‘The soldiers of the greatest generation never seemed to come close to start shooting their own fellow servicemen.’
The ‘greatest generation’ wasn’t at War for over 8 years, nor did they have as many tours as our soldiers have done.
A lot of those men went in in December 1941 and didn’t get home again (except in some cases for a 30 day leave somewhere) until 1945.
Pointing this out does not in any way diminish the respect I have for what our troops must do in this environment.
The Greatest Generation when to war and stayed pretty much for the entirety of the war with little breaks between. Tours? How about nearly four consecutive years worth? Stress? I can't imagine the horrors they witnessed in that war compared to the video game style of warfare soldiers today are involved with. Stress? Non-stop battles for weeks - sometimes months during WWII. Nothing in this war even comes close.
There isn’t anything that the “greatest generation” military didn’t do in spades. It was a massive draftee military of many millions that covered the entire rainbow of human behavior from heroic to horrible.
The greatest generation wasnt at War for over 8 years, nor did they have as many tours as our soldiers have done.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Right you are, but look who they were fighting. We had 14,000,000 (includes 10 million draftees)engaging a superior trained enemy on 3 fronts. Europe, Pacific and CBI. No multiple tours, they were in it for the duration. The ROE was simple too, “win it”.
BULL CRAP
Take a look at how long a lot of the units were in the field. They didn’t have KRB hot meals at the back. Tell the guys who wintered in Bastogne. This is nonsense. The greatest generation saw some many of their comrades in arms die next to them. The loses in the current conflicts are NOTHING by comparison. And there was no tour and then home for a rest. IF they were lucky they got a couple of weeks back in England and then returned to the front. The guys in the Pacific were worse off.
You ought to check yourself
Plus there was quite a bit of whitewashing during that time. And let’s not forget the generation that the “greatest generation” gave birth to.
I just wanted to thank everyone who called Bullshit on you, BG. My uncle left home and didn’t return for four years. No ‘leave’. Period.
I thought the tours of duty in WWII were a lot longer than 12 or 18 months. With training and deployments, I thought some men were away from their families for almost 4 years, and they didn't have the luxury of phone cards and the internet to keep in touch with their families.
WWII soldiers did one tour...from the day they signed up until the war was over. My father-in-law went in 1942 and came home in September of 1945. Everyone was an American not a “hyphenated” American.