Veterans Day reflections from a non-veteran

The following was submitted by The View staff reporter Jerry LaVaute:

In my senior year in high school, during the Vietnam War, I learned that I would be eligible for the military draft after graduation.

After several years of the war, the draft procedure had changed from a selection system that offered a lot of exemptions from the draft, to a lottery system that was intended to clean up what was thought by some to be a system that discriminated against those in the lower socioeconomic strata in the United States.

I was at work that evening, as a copy boy at the Syracuse Post Standard newspaper, at the time Syracuse’s morning newspaper.

We worked in a small office filled with machines typing out news stories in a type of Braille code that would be read by other machines down the hallway, past a swinging door through which we walked.

The room in which we sat and talked and smoked endlessly contained three or four chairs in which we sat, waiting for assignments from the editors. The radio was on that evening, and we were listening to it intently, because this was the evening when the military draft lottery numbers were being drawn.

I don’t recall exactly what my number was, but it was clear to me that evening that it was high enough to enable me to avoid being drafted, and potentially to have to serve in the Vietnam conflict.

I would have gone if drafted, to serve my country. But I was thrilled at not having to go.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve not regretted the outcome that evening, but I have since learned to reserve in my mind and my heart a special place for those who serve and have served, in Vietnam and elsewhere.

And I am glad when Veterans Day rolls around each year, when the service of veterans is celebrated and appreciated, and I can write a story about such an event, showcasing these brave men and women.

For the last two years, I have reported on the Veterans Day celebration at Concordia University. The event, now in its third year, continues to grow.

Concordia had expanded the list of events and activities since last year, and the number of people that attended, including veterans and their families, seemed to have grown as well.
The veterans with whom I spoke that day were pleased by the celebration at Concordia, thankful to be recognized. In fact, some of them were planning to attend several Veterans Day observances in other communities like Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor and Saline.

Veterans Day is each year on November 11. It commemorates the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, when an armistice began among the combatants on the European continent to end World War I, in which the United States was a late entrant.

Problem was, the timetable for the armistice was agreed very early that same morning, about 5 a.m. None of the warring nations’ representatives had considered what should happen in the several hours leading up to 11 a.m.

But the generals on each side did. Eager to conquer more land and perhaps to gain a negotiating advantage at future peace talks, the warring armies fought on until 11 a.m. And, sadly, there were more casualties in those few hours than on D-Day in World War II.

It is that type of absurdity that we rail against when we oppose war. But I’ve learned to recognize, as I’ve grown older, that life often does not offer clear and simple choices.
At the Veterans Day celebration at Concordia, I asked some Vietnam veterans how they were received when they returned to the United States, after their service.

One said that, after his plane had landed in the airport in San Francisco, that he had to run a gauntlet of 25 war protesters who yelled at him, called him names and spit at him.

Another said that he did not admit to having served in Vietnam for ten years after his return.
I am ashamed for this kind of past behavior toward inordinately brave men and women, and am glad when I see that attitudes toward veterans have changed.

Each year on Veterans Day, I am joined by an increasing number of those who are grateful to those who did serve, and am grateful that I am able each year to help us remember their service, and to recognize their sacrifice, on behalf of our fine country and its citizens.