No. of Recommendations: 3
I volunteered for the draft and went into the 82d because they were pulling troops out of Vietnam, and I thought about going Ranger. Had two friends in the Rangers and another in the Green Berets, but I thought I'd do better going to college, so I did two year and left. There were so many guys who wanted to go to Vietnam who were upset that going Airborne meant they wouldn't go, but we were being readied for the Middle East.
I voted for Nixon to get us out of Nam, and later found out Nixon's people met with the Vietnamese, put a kabosh on LBJ's negotiations to end the war, and actually extended the war. I was a Republican back then.
There was an experimental project to lower the IQ and physical standards for inductees. It was a mistake, they didn't have the skills and had a higher death toll. So if we draft, we need to keep the standards up and upset those demographics. They taught a tactic called Advance on Line which meant we stand abreast of each other, 20 feet apart, and advance on command, firing every time you put your left foot down. I felt totally exposed, thought it was crazy, and asked them if we ever actually used that. The upshot was no, but one time it was used to get a sniper in one camp in Vietnam. I was relieved, but no one else questioned it.
