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Now, now, don’t make yourself sick!

Honestly, you think every single man that joined did so because of patriotism??

I’m sure that there were a few farm boys here and there who looked at the war as a way to get out of the corn fields and see other parts of the world they never thought they’d have a chance to see.

I would not have had a problem if he made it clear that he was speaking for himself but he never said “I”, he said “we” and “you”, thus making the statement that it was a common emotion.
I said that the “vast majority” joined for patriotic reasons, not everyone.

I live in Alabama and you are correct. I have talked with old men who said that they went to war to escape life on the farm. That does not make them any less of a patriot in my eyes.

I’m sure that there were a few farm boys here and there who looked at the war as a way to get out of the corn fields and see other parts of the world they never thought they’d have a chance to see.

Growing up, I knew plenty who did join just to get away from what they saw as a dead-end life (many of whom stayed in after the war was over). When Pearl Harbor was attacked, it was the proverbial light bulb going off in the head of many.

Before Pearl Harbor, the military was not glamorous at all. My dad's crew literally shared a bomber with three other crews, because the Army didn't have the money to buy more planes. The amazing thing is, there were men in the Army (and the other services) who worked to get men in, even if they didn't have enough planes or tanks or equipment, because they knew that there was a war coming, and they would need experienced men, but I digress.

After Pearl Harbor, you had all of these men who had just come out of the Depression, and for many of them, joining the military was the first time they might have been out of their home state, and with the feelings that were running high, they felt a pride and a sense of belonging to something bigger, and doing something meaningful. One of the guys from Minnesota, one of the guys from Alabama, and one of the guys from California that was in the Marine Raider battalion kinda touched upon that.

I think a lot of us have a hard time understanding the conditions these men (and women) lived in. They had just come out of the Great Depression, something which the majority of us living today have no way of comprehending, many of them were rural, and that's definitely not the case these days. The best example is one of the pilots from Minnesota who talked about growing up on a farm, and would see an airplane every now and then, and how his spirit would soar when seeing that. Rural life in the '30s and early '40s was just not what a lot of young men wanted to do with their lives.

I've often wondered if we did not have the Depression, how things would have turned out, because the Depression was a huge test for many people in this country, and as cliched as it is, it built a lot of character. Many people who served in the military did not have what I would call "soft" backgrounds - they knew what it was like to not have much to eat, they walked all over the place a lot since for many an automobile was a luxury, or it was something used for the family or the farm. My dad and my uncles said that the lean times they had in the '30s helped make them better soldiers and Marines in the '40s.