My grandfather was 34 years old with kids when he went into and served in a non-combat position in the Philippines.
One of my uncles had lost an eye as a kid. He thought they would never take him. Well, they did. They told him he couldn’t be in a combat unit.
He ended up in the South Pacific in graves registration. One of the places he went was New Guinea. He and his team would go up into the mountains to recover bodies out of plane crashes. They came under fire all the time. He said it didn’t matter if he was in the infantry, he wasn’t really able to see the enemy with one eye so he just shot in the general direction.
Can you imagine them drafting a one eyed skinny kid today? The world is a different place.