Winning the Lottery

In 1969, I won the lottery but it wasn’t a prize anyone would want to win. In the first draft lottery conducted in this country since World War II, 366 numbers were drawn, one for each day of the year. The number coinciding with your birthday became your lottery number. While I wasn’t first my number thirty-eight was good enough to get me drafted in the first round.

I was in my first semester of graduate school and had lost my student deferment after earning my bachelor’s degree the previous term. My first wife Gail and I were in our fifth month of marriage when I got my orders to report for a physical examination in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was the one and only physical I’ve ever taken that I was hoping to fail. I didn’t and less than two months later I was standing with a group of several hundred young men being sworn into the U.S. Army as a draftee.

Shortly after lowering our arms we were informed that we were now the property of the U.S. Army and expected to follow orders, like them or not. Within the hour I was on a bus loaded with draftees on our way to Fort Polk, Louisiana.

Louisiana has a large black population and I was the only white person on the bus, except for the driver. Because I had a college degree and not because I was white, I was told by an unfriendly sergeant that I was the squad leader for the busload of men.

“Wilder, you’re responsible for getting these men to Fort Polk. If you stop for a potty break and one of those boys wants to take a crap, you go with him into the shitter. Every last person that gets on the bus better damn well get off of it at Fort Polk or I guarantee it’ll be your ass and not theirs.”

Yes, we all made it to Fort Polk but not because of my exemplary leadership abilities. I was the oldest and most out of shape person on the bus and realized there was little I could do if someone decided to go AWOL. It was well after dark when we unloaded and we got little sleep that night, spending most of it being poked, prodded, injected and questioned. It was my first day in the Army and I felt more like an unwilling participant in a waking nightmare than a lottery winner.

Eric'sWeb

Standing Last in Line

During basic training at Fort Polk, the saying was “Your mind is your own but your butt belongs to the U.S. Army.”

That was true as our drill sergeants told us when to eat, smoke, sleep and take a toilet break for six weeks. We were also poked and prodded by doctors and dentists, and had so many injections during that time that my arms felt like pincushions.

With large numbers of soldiers passing through the facility, it was easy to contract various diseases from the troops. Mostly it was just colds and sore throats but often enough it was killer meningitis.

The injections usually occurred early in the morning, right after breakfast, leaving lots of daylight to deal with bad reactions to the various serums. Once, after a Plague injection, ninety percent of my Company had severe reactions that included vomiting and passing out. We were standing in formation when the troops began dropping in their tracks

Marilyn asked me today if I’d ever had an injection to protect against meningitis.

“I don’t have a clue,” I answered. “We often had multiple shots at the same time and they usually didn’t bother telling us what they were for.”

The doctors and nurses giving the injections would often form a gauntlet, three or four on each side, all carrying pneumatic needles that looked like air pistols. We would line up and roll up both sleeves and then parade through the gauntlet. The result was often bloody and painful.

You never wanted to be last in line. Those going first would trot past us, moaning in mostly faked pain as blood streamed down both their arms. It didn’t matter much because there were many more injections in our future. Next time, they might be standing last in line and it would be our turn to cause them mental grief as they awaited their fate.

Gondwana