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Originally Posted by DeltAlum
I'm not so sure about that -- at least in terms of the Vietnam veterans. The all volunteer "professional" Army is supposed to have smarter soldiers than our armed forces of the past.
The "average" grunt in Vietnam was 19 years old, likely to have a high school education or less, a minority and probably drafted soon after high school. That doesn't give you a whole lot of preparation for life. As the article says, the vast majority of homeless who are former soldiers are from the Vietnam era.
Finally, the troops returning from Vietnam were hardly greeted as heros as our troops today are.
That men and women who served in our Armed Forces end up homeless is terrible -- but it is hardly a new thing.
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1. What's the "average" grunt in Iraq? I'd imagine that they're not much older and have about the same level of education--but have a much more naive view of what war's about. The minority thing I'm not going to speculate on. Nearly every 19 year old that I know who enlisted did it because they didn't know what else they were going to do, and the Army especially has a really great PR machine that lets these kids believe they're going to do tons of fun things.
I do stand by my assertion that the kids from earlier war eras--if only because their fathers and grandfathers served--had a slightly better idea of what they were getting into. The kids who are serving now can't remember a time when the US was in a major war. I mean, in early 2001, my cousin enlisted out of HS because he wanted to marry his girlfriend right away. Do you think anyone did that in 1966?
2. Not every soldier was spat upon when he/she returned from SE Asia. Back to the case with Daddy Munch, who returned to a military hometown. For the most part, the people tended to be just as welcoming then as they were now. Not everyone came back to towns like Berkeley or Ann Arbor.