Didn't Kerry Enlist in the Navy to Avoid Getting Drafted Into the Army?

That's what it looks like to me.

"'I didn't really want to get involved in the war,' Kerry said in a little-noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986."

John Forbes Kerry was born on Dec. 11, 1943. So, he would have turned 18 on Dec. 11, 1961. Thus, had he been status 1-A, he would have been eligible to be drafted, when he turned 18, under the provisions of the Universal Military Training and Service Act of 1951 that were renewed every four years thereafter until the draft lottery was instituted in 1969.

Was Kerry's status 1-A without a deferment? I don't know. But I do know this: "When he approached his draft board for permission to study for a year in Paris, the draft board refused and Kerry decided to enlist in the Navy." IOW, he wanted another year's deferment, after the deferment(s) for his undergraduate studies, but he couldn't get it. He signed a Navy-enlistment contract, and an officer-candidate contract, Feb. 18, 1966.

Why would Kerry need a deferment, though, if he weren't 1-A without it? That is, if he weren't eligible to be drafted?

I deduce, therefore, that Kerry enlisted in the Navy before he got drafted into the Army, and because he knew he was going to be drafted into the Army, or calculated that it was highly likely. At the time, drafting "oldest first" was the rule, so the longer one's induction was deferred, the more likely it would become that one would be drafted.

Would there be an incentive to prefer the Navy over the Army? Well, Spinsanity has brought to light a little-known fact about Kerry's original view of swift-boat service:

.... Kerry initially hoped to continue his service at a relatively safe distance from most fighting, securing an assignment as "swift boat" skipper. While the 50-foot swift boats cruised the Vietnamese coast a little closer to the action than the Gridley [a frigate on which Kerry had served in the Gulf of Tonkin, Dec. 1967 to June 1968] had come, they were still considered relatively safe.

"I didn't really want to get involved in the war," Kerry said in a little-noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing."

But two weeks after he arrived in Vietnam, the swift boat mission changed — and Kerry went from having one of the safest assignments in the escalating conflict to one of the most dangerous. Under the newly launched Operation SEALORD, swift boats were charged with patrolling the narrow waterways of the Mekong Delta to draw fire and smoke out the enemy. Cruising inlets and coves and canals, swift boats were especially vulnerable targets....

Oops.

But that would explain Kerry's enlistment in the Navy, and even his request to serve on swift boats, no? It was one of what's come to be called "draft-motivated" enlistments, to try to get an assignment that would probably involve less risk.

Pace Bill Clinton, that hardly constitutes Kerry having said, "Send me". It's more like his having said, "I'll be required to go, but I'll go the way I want while I can — and in what looks like will be the safest way — thank you very much."

After all, that sounds a lot more like the way John Forbes Kerry talks.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 08/06/04 07:56:31 PM
Categorized as John Kerry.