Those with enough money or connections were more likely to know someone who could write bogus medical and religious exemptions or have the means to flee to Canada.īut neither Headen nor Powell could and they still carry the weight of the war with them to this day. Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund's Callie Wright says by the late 1960s, the draft had quotas to make it more equitable. it was either go jail, or go to Vietnam, take your chances," he said. "So that's the predicament they put you in. He says he felt like a sitting duck and saw several with the same job get killed by rockets. Powell was a surveyor, sitting in a tower for six-hour shifts, finding the coordinates of where gunfire was coming from. "They give you the training and whatnot, but we could have used a little more training." "Less than six months later, I was in Vietnam," he said. One is 74-year-old Wilbur Daniels Powell, who was drafted into the Army in 1968 when he was a 20-year-old employee at GE.
Records about the draft just aren't very well kept by any one organization.īut Headen says even if that data point is wrong, a lot of his friends – poor Black kids from a poor Black neighborhood – were drafted. But Education Director at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund Callie Wright says there's no way to confirm that. He says someone told him during his visit that Lincoln Heights had the largest number of people drafted into the war per capita. Richard Headen servied in Vietnam for more than three and a half years. "And I really felt that I might not be coming home when I went to Vietnam, and just, that made me be thankful and grateful that I was still here." And you can actually see a reflection of you on the wall," he said. And when I did that I just broke out crying. "They have paper where you could take a pencil and stencil the name. Years later, he visited the Vietnam memorial wall in Washington, D.C. He also broke his ankle while in the service. He did get a concussion and busted his eardrum. "And they blew up the ammo dock and I just seen my life flashing in front of my face because I just knew it was gonna be the end." August 25, I had less than three weeks in Vietnam, and I was at Cam Ranh Bay," he said. "I'll never forget it as long as I'm on God's green earth. He served for more than three and a half years and had a few close calls. "Faith is faith because I ended up in Vietnam," he said. There was a 30-day wait before he could be admitted to the Army and to avoid the war, he joined the Navy instead. Headen was drafted in 1968 but got his notice a few months later in California when the FBI delivered it. They got killed a week apart," he said, reading off some of the names. Him and Skippy, George Thomas, went to service on a buddy-buddy plan. Donald, we called him Sugar Bear Palmore. Navy Vietnam veteran Richard Headen stands by a flagpole at Lincoln Heights City Hall where the names of five men are on a war memorial.
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