- Joined
- Oct 27, 2021
@The Ugly One ?I'll grant you that, most BP users on this site tend to not be terribly reasonable in that manner and I jumped the gun, so my fault there.
That said, I'd also suggest you misread Ugly One's statement as well, given that his point was not "women do not contribute to the war effort" but rather "a society cannot conscript women into military service" the implications therein being that one, most conscripts are said general infantry, and that two, there would be something uniquely cruel and unfair about doing such a thing, or at least thats how I read it.
But a couple of data points (for no specific agenda) about the draft and Vietnam specifically. Just consider it interesting (to me) trivia.
- 2/3 of those who served during Vietnam were volunteers; 1/3 were drafted; 25% of those in combat zones were draftees, and 75% were volunteers
- The draft disproportionately impacted working and lower class people (due to the deferment classifications available), and at points 3/4 of the people serving in Vietnam were from those social classes
- American forces in Vietnam were 55% working-class, 25% percent poor, 20% middle-class. Many soldiers came from urban areas or farming communities.
- An alternative to the draft was joining up, which meant a greater opportunity to select branch and job function
- Even among draftees, though many landed in the army infantry, many placed to other roles due to performance on assessments
- There were about 27 million American men eligible for military service between 1964 and 1973. About 60%, 15-16 million, were granted deferments, mostly for education but also physical or mental conditions, personal obligations, or certain occupations (or less-documented reasons for certain people). Of the remaining 40%, somewhere between 1.738M and 2.215M men were drafted into military service during the war years [have seen both numbers in multiple sources but not sure of the differences in the calculations, so including the range]
- About 2.5 million people total served in Vietnam, so based on the 1/3 - 2/3 division, that would be about 833k draftees in Vietnam, or 3% of the eligible population. [Fact-checked myself: it was actually about 648k draftees served in-country (whether direct combat or support roles)] [also 25% combat draftee rate would = 625k]
- The rest of the service during that period remained in the US or served on bases in Europe.