I Wasn't Going to Kill 'Yellow People'

MEMOIR: Avoiding active combat duty during the Vietnam War led me to a career in journalism, a calling already formulating in my mind.

(Fred W. McDarrah / Getty Images)

It was 1969. The war in Vietnam was raging. Some of my peers were dying in combat in Southeast Asian rice paddies. Others were marching in protest in American streets.

I had no intention of going overseas to kill ‘yellow people.’ (I use that term to point out its racism, not to perpetuate it.) To avoid going to war, I had a choice to make - flee to Canada or go to jail. Neither was acceptable to me. If I recall correctly, my draft lottery number was 249 - not so low as to be an immediate draftee, and not so high as to avoid being conscripted and trained to kill.

I thought that dodging the draft by going to Canada was cowardly. But, I was also too much of a coward to go to jail for refusing to serve. It was a dilemma.

“Military conscription, commonly known as “the draft,” is one of the most complex topics related to the Vietnam War.  It is emotional for many people – those who chose to serve when drafted, those who sought deferments to delay or avoid serving, to those who refused to serve and went to jail or left the country.” - Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund

I was attending the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, after graduating with an Associate Degree from Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, New York. While in community college I had a draft deferment. But, not all my credits transferred to the state university, so I was draft eligible.

I was reading “Too Far to Walk” by John Hersey. I adopted it as a mantra. The winter in Plattsburgh was brutally cold. I decided that the classrooms were “too far to walk.” So, I just stopped going to classes and flunked out. I was there on an academic scholarship. The Dean of the school suggested I go to community college. I told him I had just come from there.

I had no interest in school. The world had exploded in the Sixties - political assassinations, an unjust war, civil rights, women’s liberation, sexual freedom, environmental activism, student marches, drug culture, protest music and now, Nixon! I needed to be part of the world. The only sensible thing for me to do at the time was drop out.

(Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon, Chief of Staff Alexander Haig)

So, now, I was out of school, out on my own, and 1A for the draft. I moved to Albany, NY, got an apartment and a job at a small printing press. War-making was looming in my future. I still needed to avoid it.

An idea formed. I had a history of migraines. When they came, a numb zone would move across my face and down my arm. My vision would be partially blinded. Visual disturbances looked like heat waves off hot blacktop. I couldn’t function. I thought this might be my way out for military service. (Remember, I was a coward.)

I went to talk to a recruiter for the Naval Reserve. He said that with my college background I could choose any rating that suited me. United States Navy ratings are general enlisted occupations denoting specific skills and abilities of the sailor. Enlisting would mean one year of civilian reserve duty, two-weeks of boot camp, two years of active duty and another subsequent two years of civilian duty.

But, I had a plan. I would enlist and then tell them about my migraines. They would test me and give me a medical discharge. Thus, I would avoid serving in the military, doing time in prison or fleeing to Canada. Win, win, win. Seemed like a really good idea.

With that in mind, on September 15, 1969, a date I will never forget, I enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve. They asked me what rating I would like. I said Journalist. They said all those training schools were filled. I said Photographers’ Mate. They said that was an air division and I was signing up for a sea division. I realized that I had been lied to at the recruitment center. Surprise, surprise. Too late, I was already enlisted.

So, I asked what ratings would be available to me. They said Storekeeper or Yeomen. I was savvy enough to know that Storekeepers would be needed in Vietnam. A Yeomen was a clerical position. In Navy parlance, it was known as a ‘tit-less Wave,’ a Wave being a female sailor.

According to plan, I told them of my migraines. To their credit, they put me under observation in a medical unit for two weeks. I never got a migraine there. I was cleared for active duty. So much for good ideas and well-formulated plans. I was in the Navy now.

For that first year, I served in the civilian reserves editing a unit newsletter. During that time I spent two weeks at boot camp and two weeks aboard a ship that never left port. Then it was off to Yeomen school.

When our class completed its training, orders began arriving. The women Waves were all getting orders to Hawaii. The men were getting orders to destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. I didn’t get any orders - for weeks. I was apparently one of the two highest-scoring sailors in the class. We we were presumably being held for something that suited our intellects. Finally, I was ordered to report to duty in Naval Intelligence at the Pentagon.

My duties in that post were boring, mundane and repetitive. Every morning I would receive a shopping cart full of classified documents. I would read a code at the bottom and distribute them in a mail-sorting stack to the appropriate recipients.

I didn’t want to be at the Pentagon. I didn’t want to be in the military. But, my only rebellion was to always come to work with some part of my uniform not in proper dress requirement, just to annoy my Captain. But, I wasn’t killing anyone. And no one was shooting at me. Nevertheless, my conscience and my subconscious were always gnawing at me for being part of the war machine.

