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shallowj posted:anyone have an idea how many Americans fought in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam? veterans of all 3 wars, I mean. Googling various versions of the question, it seems like it wasn't totally impossible. Critiquing a short story for class where a character claimed to be a veteran of all 3 and it made me curious how realistic it would be. The character was black, as well, which made me curious what post-WW2 was like for black soldiers. Did many choose to stay enlisted? I read a little about "blue discharges" so it seems like many wouldn't have gotten a choice? A veteran of all 3 would likely have achieved a pretty respectable career, right? A ton of guys fought in those three wars. That does make me wonder though if there's anyone who did WWI/WWII/Korea/Vietnam. Of all people actor and general badass George O'Brien is rumored to have done this although I've never seen anything official to that end.
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Dec 15, 2015 04:46
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bewbies posted:A ton of guys fought in those three wars. That does make me wonder though if there's anyone who did WWI/WWII/Korea/Vietnam. Of all people actor and general badass George O'Brien is rumored to have done this although I've never seen anything official to that end. Yeah my grandfather fought in all three and he only went from Ensign to CDR, so there must be a ton of guys that stayed in longer.
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Dec 15, 2015 05:47
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Remember the badass Sergeant Major played by Sam Elliot in We Were Soldiers? Well he was even more badass than they bothered to mention onscreen. Glider infantry for WWII with the 82nd, Parachute infantry for Korea with the 101st, and Aircav for Vietnam with the 7th Cavalry.
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Dec 15, 2015 06:59
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Arquinsiel posted:Remember the badass Sergeant Major played by Sam Elliot in We Were Soldiers? Well he was even more badass than they bothered to mention onscreen. Glider infantry for WWII with the 82nd, Parachute infantry for Korea with the 101st, and Aircav for Vietnam with the 7th Cavalry. The great thing about military history is that the truth can turn out cooler than fiction
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Dec 15, 2015 08:52
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JcDent posted:The great thing about military history is that the truth can turn out cooler than fiction HBO had to intentionally tone down John Basilone's antics in The Pacific because audiences would have gone, "Naaaaaaah, that's bullshit"
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Dec 15, 2015 10:13
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JcDent posted:The great thing about military history is that the truth can turn out cooler than fiction speaking of, heading to milan/busto arsizio/gallerate next week, northern italian goons hit me up if you want to get coffee or something
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Dec 15, 2015 11:59
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StashAugustine posted:If the US ever gets in a war where they need to re institute the draft I suspect we'll be having bigger problems. Like mushroom clouds. I find it hard to see a situation where we have all-out war between First World nuclear-armed states where conscription would even be relevant. Also, I guess someone finally shut up Keldoclock. 
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Dec 15, 2015 12:51
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Well, like Hey Gal alluded to, the draft and everything around it is more symbolic than anything. Though I do wonder whether there would be more, or less war if we went with an entirely conscripted military.
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Dec 15, 2015 13:12
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Fangz posted:Well, like Hey Gal alluded to, the draft and everything around it is more symbolic than anything. Though I do wonder whether there would be more, or less war if we went with an entirely conscripted military. If you did it wouldn't be long before there were Vietnam-sized holes carved in it for e.g. students at university so only poor people had to actually go, so probably more.
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Dec 15, 2015 13:15
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Fangz posted:Well, like Hey Gal alluded to, the draft and everything around it is more symbolic than anything. Though I do wonder whether there would be more, or less war if we went with an entirely conscripted military. I think it would almost certainly be less. At least wars with US participation. A fully professional military does somewhat separate the general population from the horrors of war in a way a fully conscripted military does not. Conscription forces every young man (at least) to come to terms with the fact that his country might ask him to die. It's one thing if the country asks you when its back is against the wall and you are fighting literal Nazis hell-bent on world domination. It's quite another if your country asks you to die because they think Saddam might have WMDs but haven't found any, the occupation is five years in and the entire country is going to hell in a handbasket. In a volunteer army, those casualties are of course mourned but they sort of become accepted as being part of the risk the soldiers were well aware of when they signed up. Conscripts don't get a say in the matter.
