[Publib] Army and homeless

Tue Sep 18 14:06:03 EDT 2007

Judy,

Very nice overview of conscription and recruiting over a couple millennia.

As for the Vietnam Conflict, which is also the last US action to include 
conscripts (draftees) who made up about 33% of the US Forces, the data 
for combat morbidity shows:

There was a total of 58,193 casualties during the Vietnam Conflict. Of 
these, some 7,264 were "Negro" or black in today's parlance, about 
12.5%. (see
see 
http://www.archives.gov/research/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics.html#race 
fro the data). According to the 1970 census approximately 11 % of the 
general  population was negro and 53% of those were from "southern 
states" (which are identified for census purposes at 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Census_Regions_and_Divisions.PNG) in 
what I looked at on Page xiii on 
http://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1973-01.pdf.

While I did not find separate by-state Vietnam Conflict casualty figures 
for the blacks to determine if the majority were from the southern 
states, one could total up (or down) the "southern" states for all races 
in the chart at 
http://www.archives.gov/research/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics.html#state 
to determine if there is a larger percentage of casualties from that 
region. Using the Census Bureau "southern states" from above, then it 
would appear that 13,648 of the casualties of all races came from the 13 
"southern" states (includes Wash DC), or 23.5%. In the 1970 census the 
total population was 203.8 million and the census indicates that 63 
million lived in the "south" representing 30.9% of the total population. 
So, I don't see that a disproportionate number were Southern and black.

It is axiomatic that, in conventional war, the largest percentage of 
casualties will be young because of the typical force structure and 
because the younger troops are the ones with the energy and stamina  
required. During Vietnam the age with the highest number of deaths was 
age 20 with 14,095 followed by age 21 with  9,705. Together they 
comprised 40.9% of all casualties. Ages 17, 18 and 19 year olds 
comprised 19.6% of casualties for a total of 11,408. Average age of all 
casualties was 23 years. Average age of infantrymen in the conflict was 
22 years.

Want to read more? Check out the article at 
http://www.marcorengasn.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Vietnamstats.htm.

Regarding the source of current recruits, there is a study on topic by 
The Heritage Foundation at 
http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda06-09.cfm which 
indicates:

> "Our review of Pentagon enlistee data shows that the only group that 
> is lowering its participation in the military is the poor. The 
> percentage of recruits from the poorest American neighborhoods (with 
> one-fifth of the U.S. population) declined from 18 percent in 1999 to 
> 14.6 percent in 2003, 14.1 percent in 2004, and 13.7 percent in 2005."

and

> "In summary, the additional years of recruit data (2004-2005) support 
> the previous finding that U.S. military recruits are more similar than 
> dissimilar to the American youth population. The slight differences 
> are that wartime U.S. military enlistees are better educated, 
> wealthier, and more rural on average than their civilian peers.
>
> Recruits have a higher percentage of high school graduates and 
> representation from Southern and rural areas. No evidence indicates 
> exploitation of racial minorities (either by race or by race-weighted 
> ZIP code areas). Finally, the distribution of household income of 
> recruits is noticeably higher than that of the entire youth population"
>
and

> "Like their peers in 1999 and 2003, recruits in 2004 and 2005 came 
> primarily from middle-class areas. Poor areas are proportionally 
> underrepresented in the wartime years (2003-2005)"

Looks as if the US governement (DOD) is unusual...... Hope all of this 
clarifies things.

Fred

Judith Turner wrote:

> I was going to stay out of this one but I have to say that the 
> military, at least at the lower ranks, has rarely been made up of the 
> rich and powerful of the nation.
>
> By Julius Caesar's time the armies of Rome were extremely ethnically 
> diverse, made up of residents of foreign territories and former slaves 
> who were promised pensions, land and later, Roman citizenship, in 
> return for military service.
>
> Up through WW1, the British Army -- the one that fought Napoleon 
> across Europe and made possible the British Empire -- was largely 
> composed of men who had a choice between vagrancy, prison or extreme 
> poverty in England, Ireland, Scotland or the colonies. Officers were 
> frequently younger (i.e., surplus) sons of the ruling class who needed 
> a socially acceptable occupation.
>
> Many of Napoleon's foot soldiers were conscripts and troops raised by 
> levy in conquered territories.
>
> Look at the statistics for the Vietnam Conflict which was the last 
> American war that utilized primarily regular army units (as opposed to 
> Reserve and National Guard units.)  Compared to the US population at 
> that time, a disproportionate number of the regular Army members who 
> died in there were young, poor, Southern and black. 
>
> It would be an extremely unusual government, or society for that 
> matter, that would not select its recruits from among the poor and 
> dispossessed.
>
> Judy Turner
> Whitefish Bay, WI
>
>
>     But it bothers me that the government is pursuing those who are
>     more desperate or less likely to be informed about the truth of
>     military recruiting or understand the contracts that they sign.
>
>
>     Susan Dennis
>
>
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