History Main / DraftDodging

* In Creator/BruceCoville's short story ''With His Head Tucked Underneath His Arm'', there are people who avoid being drafted into the endless wars on the continent of Losfar because they're physically unfit and others who avoid it because they're too frightened, too smart or simply "too loving"; this last category is the most dangerous because objecting to the war has been made illegal. The protagonist, Brion, fits the last category and fakes being crippled to avoid serving in a war he doesn't believe in, but ends up revealing his true status and is arrested and [[OffWithHisHead executed]] for it. He promptly comes BackFromTheDead to force his king to withdraw from the wars entirely (and later leads a CavalryOfTheDead to talk a massive army of enemy soldiers into deserting in order to put off their own deaths).

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It's about this: A character (AlwaysMale for [[MenAreTheExpendableGender obvious reasons]]) doesn't want to be {{conscript|ion}}ed by the armed forces. He may have different reasons, and find different ways to do it, which may or may not work. The type of hero that usually gets put in this kind of situation is often an average worker, or even outright poor, as a person from the higher classes of society usually have relatively [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections easy]] [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney methods]] to exempt themselves from serving while avoiding the negative repercussions in the process.

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!!Examples:

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* In real life, young Korean celebrities will often bribe doctors to give them disqualifying diagnoses, with the idea that serving two years conscription would be inconvenient and damage their careers. Usually, the truth will somehow come out in the press and the celebrity will be shamed into fulfilling their obligation or see their careers take a hard hit.
** Swallowing rolled-up bits of foil before the medical examination is suggested as a good way to avoid conscription, supposedly because the foil will show up as ulcers in x-rays (this technique never works).
** Korean soccer players have been rumored to intentionally damage their own shoulders (chronic shoulder injuries being one cause for exemption) in the hopes that they can avoid military service and continue their athletic training instead.
* Famous Taiwanese singer Jay Chou got a medical exemption from the ROC army because of a bad back, which caused a bit of a stir when he later starred in the ''Film/TheGreenHornet'' as Kato, ln which he chiefly performed various martial arts acrobatics. Taiwanese, unlike Koreans, don't take conscription too seriously, so it didn't do much damage to his career.
* In the 19th century, some people in Egypt put out one of their eyes in order to escape the army. It was followed by an order to form a regiment out of one-eyed men.
* Italian history offers three examples of this:
** OlderThanFeudalism; many young Romans attempted to avoid getting drafted by [[{{Fingore}} cutting off their thumbs]] so that they couldn't hold a sword properly. This behavior was often punished swiftly and brutally, but it became so widespread during the migration period that Emperor Theodosius passed a law to allow thumb-less to serve and ultimately beginning to replace Romans with barbarians due to the population's lack of motivation to serve in the military and increasingly severe losses.
** After the unification and the introduction of conscription into the former Kingdom of Two Sicilies (who did not have conscription), part of the dodgers willingly injured themselves to be disqualified. This had a mixed rate of success, as it would take ''crippling injuries'' to be disqualified;
** During UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, already conscripted and reactivated soldiers would sometimes shoot themselves in a hand or foot during battle to be sent home, or at least in the rear echelons. This ''always'' failed and resulted in punishment, as Austro-Hungarian weapons used larger bullets than Italian ones, allowing the medics to easily recognize if the wound had actually been produced by enemy fire.
*** There was also a practice called "waving", which involved deliberately sticking an extremity out of the trench in hopes that the enemy would hit it non-lethally. It had mixed levels of success.
* During the Vietnam War, there were quite a few American athletes who managed to have "injuries" that prevented them from being drafted yet somehow failed to impair them from continuing to play professional sports.
* There are a few examples on the ''Website/DarwinAwards'' site about people trying to injure themselves so they'll be ineligible for the draft and succeeding a little too well.
* Creator/ErrolFlynn was rejected for service due to chronic malaria, tuberculosis, and venereal diseases. Fearing that public disclosure of these afflictions would cause the audience to stop taking him seriously as a swashbuckling hero, he and the studios covered the matter up.....making him look like a DirtyCoward in the process.
* Creator/DonaldTrump avoided serving in Vietnam thanks to a medical report that he had bone spurs in one of his feet... written by a doctor who was a tenant in a building owned by Trump's father. Trump has demonstrated no ill effects from said spurs before or since, and hasn't been entirely clear on which foot was affected.
* Music/BruceSpringsteen was opposed to the Vietnam War and spent a lot of time trying to come up with a plan to get himself disqualified. Ironically, when he was disqualified it was because he suffered a legitimate injury (concussion) after being in a motorcycle accident.

