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"Undoubtedly this letter and the probably dozens of similar letters written by others will not aid me—or them —in receiving the necessary deferment. However, I might hope (that is, if you even get to read this letter) that I have in some way helped to present to you the trauma with which myself and so many other male college students are confronted. Agreed there are the groups which are professional objectors —but the majority of college men like myself have devoted over 80% of their lives toward achieving an education—only to have that education cut short by an induction notice when our goal is but a few weeks away."
"Very Glad." Lyndon Johnson did not get right on the phone to Gary's draft board. The letter, like the 350 other personal draft pleas that arrive each month at the White House, went to selective-service headquarters in Washington, then to California draft authorities. Hearing no word from anyone, Gary Wilson glumly packed his bags on Jan. 31, planned a farewell party, and prepared to report at 7:30 a.m. the next day to the Los Angeles induction center. But with nice nick-of-timing, the draft board phoned at 5:30 p.m. Gary William Wilson had been granted a IS(c) rating until June 19—the day after graduation. "I was very glad," Wilson understates.
Still, he must go. Like most young men in his situation, Gary Wilson faces the Army at a time when he is still suspended somewhere between the campus and full manhood (in his room at home, his Eagle Scout badges are hung on a wall not far from his plastic-encased draft notice). One moment he will shrug boyishly about his draft call, expected in July, as a "necessary evil." Then he will turn studiedly philosophical, frowning heavily and puffing on a Raleigh cigarette as he says: "Most students I know are more worried about actually going into the military than they are about what'll happen after they're in. Their worries center around whatever dislocation and interruption it causes them. We have our own personal dreams and hopes. We all want to have our personal freedom, and even the threat of the draft is a threat to that."
"You Don't Know." What's more, Gary, like his draft-besieged colleagues around the country, is bothered and puzzled by the meaning of the Viet Nam struggle. They are not Vietniks, or frenzied protesters. Indeed, they pay little or no attention to the thin demonstration fringe. But since it is undeclared and slow to take shape, the Viet Nam war has hardly aroused the star-spangled fervor of World War II, when entire fraternity chapters tramped off to the post office to enlist en masse. The fight does not seem to have the relatively crisp delineations of Korea, where the United Nations underwrote the U.S. commitment and the Red Chinese invaders were clearly an enemy.
Says Gary Wilson: "I'd have no qualms about going into the service if the U.S. was in a big regular war. If they were drafting a lot of guys for, say, a crisis in Berlin, I'd feel different. But Viet Nam is so foreign, so remote. I think I'd feel better about a situation where you knew who was the enemy. It seems over there that the soldiers don't know if the people standing behind them are with them or against them."