In 1966, at the age of twenty-three, with the war in Vietnam raging, I entered the Ph.D. program in English Literature at Yale. Being at a university allowed me to protest the war from the relative security of the sidelines. Student deferments were the modern equivalent to what in Early Modern England was called Benefit of Clergy, a legal device by which a person accused of a capital crime like theft or murder could, by reading a passage from the Bible, have his case remanded to the ecclesiastical courts, where there was no death penalty. The passage in question, usually from Psalm 51 in Latin translation, was known as the “neck verse,” since, if you were in the small number of those who were literate, it could save your neck. Student deferments similarly functioned as a means to benefit and appease the elite, since the draft only threatened those who by choice or necessity were not in school. And since eligibility to be drafted ended on one’s twenty-sixth birthday—in my case November 7, 1969—students needed simply to drag out their studies until the day when they received the magical designation of 4F: ineligible by reason of age.
But the combination of student protests, the army’s need for more soldiers, and the grotesque inequity of the whole policy led in 1967 to the curtailment of student deferments. Instead, all eligible males under twenty-six would receive a draft number. I opposed the war fervently, but ideology aside, I also hoped for a “good” draft number—that is, a number high enough to make it unlikely that I would be taken. The television footage from the war was horrible, and the bitter words from “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” by Country Joe and the Fish kept echoing in my ears:
well c’mon mothers throughout this land
pack your boys off to Vietnam
c’mon pops, don’t hesitate
send ’em off before it’s too late
be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box
The letter that arrived from the Selective Service System assigned me a low—which is to say, unwelcome—number. After that, when the mail arrived each day, it was difficult not to feel some apprehension. But as time passed without further word from the government, I reassured myself that all would be okay, and I focused my energies on completing my dissertation and applying for a job. (In those days, academic jobs, even in the humanities, were plentiful.) In the spring of 1969, I was nearing completion—and also nearing my birthday.
But then, as if by malign fate, almost on the same day that I filed my dissertation, I received a letter from the draft board in my hometown, Newton, Massachusetts, directing me to report for a physical examination in July. I knew what would happen. I was not a pacifist. I objected to this particular war, but such selective opposition was not an acceptable excuse. I did not want to flee to Canada, and I was unwilling to try, as I heard others were doing, to find a corrupt doctor who would invent a fraudulent medical condition—say, bone spurs in my heel. I was in perfectly good health, and once I was in the system, I was going to Vietnam.
I wrote to the draft board and explained—truthfully—that I had recently accepted a job at the University of California, Berkeley, and that I had arranged to drive across the country precisely when they were asking me to be in Newton. Would it be possible, I asked, to have the exam instead in Berkeley? I had a letter back almost immediately telling me that my request was granted and that they would contact the Berkeley Draft Board, which would in time be in touch with me. I drove off to California with the happy thought that, given the machinery of government, it was unlikely that the new physical would be scheduled before the date of my twenty-sixth birthday in November.
But when I reached my destination, there was a letter waiting for me from the Berkeley Draft Board, informing me that they had heard from their colleagues in Newton and had now scheduled my physical for the morning of September 15. I wrote to the Berkeley Draft Board and explained—again, truthfully—that they had scheduled my physical on the opening day at the university, exactly at the hour when I was supposed to teach my first class.
A week later I had a letter back which I opened with trepidation. The Berkeley Draft Board informed me they were well aware that I had already rescheduled the physical exam that I was supposed to have in Newton. They confirmed that the date they assigned me indeed conflicted with my first class, and, given that fact, they would once again reschedule my exam. But this time they would grant no further changes under any circumstances. The date that they were now giving me was fixed and inflexible. I would have to report for a physical on November 8, 1969.
On that day I reported to the draft center and had the exam, which I passed, but then was told that I was too old to be drafted.
This is how I made my escape, more than fifty years ago. At the time I felt astonishment at my almost miraculous good fortune. At this distance, my gratitude that I had (perhaps literally) ducked the bullet remains, but it is now mingled with unease. I do not know whether the date that the Berkeley Draft Board chose—one day after my twenty-sixth birthday—was a purely serendipitous accident, or whether it was assigned to me with a sly wink. The student exemption had been abolished, but perhaps the authorities had found another way to give me Benefit of Clergy.
Stephen Greenblatt is the co-author, with Adam Phillips, of Second Chances. His other books include The Swerve and Renaissance Self-Fashioning.
