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Yes,
I was bitten, too. And perhaps the most terrifying bite was inflicted
by an oriental hydra named Vietnam, often shortened to an effectively
terrifying THE WAR. The war in Vietnam, as I tended ponderously to
address it when I started college in 1966, was a lower case conflict
that held a distant kind of intellectual curiosity for me. I was
against it, of course. My family were liberals. My father was a creeping
Christian socialistic pacifist. He had lost his job at New Orleans
Baptist College for daring to suggest that Jesus really did love
the little children of the world, red and yellow, black and white.
But he was no agitated opponent of the war at the time, only one
of the armchair variety. Without strict leadership from Dad, I was
left to assess the matter more or less on my own.
The news magazines
I began to read when I started college predicted that the war would
end in a matter of months, so Vietnam did not loom as something with
the potential to affect me directly. It was just another "issue" on
which I was obliged to adopt a position if I wanted to regard myself
as a "serious" person. Should capital punishment be abolished?
Should drug use be treated as a crime? Was God dead?
My years in college
would, of course, see the war in Vietnam become a decidedly upper
case catastrophe and my opposition to THE WAR move from intellectual
to emotional, from casual to ardent to frantic. By the time I was
a senior, the war which long ago should have been over had become
THE WAR which might never be over.
In the first draft lottery,
I drew a lucky number seven. It was very lucky for anyone who didn't
share my birthday. Though I was not to graduate until June, my
number was called in January. Uncle Sam gave me permission to get
my diploma, but he was waiting.
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