Then, one morning, my shopping cart was overflowing. Something called The Pentagon Papers had just been published by The New York Times. They were leaked by Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.

The Pentagon Papers revealed that President Lyndon B. Johnson and his administration had been knowingly and strategically lying to Congress and the American citizenry. It was that series of stories, those revelations by Daniel Ellsberg and The New York Times, that ultimately led to Richard M. Nixon’s ‘Plumber’s Unit,” the Watergate break-in and the resignation of a president of the United States.

From that moment on, I paid closer attention to the documents I was disseminating. For the most part, I didn’t understand their content. But, at one point I was able to ascertain that we were mining waters in the war region that our government said we weren’t mining.

When it became clear to me that the U.S. government was absolutely capable, as a matter of policy, to lie to its citizens, that is when I decided to become a journalist, a yearning or calling that was already percolating in my mind. Then and there I developed a talent for sniffing out things that just “didn’t ring true.” That instinct has served me well, ever since. I would always seek the truth.

But, how to make that happen? Near the end of my two years of active duty, the Navy had a program called “Project Transition,” where they would allow some off-hours training in a civilian job for a couple of months before discharge. They asked what I wanted to be. I told them what I told the recruiter three years earlier, a Journalist.

They complied and I got to spend several hours every day after my Pentagon shifts working at AFRTS, the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. There, I wrote public service announcements. One was a series of PSA’s on venereal disease. I ended each spot with the line, “And, remember, venereal disease is bad news, and bad news travels fast.” Still kinda proud of that one.

When I got out of active duty in late 1971 I started sending resumes to news stations all across America. I had gotten married in the Navy and was living with my wife in Alexandria, Virginia. Somehow, I don’t remember how, I got an interview at the Washington bureau of ABC network news. I parlayed my ‘news’ experience in the Navy and the fact that I was in journalism school at the University of Maryland. I got a job as a Desk Assistant on the Washington Assignment Desk. I dropped out of the one course I was taking at UM, “Introduction to Radio & Television 222.”

(ABC News Desk Assistant David Guilbault)

This was in the thick of the Watergate scandal. A better education in television journalism, one could not have had. No assignment was beneath me. I drank it up. I listened. I watched. I contributed. I learned. I studied the best of the best.

When I first met Sam Donaldson, I stretched out my arm for a hand shake, introducing myself. He said, “I’ll learn your name if you are here in six months.” I was indeed still there six months later. I was ‘in’ and I wasn’t leaving this incredible opportunity. I mean, who ‘starts’ at the network?

When I was working the overnight Assignment Desk, only one correspondent would call in every single night to have me read him the latest wire stories and the bulldog editions of The Washington Post and The New York Times. That was Sam Donaldson.

I quickly learned that the action was with the evening newscast and became the Desk Assistant to Howard K. Smith on the “ABC Evening News.” My time in the Washington bureau, where I soon would produce stories for the evening newscast, and before I left the network to become a Senior Producer at the nascent Cable News Network, was an extraordinary decade of learning, achievement and creative growth.

(I had the presence of mind to ask a colleague, who just happened to have a film camera with her on August 8,1974, to snap a shot of me giving the copy announcing President Richard Nixon’s resignation to anchor Howard K. Smith.)

(ABC News anchor Howard K. Smith and Desk Assistant David Guilbault)

So, I have to thank the United States Navy, The New York Times & Daniel Ellsberg for inspiring me to pursue an awakening calling - journalism. And I have to thank ’Tricky Dick’ for creating the events that helped inspire that career. And I thank my luck or my instincts or my talents for following the right paths at the right times.

(By the way, I eventually became Senior Producer of ABC News’ “World News Tonight: Sunday,” anchored by Sam Donaldson” in 1982, just a decade after that rejected handshake. Sam only called me David one time. He always bellowed my name, “Guilbault!”)

So, now here I am, at age 74, still conflicted about my ‘service.’ With the wisdom of age, I am honestly honored that I served my country. But, I wished it wasn’t in service to a war. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t get shot at. And I didn’t flee my country. But, I guess I took the path of least resistance.

Nevertheless, the Vietnam War was still an immoral and costly conflagration, in my mind, that should have been resisted by one and all. I harbor no ill feelings or ill will to anyone who thinks differently. But, I know what I know.

And I am deeply grateful for the wonderful care I receive as a veteran from the Veteran’s Administration.

Peace on Earth. Goodwill towards All.