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"Hell No, My Wife Won't Go!"

By John Ketwig

NOTED AUTHOR OF "...AND A HARD RAIN FELL"

I am nearing the age of forty. I have a career, a family, a mortgage, and a car payment. Our two children are heading off to school. Their mother, after nine years of full-time mothering, is looking forward to five hours each day with which she can turn her attentions to things she put off in favor of dirty diapers or trips to the park. After nine years she is estranged from her profession, nursing. She doesn't miss the shift rotations, the over-crowded wards, the tension of life-and-death situations. She wants to read, to sew, to bake, and perhaps, to go back to school. We are products of the sixties. We can recall the draft card burnings, and marchers chanting, "Hell no, we won't go." I did not know her when I was in Vietnam, and we have dealt with the aftermath of my experience together. We find it incredible, at this stage in our lives, to be confronted with the draft, again!

A number of Congressman, hawks and doves, Republicans and Democrats, are working feverishly to institute a draft registration requirement for "all medical personnel," male or female, ages 18 to 46. In June, H.R. 4346 was defeated in the House Armed Services Committee by the vote of 28 to 17. It was opposed by the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association. The issue is expected to resurface before the year's end, tracked on to other legislation.

Our lawmakers are concerned that there may not be sufficient medical personnel in our armed forces to properly care for our men, and women, in uniform. While no one wants to see our military denied medical care, knee jerk reactions can create far-reaching problems. The budget for those "Be All That Your Can Be" television commercials runs into the tens of millions of dollars, and I have yet to see them appeal for help to solve a medical emergency. We have an "all-volunteer" military, and recruiting has supposedly been going well in recent years. If the Services cannot attract sufficient numbers of medical personnel away from the private sector, perhaps it is time to restructure pay grades and make military medicine more palatable to today's professionals. In the aftermath of the Vietnam trauma, after a great deal of study and thought, we crafted a military that would, and could, compete in the free-enterprise system. If the conditions altered, the wisdom and the will of the people remains clear. Soldiers who have been drafted against their will don't perform as well as volunteers. So the emphasis must be on attracting medical volunteers.

America cannot boast a surplus of medical personnel. Our system of supply and demand has dictated the enormous costs of modern medical care. Our infant mortality rates still languish far behind much of the worlds. Medical insurance has become a very expensive luxury, a luxury millions of Americans cannot afford .This "medical draft" would certainly affect attendance at medical schools. Our country has never drafted by profession, and it is likely that a number of our brighter high school graduates might chose law or business over medicine if they knew that Selective Service awaited them at graduation. The critical shortage of medical professionals could not be alleviated by drafting doctors, nurses, lab technicians, veterinarians, or dentists.

This would also mark the first time America has drafted women. The Feminism of the sixties has come full circle. But we must not forget that the inequities of the Vietnams-era draft were supposedly addressed by the lottery system, and additional frustration and failure led to the "all volunteer Army" we know today. It can be argued that the Vietnam war continued in spite of the protests until the institution of the lottery system brought the horrible costs of the war home to the middle-class America. The poor send a minority of students to medical school, and the middle class will probably not abide another blizzard of body bags. America is not ready to see its daughter drafted! This was the issue which doomed the Equal Rights Amendment, and there is not a sign of a liberal-feminist wave on the political horizon.

The media tell is that "patriotism" is rampant in America. Are medical personnel selectively unpatriotic? The authors of H.R. 4346 surely wondered. Failure to register, presumably by a 46-year-old female, would be subject to a non-negotiable fine of $250,000 and five years in prison! This is far beyond the penalties for an 18-year-old male who fails to honor today's Selective Service requirement. Why? Although doctors are stereotypically wealthy, nurses and lab technicians could not address such a financial burden, especially after the inevitable legal fees that would result. Again, one foresees declining in enrollments in medical schools, and shortages of medical personnel in our communities.

And so I sit, at age 38, once again confronted by the dilemma of military conscription. If they take my wife, who will look after my children? Day care? Over my dead body! Will employers allow fathers additional time off as a patriotic gesture? I have my doubts. What of our friends, who are nurses and single parents? Will we return to a system of selective deferments? Might I have to divorce my wife in order to keep her? I would feel much more comfortable if more medical personnel were aware of this impending nightmare. My family doctor, dentist and veterinarian were unaware. Their voices were not being raised in the American ritual of representative government. They are now and I only have hope the system works.

When I was 18, in 1966, I said "Hell no, I won't go." The draft was one of great traumas of my life, and in 1967 I went. Vietnam was the greatest trauma of my life, and I pray my wife and children will never see anything like it. I know the powerless feeling of trying to avoid the Selective system. I'm older and more established now, and have the added responsibilities of children and career, mortgage and payment books. A great deal of my 60's idealism has gone to seed, but it will return in full bloom if I have to march carrying a sign that says "Hell no, my wife won't go!"

—John Ketwig

Vietnam Authors Join Veterans' Vigil

Forty three authors and journalists who wrote the Vietnam War have joined the Veterans Fast for Life in citing unmistakable parallels between the Vietnam War and U.S. involvement in Nicaragua. Five authors recently joined the ongoing vigil on the east steps of the U.S. Capitol and another 38 authors sent their books and written statements. Pictured above are (left to right) K. Bruce Galloway, Laura Jackson, Bonnie McKeown, John Ketwig and C.D.B. Bryan. Other authors included David Halberstam, Daniel Ellsberg, and James Beston Jr. Gloria Emmerson, whose book Winners and Loser won a National Book Award and said, "Nicaragua's history is not Vietnam's history, but what is so similar are the actions and duplicity of our own government, whose foreign policy is so shaming. But we are not a helpless people. We have the power to protest. It is up now."

—Sojourners