war leading is great.

Well ... my experience as 1st Sargent with conscripts / draftees is bad!
Forced to serve for 12 months in military, their goal was only to take the issue over and to take a look on calendar when the military BS is over!
During the first 3 month they get a basic military training which grants that they know some basics to understand orders, how to fire and handle the 4 main weapons (Rifle, pistol, machine gun and anti tank weapon). Some marching drill, as well "military camping" and "cowboy vs. Indian gaming" and ready!
After this 3 month of special training before getting the rank of a private ... means for example to get military drivers license or whatever they were in service. Then 6 months serving and end of military story!
About 2/3 were totally un-motivated to do anything or willing to learn, because for them useless BS and if in future any war will break out it will be ridiculous to went to arms ... because "Boom", nuclear bomb and end!

I spoke with many friends in Belgium and France who were as I higher NCO rank and all had with any draftees bad experience and wanted a professional army!

 

One of my relatives was a cook in the Army in Europe in World War Two. One day during the Battle of the Bulge, an officer came by and ordered all the cooks and kitchen support staff to assemble in front of the mess tent in formation.

Minutes later a truck pulled up and several soldiers jumped out and started handing each of them a rifle and told them to prepare to fight.

 

I don't believe that for a New York minute. I'm not denying the inherent risk of IEDs to those in truck convoys as they are a big target. Nor am I denying they are probably very high on the casualty list if it was actually broken down by MOS. However to unequivocally state the highest rate of casutalites during OEF were truck drivers, 88 Mikes? Support personnel?

That's simply not true.

I'm not going to take the time to break down the list of casualties by MOS as there is no definitive list I could find...only a list by cause. IEDs are a significant cause, however infantry personnel also drive vehicles, not just the full time truck drivers. They too are exposed to vehicular IEDs and would be part of those statistics...those KIA or WIA by an IED while in a vehicle of some sort or another.

Again, 88 Mike is a dangerous occupation and IEDs are the primary cause of casualties at least in Iraq, No argument

Realistically 11B, etc. would be tops on the list.

You want to take the time to break down your own list of casualties by MOS, be my guest...but I'm disregarding both of your opinions as far from realistic or factual.

Support personnel, specifically truck drivers, do not lead the list of casualties by MOS if this was actaully broken down as such. Riding in a vehicle of some sort, as either a passenger or driver...yes...but 88 Mikes weren't the only soldiers driving vehicles.

 

Trucks were hit hard in both Iraq and Afghanistan. IEDs accounted for over 60% of the casualties in Iraq, I don't know the statistics in Afghanistan. However infantry guys were given instructions on how to drive M-RAPs and that may show up as part of the over-all vehicular IED statistics...in other words an 88Mike may not always be the driver when truck or armored vehicle gets hit. The TC (truck commander) is not necessarily an 88Mike by occupation.

I just find it hard to accept if there was actually a statistic...what is the most dangerous MOS, that an 88Mike would glaringly be #1, in either Afghanistan or Iraq. This doesn't dismiss the very real danger they were in and I don't want to dismiss that.

 

"12 months" in the military ??? When did you serve, 1939 ? Draftees after WW ll did 24 months of active duty service. Then 4 years in the unorganized reserves. Back then no matter how many years you enlisted for, it was a 6 year obligation. Today it's a 8 year obligation.

Exactly what years did you have experience with draftees ? America's anti military sentiment didn't start until about 1969 and would continue until Ronald Reagan became President when he restored respect for the U.S. military.

Are you sure you weren't confusing McNamara's Moron Corps soldiers with draftees ? It was liberal social engineering experimentation of creating McNamara's Moron Corps that was responsible for most of the troubles with the enlisted troops back during the Vietnam War era. Once they got rid of the "Cat-5's" some normalcy returned to the U.S. military. As history has shown us, every time the U.S . military has been used for liberal social engineering, soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen bleed and die and today raped.

I served in the Marines so I had little contact with draftees but we had a few and you wouldn't have known it unless they didn't bring it up. Like I mentioned before, when I was with Sub Unit One 1st ANGLICO I was TAD with the Americal Div. grunts and maybe 1/3 were draftees but I couldn't distinguish who was a draftee and who wasn't.

Where I went to high school, about 40% of the males served in the military during the Vietnam War era. I don't know how many were inducted compared to who volunteered. I do know that 27 names that are on the "Wall" I went to high school with and I personally knew over a dozen of them, they were close friends I grew up with. But over the years by attending high school reunions and with social media alumni websites I see 10 high school alumni members who all became "lifers" in the Army and did twenty to thirty years of active duty service and everyone was a draftee.

Come to think of it, I have a high school buddy who was drafted into the Army in 69 and shipped over and was commissioned a Warrant Officer and flew slicks in Vietnam.

I think it all depends where the draftee came from. You have to understand how the draft worked back then. You had draft boards all across the country. Each draft board had about the same number of registered males for the draft. The word would come down that each draft board had to produce a certain number of bodies for induction into the Army. It was the same number for every draft board across the country. So if that draft board was close to a college or university, there were probably more student deferments issued so if you were 1-A, your chances of being drafted were a lot higher.

