Vietnam: Teenagers Back Then

[Mreed911]

Found these online and it just made me think... you can really see the youth in some of these faces.

 

[karlac]

My turn in that barrel, during "Project 100,000", where you just had to have a warm body.
As CO of A/2/17 Field Artillery, I was literally the "old man", at 25.
My 1st Sergeant, barely 30 ... Thank you, Top! Many came home because of you.

If McNamara was alive today and I had the opportunity, I'd rip off his head and piss in the hole ...

 

[Texasjack]

McNamara probably killed more GIs than the VC. That's what happens when you try to run a war like an economics professor.

 

[Army 1911]

Read the book "Stolen Valor" by HK Burkett. He has the correct statistics on who served in Vietnam. Short story is that most of the combat troops volunteered for it. Relatively few teenagers served there because there were student deferments to the draft and the consequence of that was that at that time we had the best educated army in history.

 

[karlac]

Read the book "Stolen Valor" by HK Burkett. He has the correct statistics on who served in Vietnam. Short story is that most of the combat troops volunteered for it. Relatively few teenagers served there because there were student deferments to the draft and the consequence of that was that at that time we had the best educated army in history.

Statistics are what you can claim they represent
... and that still leaves plenty of room for misrepresenting actual reality.

IIRC the numbers at the time, only about 25% of those serving in country were draftees, with approximately 30% of those killed being draftees.
But, that belies the large number of young men who joined to keep from getting drafted.

And what about breaking it down by MOS?
Roughly 90 % of the 13B's in my unit were draftees, almost all of them black.

IOW, and no offence, but **** a bunch of "correct" statistics ...