The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders by Jack D. Schwager Page A
Authors: Jack D. Schwager
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six Fs. I flunked out and was immediately drafted by the marines.
I didn’t know that the marines drafted recruits.
They normally don’t. However, there were two months in 1968—April and May—in which they were allowed to take eight thousand draftees.
Did you try to avoid getting drafted?
I didn’t have to be drafted. My father was a colonel in the reserves and he could easily have gotten me a cushy job in the reserves.
How come you didn’t take that option?
At the time, I felt it was my obligation to serve. I guess I was a conservative kid. I felt that if I accepted the privileges of being a U.S. citizen, I also had to accept the responsibilities.
Did you have any personal opinions about the war at the time?
I thought it was a stupid war, but I felt that we elected leaders and they made the decisions.
You make it sound like it was a matter of civic responsibility.
That’s exactly the way I felt about it before Vietnam. During and after the war, my feelings changed drastically.
In what way?
One of the experiences that will always be with me is standing guard duty, which is something everyone did regardless of his job. I would hear a noise in the bushes and think, “What is that?” Of course, the worst possibility was that it was one of the enemy sneaking up to try to shoot me. I would think to myself, “This is the enemy; I really want to kill him.” Then I thought about who was really out there. It was probably a young kid just like me. He didn’t hate me; he was just doing what his superiors told him to do—just like me. I remember thinking, “What’s going on here? Here’s a kid who’s as scared as I am, trying to kill me, and I’m trying to kill him.”
I started to realize that war is insanity. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense for countries to try to settle their political differences by sending their children out to kill each other and whoever kills the most people gets the piece of land. The longer I was in Vietnam, and the more personal my experiences became, the more intently I felt that war was insanity.
It almost sounds as if the war made you a pacifist.
Very much so.
What about the rest of the unit? Was there any prevailing sentiment about the war?
There was a pretty wide range of feelings, but most of the unit leaned to the hawkish side. Most of them thought that we were doing the right thing; that we were there to help free these people from communism. I don’t know if they were, as we say in the markets, “talking their position,” or whether they really believed it.
Did you get into arguments because your beliefs were different?
I tried to avoid it. You have to remember that the marines were almost all volunteer. Therefore, the people who were there believed in what they were doing. Their backgrounds were very different from mine. Few of them were college educated. A number of them came from street gangs. Some were even there because the judge had given them a choice between jail and probation on condition of joining the service.
Did you feel out of place?
I felt very much out of place. I was in an artillery unit. Each hour we received weather reports, which we were supposed to use to derive a composite adjustment factor. We filled out a form specifying the wind direction and velocity, air density, temperature, rotation of the earth, and other factors and performed a mathematical process to derive a net factor. Every time the weather report came in, it became a game to see who could derive this factor most quickly. Before I was there, the speed record was nineteen seconds. On my second day there, I broke the record, and I eventually got the time down to nine seconds. I thought this was great fun. Little did I realize that I was making enemies by the truckload.
The people who were there preferred the new guys being ignorant so that they could have the feeling of helping to bring
I didn’t know that the marines drafted recruits.
They normally don’t. However, there were two months in 1968—April and May—in which they were allowed to take eight thousand draftees.
Did you try to avoid getting drafted?
I didn’t have to be drafted. My father was a colonel in the reserves and he could easily have gotten me a cushy job in the reserves.
How come you didn’t take that option?
At the time, I felt it was my obligation to serve. I guess I was a conservative kid. I felt that if I accepted the privileges of being a U.S. citizen, I also had to accept the responsibilities.
Did you have any personal opinions about the war at the time?
I thought it was a stupid war, but I felt that we elected leaders and they made the decisions.
You make it sound like it was a matter of civic responsibility.
That’s exactly the way I felt about it before Vietnam. During and after the war, my feelings changed drastically.
In what way?
One of the experiences that will always be with me is standing guard duty, which is something everyone did regardless of his job. I would hear a noise in the bushes and think, “What is that?” Of course, the worst possibility was that it was one of the enemy sneaking up to try to shoot me. I would think to myself, “This is the enemy; I really want to kill him.” Then I thought about who was really out there. It was probably a young kid just like me. He didn’t hate me; he was just doing what his superiors told him to do—just like me. I remember thinking, “What’s going on here? Here’s a kid who’s as scared as I am, trying to kill me, and I’m trying to kill him.”
I started to realize that war is insanity. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense for countries to try to settle their political differences by sending their children out to kill each other and whoever kills the most people gets the piece of land. The longer I was in Vietnam, and the more personal my experiences became, the more intently I felt that war was insanity.
It almost sounds as if the war made you a pacifist.
Very much so.
What about the rest of the unit? Was there any prevailing sentiment about the war?
There was a pretty wide range of feelings, but most of the unit leaned to the hawkish side. Most of them thought that we were doing the right thing; that we were there to help free these people from communism. I don’t know if they were, as we say in the markets, “talking their position,” or whether they really believed it.
Did you get into arguments because your beliefs were different?
I tried to avoid it. You have to remember that the marines were almost all volunteer. Therefore, the people who were there believed in what they were doing. Their backgrounds were very different from mine. Few of them were college educated. A number of them came from street gangs. Some were even there because the judge had given them a choice between jail and probation on condition of joining the service.
Did you feel out of place?
I felt very much out of place. I was in an artillery unit. Each hour we received weather reports, which we were supposed to use to derive a composite adjustment factor. We filled out a form specifying the wind direction and velocity, air density, temperature, rotation of the earth, and other factors and performed a mathematical process to derive a net factor. Every time the weather report came in, it became a game to see who could derive this factor most quickly. Before I was there, the speed record was nineteen seconds. On my second day there, I broke the record, and I eventually got the time down to nine seconds. I thought this was great fun. Little did I realize that I was making enemies by the truckload.
The people who were there preferred the new guys being ignorant so that they could have the feeling of helping to bring
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