Thanks Reeb

[MontanaKid]

Good numbers to remember, though I wonder how anyone could have gotten the last statistics regarding how a given percentage of vets feels about their service.

One other thing. When comparing draftees to RAs, we need to remember a couple of things. In those days there was such a thing as a two-year enlistment or "volunteering for the draft." What many men of draft age did, rather than waiting to be drafted, was at least select their time of entry by volunteering. They didn't get a guaranteed school, and a lot of them went into the combat arms because that's where the need was. But I would guess a fair share of the RA's in infantry et. al. fell into this category. For the others, a three-year RA enlistment could guarantee one at least assignment to an MOS school of their choice (providing they otherwise qualified, of course). I imagine without the pressure of being eventually drafted the number of RAs would have been considerably less. Also the percentage of draftees was higher in different units. Units such as the 101st deployed originally with jump-status troops, mostly RAs. Though they later were airmobile and took in their chare of draftees in the later part of the war.

"Leg" Units such as mine, the Americal, were very heavily comprised of draftees, at least among EM in the line companies. I don't have statistics at hand, but anecdotally, it seems the vast majority of my guys were "US." That's true of the vets from my battalion that I see at the annual reunions.

All that said -- I was an RA. I enlisted for three years and got guaranteed medics school. My recruiter tried to talk me into getting a more technical MOS than "91 Alpha" the basic medical corpsman. He said with my GT score I could get into any of the technical medical MOS schools, Lab, X-Ray etc. (In the Army everyone went first to 91Alpha school, then on to the more technical schools, sort of like "graduate school." ) He said I also would be able to get certification and experience that would translate into a good job after discharge. "If you just go for basic medic, you're liable to wind up out in the jungle with the infantry" he told me. All very good advice. I didn't take it. I certainly was not someone who could say that I was eating poop out in the boonies because "my recruiter lied to me."

But there was a war on and I wanted to go see it, though I told myself at the time that I was in a morally stronger position by going as a medic. (I disabused myself of that notion my first day off the firebase with "my guys." ) I envisioned being assigned to the infantry as a medic when I signed up. At the Fort Lewis reception station when I was asked a duty station preference. I said, "Vietnam, I guess." Got my wish.