My roommate Pete and I decided we didn’t want to listen to the lottery that night; instead we would wait for the numbers to be published the next morning. When I awoke the next day I found Pete in the bathroom holding up a green shirt, blue shirt and white shirt in front of him. I asked what was going on and he said he wanted to see what color he looked best in because his lottery number was number 2.
It turned out my number was 190 and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad news. My dad did find a doctor who would say I was allergic to wool which during WWII got you out of the draft. I tried to explain to him that might not apply to the jungles of Vietnam. Pete and I had another friend named Joe who has the same birthday as I do but he is a year older than me. Over the next 30 days Joe got drafted and was ordered to report for his military physical.
Pete and I figured it was only a matter of time before we got our notices but they never came. It turned out that Pete and I had draft boards in large cities (Chicago and Philadelphia) which were both able to fill their draft obligations with volunteers only, so we were never drafted. However, Joe’s draft board was in St. Paul, Kansas which needed to draft almost all of their young men to meet their draft numbers. As it turned out Joe got injured playing football and failed his physical and never did have to serve but it was a really close call for all three of us.