Rumsfeld and flying

"Stephen Harding" wrote in message
...
Ed Rasimus wrote:

On Mon, 8 Mar 2004 10:22:38 -0800, "Tarver Engineering"
wrote:


"Cub Driver" wrote in message
. ..

On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 18:37:53 -0500, Stephen Harding
wrote:

IIRC, the average age of the Vietnam grunt was quite young

25 WWII
21 Korea
19 Vietnam


Might I direct you to "Stolen Valor" as well. Burkett effectively
debunks the legend of the 19 year old average for Vietnam. He's got
the numbers in print.

Average warrior age in Vietnam was a lot closer to 22.

Is this average over all or just grunts, as I was referring?

I would assume that if you include aviators and specialty
personnel, you'd up the average, even though there wouldn't
be as many of them.

From the same work that Ed cited: "The average age of men killed in Vietnam
was 22.8 years, or almost twenty-three years old. This probably understaes
the average age of those in ietnam by several months, because those who
faced the enmy in combat roles typically were the younger, healthy veterans,
not the older career soldiers. While the *average* (emphasis in original)
age of those killed was 22.8, more twenty year olds were killed than any
other age, followed by twenty-one year olds, then nineteen year olds." I
don't know of any reputable database that actually has the ages of all of
those who *served* in Vietnam, and Burkett's analysis based upon the ages of
those who died seems to be logical. His conclusion is that the average age
of the soldiers who served in Vietnam was not significantly different from
that of WWII.

He goes on to point out some other common misconceptions, like: enlisted
personnel suffered a disproportionat share of the casualty burden (false--in
actuality, 13.5 percent of fatalities were from the officer side, which only
accounted for 12.5 percent of those who served in theater, with the Army
losing a higher ratio of officers in Vietnam than it did during WWII,
including no less than 12 general officers); draftees accounted for most of
those KIA (false--77 percent of the KIA were volunteers, with the percentage
being even higher for the eighteen and nineteen year old age brackets at 97%
and 86% respectively); thousands of eighteen year old draftees died
(false--only 101 draftees in that age group died in Vietnam); young black
draftees died at a greater rate than others (false--of those eighteen year
old draftees killed, only *seven* were black); and Vietnam was the first
unpopular US war (false, at least in an arguable sense; he points out that a
1937 poll indicated that fully 64% of Americans considered our entry into
WWI as being a blunder, and two years after WWII 25% of Americans thought
our participation in *that* war had been a misguided); and lastly (Art
should really LOVE this one), contrary to popular belief, the percentage of
draftees in the service during the Vietnam era was MUCH lower than during
WWII (one-third versus two-thirds).

Brooks



SMH