Memorable Days

We honor on Memorial Day the people who sacrificed to protect our freedom.  That's the standard construction.  Rightly so.  But those who object to war also serve and sacrifice, often even more.

I remember getting my draft card in 1974, in the closing years of the Vietnam conflict (war).  Although it was #50 or so (out of 365), reflecting below-average luck, I knew that the true odds of ending up humping through the bush and risking death, even if I were "called up", were actually pretty low.

Does anyone know anything when they are 18 years old?  I operated mostly on suspicions and hunches.  But I can tell you honestly, it would have been far harder to object than to go along with what I thought was a "bad" war (now I doubt there ever was a "good" war).  Enlisting would have required much less courage than resisting what I knew, or suspected, in my gut, even then, was wrong, wrong, wrong.