Blog 3971 – 10.08.2026

A Hitch In Time

Today’s title is the middle phrase in the Serenity prayer:

I graduated high school at seventeen in June of 1968 and instead of waiting around to be drafted I asked my dad to sign for me so I could join the Army right away. Dad had served in WW2 and had gotten a man to pretend to be his dad and sign for him to enlist in the Navy. He refused to sign for me saying that I would have no one else to blame for that decision, but myself. He was so right, I would have blamed him. Instead, I had to wait for my eighteenth birthday to sign up. Dad also advised me to register for the draft when I signed up as he got a draft notice after he was in the Navy. I often wondered what my chances of being drafted were. 

In the December 1969 draft, the first time I was eligible my birthday was picked ninth, so I ended up getting a year head start on Uncle Sam. Not only that, but I got to pick the longest school they had available when I joined, a six months teletype repair school. So even though I got orders for South Vietnam in December of 1969, I went as a teletype repairman and not as a drafted infantryman. The teletype repairmen had better odds of returning alive and well.

I spent my whole tour stationed at Tan Son Nhut Airbase just outside Saigon and working in Top Secret communications centers guarded by a company of Military Police. I have half-joking said more than a few times that the only action that I saw in Vietnam was the movie Patton at the NCO Club.

To paraphrase the words of a Poor Richard’s Almanac quote:

A hitch in time saved mine from being drafted number nine. 

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White