It only ended in 1973, so yes the first ~10 years of boomers would have had national service. Even worse: Those kids would have been drafted to go to Vietnam.
Imagine being the last kid called up. Born a day later, you’d be in the clear!
Imagine being that kid born a day later - missing out on the draft to Vietnam by a day!
Whether they were personally called up or not, they absolutely were not in favour of national service at the time.
The birthday lottery. Random birthdays were picked out and if you were male and of a certain age you’re off to fight in a war you had no business being in.
My brother being one of them. He missed out on inclusion in the draft by one month and 3 days. FYI: inclusion in the draft was for every male over 18 on January 1st - then there was the lottery for who actually got picked to do national service. You could apply for exemption from inclusion on religious grounds, ill health such as blindness or missing a limb, family responsibilities (elderly parents yes, kids no), attendance at university (free at the time) and employment in essential services (police and doctors mostly but also some engineers). This had to be done before the lottery, so that in theory everyone called up for national service was available to ‘fight’. If you applied for an exemption, but they hadn’t processed your application when your number came up in the lottery, they usually did their best to put you in a non-combat role until the application was processed. So many exemptions were applied for that there were years long delays in processing.
It only ended in 1973, so yes the first ~10 years of boomers would have had national service. Even worse: Those kids would have been drafted to go to Vietnam.
Imagine being the last kid called up. Born a day later, you’d be in the clear!
Imagine being that kid born a day later - missing out on the draft to Vietnam by a day!
Whether they were personally called up or not, they absolutely were not in favour of national service at the time.
The birthday lottery. Random birthdays were picked out and if you were male and of a certain age you’re off to fight in a war you had no business being in.
My brother being one of them. He missed out on inclusion in the draft by one month and 3 days. FYI: inclusion in the draft was for every male over 18 on January 1st - then there was the lottery for who actually got picked to do national service. You could apply for exemption from inclusion on religious grounds, ill health such as blindness or missing a limb, family responsibilities (elderly parents yes, kids no), attendance at university (free at the time) and employment in essential services (police and doctors mostly but also some engineers). This had to be done before the lottery, so that in theory everyone called up for national service was available to ‘fight’. If you applied for an exemption, but they hadn’t processed your application when your number came up in the lottery, they usually did their best to put you in a non-combat role until the application was processed. So many exemptions were applied for that there were years long delays in processing.