I’m not sure why. One of my brothers choose to serve in the artillery, precisely. Anyway, the general concept is that most people ended up where the army needed them (even though they could express preferences). Anybody can be trained for artillery, so, it’s not going to be an issue. Only some positions require preexisting skills, or particular physical or mental aptitudes. And I suspect that there were generally more volunteers than needed for those. The boomer guy I mentioned above absolutely wanted to do that, and why someone would want to spend his military service submerged for months in a row is totally beyond me 
:eek: Nevertheless, there are volunteers even for that.
And finally, the army has its way to cajole people into volunteering for something they weren’t originally interested in. I’m a conscientious objector, but I had been preselected for reserve officer training. Along with another guy who had no issue with serving but was unwilling to serve some months more, we went through three (mandatory) interviews beginning with a sergeant and ending with a major to convince us otherwise despite our utter lack of interest (we declined). A guy who wanted to serve in the navy but had some skill or another of interest went through a similar process to convince him to sign up instead for a specific training in the signal corps (he did). The desert recon guy I mentioned previously had already served in the Algerian army, shouldn’t have been called to begin with due to an agreement between both countries, had no interest in a second round of mandatory service, but they somehow convinced him not only to stay but also to volunteer for a war zone (Libya/Chad war) :smack:
Artillery does not have the appeal of infantry or armour.It is also a highly technical arm and while not exactly nuke school, does require a recruit to learn and master some rather complicated mathematical concepts and skills.
The guy who’s aiming the gun, sure. The guy who drives the truck that tows the howitzer or loads it or whatever, not so much.
Or the guy loading the ammo. A good friend of mine was an artilleryman, and started out by loading 175mm shells. That’s normally a 2-man job, but since he was 18 years old and freakishly strong, more often than not he loaded them by himself. Needless to say, he now has serious back problems, 20 years later.
IIRC, all members of gun crews are given the same training and they alternate roles.
I’m sure there’s some degree of cross-training, but I doubt they alternate roles. Tank drivers and loaders don’t swap roles; why would artillery crews?
At least in Spain, Artillery includes the guys in charge of transporting and storing ammo; it was my brother’s assignment and he still gets pretty white remembering how carelessly some of his superiors and mates handled things - and how they drove. He was the person with the oldest license, so he got to teach everybody who didn’t have one. They never handled any actual artillery pieces. Of course once you choose a branch you can’t say “no, no, I want to be a storage dude”, but I always think of it as an example of one of those army jobs that don’t come to mind when you think of the army, yet without which the army wouldn’t be able to do those that come to mind.
To echo SanDiegoTim, my mother had a childhood friend who enlisted with the Navy to try and avoid the draft during Viet Nam, only to be assigned as a corpsman and serve in the field with the Marines. He lost both his legs to a landmine.
The same thing was happening when Germany abolished conscription a few years ago. Even with more men doing the “alternative” service for conscientious objectors than serving in the military the Bundeswehr was still getting more men than needed. It was the military that was in favour of going to an all-volunteer model and the social service organizations (that depended on the conscientious objectors) that were against.
In my brother’s case, he too served as a reserve officer and artillery spotter (), hence had a longer service than normal. I wouldn’t even know if he ever fired an artillery piece. I guess that if they needed people with peculiar skills, they tried to convince such people to sign up for a longer service with appropriate training; like the guy I mentioned who wanted to join the navy but signed up for some specialized job in the signal corps instead. And as pointed out by several posters, some “jobs” (I would suspect the majority) don’t require skills that can’t be taught in one year.
() He told me once that his job was to drive around in a lightly armored vehicle with plenty of antennas on it. And that one of his main objectives was to spot light armored vehicles with plenty of antennas on them so that they could be destroyed ASAP. He said that somehow, this made him a bit uneasy 
I got drafted into the Navy in October of 1965
About 20 out of 89 in our Navy boot camp company were draftees
When Britain had the postwar draft, most conscripts were directed into the Army, with most of the balance going to the Air Force. The Navy took very few, as they did not think they got value for money out of the short service period (two years, latterly reduced to eighteen months).
And if the ARMY wanted you, they got you.
I was stationed at Ft. Lewis in 1962-3 and there was a guy that was an railroad engineer ( actual train driver ) that was in with us. The most poor, lost, mad, screwed, refused to do anything but his job. ( and got away with that. )
He had 8 years active duty in the Navy as a railroad engineer and the ARMY somehow drafted him and made it stick. His US state senator could not pry him loose.
I do not know any more details and after I was shipped out, I never heard any more about him.
Interesting. Always good to see old threads revived with new information.