Note that there’s a difference between a parent signing a kid up for the army if the kid doesn’t sign anything, and a parent who bullies their kid into signing up for the army.
I imagine just about all these anecdotes about a parent who “signed their kid up for the army” involve the parent telling the kid they better sign on that line, and the kid signed rather than face the wrath of their parent. The parent had no legal power to sign the kid up.
Minors can be drafted? Since when?
Okay, I should have said minors have been drafted before. In most states the age of majority was 21 until the 70s while men were eligible for the draft at 18. Under current federal law every male between the ages of 15 and 49 is a member of the militia of the United States.
I’ll happily and intelligently discount it. At that time, and since, background checks are done on prospective enlistees. Whatever it was facing jail for would certainly show up.
What’s the dude’s next trick: “my hands are licensed as lethal weapons”?
1972 ain’t 1979 and it certainly ain’t 1968 (not address to Jim).
Last I heard, one had to be 18 to be subject to conscription.
spifflog: I have plenty of reason to doubt your looie’s accounting. If you’re really interested in the facts of why I would doubt it, why not check with the Recruiting Command?
As I pointed out 18 wasn’t always the age of majority, 21 was. And for most the time we had conscription 18 year olds were considered minors.
And since when has 18 been the age of majority (besides for buying/drinking booze)? It’s been a heck of a long time now.
May we cee a cite?
I was reading a history of the Women’s Army Corps recently and once Congress and the Army decided they needed women one trick the recruiters would pull was to prey on young teary-eyed women at bus depots and train stations saying farewell to their husbands and boyfriends. This was in the 40’s. They’d say “would you like to support the war effort and do what can to help your men?” They’d say “yes” and the recuiter would have them sign a “petition.” Except it wasn’t a petition, it was enlistment papers and once they had your signature they owned you.
So it’s not a stretch for me to believe a parent could take their kid down to the recruiter’s and make them sign up.
ya go. I’ll admit I was off about the ages (it’s only 17-45 yr olds), but most 17 year olds are minors.
Again, if by “make” you mean march the kid down to the recruiting station and say, “Billy, you’re gonna sign the papers right now or Mama’s gonna git ornery. And you wouldn’t like Mama when she’s ornery”. And the terrified kid signs.
But if you mean Mama can march into the recruiting office without the kid, sign some papers all by herself, and the next day some MPs show up and haul the kid out of bed kicking and screaming off to Basic Training, then no, she can’t “make” her kid sign up.
Thanks. So, now I’ve a question for you. Can the militia be activated other than by conscription? AFAIK, conscription is still confined to 18 or older (not that we actually have conscription now, anyway).
Monty: Eight different posters in this thread claim to have personally known people who were given the “enlist or go to jail” option by a judge. Yet you continue to dispute that this ever happened.
Do you have any suggestion as to why eight people who don’t know each other and have no vested interest in this would conspire to lie about such a mundane subject?
“Enlist or jail” happened, and it was not that uncommon.
Calling the recruiting command today would be pointless. Much has changed with military recruiting in the last few decades. They may or may not take those kids today, I wouldn’t know.
One major change is that they now require a high school diploma or GED prior to enlistment, which was not the case in times past. Many of the “enlist or jail” kids were high school dropouts.
You can’t reference today’s rules and apply them to things that happened years ago.
They didn’t have computers in those days. I first walked into the Air Force recruiter’s office a day or two after Christmas, 1959, and was enlisted and on a plane to Lackland Air Force Base on December 30th.
Two or three days after I got there, we had our background check. The sergeant handed out pieces of lined notebook paper and told us to write down any and all felony arrests we’d had.
Chinese kid next to me from Oakland, Ca., just about filled up his paper. I remember counting nine arrests with “released, lack of evidence” after them, and a few B & E convictions.
They kept him and he turned into a damn good jet fighter mechanic.
I want to go and start a militia. How do I do it?
Monty, it’s important to note that the supposed “Enlist or Jail” dilemma is really nothing of the sort, because it still offers an option. It’s certainly not forced conscription.
When I enlisted I had to fill out some pretty serious forms that went back more than 10 years, asking me questions that I barely remembered the answers to. However, I’m pretty certain that it hasn’t always been that way, and there is more than enough anecdotal evidence to lead me to believe that such an ultimatum was offered pretty regularly.
As for the OP, I would say no. As Monty said, even in the bad old days of the draft you had to be 18 or get permission (which is volunteering). I’m sure that some 17-year-olds were told to get out and used the military as a way out, or were told “Join up, or else”, but that is not at all the same thing as parents signing them up against their will because they still leave an option, however unpalatable.
Seriously?
Buy a few guns, recruit a few idiots, and call yourselves one.
Malarkey. I do not dispute that it ever happened. I dispute that it happened in the late 1970s and later. There’s even a thread here where it shows that one guy who thought he could get a judge to agree to it had no luck.
Maybe for the same reason so many people think that it’s true that servicemembers are government property?
Right, but not at the times I dispute it happens (late 1970s and later).
I’m not–you’re reading too much into it. I dispute that it happened in the late 1970s. Scroll back through the thread and read my posts and you will see that is the case.
Can nobody read what I’ve posted? I’m not talking about stuff that happened 50 years ago!