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Dec 15, 2015 13:25
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feedmegin posted:If you did it wouldn't be long before there were Vietnam-sized holes carved in it for e.g. students at university so only poor people had to actually go, so probably more. The student exemption really seems like a strange rule. I can't think of another historical example where the ruling class were so open about foisting military service off on the working class. Also, as I understand it, once conscripted the least educated soldiers were funneled into the front line, while those with better educations were held back. In every other case I can think of it was they other way round. Even in the UK, for all its class bound faults, the products elite schools and universities died at a much faster rate than the rest of the population, because they went straight in as front line as junior officers, which was the most dangerous job.
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Dec 15, 2015 13:34
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Mr Enderby posted:The student exemption really seems like a strange rule. I can't think of another historical example where the ruling class were so open about foisting military service off on the working class. Also, as I understand it, once conscripted the least educated soldiers were funneled into the front line, while those with better educations were held back. On the other hand, you don't want to put your best and brightest into the meatgrinder just to be fair to the worst and dumbest. Putting a guy with a knack for automotive repair into a minclearing detail sounds like something to be held up as an example of military stupidity to me.
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Dec 15, 2015 14:03
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Looks like Keldi got banned.
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Dec 15, 2015 14:08
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ArchangeI posted:On the other hand, you don't want to put your best and brightest into the meatgrinder just to be fair to the worst and dumbest. Putting a guy with a knack for automotive repair into a minclearing detail sounds like something to be held up as an example of military stupidity to me. ijn_ija_interservice_rivalry.txt
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Dec 15, 2015 14:23
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thanks for the responses. guess it wasn't that rare to be a veteran of all three. Hegel, I saw your post from earlier and I don't speak German unfortunately. I appreciate you locating that article though. another question: reading an essay about Prussia and it mentions the difficulty they had in locating soldiers under Frederick II, I think it is, who wanted to increase the standing army to 80,000+. Why was this so difficult? Essay mentions it was a crime of "capital punishment" to be a recruiter for Prussia in the neighboring polities. Did something change in the century between the 30 yrs war and Frederick II? I know foreign recruitment was always a thing, like the Scottish mercs, but did something change for everyone at this time in terms of recruitment or was it especially difficult for Prussia? The essay mentions their recruitment as at times outright press-ganging, which seems like a strange thing to do for land-based armies who aren't trapped on a tiny wooden ship. I know they kidnapped the tall guys the one Prussian king loved, IIRC, but was this a general policy too? Was it the reputation as disciplinarians that made it so hard for Prussia to acquire troops maybe? edit: the essay is "The Prussian Military State" by Dennis Showalter and it says that this was a general thing across Germany in the 1720s - "even honest recruiters embarked on what amounted to man-hunts" etc. Was this just the result of manpower losses from the War of the Spanish Succession, or was something else at play? shallowj fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 15:09
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shallowj posted:thanks for the responses. guess it wasn't that rare to be a veteran of all three. I don't know about anything else, but note that Prussia was a pretty small country when Frederick II took the throne, while the 30 Years' War's recruiting pool was basically 'all of Europe'. (Also the whole area was still recovering from said war, which had pretty horrific effects on Germany's economy)
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Dec 15, 2015 15:43
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100 Years Ago The outgoing CIGS produces a paper so that the War Committee won't have to think too hard about strategy in 1916. In Mesopotamia, Robert Palmer is recovering slowly and worrying about his mates at Kut; and Flora Sandes takes up her rifle for the first time and describes combat with all the sang-froid of a twenty-year veteran.
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Dec 15, 2015 15:49
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JaucheCharly posted:Looks like Keldi got banned. Let us start a new thread and never mention him again.
