Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
Speaker 2: Should Know with a happy, fun, upbeat edition of Stuff
Speaker 2: you Should Know.
Speaker 1: Another entry in the shameful American history? Yea bucket? Do
Speaker 1: you want to thank a listener for this idea? By
Speaker 1: the way, this came from David Bryant? No relation, are
Speaker 1: you sure? Yeah? I don't have any. The only David
Speaker 1: in my family's my cousin, and he is a Mills, Okay,
Speaker 1: but specifically David Bryant's mom I believe gave David this
Speaker 1: idea or asked David if those boys ever did a
Speaker 1: show on the one Project one hundred thousand. And we
Speaker 1: also should shout out a writer, Hamilton Gregory, who was
Speaker 1: a Vietnam vett and journalist and who wrote a book
Speaker 1: McNamara's follow colon the use of low IQ troops in
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War, which I guess sort of gives away
Speaker 1: what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the name of the project Project one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand certainly doesn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean another name of it was McNamara's Morons
Speaker 1: from Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. But that name is awful,
Speaker 1: so I'd love to not use it again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's ridiculously derogatory. Even when this was going on
Speaker 2: in the mid sixties to the very early seventies, it
Speaker 2: was still quite derogatory. It hadn't been like a medical
Speaker 2: term since like the nineteen teen so it was just
Speaker 2: mean all around. And that's pretty appropriate because this whole
Speaker 2: idea of this project, which was a wartime effort to
Speaker 2: essentially lower the standards for military recruitment so that people
Speaker 2: with low enough IQs that they were either borderlined or
Speaker 2: mildly cognitively challenged would be acceptable into military se And
Speaker 2: it depends on who you ask what the purpose was.
Speaker 2: We'll go into both of them. Yeah, but for the
Speaker 2: most part, it seems like it probably was as bad
Speaker 2: as it seems on its face, that it wasn't an actual,
Speaker 2: like good idea ever among anybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, that's a great setup for a change
Speaker 1: for us. You know, usually people are like, what is
Speaker 1: this even you're talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and how'd you guys confuse me already? We're only
Speaker 2: in a minute two Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I guess we'll just dive right in. I mentioned
Speaker 1: Robert McNamara, who was during the Vietnam War was the
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense, and this was an idea that wasn't
Speaker 1: something that he just thought of then we'll get into it.
Speaker 1: But he had thought of this idea previously. But it
Speaker 1: was also something the US military had faced previously when
Speaker 1: it came wartime and they found out that like, hey,
Speaker 1: we had a real problem with not having enough soldiers.
Speaker 1: We really overestimated how many like you know, fit literate
Speaker 1: men were qualified to serve because this is what's what
Speaker 1: a time when it was I mean, was it exclusively men?
Speaker 2: Yeah? World War two for sure, at least for combat roles.
Speaker 2: I think there were other roles for women. But as
Speaker 2: far as combats concerned, yes, definitely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so they h and that was also the
Speaker 1: first war, which is one reason they had this shortage
Speaker 1: that the first war that they had these really kind
Speaker 1: of big leaps forward in technology with you know, weaponry
Speaker 1: and communications to where they had specialists that you know,
Speaker 1: the brightest of the bright that did that stuff right,
Speaker 1: and everyone else is in combat. So once they had
Speaker 1: the specialists assign they were like, hey, we don't have
Speaker 1: enough like front line dudes.
Speaker 2: No, So they had a choice. They could either say,
Speaker 2: some of you specialists, we may have assigned you to
Speaker 2: radar duty too hastily. We need you to be on
Speaker 2: the front lines because we don't have enough combat soldiers.
Speaker 2: Or they could lower their standards to allow more people
Speaker 2: into the army or infantry so they would automatically be
Speaker 2: combat soldiers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and one guy said, but my name is radar, right,
Speaker 1: and he said, well, just get over to the Mash unit. Then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, that show was not funny to me.
Speaker 1: Is this the first time I'm hearing this.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're not a Mash fan. No, I thought you
Speaker 1: love Mash.
Speaker 2: No. I remember like hanging out with my dad. Well
Speaker 2: he watched it and he would like laugh and clap
Speaker 2: and everything, and I'd be like, this is not funny.
Speaker 2: And then I grew up and I'm still like, this
Speaker 2: is not funny.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's funny, because the other day Rip Loretta Swit
Speaker 1: who just passed away Hotcholahan. I was remarking on Paula
Speaker 1: Tompkin's Instagram page because he did a little tribute to
Speaker 1: her that it's like, it's so funny for me to
Speaker 1: think back of being like a twelve year old kid
Speaker 1: watching a movie about alcoholic surgeons in the Korean War
Speaker 1: on Thursdays five times a day, every other day of
Speaker 1: the week, four times a day. I ate it up.
Speaker 1: I thought it was the best thing ever.
Speaker 2: Well, I liked the movie.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Why do you dislike the movie but like this show? No.
Speaker 1: I mean the movie is just the great Robert Altman,
Speaker 1: so I certainly love it, but I just think it's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought you were a Mash guy.
Speaker 2: I mean, once they got rid of Trapper John, I
Speaker 2: was like, I'm done with even giving this a chance.
Speaker 1: But this is what I like about our friendship is
Speaker 1: we're still learning about each other after all these years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we can still get along despite our views
Speaker 2: on Mash.
Speaker 1: This is gonna take me a minute, but it'll be fine.
