The Vietnam War, fought from the mid 1950s to the early 1970s, was an unpopular war at the end but had many people from around the country enlisted to fight. Christian Appy argues that Vietnam was a “working-class war” as a good portion of those who fought in the war were part of the working-class rather than the middle or upper-class (McMahon). He talks about how most of the enlisted were from working-class families or ones that had low-paying jobs and, while there were some middle to upper class enlisted, they made up a much smaller portion of all the enlisted soldiers throughout the war (McMahon). This is because with most wars, if you have money or have access to higher education, there are more opportunities and means for you to either get out of or avoid military service, even with the draft in place. Another demographic that he brings up is that, during the later years of the war, from 1966-1971, around 60% of the enlisted soldiers only had a high school education, even though after WWll, there was an educational boom (McMahon). He briefly talks about the statistics of the black enlistees that fought during Vietnam with there only being slightly disproportionate compared to their white counterparts, but mainly mentions how they didn’t get very much recognition even though the civil rights movement was happening at the same time (McMahon). This was something that they shared with white soldiers both during and after the war, since they weren’t really talked about much in the news about what really was happening or when they got back, as their sacrifices went largely ignored by a majority of the population. Near the end, he talks about how the enlisted soldiers were the youngest of all the wars that the U.S. has fought in, with the typical age being 19, but 17-year-olds could join the marines with their parents’ approval (McMahon). That was different since, in past wars, the normal age would be in the early 20s and above for those that would enlist and fight, but nothing really changed the fact that the youngest people of fighting age were enlisted, even though around 1965 the Pentagon required them to be at least 18 before enlisting, but that didn’t stop them.
Troop morale late in the Vietnam War was dwindling for many reasons, some of which were political and others more about losing their sense of purpose. Gerard DeGroot talks about how some of the troops in Vietnam were starting to get disillusioned with the way the war was talked about at home since in the late 1960s, quite a few people and groups were protesting the war effort and questioning why we were even in it (McMahon). With that, there were also soldiers feeling like they were losing their sense of purpose other than to just fight and survive the combat zone, rather than their original ‘purpose’ to get democracy back to South Vietnam and fight communism (McMahon). As the morale dropped among the soldiers deployed in Vietnam, they started to care less about returning home and what that meant and care rather about getting those they fought with (their fellow soldiers) off the battlefield and back home in one piece (McMahon). That could be seen with him giving examples of how some soldiers couldn’t care less about the situation at home as it wasn’t really affecting them in their current position, so why worry about that when you should be doing that, about whether you’ll survive that day or if your company will survive.
Today, I personally think that there is still a class divide between the lower, middle, and upper classes, although it has gotten slightly better. This is because I knew some kids back in high school that, right after they graduated from high school, they went into military service rather than go to college. Along with that, my school had a fairly large junior ROTC group, the military test that you could take to see if you would be good for it, and had some representatives from the military show up for career and college fairs. On a different note, I think that the service has encompassed a few more lower-middle class people but is still predominantly made up of those from the working class as a way to pay for college or get a job. With that being said, I think that there should be more diversity in the amount of people in military service from all walks of life, but that might be hard as military service isn’t seen as well as it has been in the past because of Vietnam and more recent wars.
Will Wright 