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* According to one report from the late 1990s, some young men in Thailand got ''breast implants'' before reporting to the induction center.
** That is not exactly the ''gay'' but rather transgender option. Thailand has more transsexuals per capita than any other country in the world.
** Transsexualism is not a cause for exemption of draft in neither Finland nor Israel. Male to female transsexuals are simply reassigned to an all-female unit. Likewise, female to male transsexuals may apply as volunteers in Finland.
* [[http://www.dareland.com/strasberg.htm This]] article tells the story of a trained actor who was able to convincingly play gay. He took an opportunity offered to him as a time-saver to be interviewed with several men who enlisted instead of the next round of conscripts, setting himself up as someone who ''wanted'' to be in the military instead of as someone who would try to dodge. He denied being gay in a manner that convinced the interviewer he was lying to enlist.
* Reportedly, it's what [[Music/TheStooges Iggy Pop]] did to escape service.
* During an interview on ''The Pat Sajak Show'', Creator/ChevyChase claimed that he told his draft board he had "homosexual tendencies" to avoid military service.
* Homosexuality itself is not a cause for exemption in Finland; "homosexualism disturbing to oneself" is. Many [[ManlyGay non-effeminate homosexuals]] do serve and make an active career in the Finnish Forces. Creator/TomOfFinland was a Lieutenant in WWII in the [[UsefulNotes/FinnsWithFearsomeForests Finnish Army]].

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* In Italy escape from the draft partially fueled a ''civil war'', as draft dodgers in the former Kingdom of Two Sicilies who didn't injury themselves would join the 'brigands' (many of which were actually [[LaResistance fighting a guerrilla war against the forced unification]]) that infested the area at the time.
* Although ''Music/{{Heart|Band}}'' is now associated with the Wilson sisters, the original founders were the brothers Michael and Roger Fisher who decamped to Canada to evade the Vietnam War draft. The Wilson sisters followed them, as they were in relationships with the Fishers. This explains why Heart’s first few records were from Canadian labels. The group returned to the US only after President [[UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter Carter]] issued a blanket pardon to all Vietnam War draft evaders.
* The 2022 invasion of UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}} by UsefulNotes/{{Russia}}:
** As soon as UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin declared "partial mobilization" (which wasn't so partial in the end) on September 22, 2022 (he had refrained from doing so since the invasion started in February), thousands of Russian men rushed to the borders of neigbor countries that don't demand visas with Russia (UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}}, UsefulNotes/{{Armenia}}, UsefulNotes/{{Georgia}}, UsefulNotes/{{Mongolia}} etc), creating long traffic jams at said borders. Prices for plane tickets skyrocketed (up to millions of rubles) and Russian airlines were ordered to stop letting men from 18 to 65 onboard planes.
** Up to 4 million people had left Russia since late February long before mobilization was enforced, including many men that saw it coming.
** A number of Ukrainians aged 18 to 60 left their country as soon as the invasion started despite being forbidden to do so, though not in numbers as massive as Russians (see above). On the other hand, many Ukrainians (some tens of thousands) from the worldwide diaspora came back to defend their motherland.

