The Social Demographics and Enduring Legacy of the Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was indeed predominately a working-class war; approximately 80 percent of the soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War came from either working-class or extremely impoverished neighborhoods of big cities such as New York and Michigan, etcetera. Furthermore, soldiers, just like their relatively poor counterparts in the cities of USA, also came from sparsely populated towns of America and it can be argued that families from the rural towns of America lost more than the working-class families which lived in the urban areas. Mike Clodfelter, who came from a small town, in his 1976 memoir, insinuates that most of his peers from school from working-class families enlisted in the army, stating that he didn’t know a single person who came from a middle-class background who enlisted. Christian Appy in “A Working-Class War” states, “Most young men from prosperous families were able to avoid the draft and very few volunteered. Thus, America’s most unpopular war was fought primarily by nineteen-year-old children of waitresses, factory workers, truck drivers, secretaries, firefighters, carpenters, custodians, police officers, salespeople, clerks, mechanics, miners, and farm workers: people whose work lives are not only physically demanding but, in many cases, physically dangerous…”. Thus, from what Christian Appy states, it is and was a conclusive fact that the war in Vietnam was fought by individuals who lacked the social and cultural capital to avoid being drafted by the US government, which evidently were individuals from the working class. Moreover, the soldiers who went into the war went with a frame of mind that they were essentially cogs of a larger machine that the US was using to fight communism abroad and that their bodies and grit would be used to help the people of Vietnam perpetuate democracy. However, many, upon arrival, found that they went to Vietnam to do the exact opposite; they went there to antagonize civilians and burn the Vietnamese villages (Appy).

As aforementioned, the majority of soldiers in the Vietnam War came from working-class backgrounds. However, it’d be wrong to not mention that by the 1960s, many jobs which could easily be confused as being associated as blue-collar jobs became white collar jobs and people who worked these jobs increasingly started living in the suburbs. Parents of Ron Kovic ( Author of Born on the Fourth of July) had to raise five children on the wages of a supermarket checker; they did, however, live in the suburbs, which is why they could easily be mistaken as being in the middle class when they were not. Hence, it can be said that some families that could be mistaken for being middle class also lost a lot of their loved ones to the Vietnam War. In addition, US troops in Vietnam, with the passage of time, felt demoralized as compared to their communist counterparts; they weren’t indoctrinated about the righteousness of their war (DeGroot). Support at home also vanished, which also played a huge role in ushering feelings of resentment in the soldiers who were fighting in the war. Therefore, by the late 1960s, a typical soldier who went to fight the war in Vietnam no longer felt that the US Army was deserving of his life. Moreover, the existence of drugs coupled with fragging also further exacerbated the conditions in Vietnam. Between 1969 and 1971, there were 730 cases of fragging, and in the Christmas bombing of 1972, there were instances of pilots refusing to perform their assigned role of bombing AA batteries. In conclusion, it is reasonable for one to postulate that the war in Vietnam was predominantly fought by the young, rather optimistic individuals from the working class. Most of them were completely oblivious to the harsh realities of war and the bamboozling of the US government into making the people back home think that they were fighting communism.

In conclusion, I do, in fact, think that a class divide exists in the US military today. I often get emails and see ads in which the US Armed Forces markets the number of incentives that soldiers will enjoy, e.g., a 100 grand signing bonus. These type of marketing tactics are particularly very appealing to those who come from the working class and those who do not plan to go to college simply because they don’t have the money to go to college.