BOB ARMSTRONG

SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

For many young men, the war came to a halt in a bowl.

I pull from my file cabinet a manila envelope labeled "Boomer." I find a batch of 25th- and 30th-anniversary clippings on the Summer of Love, Woodstock, Watergate and the My Lai massacre that fateful morning on March 16, 1968, when American-soldiers wiped out women and children in a South Vietnamese village.

And now another anniversary came last week, the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Newspapers have devoted page after page to articles on Vietnam and the war.

I don't find any clippings` and I don't recall the champagne bottle being uncorked for the remembrance of Dec. 1, 1969. The 10th, 25th and 30th anniversaries of that date passed without a whimper.

Yet this was the day at the height of the Vietnam War, when it ended for most young men in their 20s.

President Richard -Nixon introduced a lottery system for the draft. Capsules enclosing 366 calendar dates were drawn out of a goldfish bowl, the same bowl used for the draft in World War I and World War II. Your date of birth determined your destiny.

If you had a high number, you could consider the war over. I recall the parties at the University of Oregon that night, the joy on .the drunken faces of those students who had lottery numbers in the low 300s. A senior who drew number 4 got drunk with- out joy.

With his student deferment about to expire, he went for the pre-emptive strike. He signed up with the Air Force the next day and entered its recruit camp after graduation. He' figured, correctly, any four-year-job on the ground in the Air Force would be safer then getting drafted for two years in the Army.

The lottery was by no means the only ticket out of the war. Of the 21 million men who came of draft age during the nation's longest war, 16 million evaded military service through legal channels or outright draft evasion.

Smash cut from Eugene to Boston for another drunken party with the boys.

In 1975, I had a job selling books at Little, .Brown publishing company. After an exhausting day of sales training, eight of us crowded around a table at the Parker House bar, drinking as much as we could on the Little, Brown tab. The conversation turned to the war, which had just ended.

Eight men, ranging from fresh out of college to about 30, all college grads, all white, all in good

health, all from middle-to upper-class families. The guy who brought up Vietnam offered a

toast to the end of the war. As we clicked our glasses, the draft-dodging stories began.

They all -skated: They -all told their stories with pride, except one salesman who had joined the Peace Corps. He seemed uneasy with the general -drift of the conversation. I too was uneasy. I said nothing. Only my -friend Ian, a Harvard graduate knew I had worn a Marine Corps uniform in Vietnam. After a few "why don't you speak?" glances toward me, Ian told his story.

His parents fled Cuba when Castro came to power. A Cuban national, he was exempt, al-

though he could have volunteered to get even with Castro via Ho Chi Minh.

The bar shut down and I strolled into the lobby with Ian. With dry humor, he noted my "crime of silence."

I told him my experience in Da Nang was not so nightmarish I couldn't talk about it. But among a group, some of whom I barely knew, and all who were filled with pride by their unwavering commitment against the war, opening my mouth would be like throwing a stink bomb in the bar. Ian nodded with understanding, then said: "It shouldn't be like this. Something is up side down."

While I am now more, at ease with my past; I suspect there are many men of the Boomer class

who have a twinge of guilt for copping out on the war, or, for that matter, copping out on the

peace movement by simply sitting on the side lines.

Carl Oglesby, a raging revolutionary and a leader in the Students for Democratic Society, once described the idealism of the 60s radical. "His position may be invincible, absurd, both or neither. It doesn't matter. He is on the scene.

Oglesby's description is perfect for the troopers in Nam. And perfect for another man at the Parker House bar. The guy who went in the Peace Corps was on the scene, too. BOB ARMSTRONG is a -San Francisco freelance journalist. He served as a photographer with the Third Marine Division in Vietnam in 1966.