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* According to John "Drumbo" French, longtime drummer with Music/CaptainBeefheart and the Magic Band, when guitarist Jeff Cotton received an appointment with the draft board his fellow band-members helped him prepare for it by keeping him awake and feeding him amphetamines for several days beforehand.
* Gregg Allman took a more drastic measure. When he got his draft notice, [[Music/TheAllmanBrothersBand he and his brother Duane]], had a "foot-shooting" party. They had a party and when Gregg was good and drunk, they called the EMT's and shot Gregg in the foot (Gregg was originally going to shoot himself, but was so nervous Duane had to do it). When he went to his draft physical, he claimed he accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun. They bought it and he was rejected.
* Musician Bobby Keys (best known as the sax player for Music/{{The Rolling Stones|Band}}) was actually accused of being a draft dodger because he never showed up for his draft physicals, as he was on the road playing and never received the letters. He was advised by the head of his local draft board to try and enlist before the Army caught up with him. He did so and was rejected due to a medical history of ulcers.
* Denmark lets young males (and females, if they get the call), postpone the call. At least if they have something excusable such as college/education.
** College deferments were controversial in the U.S. during the Vietnam-era.
** One variation of the college deferment gambit became an issue in the 1992 Democratic presidential primaries when Arkansas Governor UsefulNotes/BillClinton had signed a pledge in 1969 to join the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, or ROTC, program of the University of Arkansas, only to back out of the pledge[[note]]a letter Clinton wrote to the head of the school's ROTC program, which he had kept, included remarks thanking him for sparing Clinton from the draft, as he could not have done otherwise without "spoiling his own political viability"[[/note]]; a factor which drew criticism - especially in light of the fact one of his primary rivals; Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, had lost part of one leg in combat; though that controversy (as well as the Gennifer Flowers sex scandal) might have cost him a shot at victory in the New Hampshire primary[[note]]won by former Democratic Senator Paul Tsongas of neighboring Massachusetts[[/note]], it ultimately didn't hurt him in the long run, as he ended up winning a tough fight for the Democratic presidential nomination before ousting incumbent Republican President UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush in the general election.
* Many places and times have had the 'war-important industries exemption', where workers in specific industries were defined as having a valid exemption. Obviously, ''getting'' a job like that in response to a draft would be impractical, but it was sometimes necessary to find people and organizations to vouch for you being an experienced worker in a relevant industry, especially if the industry had less intensive periods.
** In the United States during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, there was an order that all men, even if they had previously deferred their conscription, must either get a job essential to the industry of the country and war effort, or join the armed services. The team owners of America's baseball leagues tried (both times) to claim that [[UsefulNotes/{{Baseball}} baseball]] was an "essential industry," in an effort to keep their players from being drafted. This claim was rejected (both times).
* In Russia, [[http://www.otsrochki.ru/ there]] [[http://www.prizyvnik.ru/ are]] [[http://armeyka.net/ many]] non-governmental websites dedicated to providing professional help and legal assistance from lawyers and medics in evading the draft. The main reason for this are flaws in the Russian conscription system – enlistment offices are doing everything to get as many recruits as possible (meaning that without proper legal preparation you can be conscripted even with serious physical issues), and intensive hazing ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedovshchina dedovshchina]]) leading to many cases of suicide and even accidental murder.
* Some Russian people buy fake [=PhD=] diplomas, as in Russia [=PhD=] holders are exempt from draft. Sellers claim that those diplomas would withstand any kind of scrutiny. Validity of that claim is hard to estimate.
* Finland has deliberately made draft-dodging almost impossible. Fleeing abroad is no option, as to apply for passport one has to present his military discharge certificate. Likewise, neither homosexuality nor committing a lesser crime qualify ''per sé'' an exemption. Some 80% of Finnish men complete their tour of duty, with 14% being washed out in service, 2% completing the civilian service, and 3% being exempted for medical reasons. A minority will end up in prison on refusal.
* A classic example of RealLife RefugeInAudacity: upon receiving his draft notice, ''Berkeley Barb'' editor (and later, technology guru) [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Felsenstein Lee Felsenstein]] wrote an editorial stating his intention to submit to the draft - so that he could learn military tactics that he could then use against the US government. When he got the induction post, they told him that he'd been deferred, without any official explanation, [[BriarPatching exactly as he planned]].
* Civil rights leader Malcolm X did a similar RefugeInAudacity when he told his draft board he wanted to be sent down South, so he could organize the other blacks and "kill us some crackers". He was declared "mentally disqualified for military service".
* Creator/DaveBarry recounted in his book ''Dave Barry Turns 50'' that he dodged the draft by claiming to be a pacifist. He credited his father being a Presbyterian minister and his college being traditionally Quaker as what got him the exemption. He also mentions a guy who deliberately shit himself for several days without changing clothes so the doctor would reject him solely to avoid coming near him (and as far as he's concerned, that guy was still more honorable than Henry Kissinger).
* UsefulNotes/MuhammadAli famously insisted on going to jail and paying fines over being drafted into service for the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar, which caused his boxing license to be temporarily revoked.
* Creator/JamesAvery managed to dodge the draft ''legally'' through LoopholeAbuse. Knowing that he could potentially be drafted for the Army or Marines to fight in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, Avery voluntarily enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served there instead. [[https://vva.org/arts-of-war/tv-series/james-avery-1945-2013/ By the time Avery's mother received a letter saying he'd been drafted into the Army, he'd already been in Naval boot camp for two weeks.]]

* In the movie ''Film/{{Stonewall}}'', the DragQueen is frightened to go to the draft board and say he's gay, so his StraightGay boyfriend goes in his place. ...in drag.

** A number of Ukrainians aged 18 to 60 left their country as soon as the war started despite being forbidden to do so, though not in numbers as massive as Russians (see above). On the other hand, many Ukrainians (some tens of thousands) from the worldwide diaspora came back to defend their motherland.

