Dr S Pasqualina
University of Nevada, Reno 18 Sept 2018
James Langelle
Essay: The Freedom To-From Illusion, a Personal Narrative
Course evaluations, normally reserved for the end of a semester, would probably differ considerably from what could be said about class content after just a few weeks of lectures. Consider Core Humanities 203, the University of Nevada, Reno for the Fall 2018 semester. Content currently places emphasis on the writings of social theorist Isaiah Berlin. As a topic in the subsequent discussion section associated with lectures, following primary source reading assignments, it is not difficult to place Spaniards marching across Mexico,. Puritan preachers wives being abducted by savages, or Founding Fathers guilty of profiteering from the slave trade. But where does the to-from paradox apply personally, individually?
Everyone has a personal experience of being included or excluded from a particular status, whether it be economic, social, ethnic or intellectual. My own personal experience involving a to-from duality can be found not in the constant reminder of slavery in America, but in another form of unwilling servitude, that being conscription. Popularly known as “the draft” in and about the middle of the last century, millions of young American males who had just graduated high school and turned 18 years of age were required to register with the Selective Service for possible duty in the armed services. It is useless to go into a brief history of the origins and evolution of mandatory service save to say it was listed in the Declaration of Independence as a grievance against the King of England. It was also common knowledge that it was a root cause of the War of 1812. We find throughout American history the necessity for the draft to further the cause of freedom at the expense of those who were forced to serve unwillingly. Did the average citizen of age have the freedom to resist? In many ways, affirmative. Desertion was one and it served its purpose in the course of many wars, from colonial to Gettysburg.
The most striking example of the disservice served by mandatory service came about in the Vietnam Era, the “Quagmire.” In 1965, I had received a notice of 1A, the highest classification making me eligible for induction. In 1965, the war in Southeast Asia was escalating at an alarming rate with US Marine Battalion Landing Teams wading ashore from Chu Lai to Red Beach in Da Nang. My generation had just graduated high school, myself from Reno High. Our band, the Uncalled 4, all five of us, played rock and roll at various venues in northern Nevada. My lead guitar player received his draft notice in the summer of ‘65, my older brother received his about the same time. But he knew the Marine recruiter at the quonset hut on Evans Avenue where now stands a college dorm. The recruiter backdated his enlistment into the reserves so that he didn’t have to go into the Army. My lead guitar went and we were truly the uncalled for. I was next in line and to describe it as freedom to or from would be a genuine injustice for all of us who served, like it or not. I signed up for active duty with the same Marine recruiter in the quonset hut on Evans Avenue.
During Tet of 1968, I landed in Da Nang with the 27th Marine Regiment, the last combat unit LBJ would give to General Westmoreland, we hadn’t any more troops to spare. “Back-in-the-world” as we called it, students were burning their draft cards, the women were burning their bras; staging love-ins, die-ins, hippies were carrying fake coffins of dead soldiers up and down the streets of Haight-Ashbury. Those who didn’t beat the draft either went in, went to Canada, or went to Leavenworth. There was no freedom-to or freedom-from. LBJ huddled with his advisors like Rusk, McNamara, LeMay, Taylor, Ridgway and Bradley. In Berkeley, friends of mine were tossing bricks through the windows of the math buildings, breathing tear gas and getting busted for protesting. Over in the ‘hood Stokley and Eldridge were discovering their own form of “freedom-from.” Following Khe Sanh, Hue city and other memorable highlights of the year that historians liken to “defining,” the Quagmire gradually became so overwhelming for the President that he recused himself from running for another term. It paved the way for Richard M. Nixon, and in the fallout, expiration of mandatory military service. American youth would be free from the draft. The military would become all volunteer. The interim saw a lottery system and a congressional filibuster over just how to phase it out, but by the time the last chopper lifted off from the US embassy rooftop in Saigon, we would have the freedom to do what we wanted with our lives at the age of eighteen.
In the early weeks of lectures of CH 203 we are constantly reminded of the injustice of slavery in America. Nobody talks about that other great injustice, unrelated to ethnic background although the rich could always find loopholes to avoid the draft. The poor from Appalachia, the blacks from Watts, the farm boys from Nebraska, bubbas from the South and rednecks from Arizona, these are America’s forgotten slaves. They just don’t fit well enough into the lecture, into some sophisticated social dialogue so that constant ethnic unrest can be achieved. Where are they today?
Primary Source Listing:
“Take the rag away from your face, now ain’t the time for your tears…”
Bob Dylan, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, 1964