[ansel12]

I served with GIs who showed no difference between draftee and volunteer, good and bad came from both, many draftees went on to become super soldier volunteers going Airborne and into Rangers and Special Forces, women are inferior to male soldiers regardless of whether as 19 year olds they wanted to enlist or were drafted.

“Last Vietnam Era Draftee Finally Retires” July, 2011

“It was 1972, a time of protest when war was stigmatized and some of those who fought in it were spat on.

A young drywall installer in Oregon, just 19 years old, had just gotten a letter from the White House, and believed that President Nixon had sat down and written to him. It was a letter informing him that he would be drafted.

Now that teenager is Command Sgt. Maj. Jeffrey Mellinger, and he’s been in the Army for 39 years.”

“Mellinger told the draft board there was a mistake.

“I ... told them I don’t need to go into the Army, I’ve got a job,” said Mellinger, who hung drywall for a living. “They just kind of laughed.”

“He went to the draft board and asked them if it was really serious. He was told that it was and ended up training at Fort Ord, in California, soon thereafter. He later was stationed in West Germany as a clerk and could not wait to get out after his two year service was up. The company commander ended up changing his mind when he convinced him on the possibility of joining the Army Rangers. He said in a 2007 ABC News magazine interview that reenlisting was the best decision of his life. As of 2011, he has made over 3,700 jumps with a total of thirty-three hours in freefall.”

[Chainmail]

I see your point about Sgt Maj Mellinger but he was an exceptional guy - wish we Marines had got him. I was about to dispute your point that "just any guy can be a Marine" when I remembered how completely unsuited for the Marine Corps I was back in '65 and how I accidently joined. I was a skinny, glasses-wearing dweeb that was flunking out of Junior College when I went to a recruiting station to ask a few questions about the Air Force. The Air Force recruiters were out at lunch but there was a huge Marine Corps Master Sergeant there instead and before I could think twice, he had me signed up for four years. I remember a whole bus full of us dweebs heading for San Diego and Boot Camp and 13 weeks of running, drilling, yelling, obstacles, weapons, and shaved heads (and some of the best food I had ever eaten). At the end of this mess and graduation, I was a different guy by miles and once I finished infantry training, I was ready for my part in Vietnam.

So I sort of prove your point - except if I were dragged into it, I might not have adapted to things properly and never accepted my place among my brother Marines as well. A large part of the Marine Corps' success has been the bond between us and I knew, as all my other Marines knew, that the man on either side of me would carry his weight and if I was in trouble, they'd risk their lives to help me. I knew that I was up to that too - and I was wounded while dragging a wounded Marine out of an open rice paddy while a whole bunch of people were shooting at us.

I liked the guys who were drafted and served well in Vietnam - I met a bunch of them in the hospitals while we recovered - but they had a different mental set from those of us in the Marine Corps who volunteered and knew what we were in for.