National Affairs: The Kick of the Starter

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All through the U.S., Moscow newspapers jubilantly reported, draftees were fleeing from their medical examinations—cold proof of "the lack of desire of American youth to serve as cannon fodder for the sake of increased profits for Wall Street."

What Moscow took for a comforting backfire was actually the kick of a self-starter. The U.S. was just getting its draft machinery going again, after 17 months in dead storage. So far, few draftees had actually been inducted: men called up for examination got three weeks before reporting for service. Not until mid-September would sizable numbers of men (mostly at the top age of the draft call, 25 years old) be inducted. The nation's 3,659 local draft boards meanwhile were trying to update old files. The boards themselves had been snoozing in peacetime, and many a young draft-ager had neglected to keep the Government posted on new addresses, new illnesses, new marriages and new babies.

"Not one in a hundred of these guys is ducking," said a draft official in Chicago, where about one-third of the selectees weren't showing up for physicals. In New York, with a 23% no-show, Selective Service Director Candler Cobb growled menacingly about calling in the FBI, then quieted down as newspapers discovered that many of his delinquents were already in the service (one had just left for the Pacific). Cases of actual malingering were few: a handful of inductees in Virginia were caught trying to flunk intelligence tests; in Washington, a 19-year-old told the judge he had stolen a car because the draft wouldn't take anyone convicted of a felony. Most of the grousing was good-natured. Sample: in Los Angeles, a gag was going the rounds that many young men were worried about a new social disease: gontoKorea.

While the draft machinery sputtered, enlistments spurted. One reason why recruiting offices were crowded: volunteers get their choice of Army, Air Force or Navy; draftees do not.