Winning Lottery is winning the draft

http://www.vietnamwardraftlottery.com/phpnuke/modules.php?name=Stories_Archive&sa=show_all

Eagered to find out more about the drafting process for the Vietnam soldiers i started searching to see what i could find. I found a website that has a lot of stories that had been shared by veterans that were pulled from a lottery pull to get drafted. Lots of stories and lots of different perspectives like one where a man was drafted and sent to war even with the fact that he had two kids and a wife. There is a quote that sticks out to me "if the government wanted you to have a wife they would have assigned you one." The only things that mattered were winning the war and having enough back up to support the cause. 

Another man mentioned the fact that he had no intention of wanting to get drafted. He explains the situation in an intriguing way but in the end he says cutting his right arm was worth it. He was able to have kids and get out of fighting a war that he didn't even understand. He saw his kids grow and when someone asked him if he regrets not going he says, "do you regret not being in an important family even? Well that is the same for me."

War stories, they are usually not what you expect but they explain it all  from one perspective. Everything is understood from the perspective that lived it and experienced it.

A bright side to Vietnam?

As i was looking around through Google i found an interesting website that was created by a veteran that served 14 months during war. The website http://cybersarges.tripod.com/vnfacts.html speaks of obviously interesting things that the media decided wasn't interesitng enough for them to inform.

Some of their facts are that about 91% of the soldiers were happy they served and that 85% of those soldiers were able to acquire and maintain a happy and peaceful life. I have never been someone that doubts that happiness exits; but the fact that this percentage is fairly close to perfect i am skeptical on whether to believe that soldiers were able to move on with their lives after witnessing such horrible events. Peoples heads being blown up and some soldiers feeling guilty for not haven been able to save a comrade is something that i doubt was rare to see. This website showed that within the first five years of being released from war those were the years that it was mostly like for a solider to commit suicide.

There are of course those facts that did intrigue me like the fact that more than 2/3 of the soldiers were the ones that were drafted. Then there is the other third from which 70% were killed at war. Vietnam was a war that caused a lot of commotion for the simple fact that it was an undeclared war and it was a confusing concept to which we did not know why were involved any way. Through out it all Vietnam has a lot of things that have left many of us with thousands of questions.  At least some of the questions here were answered and some things were revealed to me that i had no idea existed...like did you know that only 13 percent of the soldiers that were killed were black and 86 percent were Caucasian...interesting enough to me.