You've gone into full troll mode Arlo. Desperately trying to push buttons, but failing. I stand by what I said, and if given the opportunity (I doubt it) I will try to prove it. Also if someone proves me wrong I will change my opinion.
However, there are facts available that support my "assertion" as you put it. During WWII more than 10 million men were drafted into military service (according to Wikipedia at least). Since the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, about 2.5 million members of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard and related Reserve and National Guard units have been deployed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Of those, more than a third were deployed more than once.
Obviously the statistics will favor
the largest war in human history, over a low intensity conflict. Also the draft matters, because a professional army is a job career that goes beyond just fighting a war until it's over. Conscripts go home when the war ends... And some become celebrities.
And to quote a veteran named David Simmons:
"I am a 79 year old volunteer veteran of the Army Air Corps in WWII. The number of ridiculous myths about WWII, particularly those by Tom Brokaw (The Greatest Generation) and some by Steven Ambrose, make me gag. The idea that it was "one for all and all for one" is not only wrong, it borders on ludicrous. And I went into the Army in 1943 so I don't know if things got tenser as the war went on. But I doubt if they got any easier.
The incidence of AWOL, in Europe at least, in WWII was much higher than in Vietnam (or, for that matter, in Korea). During the Battle of the Bulge in Dec. and Jan. 1944-45 riflemen were in such short supply that cooks and bakers and company clerks who hadn't had any infantry training since Extended Order Drill in Basic Training were put into the line. At the same time, according to historian John Tolandin Battle: Story of the Bulge, the equivalent of a division of infantry was AWOL somewhere in France.
Not that we were all a bunch of gold-bricks, but we were far from the unified heroes as Tom Brokaw would have it. The war was regarded as a nasty job that had to be done so it was. But very few people went out of their way to push themselves forward into the thick of the action. If we had to go we went, for the most part anyway, and that was about the size of it.
By they way, this is all my view of things. I'm sure you will find others who remember WWII differently."
They did their duty to their nation. Nothing more. Nothing less. The current generations are doing the same.
