Harry was in fact drafted in 1918. He told me that he and about 200 men were at the final steps of in-processing at the Nashville induction center when an officer introduced a man in a civilian suit to them and told them to pay attention.
The man asked one simple question: "Who here is already licensed to drive a truck?" Now, this was 1918, and probably a minority of men in the room even had a license to drive a car. But "Pa" (as I called my grandfather) did have a truck license. As you can see from his registration card, his employer was Greenvale Milk Co., and Pa drove a truck for them.
Pa said he and maybe four other men raised their hands. The officer commanded, "You men go with him," so they got up and followed the civilian to another room.
There, the man told them that they may have thought they had been drafted into the Army, but in fact they had been drafted into federal service. "Here's your choice," he said. "You can stay in the Army and go fight in the trenches in France if you want. Or you can drive the US Mail for the Postal Service for the term of your draft period."
They all chose the post office. So Pa told me he drove trucks of mail from Louisville, Ky., to Nashville, and back, for four years. The mail cargo bay was covered with weatherproofed canvas. The truck driver's compartment was not covered at all. Heat of summer sun, rain or shine, snow or ice, Pa drove the mail fully exposed to the elements.
As for the 195 or so men who did not know how to drive a truck? They were sworn in to the Army and sent to Camp Jackson, SC, for basic training. And less than a month later the war ended and they were all discharged and sent home.
For some reason, my great-grandfather, Allen Overton Burkitt, also registered for the draft, even though when the US entered the war in 1917, he was 41 years old:
