Bullers Registered for the Draft 1

A recent post examined J. P. Buller’s World War I draft registration card (here), but that was only one of fifteen such cards for Bullers in the York County section of the Ancestry.com collection of World War I draft registration cards. This post will begin to survey those registration cards to see what we can learn both about our relatives near and distant as well as how they—and, by extension, other Mennonites—navigated the Selective Service System and its demand for military service at that time.

As mentioned in the earlier post, there were three distinct registrations. The first one was on 5 June 1917 and included all males ages twenty-one to thirty-one. The second registration was held a year later, on 5 June 1918, for males who had turned twenty-one since the first registration. The second registration was also supplemented by one on 24 August 1918 for men who turned twenty-one between 5 June and 24 August 1918. A third and final registration on 12 September 1918 expanded the age range significantly by requiring all males between ages eighteen and forty-five who had not previously registered to do so now.

Each of the three registration dates had its own form:

• 5 June 1917: Form 26-2-38-A
• 5 June 1918 and 24 August 1918: Form 26.2-38-B
• 12 September 1918: Form 26-2-38-C

We viewed the third form when we worked through J. P. Buller’s registration (see the form here), so we will show only the first two in this post. (You can view larger versions of all three here.)

The top card, which is an example of the A card from the 5 June 1917 registration, was for a twenty-two-year-old named Andrew Buller; he is a distant relative of unknown connection (i.e., no one knows where in the Buller line his father, Jacob P. Buller, fits). The bottom card, a B card from the second registration, was signed by Benjamin P Buller, Peter P and Margaretha’s oldest living son (i.e., Grandpa Chris’s older brother). Note that he signed the card on 24 August 1918, which was the date of the supplement to the second registration. He did so because he turned twenty-one on 5 July of that year.

The A, B, and C registration forms are generally similar, although several key differences are worth noting. The front of card A, for example, asks for the following information:

• full name + age in years
• home address
• date of birth
• citizenship status
• place of birth
• trade, occupation, or office
• employer name and location
• marital status
• prior military service

Card A also includes two questions. Question 9 reads: “Have you a father, mother, wife, child under 12, or a sister or brother under 12, solely dependent on you for support (specify which)?” Question 12 asks: “Do you claim exemption from draft (specify grounds)?”

Card B asks for most of the same information but does not request the registrant’s trade, occupation, or office and place of birth. Card B also asks for additional information:

• father’s place of birth
• name and address of nearest relative
• race (White, Negro, Indian, Oriental)

Strangely, card A’s question 9, about a dependent family member (which was grounds for an exemption) and question 12, concerning a claim of exemption from the draft, are not included on card B, which was used exactly one year after card A.

Card C largely follows the pattern of card B, including the identification of the registrant’s race and the name and address of the nearest relative, but it does not ask for the father’s place of birth. The earlier questions about having a dependent family member and exemption from the draft are, as with card B, absent from card C.

Curiously, only card A, for the first registration, provided a place for the registrant to claim exemption from the draft. So we see on Andrew Buller’s card that he did claim an exemption, with “Mennonite conviction” given as the reason. Why were Andrew and others completing card A invited to claim an exemption but not later registrants who filled out cards B or C?

To be clear, the Selective Service Act of 18 May 1917 did allow for exemptions from the draft for various categories of individuals, including federal, state, and local government officials, those already enlisted in the armed forces, “regular or duly ordained ministers of religion [and] students who at the time of the approval of this Act are preparing for the ministry in recognized theological or divinity schools,” “persons engaged in industries, including agriculture, found to be necessary to the maintenance of the Military Establishment or the effective operation of the military forces or the maintenance of national interest during the emergency,” “those in a status with respect to persons dependent upon them for support which renders their exclusion or discharge advisable” (the interest of question 9 on form A), and “those found to be physically or morally deficient” (quotations from HR 3545, the legislative act passed by Congress and signed by the president, available here). The legislation also stated:

nothing in this Act contained shall be construed to require or compel any person to serve in any of the forces herein provided for who is found to be a member of any well-recognized religious sect or organization at present organized and existing and whose existing creed or principles forbid its members to participate in war in any form and whose religious convictions are against war or participation therein in accordance with the creed or principles of said religious organizations, but no person so exempted shall be exempted from service in any capacity that the President shall declare to be noncombatant.

To put this in simple terms, members of churches committed to nonresistance or pacifism, which obviously included Mennonites, were exempt from participation in military activity. This did not, however, exempt them from registering for the draft or from serving in whatever capacity President Wilson deemed to be noncombatant.

The promise of exemption from military activity seems simple and clear, but many of those tasked with managing the draft, including political and military leaders, disagreed with the policy and thus made it as difficult as possible for potential draftees to secure an exemption. For example, according to one report (see Hartzler 1922, 89), those who wished to be exempted from combatant service were required to complete form 174. However, that form was misfiled between forms 143 and 144 in the material given to local draft boards, with the result that the necessary form remained undiscovered by some. Beyond that, those who claimed exemption from military activity could still be drafted and called into training camp. There they were frequently pressured in various ways both physical, emotional, and psychological to abandon their religious commitment and join the regular armed forces (see Hartzler 1922, 93–96, 99; Juhnke 1989).

In short, although the Selective Service Act allowed for exemption based on religious convictions or when other family members were financially dependent on the potential recruit, both the draft apparatus and most people who worked within it sought to minimize the number of men who took advantage of the allowances. The officials’ job, after all, was to add soldiers, not dismiss them. Given this background, it is not difficult to imagine why the questions about claiming an exemption that had appeared on registration card A were removed from cards B and C: removing them made it more difficult for registrants to take advantage of the exemptions provided by the law.

Unfortunately, for our purposes, the decision to remove the exemption questions means that we cannot say how Bullers who registered with cards B or C responded to the draft. Still, five of the fifteen Bullers in York County who registered for the World War I draft did complete card A. We will turn our attention to them, and to the other ten registrants, in a subsequent post.

Works Cited

Hartzler, J. S. 1922. Mennonites in the World War: Or, Nonresistance under Test. Scottdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House. Available online here.

Juhnke, James C. 1989. “World War (1914–1918).” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

U.S. Congress. House. 1917. “An Act To Authorize the President to Increase Temporarily the Military Establishment of the United States.” HR 3545. 65th Congress. U.S. Statutes at Large 40 (1917): 76–83. Available online here.