Vietnam War

In Christan Appy’s essay, he says the people who served didn’t represent the generation as a whole. He says this because in the article he also says that about 80% of the people who were drafted came from a working-class and poor background. Which was more than any other war America had been a part of at that time. Appy also argues that jobs, schools, and the draft made the men decide what and where they were going to go. Either college where all the rich families had their kids go and they also were able to avoid the draft. While the others only had the draft which they were drafted. The demographic that was mainly drafted into the war was 19 year old men who had a blue-collar job. According to DeGroot, the loss of morale was caused by caring more about firepower than men. So more people lost their lives than should have. That low morale made nurses not want to be next to the sick, people arguing back and forth, and people being more afraid of dying than actually fighting. I think there is not much of a class division in the military. I think people having people in their family in the military or know someone in the military gives them more motivation to join. I know people in both the middle class and in the higher class that decided to go because of morals they have and they feel like they can make a difference.

2 thoughts on “Vietnam War

  1. If I’m following your interpretation of the article correctly, you feel that while in the past soldiers were often left without a choice. Counter to that, in the modern era, you believe that people feel familial, nationalistic, and moralistic ties to military service? While I do agree that there are certainly people whose familial, nationalistic, or moralistic ties to the country and themselves could draw them to service, it’s interesting contradicting this with my own experience. I’ve had people who in my life who have chosen to join for similar reasons to those soldiers of the Vietnam war, and maybe this is just a matter of personal experience.

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  2. I found your blog post to be quite interesting and I was surprised reading in the article about many of the points that you brought up. I somewhat agree and disagree at the same time with your thoughts on if there is still class division in the military. I fully agree that there are many people that join the military strictly out of their love for our country and want to protect it for us. However, I also know a few people that joined the military because they couldn’t afford and didn’t want to pursue a college education and the military offered a great alternative. But, I noticed that all of these people also had a deep love for protecting our country, so I think that their passion for our country is the most important factor.

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