ORIGINAL: BrucePowers
Most waited to be conscripted. Those young men knew they would be conscripted. They also knew the war would be a long drawn out hard fought affair. There was othing wrong with waiting until Uncle Sam sent you your greetings letter. Also, if everyone had jumped up and rushed to the recruiting center, the US military could not have handled the influx in January, 1942.
Indeed the Army was less than lukewarm about volunteering as conscription facilitated greater efficiancy in manpower allocation. The fact that volunteers tended to opt for the Air Corps, Navy, or the Marines did help either.
However it doesn't follow from here that, unlike what Greatest Generation mythology would seem to have us believe,
everybody was just raring to go do they bit for God, mum and apple pie or that they had any idea what they might be getting themselves into. It probably helped that the US could afford to in effect shield the body polity from direct participation through a by comparison very generous deferment policy. Thus of the roughly 25 million men aged 18 to 37 processed by US Army induction boards 1940-45, 16 million were granted deferments. 15 million of these were on grounds of dependancy, though some hundred thousands (IIRC) were revoked in '44 when the infantry replacement crisis hit. When selective service was introduced in 1940, 75% of those who'd eventually serve in the Army were aged 25 or younger. Crudely put the young and the outcast were shipped off to war, but they
did go almost to a man. Conscientious objectors came to 0.13% of Army inductees, fx.
. My background is in history...I struggle to make four of two and two. "
