FROM THE 58,000

THEY RAN THE FIRST TIME, and it seems they’re running again. A string of famous people, some of whom have made fortunes playing tough guys, or warmongering in political office, are seeking deferment once again, this time from a proposed Vietnam Draft Dodgers’ reunion to be held in Canada.

“They know who they are,” says Walt Pickett, who lost both arms and both legs to a landmine near Khe Sanh in 1968. “The flat feet, the endless college degrees, the friends in high places, the anti-war teens who sent thousands to their deaths later in life. We decided that they might have the same pride in what they did that we who gave everything and almost everything did.”

Walt and his group, Vietnam Veterans for Draft Dodger Recognition, who identify men who talk tough today and yet avoided military service in Vietnam, say they have noticed how the anti-war people do not appear to walk with the same pride nowadays as they did when they were saving their own skins at the expense of their brothers. “You just don’t see the same camaraderie among those people, as there is with veterans,” he says. “I guess leaving your fellow countrymen to pick up the check, for whatever reason, just doesn’t look right in hindsight. I’m especially fond of those neocons who talk war endlessly but kept themselves safe when it was their turn. I think of them all the time when I’m being spoon fed. It’s always reasonable when you’re running away; but as the years go by that reasonableness appears more and more selfish and cowardly. There are times in your life when you have to step up to the plate. If you don’t, no amount of reasonable excuses can help you. Yellow is always yellow.”