hoary, please stop repeated 20x repeated stories. Everyone who took a military
physical during VN knows that virtually everyone passed. And everyone who wnet
through boot camp knows that just a tiny number were rejected in boot camp for
physical reasons.

hoary, you learned your military lore when watching 1950's tv.

From: Harry Krause
Date: 2/7/2005 10:10 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
Message-id:

Ship Skipper wrote:
I have a friend that is a Navy Recruiter. I had asked him one day what's
the
number of recruits that you put through. His reply was, 1 in a 1000 gets
in.
Then he explained why. Which is, they failed the entrance exam, medical
reasons, school grades, failed pshyc exam, and over weight, are the top 5
reason why. It's not because they don't want to join, it's because the
standards have risen.


Believe it or not, this was true during the Vietnam Era, too, though I
don't know what the proportion was. When I worked for The AP in West
Virginia, I had a buddy there who was an MD in the Army, and part of his
duties involved examining draftees and recruits. This was Appalachia,
times were tough in that part of the country then (and they are still
tough) and many young men who didn't have the wherewithal to get into
college or pay for it looked to the military as a way out of where they
were, joblessness, or, at best, some awful coal mine job.

Problem was, many of the young men had suffered serious malnutrition, or
didn't have the ability to do even modestly well in school, or had
horrific dental problems (this, I recall, was the biggest disqualified),
and couldn't even get into the Army during a serious war. It broke his
heart, my doctor friend said, to turn down so many of these kids because
they really had no other options.

Keep in mind that I have no problems with most individuals who serve in
the military. I think soldiers who serve in a war battle zone are
grossly underpaid, and I think their benefits suck, too. My problem is
with the institution of the military and its corruption.