In 1941, the draft was a great idea. We needed a LOT of warm bodies to throw into the breach to defeat a relentless and well-armed enemy on TWO fronts, and we had a surplus of men of the ages between 18 and 35 who had difficulty in finding decent employment. The draft dipped into this pool of the underemployed, and essentially extended a subsidy to many struggling families, as either the husbands or sons were given an assured cash flow (however small it was at the time) to give over to the support of their families. There was not much slack provided for young husbands with two or fewer children, who were not in an otherwise essential job at the time. Soon, only the “4F” (physically unfit) or those who could buy their way out of service were left on the home front, while the lives of the best and bravest were being squandered in assaults that were not as well planned or executed as they could have been, but the other side was equally as guilty of squandering of lives as well.
Just the fear of being drafted compelled a LOT of young men to enlist as “volunteers”, in the hopes they would be placed in some rear-echelon job where the enemy PROBABLY would not be shooting at you.
What did you do in the war, daddy?
“In 1941, the draft was a great idea. “
In 1941 it was no so much a draft as a lottery. More men were volunteering than were needed
I used to deliver to a VFW Post.
There were two groups of men.
There was always a gaggle of men sitting at the bar talking loudly about how tough it was when they were in the Army.
To hear most of them talk you would have thought they whipped the Germans AND the Japanese all by their lonesomes.
There were other men sitting talking about work, children, grandchildren and wives.
You would never believe that bunch had ever heard a shot fired in anger.
One day the bartender clued me in.
The loud gaggle had been clerks and such.
Most had never left the states. The ones who had never saw a live enemy soldier who hadn’t been captured by someone else.
The quiet men?
They were the ones with the Purple Hearts and Silver Stars. Scars from bullets, grenades, mortars and artillery. The men with long dead friends.
They didn’t need to talk loudly, they had walked Proudly.