combat assignment altogether. Finally, many believed that the Selective Service System was not then drafting fathers or fathers-to-be, although it wasn’t clear how a deferment based on paternity would be designated (DAD-2-B?).
As I found out, the last possibility was not exactly winning but for a time seemed to be. In June or July, Phyllis told me that we were going to have a baby! I immediately and triumphantly wrote to my draft board and, in August, we took advantage of the hiatus between the bar exam and the job that I was hoping to get by September by taking a driving vacation in upstate New York. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of visiting Ausable Chasm on the trip, and—whether or not the boat ride there caused it, I do not know—Phyllis had a miscarriage barely two miles from Canada, the country to which many men had fled to avoid the draft. When we got home, I opened our mail to find out that I had been reclassified 1-A, draft eligible.)
(A few weeks later, hoping to find that there was something wrong with my right knee, which had bothered me from time to time, I paid a visit to an orthopedist friend of my dad’s, who took a series of X-rays. The last one, an unusual picture called a “tunnel view,” surprised every- one by disclosing what the more customary X-rays did not: as you undoubtedly have guessed, a condition called osteochondritis dissecans on the medial femoral condyle, naturally enough. That condition ulti- mately permitted me to be classified 1-Y but not before I had to go through a nerve-wracking physical at the army’s base in Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn. When the captain ended the physical by saying, “You’re not fit
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