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Dec 15, 2015 15:53
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Fangz posted:Well, like Hey Gal alluded to, the draft and everything around it is more symbolic than anything. Though I do wonder whether there would be more, or less war if we went with an entirely conscripted military. At least in the US the draft is still very much relevant and is a pretty important planning tool for a lot of different scenarios. It isn't so much centered only on the idea of conscripting massive numbers of riflemen any longer (though that remains important); a lot of effort is focused on identifying/conscripting people with critical skills (ie cyber, language, etc) in sufficient numbers. The fact that most or all of those skills are gender-neutral makes the male-only aspect of the draft even more ridiculous. Mr Enderby posted:The student exemption really seems like a strange rule. I can't think of another historical example where the ruling class were so open about foisting military service off on the working class. Also, as I understand it, once conscripted the least educated soldiers were funneled into the front line, while those with better educations were held back. The policies of both sides during the ACW make the Vietnam-era deferments look downright populist. In the North you could simply buy an exemption for a big hunk of money ($300 then, around $6,000 now) or alternatively, hire a replacement. In the South, you could likewise hire a replacement or buy an exemption; in addition slaveowners, children of slaveowners or those who worked with slaves were generally exempt from service. In other words, the social class that did more than any other to bring about the war (the planters) virtually exempted themselves and their offspring from conscription. Also, in Vietnam at least, more educated soldiers tended to suffer marginally higher casualties per-capita. This is due to the fact that they tended to get placed in more dangerous (ie, pilots and infantry junior officers) jobs. I've never seen any such data for any other American war though.
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Dec 15, 2015 15:56
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bewbies posted:people with critical skills (ie cyber, language, etc) in sufficient numbers. Ughhh why do the military/government not understand it's not the mid 90s anymore 
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Dec 15, 2015 16:13
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bewbies posted:The policies of both sides during the ACW make the Vietnam-era deferments look downright populist. In the North you could simply buy an exemption for a big hunk of money ($300 then, around $6,000 now) or alternatively, hire a replacement. In the South, you could likewise hire a replacement or buy an exemption; in addition slaveowners, children of slaveowners or those who worked with slaves were generally exempt from service. In other words, the social class that did more than any other to bring about the war (the planters) virtually exempted themselves and their offspring from conscription. That's bonkers. I imagine the logic was to keep the salve economy running, but still. BTW, are you confident of that inflation adjustment? It sounds way off to me, but I'm used to looking at historical sterling values, and I know the dollar has been appreciating against the pound since then.
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Dec 15, 2015 16:16
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Mr Enderby posted:BTW, are you confident of that inflation adjustment? It sounds way off to me, but I'm used to looking at historical sterling values, and I know the dollar has been appreciating against the pound since then. Understatement of the (20th) century. One pound got you about 5 dollars back then.
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Dec 15, 2015 16:22
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feedmegin posted:Ughhh why do the military/government not understand it's not the mid 90s anymore if you don't like the word "cyber" then get the gently caress out the thread also, Rabhadh, I found my first Irishmen! There's two of them in a cavalry company from 1645, so I guess the choice was between get shot at in Germany or get shot at at home HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 16:24
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Mr Enderby posted:That's bonkers. I imagine the logic was to keep the salve economy running, but still. The economy was half the equation, the other reason given was they were forever concerned about slave uprisings and so wanted to keep the masters on the farm to keep them in line. As for the inflation thing I have no idea, I just used this calculator which I certainly cannot vouch for.
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Dec 15, 2015 16:27
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shallowj posted:Hegel, I saw your post from earlier and I don't speak German unfortunately. I appreciate you locating that article though. like, lots of the big 30yw generals/heads of state were also media personalities, which is just...weird. the angry broadsheets started coming out about Magdeburg during Tilly's siege of it and then when it got sacked the Protestant media went insane. or every now and then someone's all "Wallenstein keeps raising these huge armies what does he need them for, something sinister I bet"
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Dec 15, 2015 16:35
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It's not like draft exemptions are an American capitalist invention. Soviet union had something similar I think.
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Dec 15, 2015 16:47
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JcDent posted:It's not like draft exemptions are an American capitalist invention. Soviet union had something similar I think. Oh, this kind of thing goes all the way back. You could effectively pay money to not get stabbed in Anglo-Saxon times, if you didn't own any land - https://archive.org/stream/lawsofearliesten00grea#page/52/mode/2up item 51
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Dec 15, 2015 16:49
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feedmegin posted:Oh, this kind of thing goes all the way back. You could effectively pay money to not get stabbed in Anglo-Saxon times, if you didn't own any land - Yeah, but that's sort of the opposite, in that you forfeited your landowner status, as opposed to getting to dodge the draft because of your status. And yes, scutage is an old idea, but the motivation isn't the same as the Vietnam draft rules. The exemption for students wasn't giving anything to the army, in the way that bribes/fines were. It was just saying that the life plans of a certain class of person were too important to be derailed by war, while people in a lower class could be as disrupted as they needed to be. Edit: I'm sure there are lot of similar occurrences in history. poo poo was hosed up, was really my point.
