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"I wanted to find a commonplace world a chance to live heroically. Having known nothing but security, comfort and peace, I hungered for danger, challenges and violence. I had no clear idea of how to fulfill this peculiar ambition until the day a Marine recruiting team set up a stand in the student union at Loyola University. Ithought the heroic experience was war and so I decided to enlist. Another motive for volunteering was: I needed to prove something - my courage, my my toughness, my manhood, call it whatever you like. The current slogan was: "The Marine Corps builds men.""
- film: "Full Metal Jacket" -
The average age of the US combat soldier in Vietnam was 19. Some did it because they had nothing better to do, some because they wanted to find themselves, some because they wanted to serve their manhood or find their manhood, some because they were overcompensating and wanted to be a macho men.
"A man who wore that unniform was somebody."
The educated kids who knew how to manipulate the system by and large avoid the war - the less-privileged Americans fought and died there. Of the 26,900.000 men of draft age (1964-1973), 8,720,000 enlisted voluntarily, 2,215,000 were drafted and 15,980,000 never served.
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