There was a kerfluffle a few years ago when somebody wrote an article, I think in Esquire magazine, talking about the guilt from not fighting in Vietnam. My memory of the reaction was that every single person who commented said that the writer had his head up his ass, because no person in America felt guilt about avoiding Nam. I’m of that age and I’ve never met anyone in my life who thought that way. There obviously must be some, but it’s not like WWI and WWII, where the attitudes were totally different. But by the time of Korea the urge to serve was noticeably lacking. It’s never returned.
I was looking through an issue of Yank magazine (produced by and for enlisted men in the U.S. Armed Forces) dating from 1945 about some men who were on the home front not in uniform. A lot of the men featured in the article said they were frequently asked by others why they weren’t serving in the military. One of the men was turned down for service because he was deaf in one ear. He carried his deferment papers to prove to people that he was rejected for military service. Another man had actually served in the army and also carried around proof that he had served for the occasions where people asked why he wasn’t in uniform. The third I remembered had a job critical to the war effort and was not allowed to enlist (I forget what his job was).
Did the reasons or popularity behind the particular war matter to you? Would you feel the same responsibility towards 'Nam or the recent wars?
No, the popularity of the war did not enter my decision to try to enlist. The Gulf War was the current war at the time I tried. And Vietnam wouldn’t have prevented it either. As I tried to explain in my last post, military service is a honor and something that all young men should feel compelled to do. Not only in a time of war, but whenever. I come from a very long line of veterans, going back to the Civil War. I am no war-monger by any stretch, but I do feel a very real sense of duty and commitment to this Country. Giving a little back is not asking too much of our young men.
My war was Vietnam. I was 4F. No shame at all.
Are you kidding? I vowed to go thru this life without taking human life for any reason, and so far so good.
I’m not implying one should feel shame or guilt (I don’t) or even a sense of duty. I’m just asking if the psychological impact of not serving had profound effects on men in past wars. I do think if I had friends or family who were fighting today, or if I came from a line of military men, I might feel differently. Certainly the concept of “duty” is alive and well for many people today, although clearly the WWs had a much deeper social and psychological impact than our present wars on the American psyche.
My only “conflict” (if you can even call it that) is what I consider to be somewhat of a contradiction; I do not approve of our involvement in the Middle East and yet I do have respect for soldiers who decide to serve. I certainly don’t believe they are protecting freedom or are making this country (or the world) any safer, and yet they are making a personal sacrifice that I respect, even if I feel it is wrong-headed.
My father was exempted during WWII for similar reasons to Satchmo above. He was an only son, his family farmed, his father was disabled, and he had five sisters. He really resented people who assumed he had tried to be exempted or had dodged somehow. I don’t think he felt guilty so much, because he really was needed as the sole support for his family, but he didn’t want anyone to think badly of him. And some did, of course.
Preston Sturges’s 1944 Hail the Conquering Hero is premised on a man crushed because he was 4-F. It has a complicated theme, after active Marines claim he was with them overseas.
In a past thread people reported on the shaming of young men who did not serve in WWII. Young able bodied men were looked at askance if they were not in the service in some settings. I don’t if any other war brought about that kind of reaction. In something similar, during the Civil War there were scandalous cases of soldiers paid to serve in the place of drafted individuals who died in service. I doubt there was much guilt associated with those instances.
The Four Feathers is a book about this subject, that has formed the basis for several movies.
Not American, but my Grandfather was rejected by every service during WWII. He was an engineer in the Glasgow shipyards - ‘essential personnel’.
He was deeply ashamed anyway, especially when some bitch later handed him a white feather.
I make a modest nod of respect to those whose Numbers were less than 273. Okay, it’s a bigger nod but, frankly, it’s “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din. Give my regards to Saigon!”
They didn’t call it a lottery for nothing, and I was one of the winners. I have no regrets, but I do have that respect.
I had to think about this subject for a while. I recall some men from the Vietnam era who expressed some guilt about knowing that others served in their place, and may have died. One served in the military, but worked the system to remain stateside. In the case of Vietnam there was a great deal of collective guilt about the US involvement that may have mitigated some of the individual feelings. During the Vietnam War, the traditional association of refusal to serve and cowardice was dissolved, another mitigating factor. ‘Guilt wracked’ from avoiding service may have never been more than a romatic notion anyway. But real guilt, or misgivings must have occurred.
I call bullshit. I have no doubt that there were many people upset that they couldn’t fight, but that didn’t seem to be the prevailing sentiment. Of the 16 million WWII vets, 10 million of them were drafted. If there was this huge sentiment to fight, why did 2/3s of the soldiers have to be drafted? Compare that with Vietnam where that number is 1/3 or today where it is 0.
I did not enlist, nor was I drafted. I took my turn in the lottery with everyone else during the Vietnam Era. I don’t think I’m suffering from survivor guilt, especially when I know that I would not have gone into combat. I got a “Profile 2” classification on my physical because of my hearing - they would have taken me, but I would have pounded a typewriter somewhere.
I do sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had volunteered, done my time, collected my honorable discharge and then had access to the benefits like college tuition, etc.
The U.S. didn’t want everybody to sign up all at once. It was totally unprepared for all-out war, because conservatives were fierce isolationists who refused to spend money on a true build-up of the army. As it was, they were swamped after Pearl Harbor. They didn’t have the camps, the trainers, the weaponry, heck, even the uniforms. Or the ships to transport the bodies across an Atlantic filled with u-boats. Drafting bodies in a regular predictable fashion over the course of the war was helpful. Don’t forget that it wasn’t until 1944 that the largest need for bodies occurred.
Vietnam was a completely different situation. In WWII draftees and enlistees were used in pretty much the same ways across combat and support. Wikipedia has a quote about Nam:
Every male in the country knew that if you got drafted you were meat. That put a very high premium on enlisting so that you could go off to Germany or somewhere away from the firing line, as the recruiters specifically promised.
The two wars were different in every way, and so was the reaction to them in the country. It’s completely believable to me that 4F’s cried if they were rejected. In fact, the only slightly realistic moments in the new Captain America movie were those in which Steve Rogers was desperately trying to enlist. There are multitudes of cases in which men disguised their names or traveled to distant areas or faked medical records or birthdates so they could enlist after being rejected. I don’t think that happened in Nam or happens today.
Well said! It should also be noted that WWII was more of a “patriot” war than was Vietnam. We were attacked, not to mention I think that the feeling of patriotism was much higher in the 1940’s than today. The sixties and seventies really killed the patriotism that this country used to have. It has returned somewhat since 9/11. Also, WWII was a “total” war, meaning that every single family in this country was involved some way in the war effort. To not be a part of that put you as an outcast. If you were a young man and not in uniform it was quite possible you were the only one in your town who wasn’t. It isn’t too hard to see how that could affect a young man’s self esteem.
This doesn’t make sense. Just because people want to enlist doesn’t mean you have to take them. It is far easier to put out a notice saying we need 10,000 more men every month than to force people to sign up. Or, you say we need volunteers and when they all rush to sign up you say, ok you come back in two months, you in three, etc.
This doesn’t work in reality. Can you give me an example in which a country ever did this when a war was declared?
Every war that didn’t involve a draft. Your method is completely bizarre. If the problem is too many recruits, why in the world would you expand the pool and take random people, instead of selecting the best applicants.
Can you provide any cite by someone involved with the effort saying “We had enough recruits, but we thought drafting people was a better idea.”
It’s pretty much common knowledge. There simply weren’t enough resources to handle the deluge of men who wanted to sign up after the Pearl Harbor attacks. The draft then was just an orderly way to go through the people who wanted to sign up.