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Dec 15, 2015 17:03
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Mr Enderby posted:Yeah, but that's sort of the opposite, in that you forfeited your landowner status, as opposed to getting to dodge the draft because of your status. That's why I said 'if you don't own any land'. But yeah, it is a bit different in its motivation, I agree.
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Dec 15, 2015 17:13
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bewbies posted:
I'm pretty sure that rates of volunteering were so far skewed that people directly involved in slavery were still overrepresented through most of the war. Conscription was likely the only way to get the manpower from the areas not fighting for their interests, while to put it gently planter underenthusiasm for the war was not in any way a problem. In Vietnam, didn't the guys drafted under Project 100,000 suffer a ludicrous casualty rate (and incidentally provide a lot of the homeless population in later decades)?
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Dec 15, 2015 17:29
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HEY GAL posted:the truth is always cooler than fiction, my friends Slightly off topic question: when you go to Italy is it just filled with young unemployed people, standing around, staring at nothing
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Dec 15, 2015 18:19
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Nebakenezzer posted:Slightly off topic question: when you go to Italy is it just filled with young unemployed people, standing around, staring at nothing
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Dec 15, 2015 18:27
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Mr Enderby posted:The student exemption really seems like a strange rule. I can't think of another historical example where the ruling class were so open about foisting military service off on the working class. Union army, US Civil War. You could literally buy your way out of the draft.
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Dec 15, 2015 18:37
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Nebakenezzer posted:Slightly off topic question: when you go to Italy is it just filled with young unemployed people, standing around, staring at nothing No. One thing that's will hit your eye is: The more well groomed and stylishly dressed people are, the more hosed, dirty and decrepit everything around them is.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:08
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Oh, shallowj, the one guy that I know very well how he reacted to Wallenstein's death is Richelieu, who was pretty much constantly scared Louis XIII would ruin him. He compares himself to Wallenstein in his memoirs inasmuch as both of them had to suffer the misery of a life "dependent on jealous and timid royalty." He also increased his guard when he learned Wallenstein had got his.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:09
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xthetenth posted:In Vietnam, didn't the guys drafted under Project 100,000 suffer a ludicrous casualty rate (and incidentally provide a lot of the homeless population in later decades)? As far as I know the DoD didn't specifically track the Project 100,000 guys; I've never seen anything concrete about their casualty rates. I do know that they were massively disproportionately black and latino, which is a pretty good indicator of the inherent inequality in education by race in America during the time period. Also I don't remember where I read this but there was some evidence that suggested the Project 100,000 guys actually did better with life than did their non-drafted peeers....which, while plausible, probably goes more to the ugly opportunities available for uneducated mostly minority people in 1960s America than any endorsement of military service. I'm sure that a lot of them wound up homeless in any case. edit - on the other hand I guess that I was completely misremembering that, apparently they did worse than their peers at stuff. bewbies fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 19:17
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JcDent posted:The great thing about military history is that the truth can turn out cooler than fiction Case in point: Senator Dan Inouye. E: I know a lot of people have read about his insane MoH stuff but I like leaving it out for people to Google it themselves, like the Zheleznogorsk flag. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 19:19
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Nebakenezzer posted:Slightly off topic question: when you go to Italy is it just filled with young unemployed people, standing around, staring at nothing The unemployment rate in Italy varies wildly depending on region. North Italy is fine, while Calabria is mobster or bust.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:19
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FAUXTON posted:Case in point: Senator Dan Inouye. He's also an example of grim reality crushing idealized notions. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/congress.htm#inouye
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Dec 15, 2015 19:21
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JcDent posted:It's not like draft exemptions are an American capitalist invention. Soviet union had something similar I think. Students still had to serve.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:27
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