facts re "our foot soldiers"

[Doug Millison]

Terrance,

What facts would you like to present that support the claim that during the
Vietnam War, a disporportionate number of combat soldiers were NOT from
lower income and minority segments of U.S. society?

This is only anecdotal, of course, but in1972, when I was drafted, I found
it quite difficult to find young white draftees from rich families in basic
traning and speciality training at Fort Ord (Monterey, CA), in South Korea
in 1973, and at Fort Hood, Texas in 1974 -- because there were very few
young white draftees from rich families.  In Korea, in the 2nd Infantry
Division where I served, one-third of the approximately 30,000 soldiers
(I'm not sure of that exact number, it seems that the U.S. had close to
40,000 military personnel in Korea that year and about three-quarters of
them were in the 2d Infantry Division (it includes the original M.A.S.H.
unit) up along the DMZ -- and of the soldiers in the 2d Infantry Division,
I was told by friends in HQ personnel that one-third were what the Army
called "Class III", no high school diplomas, minimal literacy, the bottom
of the Army barrel.  Of course a huge number were of a racial background
other than white.  In fact, most of the fights at the Enlisted Men's club
at Camp Howze (where I lived and worked and first read Gravity's Rainbow)
started over which music would be played next on the juke box (rock,
country, soul, or Latin), and it usually wound up being soul or Latin.

I also had quite a few colleagues who came to Camp Howze, and other bases
in the 2nd Infantry Division, directly from combat duty in Vietnam.  It
seems to have been a common practice with combat vets who the Army deemed
too shook up to send directly home to the U.S., but not damaged to the
point of needing to be hospitalized, to let them chill in Korea for a year
or so.  We carried a couple of soldiers in this category on the daily
report for the mechanized infantry company where I worked, but they didn't
live and work with us, they stayed in a Korean prison as the result of
stabbing a Korean taxicab driver to death.  Anyway, I had many colleagues
who had served in Vietnam, and the story was pretty much the same:  poor
soldiers of color made up a very large fraction of the combat grunts in
that War.

Please don't take my word for it, but it shouldn't be very difficult to
find reliable references to back up the claim that a disporportionate
number of U.S. combat soliders in Vietnam were non-white, from
disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.

If your claim has something to do with the cumulative U.S. armed forces
since WWII, and not specifically the demographic make-up of combat soldiers
in Vietnam, maybe you could explain in a bit more detail what you're
talking about, and present the facts you mention.

-Doug