The Guy In the Rear Who Got Drafted

Written for the Writer's Cramp prompt of the same name

Kenny found his voice in the choir at the Pleasant Valley Methodist Church. His Dad, Kenneth, or “Pastor Ken” as he liked to be called, left the musical needs of the church to his wife Joyce. Joyce, in turn, made sure that Kenny was a stalwart in the children’s choir and a strength in the adult choir as soon as his voice changed.

Church music can be rather stuffy. Kenny preferred the country music he heard at the county fair and on the local CBS affiliate WCOW, where he and his friends performed on Friday nights. His clean-cut good looks and deep voice made him a favorite among girls, moms, and grandmothers.

Although Pastor Ken would have liked Kenny to follow in his footsteps and become a minister, he knew that, while being a man of God was a pathway to heaven, the work didn’t pay enough to support a family. Kenny went to the regional state college with explicit instructions to major in business.

It was the 1960s, and resistance to the Vietnam War was being expressed on college campuses across the country with a newfound interest in folk music. Kenny, who felt bathed in God’s love, had grown weary of country songs that pined over lost love, lost work, and lost opportunities. He embraced the uplifting themes of folk music that called for peace and understanding and doing the right thing. He grew his hair long, switched to wire-framed glasses, and sported a wispy mustache. At local cafes, he joined sing-alongs and found that his rich, deep voice was well-suited to folk lyrics. Along with several friends and a pretty girl with long hair, they formed a singing group called “Act of Faith”. They played at local clubs, campus events, and travelled to protest rallies. Their single recording was received with polite but limited interest from record companies.

As the war turned ugly, there was a draft. College boys like Kenny were given deferments with the promise of serving upon graduation. Kenny didn’t think much about the military. After all, the war would surely be over by the time he completed his studies. He wasn’t aware that the Republicans who were running the country believed that, despite the atrocities and lives lost, the war was good for business.

Act of Faith, meanwhile, was beginning to fray around the edges. Their renditions of popular songs were well received, but their original work lacked substance and direction. One member secretly aspired to become a hard rock star and was growing increasingly frustrated with the tepid lyrics. One member was content to play other group’s hits. Kenny and another member were determined to be the voices of protest, but couldn’t write songs that were both meaningful and pleasant to listen to.

After graduation, Act of Faith drifted apart. Kenny accepted a sales position with the company where he had interned over the summer and made plans to marry his college sweetheart. Despite news of the war filling the headlines, Kenny didn’t think much about the military until his draft notice arrived. Young men like Kenny, who were deferred from service, were thrown back into the draft pool after graduation. He had a choice of waiting to be drafted into the Army for two years or enlisting in another branch for three or four years. His girlfriend, impatient to move on with her life, encouraged Kenny to enlist in the Army and be done with it after two years. Kenny decided that avoiding combat in Vietnam was worth the commitment of a four-year enlistment in the Air Force.

Basic training at Lackland AFB in Texas was a whirlwind of new experiences. Sleeping in an open barracks with forty guys, in two rows of twenty bunks. When uniforms were issued, he stood at the foot of his bunk, holding up two pairs of boots and a pair of dress shoes in outstretched arms until all forty guys could hold their shoes for two minutes without dropping them. Making new friends, sharing experiences with other guys whose lives were so alike or so unlike his own. Helping each other in field training fosters a sense of teamwork. On to technical training in Denver, Colorado. Learning with dismay that the job of Inventory Management Specialist, so glowingly described by the Air Force recruiter, was simply a clerk who sat at a desk taking phone orders for parts.
Kenny and his new wife travelled to his base assignment across the country, haunted by the miscarriage of their first child. Their love was resilient. They overcame their loss and began their life together, then a second miscarriage left them in the depths of despair. Time heals, as they say. Kenny and his bride looked toward the end of his enlistment and made plans for the future. An early morning call disrupted their lives again as Kenny learned he was being sent to Thailand with only two weeks’ notice. Ironically, their trip home in 1972 occurred on the weekend that Hurricane Agnes devastated the East Coast.

The flight was a blur. Kansas City to LA. LA to Hawaii. Hawaii to the Philippines. From the Philippines to Thailand on a KC-135 with canvas bucket seats. Thailand was hot. Kenny had read about hooches, open-air barracks with screen walls, where he would sleep for the next year. At his duty station the first day, the sergeant announced that he would be working a twelve-hour shift, seven days a week.

Three hundred and fifty-nine days later, Kenny was on his way home. The first night at home in bed with his bride, Kenny tried to tell her what it was like in Thailand. She said, “I don’t want to hear about how hard it was. It was hard for me here, too.”
Somehow, their marriage lasted for forty-three years before flaming out. As a result of exposure to Agent Orange, Kenny battled Lymphoma, then Prostate cancer, but lived to tell this tale.