If we look at history, those draft boards in the Southern states and in the middle class neighborhoods across America produced better inductees than those draft boards from the inner cities. Those draft boards in California were producing higher educated inductees because at the time California had the best public schools in America than say those draft boards in Hawaii, in fact Hawaii had the highest percentage of males who were rejected for military service because they were Cat 5's and 6's.

 

[video=youtube;_g_M_eAwyGs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g_M_eAwyGs[/video]



Pat Boone loved war so long as someone fought it.

 

During the Vietnam War, Army, Motor -T guys found themselves being Army grunts. It was a dangerous job in the Nam driving a 6 X along Hwy One.

So dangerous the U.S. Army invented the gun truck.

Worth reading. -> http://www.vietnam-guntrucks.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/2227ConvoyAmbushVol1Proof141.pdf

 

"in a vehicle of any sort" probably ranks highest on the list, maybe the teams that look for IEDs have it rough also.

the driver, the passengers, the folks in the area when the IED goes off

There was a rush to deploy mine resistant vehicles, precisely because they were the #1 target.

Now we can't get rid of them, many are being scrapped as shipping them home is more expensive than scrapping them.

http://www.usmilitary.com/29343/8-most-dangerous-military-jobs/

Supply truck driver ranks above infantry on this.

Take a look at #8.

8. Helicopter pilots– Helicopters are an aerial target for enemies. Helicopters are used to attack tanks, carry soldiers, transport weapons and haul other loads. When the helicopter malfunctions, an error is made or is attacked by enemy fighter, the pilot goes down with his aircraft.

 

A Study on Casualty Profile Using Logistics Regression

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to create a profile of U.S. Army troops killed or injured due to hostile incidents in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2003 and 2011. The analysis of study may help decision makers to see a profile that is most vulnerable to casualty.

Source: https://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/7399/12Jun_Ozcan.pdf

While there isn't a breakdown by specific MOS, the study did break it down by Combat, Combat Support and Combat Service Support.

Combat = infantry, armor, field artillery, combat-engineer and air-defense artillery

Page 44.

Now...going full circle.

In my original mission statement on this thread, I delineated...very clearly, draftees should not comprise combat personnel, they should be part of the support elements.

This is not the same thing as saying, combat support and combat service support occupations have zero risk; obviously they do. What my statement did infer was that combat personnel face the higher risk...that's all I was inferring and indeed the facts bear this out. Arguing that CS and CSS have comparatively higher occupational risk than C...is in fact...misinformation at least as applicable to Afghanistan and Iraq between 2003 - 2011.

 

This boils down to a question of ethics, less so effectiveness.

It's nice with the Star Trooperesque belief that serving is the highest order of citizenship. However, I am a disillusioned patriot. I would even go as far as saying it is evidence of moral bankruptcy to force someone to potentially die on behalf of a governmental entity unless the very existence of said governmental entity has been viably threatened.

To quote Marine General Smedley Butler "War is a racket."

I'm not so sure I go as far as the good General in terms of complete non-intervention, but I am on his side of the fence in that in the failure of a government to convince the constituency of supporting a war, they turn to coercion. The threat of imprisonment.

A young male draftee is faced with the loss of his personal liberty in either event...either as a member of the Armed Forces or as a prisoner.

Are we not fighting these wars to support and defend personal liberties? Why then would we tolerate a government that insists on taking them away to support dubious wars and conflicts.

 

Sorry I missed your post. I suppose I lean Libertarian in regards to the issue of conscription. I was born in 1964 and so the war in Vietnam was peripheral to me. I distinctly recall the fall of Saigon but the protests, the battles, I was protected from all of that. My sister was 4 years older than me and she did have friends concerned about it.

I wasn't political in my youth, so I seriously doubt I would have been a hippy type out protesting the war, burning draft cards, yelling at returning troops. My position is not to blame the draftee, or the volunteer for an unpopular war. They are placed in life and death situations and killing is a necessary part of survival in war often times. That's basically how wars operate.

Look at the situation you described, a campus representing different sides of an argument, the conservative/libertarian and, the liberal. People exercising their personal liberties. This is why going to war to defend these basic principles is worth going to war. Any threat to these liberties should be regarded as an enemy of freedom. So the back-handed coercion of conscription essentially walks on these principles more often than not.

 

A draft is a more egalitarian way to handle it; we're a republic, not a democracy, despite whatever illusions some have to the contrary; my personal opinion is drafts should start with the higher income brackets and work its way down the economic scale, but that's just me and I don't mind discriminating, not that I think it will ever happen that way in real life. I'm fine with not having everything in the world suit me and my whims. I got over believing the world is ever going to be perfect by the 7th grade, and it doesn't keep me awake at night.

 

Well, let's look at the order of battle, shall we?

On the US side, you had 4 Infantry Divisions.

