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To: pepsionice

I enlisted in the army during the Vietnam War, draftees were better than the females who replace them after the draft ended.

We just had our last draftees finishing up their service in the last 3 or 4 years.

Army’s Last Draftee to Retire After 39 Years
Published July 03, 2011 Associated Press

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.”
(snip)
He heard so many war stories in training that he was fired up about going, and was disappointed he was instead assigned to be an office clerk in Germany.
(snip)
Mellinger wasn’t long for clerking. He earned a spot in the Army Rangers, and would go on to do more than 3,700 parachute jumps. And despite the 1991 parachute accident that gave him the material for the wind chime, breaking his leg in several places, he went on to run nine marathons. He was made a command sergeant major in 1992.
Nearly a decade later, he was sent to ground zero in New York right after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as part of an advance party from the First Army. Then came his time in Iraq as the top enlisted soldier of the multi-national forces in Iraq, where he says he survived 27 roadside bombings during his deployment of nearly three years straight.
(snip)
“Draftees are pretty maligned over time,” he said, “but the fact is they are part of every branch of service up to 1973, and when you look at what those military branches accomplished over time, I’ll let the record speak for itself.”


20 posted on 12/15/2014 11:05:08 PM PST by ansel12
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To: ansel12

That’s an amazing story and he sounds like a great guy. But asking the survivors of a war their opinion of the draft has an obvious problem. You -might- just be asking the wrong guys.


23 posted on 12/15/2014 11:13:43 PM PST by DesertRhino (I was standing with a rifle, waiting for soviet paratroopers, but communists just ran for office.)
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