# What does a drill sergeant do if a recruit arrives at the recruiting depot then realizes what he's gotten himself into and refuses to participate and demands to be sent home?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-drill-sergeant-do-if-a-recruit-arrives-at-the-recruiting-depot-then-realizes-what-hes-gotten-himself-into-and-refuses-to-participate-and-demands-to-be-sent-home/918288>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 17, 2020, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-drill-sergeant-do-if-a-recruit-arrives-at-the-recruiting-depot-then-realizes-what-hes-gotten-himself-into-and-refuses-to-participate-and-demands-to-be-sent-home/918288 "2020-08-17T00:34:42Z")\
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**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2020, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-a-drill-sergeant-do-if-a-recruit-arrives-at-the-recruiting-depot-then-realizes-what-hes-gotten-himself-into-and-refuses-to-participate-and-demands-to-be-sent-home/918288/53 "2020-08-20T01:49:38Z")

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“McNamara’s Morons” was a thing during the Vietnam era - inducting people who definitely wouldn’t have made it if the standards were higher. I started a thread about it a while back, when I heard about it.

> [@McNamara's Morons, aka Project 100,000 (recruiting mentally challenged people during Vietnam)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcnamaras-morons-aka-project-100-000-recruiting-mentally-challenged-people-during-vietnam/823872):
>
> I had never heard of this until last night; in short, during the Vietnam era, and to a lesser extent in the Iraq/Afghanistan era, the military lowered their standards to a point where people with significantly subnormal IQs were admitted into the military, and usually given KP or other noncombat duties, if they made it through boot camp at all. Here’s a 36-minute speech from someone who wrote a book about it. [[McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War] ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J2VwFDV4-g) If you…

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