The Draftee in the Desert: An Interview with Veteran Donald Corkum

When we think of war veterans, we tend to imagine old, shell-shocked soldiers who carry the memories of battle and an intense patriotism for America. What we forget, however, are the draftees who served when there was no war to fight -- when they were drafted simply to keep the United States forces at their needed levels. Though there may not have been bombs, fire, or an atmosphere of unthinkable destruction, they lived in a completely different world. Mr. Donald Corkum was one of these "lost draftees." On the morning of

Thursday, May 24, 2001, set in the quiet, personable environment of the Canton Public Library, I was able to interview Mr. Corkum, in hopes of finding what he, along with his fellow draftees, did in their service without glory.

Question: What is your full name?

Mr. Corkum: My full name is Donald Corkum.

Question: Where did you live prior to being in the service?

Mr. Corkum: Prior to the service we lived in Hartford, Connecticut in an apartment.

Question: In which branch of the service did you serve?

Mr. Corkum: I served in the United States Army as a draftee.

Question: When were you in the service?

Mr. Corkum: I was drafted in December of 1956. It was for 2 years through '58, and subsequent to that I was in the Army Reserve.

Question: How old were you at that time?

Mr. Corkum: At that time I was 22 years old.

Question: What was your rank?

Mr. Corkum: Well, I went in as a private and I came out as a Specialist Second Class.

Question: What were your responsibilities or jobs as this position?

Mr. Corkum: Well, my primary job was generally in Data Processing because I worked for IBM at the time and when I was drafted I was sent to Fort Huachuca, Arizona which was their Army Electronic Proving Ground at that point. Primarily my job was to set up a data processing installation at the fort.

Question: Was that near Tombstone, Arizona?

Mr. Corkum: Yes, in fact that's where we lived.

Question: Did you go anywhere?

Mr. Corkum: No, pretty much that was it. I did some training for the army on the West Coast in Los Angeles a couple of times but most of the time was just spent there.

Question: What type of training did you undergo?

Mr. Corkum: Well it was technical training so classes. They would send us to civilian-type classes for data processing.

Question: Did you have a commanding officer?

Mr. Corkum: Yeah, but I don't remember his name. (laughs)

Question: Do any significant dates or events come to mind about your time in the service?

Mr. Corkum: Well, no, generally we did our basic training on the East Coast at Fort Dix and after that I was assigned out there and my wife did join me, Kathy came out and that's when I moved off the base and we moved into Tombstone, Arizona in a little apartment, and we did have a significant event our daughter, first daughter, was born in Tombstone, or at the Fort and we were living in Tombstone.

Question: When did you return? What did you do next?

Mr. Corkum: It was December of '58 and I rejoined IBM as a technician at that time and we got another apartment in West Hartford.

Question: What did you enjoy most about the service?

Mr. Corkum: At that time the Korean War was over and so we got drafted to serve in-between the Korean War and the Vietnam War and there weren't enough volunteers to do that so they did have to draft. We found ourselves in a situation with a lot of other young people, a lot of young, married people and I guess at that time if you had a child you were exempt, but we at that time didn't have any children, so we did meet an awful lot of the people from around the country that were in the same situation that we were. In fact, even today we still correspond with a couple of them even after 42 or so years. So that was kind of neat, and you know nobody had any money so you lived on 80 or 90 dollars a month and so everything was very, very inexpensive, we did our shopping at the base. So we had no money but you had a lot of good friends.

Question: Is there a particular day that comes to mind?

Mr. Corkum: Not really, other than the birth of our first daughter and the fact that, you know, we couldn't wait to get out (laughing), but there weren't really any significant conflicts or anything.

Question: Did you have any particular good friends while you were in the service?

Mr. Corkum: Yeah, as I was saying we were living in a little apartment and generally the people that lived off-base would live in Tombstone because it was very inexpensive and there were a lot of apartments for rent and so we all had children at that particular time, and they were all our firsts, and the wives would take the little babies to the post office and weigh them on the scale (laughing), and you know, Tombstone was a great place to live because it had a had a history of mining and the Old West, and they would have a festival every year, you know, "Tombstone Days" kind of like what we have here in Collinsville. They would have parades and reenactments, and that type of stuff, so it was fun. Tombstone and Fort Huachuca were relatively close to the Mexican border, 70 or 80 miles, so we would go down to Mexico to visit or do a little shopping, that kind of thing. So everyone was in the same type of boat: we were doing our jobs to serve the country and do your thing, and because there was no conflict it was not as bad as for some of the later draftees.

Question: So how did you feel about the draft?

Mr. Corkum: Well, you know, the one thing you felt at the time, which was understandable, is that this is going to set us back, you know, why are we 1A and somebody else not. But when you look back on it you say hey, someone had to do it and what we were doing was just keeping our forces at a level that they needed to be. So the day you went it was kind of disappointing but after the fact it wasn't that bad.

Question: What did you dislike the most about the service?

Mr. Corkum: Well, the freedom was a problem and the fact that, you know, you felt that you could do probably a better job at what you were doing, but again, the authority kind of thing was much more stringent than it was in business. I'll never forget one particular day they got us out there on a Saturday morning and there was going to be some big parade coming up in a week or so and some dignitaries were going to come, so they had us go out there on the field and pick all the weeds out of the grass, and I was saying, "This is ridiculous!" (laughs) We had like a hundred people out there picking weeds out of the grass, you know "All right, a lawnmower would have done a better job." But that's the way the military did things...

Question: Do you have any regrets about what you did, or would you have done anything differently?

Mr. Corkum: No, when I went in there, they had very, very little automated data processing at the time so over the two years we built fairly sophisticated for those days, a machine environment, so it was just kind of an extension of my career path with IBM so I was fortunate in that regard. They tried to match what my skills and training were for what I did in my two years. Other than the fact that it was long and you were away from your friends, we made new friends and the experiences were great. It was a good chance to visit another part of the country. A lot of people went to Germany and France and all that, but we were in the desert (laughs).