First was the 99th and 106th Infantry Divisions. For both of these units, it was their very first taste of combat. Both were newly created units, and almost all in it were completely unblooded.

Then you had the 28th Infantry Division, PANG (Pennsylvania National Guard), commonly called the "Bloody Bucket" for their unit patch. This unit however had already gone through their "trial by fire", landing on Normandy, participating in the fighting leading to the Liberation of Paris, and then pushing into Belgium. A division of experienced combat soldiers.

And remember the stats that Apache said earlier. Unblooded troops will always have significantly higher casualties when compared to experienced troops. This has not a thing to do with "training", all 3 divisions had the same level of training. What one of the 3 had however was experience.

And the 4th Division? Do I even need to say who they were? The 101st Airborne Division. Draftee or not, everybody in the Airborne divisions was a volunteer to become paratroopers and among the best trained soldiers in Europe.

So the fact that they were "draftees" had not a damned thing to do with anything. The difference is that half of the US forces were experienced combat soldiers, and the other half were raw unblooded troops with no combat experience. Not to mention that the US had been led into a trap where they were surrounded on 3 sides.

 

I'm really amazed how much this thread has taken off.

But then in America, it's a very serious issue, if you think about it.

 

Actually, most of us involved in this discussion have simply ignored you intial rambling posts, and taken off in a direction that is actually interesting and worth discussing.

 

Why do you want the higher incomes to go first?

Though it makes sense. There's a lot of bloody useless people on high wages.

 

Because those that benefit the most from the last 200 years or so of this country's history should be the first to give something back to it, particularly in defending it, not to mention having lived through an era of sniveling, spoiled middle class draft dodgers burning flags, Daddies pulling strings to get their dumbass worthless kids out of it while others having no influence having to go, all the way back to the Civil War, where wealthy obnoxious turds like J.P. Morgan being able to buy their way out of serving and then making large fortunes gambling for or against their own 'side' throughout the war, and other annoying and unfair incidents. It's a personal thing. Those with the most vested in its survival and strength should be happy to serve it, right or wrong; many of Germany's soldiers were not Nazis, but they fought, and not because they loved Hitler but because they didn't feel like being overrun by Russian savages; sitting around sniveling and hiding under the bed because they didn't like Hitler wasn't an option for them, whatever the domestic political situation was at that point.

There are a lot of bloody useless people, period, but that's another thread.

 

Interestingly, some of the richest families during WWII were full of people who ran to enlist.

Kermit Roosevelt, Elliott Roosevelt, James Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., and John Aspinwall Roosevelt all served.

As did John F. Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. Another wav Henry Ford II, who served until the death of his father in 1943.

WWII is full of individuals who left fame and fortune behind to serve their country. From Clark Gable and Glenn Miller to Jimmy Doolittle and James Stewart.

Interestingly enough, it is the "children of the middle class" that often protested the loudest against serving.

 

I'm well aware there were and still are some very wealthy families with long traditions of serving, and in combat; I'm also aware there were and are many more screwing off at Harvard or Stanford or somewhere, or jumping ahead of the line and getting exempt government or defense jobs as well. But yes, there are indeed some wealthy people who will be among the first in line to go.

 

Ehm ... look on my flag, I'm German!
In Germany was compulsory military service given until 2011 ... history is this:

From 1962 to 1972 = 18 month
From 1973 to 1990 = 15 month
From 1990 to 1995 = 12 month (change per 09/30/1990)
From 1996 to 2001 = 10 month
From 2002 to 2010 = 9 month
From 2010 to 2011 = 6 month (change per 11/30/2010)
Since 07/01/2011 we have no compulsory military service!

The complete compulsory military service was in Germany far away to be named fair all the times. During cold war the total active power of Officers, NCO's and draftees was about 500,000 men + some millions draftees and ret. NCO / officers as reserve. In Total percentage of men forced to compulsory military service was not much, as well those who took their constitutional right to deny service on weapon and so were forced to serve in social services, red cross, civil protection etc. was always higher ... even they had in average to serve 3 month longer as those in military.

As told, majority of young men rated the military service as useless, boring, unnecessary and nonsense and only counted the days when they are over with it. Sure, there was always of course more or less hard discipline in military too, but to work with such un-motivated personal is crap and brings nothing. Finally, what these men learn during the service was only basic training and makes them not more as cannon feed.

I was as sniper and 1st sergeant and part of a somehow specialized unit (not special forces, but specialized and with several real combat missions in Yugoslavia and Somalia) and during exercises when such draftee units were the enemy ... well, it was only a slaughterhouse and the German Miles system caused here a permanent "peeping" in the woods by them!
I remember too, when we took an exercise for urban combat training, that even the officers (Lieutenants) of them were totally overstrained! What I and my platoon learned in years of training (including at the US Army!) was never comparable to the basic training.

 

Maybe too many decades of complacency under NATO's umbrella?

I would be curious to know if there is a demographic differences in those stats re former East Germans versus West Germans, or southern German states versus northern German states, maybe?