Who Gets In...

[DGS49]

When I was in the Army during the Vietnam adventure I "worked" in Personnel, and was privy to a lot of information about recruits and soldiers, and took an interest in the various test scores, all of which were displayed on the Form DD 20, although few knew what the abbreviations stood for.

One tidbit that might be generally interesting is how the Army addressed AFQT scores. AFQT scores are a reflection of the percentile ranking of the test takers. A score of 50 means that half of the applicants scored better and half scored worse. The Army would not accept anyone with a score below 15. (This corresponds to an IQ around 83-84). In 1970, they decided to lower the standards to accept (and DRAFT) young men with scores as low as 7, assigning the soldiers with scores between 7-15 as security guards and low-level grunts in Vietnam. This was the program that resulted in Cassius Clay being drafted. Enough said on that matter. The experiment ended in catastrophe, with more than half of those individuals (who carried Service Numbers beginning with "US67...") being killed in action in Vietnam.

But it's a new day now. Recognizing that those who take the AFQT are HS grads, and they have volunteered to take it, it does constitute a random sampling of American Yoot; it's actually a fairly select group. The minimum acceptable scores for the services today are, Army 31, Marines 32, Navy 35, Air Force 40 , Coast Guard 45.

Those with sufficient interest can learn the racial component. The average "white" score is 55, Hispanic 44, and Black 38. It is no wonder that they are having a difficult time filling their quotas for BIPOC's. No doubt the new Administration will be more flexible where they think they can get away with it.

 

[JGalt]

First off, thank you for your service.

I was one of McNamara's "100 Thousand." Got popped for a minor offense but broke out of jail. They gave me a choice of 5 years prison or 4 years in the Army, 71-74.

I was 13E20, Fire Direction Control for artillery. Did nothing but help train Airborne Rangers to call for artillery strikes, at Ft. Benning. We also trained some South and Central American military personnel about using artillery to wipe out Communists

Terrible soldier I was at the time: 12 Article 15's and a court martial before I go out, but was released with general under honorable conditions. Got to sit in a cell next to Lt. William Calley, though. That was pretty cool.

Given the chance to do it over again, I wouldn't have fucked up so badly, but that runs in the family. My dad was a paratrooper during WW2. He didn't see any combat but got stationed in Germany right after the war ended.

While he was there, he went joyriding in a tank, went fishing in a pond with hand grenades, and robbed a German couple at gunpoint for a bottle of wine. He felt bad about it later, went back, and paid them for it.

He wouldn't go anywhere near an airplane the rest of his life, after making those jumps.

 

[DGS49]

Such stories are interesting to other Vets. You must have been one of the last ones drafted, in'71.

 

[Mushroom]

The Army would not accept anyone with a score below 15. (This corresponds to an IQ around 83-84). In 1970, they decided to lower the standards to accept (and DRAFT) young men with scores as low as 7, assigning the soldiers with scores between 7-15 as security guards and low-level grunts in Vietnam.

Most grunts were volunteers, not draftees. And that was not the decision of the Army, all branches had to take those who would not normally be accepted.

Project 100,000 was designed to accept those who fell below acceptable standards, as many were saying the requirements were "biased" and unfair to minorities and the underclasses. It tied in with President Johnson's "War on Poverty", as a way to try and train many and give them skills they could use after their service. It must be remembered, a draftee only served 2 years, as opposed to 4-6 years that a volunteer served. And far more went into driving trucks, cooks, and supply than to grunts or "Security" (which is not really a "military job", it is a secondary job).

But feel free to look, there is no MOS in the Army called "Security". Now somebody might get shoved into that because their MOS was say "Vehicle Repair", but they were so substandard in their technical ability they were shoved into the "Battalion Security Pool" so instead of fixing trucks spent their year after training guarding the motor pool because the Motor-T Sergeant did not trust them to do their actual job. But that has always been the norm.

I knew guys that spent most of their time going between jobs like that, working the chow hall, and other jobs (gym, bus driver, landscaping, etc) because they were incompetent in their actual MOS. And every unit has positions like that. Tasks everybody rotated in and out of, but some just seemed to stay in them forever. One guy I served with from 2008-2012 was one of them. A really smart guy, but incompetent at his job so shoved from one secondary duty to another.

We joked when I was in the Recon section of my PATRIOT Battalion that we were half and half of that. Half could never do their actual job so they were shoved there. Then the other half (like me), where as my Infantry background honestly did make it the best fit (but I did serve on system crews later on). But my 10 years in the Infantry made that a perfect fit for me, as I had skills that were perfect for that role already. About a quarter of the Recon Section were those that had come from more serious "Combat Arms" (Infantry, Tanks, Artillery), and about 3/4 of those with such backgrounds did end up there (or some good system guys that failed the required Secret security clearance).

The common terms were "New Standards Men", or "Moron Corps". The Navy, Marines, and Air Force each took about 10%, but by far most of them went to the Army, at over 70% or over 71,000. And it was not just intelligence. Low IQ (even functional illiterate) were accepted, as were many with criminal backgrounds and physical impairments. And sadly, it was a failure. In fact, later studies showed they underperformed others both in and out of the service. It was tried again to a lesser degree in the early 2000's, to similar results.

And the most recent example was much more mixed. It let a lot of people like me back in the military (waivers for age or physical issues). But the mass waivers for criminal activities caused havoc in the Army for years. From 2008-2010 I saw so many of those given the boot, most times reverting right back to their ways (drug use, criminal activity) that saw them refused in the first place.