Called to Serve: Stories of Men and Women Confronted by the Vietnam War Draft (review)

Tom Weiner has been on a journey for over forty years, beginning in 1969 on the night he learned his draft lottery number was 117. When called in for his Army physical, he nervously answered yes when asked if he had ever smoked marijuana. He was quickly dismissed for his previous drug use and found himself rejected from the military and freed from service in Vietnam. Relief waved over him as did an awareness that another young man must have gone in his place. He watched as others around him went to Vietnam or did everything they could to not go to Vietnam. The draft shaped his life and the lives of those around him. Weiner became determined to tell the stories of those young men and the influence of the draft and has eloquently done so with his book, Called to Serve.

Weiner begins with an informative and interesting chapter "The Draft in America: A Brief History." Beginning with the organization of local militias during conflicts with the Pequot Indians in 1636, through the drafts of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, into the World Wars of the twentieth century and finally Vietnam, he demonstrates that resistance to forced conscription has always been a part of American history. Weiner provides statistics for each of these conflicts that convincingly demonstrate that even in patriotic conflicts people have worked to avoid fighting through both legal and illegal measures. This chapter helps put the Vietnam conflict and the many myths of loyalty, patriotism, and cowardice connected to it into historical perspective. He concludes the chapter with brief explanations of Presidents Ford's and Carter's amnesty programs of the 1970s, revealing the inequities and failures of both.

The interviewees in Weiner's study (he conducted sixty-one interviews, with thirty presented in the book) live in western Massachusetts, although he argues they grew up across the country, making this more than just a regional study. He found his interviewees with local announcements and news stories, then finally through word of mouth. Weiner began his interviews by gathering the backstory of his participants (before they were eligible for the draft), but he found specific questions limiting "once the interviewee became comfortable." He explains: "As a result, the process became one of close listening, allowing the subject to tell his or her story without being nudged or prodded" (xvii). While this loose questioning style can lead to rambling, disjointed interviews, the stories in Called to Serve have consistency in the personal stories of anxiety, doubt, and fear that they tell. Weiner edited the transcribed interviews and presents each one as a continuous narrative, suggesting the editing was extensive, but the subjects each had the opportunity to approve of their interview before publication. While some value is lost in heavily editing oral histories, Weiner seems to do a good job of weaving together the ideas presented in the interviews, and the result is a smooth, very readable set of what he calls "testimonies."

Weiner divided his interviews into chapters based on the individuals' experiences with the draft, setting up each chapter with a well-written and helpful introduction. "Those Who Served" is among the longest with seven subjects who, as the title suggests, served in Vietnam. These men were either drafted or enlisted, often with the hope that by enlisting they would have more control over their own fate. Their confusion and surprise upon recognizing their new reality reminds the reader of how very young these young men were. While Weiner initially began his study to talk with draft resisters, he did his work a great service by adding these seven drafted men, who either failed in their attempt to evade or simply did not resist. Balancing their stories against those who did resist adds to the ability of this work to tell so much more of their generation's story.

The...