* Musician Bobby Keys (best known as the sax player for Music/TheRollingStones) was actually accused of being a draft dodger because he never showed up for his draft physicals, as he was on the road playing and never received the letters. He was advised by the head of his local draft board to try and enlist before the Army caught up with him. He did so and was rejected due to a medical history of ulcers.

* In ''The Brothers K'' by David James Duncan, one brother, a gentle pacifist, is drafted during the Vietnam War. The family attempts to have the local church vouch for him, but the preacher has a grudge against him. He is sent to Vietnam and the stress takes a heavy toll on his sanity.

* Although ''Music/{{Heart}}'' is now associated with the Wilson sisters, the original founders were the brothers Michael and Roger Fisher who decamped to Canada to evade the Vietnam War draft. The Wilson sisters followed them, as they were in relationships with the Fishers. This explains why Heart’s first few records were from Canadian labels. The group returned to the US only after President [[UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter Carter]] issued a blanket pardon to all Vietnam War draft evaders.

* Inverted in ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger''. Steve Rogers gets rejected by the draft board nearly eight times. They finally let him join the army if he agrees to be part of Dr. Abraham Erskine's experiment... and we all know how that turns out.

* ''Film/TheTexasChainsawMassacreTheBeginning:'' Dean has been drafted to fight in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, but plans to flee to Mexico instead.

* While it's not stated outright, the WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue to ''Film/AmericanGraffiti'' hints that this was what Curt ended up doing. (As of 1973, he's "a writer living in Canada".)

* ''Series/{{MASH}}: In addition to the other examples listed above, Klinger tried other methods including making up family emergencies (to the point Col. Blake had a drawer full of them), gaining enough weight to count as disabled, and in one episode [[spoiler:[[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome building a hang-glider to fly his way out]]]].

# Get rejected either due to seemingly be (or ''actually'' being) unfit for service. As some of the examples below show, some people deliberately let themselves become ThePigPen when they presented themselves to the draft board, leaving the board thinking they aren't physically capable of serving. In other cases, the draftee either voluntarily enlisted or reported to the draft board, only to be rejected due to physical problems. [[https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/10/10/one-third-youths-too-obese-military-service-study-finds.html Even just being overweight can make someone unfit for service.]]

# Get rejected either due to seemingly be (or ''actually'' being) unfit for service. As some of the examples below show, some people deliberately let themselves become ThePigPen when they prsented themselves to the draft board, leaving the board thinking they aren't physically capable of serving. In other cases, the draftee either voluntarily enlists or reports to the draft board, only to be rejected due to physical problems. [[https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/10/10/one-third-youths-too-obese-military-service-study-finds.html Even just being overweight can make someone unfit for service.]]

* In ''Film/GirlInterrupted'', Susanna's friend flees to Canada to avoid being sent to Vietnam. He invites her to come with him, but she declines.

* In Creator/BruceCoville's short story ''With His Head Tucked Underneath His Arm'', there are people who avoid being drafted into the endless wars on the continent of Losfar because they're physically unfit and others who avoid it because they're too frightened, too smart or simply "too loving"; this last category is the most dangerous because objecting to the war has been made illegal. The protagonist, Brion, fits the last category and fakes being crippled to avoid serving in a war he doesn't believe in, but ends up revealing his true status and is arrested and [[OffWithHisHead executed]] for it. He promptly comes BackFromTheDead to force his king to withdraw from the wars entirely (and later leads an ArmyOfTheDead to talk a massive army of enemy soldiers into deserting in order to put off their own deaths).

* ''Film/AcrossTheUniverse'' has Max comically opting for "all of the above". He swallows some cotton before he goes in for his physical exam when he is drafted, with the idea that it'll come up as a fuzzy spot on his X-ray. They don't even do an X-ray. Other options suggested are pretending to be a sociopath so he'll flunk a psych screening, claiming to be a pedophile, and eating lots of beets the night before the test so it looks like he's peeing blood.

* In ''Literature/TheGodfather'', it was mentioned that one of the services that the Mafia provided to their men and the families who paid them tribute was a network of crooked doctors willing to provide fake medical deferments to draftees during WWII. Michael Corleone notably did not use this service (he enlisted voluntarily), but Vito eventually pulled some strings to get him a medical discharge instead of a Purple Heart and return to duty after he was wounded in combat.

* In Creator/DavidEdding's ''Regina's Song'', it's mentioned early on that Les Greenfield, the narrator's father's boss, tried to get an educational deferment during Vietnam years before the story started, but after his alma mater flunked him out for majoring in partying rather than an actual academic path, he got drafted anyway.