[pct-l] Dog Tags and Why I Hike

[chancepctcdt at yahoo.com (Chance Money)]

  Not everyone can serve, nor should everyone feel they need to. The most precious freedoms we have are the right to say NO! and to demand that social authority of all kinds be held publicly accountable. You did not abandon your country nor fail to do your part. 
   
  Chance
  

Wayne Kraft <wayneskraft@comcast.net> wrote: Quite unexpectedly the list's discussion of dog tags and military  
experiences has caused me a bit of a personal epiphany.  I have never  
served in the military and during the Vietnam War, when I was of an  
age to do it, I didn't volunteer.  In fact, I was pretty vocal in my  
opposition to that war.  At first I applied for a student deferment.   
Later, when the draft lottery was implemented, I drew a number so  
high I was guaranteed never to be drafted.  I was blind in one eye  
and, although I didn't know it yet, already beginning to lose my  
hearing.  Had I volunteered, I don't know if I would have been taken  
and, if taken, if I would have been thrown into combat.  I was about  
as far from fighting that war as you could get.

Since then I've discovered a lot of what I "knew" at 20 was just  
plain wrong.  I let others fight for me and I abandoned them when  
they needed me most.  If this was because I believed lies that were  
told to me, then I am at fault for being so gullible.  Although it  
was not something I spent a lot of time thinking about, over the  
years I found myself trying to make up for this personal failing.  I  
picked hard tasks and set audacious goals.  Law school.  A high  
pressure career.  Running marathons. Cooking up outlandish  
challenges.  To some degree, I've volunteered for all these things  
because I didn't step up when it really counted.

When I told my dad one day that I wanted to hike the Pacific Crest  
Trail from Mexico to Canada some day, he asked me "Son, why don't you  
set some easier goals?''   I deflected the question with some  
humorous remark I no longer recall.  I wonder what he would have said  
if I had responded, "Because I didn't go, dad.  Because I didn't  
go."  If I ever I do get to hike this trail, I guess I'll be  
motivated in some way by all of you who did go and to whom I am  
forever and irrevocably indebted.

So, if they find my mangled corpse some day and someone kneels down  
to read my dog tags.  And someone says to him, "Well, who is he?"   
And the man with my dog tags responds, "Well, I don't know who this  
is, but he walked from Mexico to Canada."  Well, if that were to  
happen, I guess it would be OK with me.

Wayne Kraft


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