If you were drafted in 1968—and in fiscal year 1968, about 334,000 Americans were drafted into the U.S. armed forces—the government controlled the next two years of your life. Assuming you lasted two years, that is. In 1968 more than 16,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War. (The Vietnamese had it worse. Their death count that year was well over 200,000.)
Even if you weren’t conscripted, the government owned a piece of you. Officials used draft deferments to steer people in what were seen as socially beneficial directions, such as teaching and engineering, writes Jesse Walker.
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