Speaker 2: So we left off basically before this little tangent that
Speaker 2: the army had a decision either lower their standards to
Speaker 2: allow more combat troops in or get some of those
Speaker 2: specialists stuff to the front lines. And they're like, we'll
Speaker 2: just go ahead and lower our standards.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they did that. They lowered the intelligence standards
Speaker 1: and they were pretty surprised. They're like, wow, a lot
Speaker 1: of you guys maybe are illiterate and can't read, maybe
Speaker 1: you can't understand basic orders. Even we knew obviously this
Speaker 1: is the nineteen forties, so much less about mental challenges
Speaker 1: and different intelligences and learning disabilities and like you were
Speaker 1: either this or you were that back then, And so
Speaker 1: all of a sudden they said, oh, well, we had
Speaker 1: a lot of that, and we thought it would be
Speaker 1: a little more like guys like.
Speaker 2: This, right, So I think they managed to get three
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand men at least they kind of
Speaker 2: opened the floodgates during World War Two. This is just
Speaker 2: between forty two and forty five. But the caveat to
Speaker 2: this is that the military provided remedial education classes. Like
Speaker 2: you would sign up for three years, they would teach you.
Speaker 2: They'd spend some of this time teaching you what you
Speaker 2: didn't learn in high school because maybe you dropped out,
Speaker 2: or maybe your high school sucked, maybe you had to
Speaker 2: work in the fields half of the day so you
Speaker 2: didn't get a full education. The army educated them to
Speaker 2: bring them up to the level that their former standards met, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or try to at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did their best. And then after War two
Speaker 2: ended and Hitler was dead, dead, dead, the army was like, well,
Speaker 2: the military in general said, we're gonna re raise our
Speaker 2: standards back to where they were before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and then they needed to make the movie
Speaker 1: mash and then later the TV show. So they started
Speaker 1: the Korean War.
Speaker 2: Well wait, the Rosenberg started the Korean War, don't forget
Speaker 2: that's right.
Speaker 1: No, the Korean War came along and they had the
Speaker 1: same problem, of course, so they lowered the standards again,
Speaker 1: of course, and there was another scramble to kind of
Speaker 1: get ready, and so they were like, you know, guys,
Speaker 1: before we go into our next war, which we should
Speaker 1: do pretty soon, we need to like have a real
Speaker 1: plan in place for this and and you know, get
Speaker 1: the manpower we need the right way. And so part
Speaker 1: of that was, you know, led into what led to
Speaker 1: Project one hundred thousand. Yeah that wasn't all, though.
Speaker 2: No, that wasn't all. There was this this I don't
Speaker 2: know how much faith to put in this. Let's just
Speaker 2: present it as if it's real and we'll let the
Speaker 2: listeners decide. Okay, But there's a senator named Daniel Patrick moynihan.
Speaker 2: He was a longtime sitting Senator for New York. Prior
Speaker 2: to that, in the era that we're talking about, he
Speaker 2: was assistant Secretary of Labor under both Kennedy and LBJ.
Speaker 2: He was actually one of the architects of the War
Speaker 2: on Poverty. And I don't know if it was his
Speaker 2: idea or he just really bought into this idea, but
Speaker 2: it was that there's a bunch of people who aren't
Speaker 2: fit for military service, either because they're overweight or underweight,
Speaker 2: or because they're not intelligent enough to pass the basic
Speaker 2: intelligence standards. I think he found like thirty percent of
Speaker 2: American men weren't fit for military service because of those standards.
Speaker 2: So he said, Okay, rather than go back to the
Speaker 2: beginning and try to fix the educational system, let's just
Speaker 2: get these people into the army and let the army
Speaker 2: kind of like polish them up so that once they're
Speaker 2: done with their hitch, they can become productive members of society.
Speaker 2: And even better, we're taking people out of like abject poverty,
Speaker 2: giving them a chance to have like a life for
Speaker 2: themselves and provide a stable a stable home for their children,
Speaker 2: who can then go on to become middle class and
Speaker 2: so on and so forth in the cycle of poverty
Speaker 2: will be broken. That's what Daniel Patrick Boynihan was saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he had a lot of people on his side.
Speaker 1: It wasn't some hugely controversial thing to propose. It was
Speaker 1: at a time when it was like, you know, you
Speaker 1: got a kid who's a problem, send them into the army,
Speaker 1: and you know they'll they'll shape you up into a
Speaker 1: real man and a productive member of society. It was
Speaker 1: kind of the way of thinking at the time, so
Speaker 1: much so that John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Mains Johnson,
Speaker 1: they were big time believers in this. They were both
Speaker 1: like fully fully on board. So we just want to
Speaker 1: make that clear. It wasn't just one or two people
Speaker 1: making these decisions, and there were presidents going, I don't
Speaker 1: know about that. That doesn't sound like the idea, right. We
Speaker 1: will kind of hit some early critics because there were some,
Speaker 1: but people were kind of steaming ahead, you know, full
Speaker 1: steam ahead with this steaming ahead, full steam.
Speaker 2: Ahead, that's really steamy, that's full steam. Yeah, Kennedy said
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty three. Are today's military rejects include Tomorrow's
Speaker 2: or hardcore unemployed.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny I have written down on my thing.
Speaker 2: Do you really?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the worst Kennedy anyone's ever done. But
Speaker 2: that was my best.
Speaker 1: I know. We're all frightened and horny. And the LBJ
Speaker 1: for his part, can I do? LBJ?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: He was a country guy.
Speaker 2: Right Texan?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we'll teach him to get up at daylight
Speaker 1: and work till dark and shave and bathe, and when
Speaker 1: when we turn them out, we'll have them prepared at
Speaker 1: least to drive a truck or a bakery wagon or
Speaker 1: stand at a gate.
Speaker 2: That was more a gentleman dressed in a seersucker suit
Speaker 2: at a Kentucky derby. I think all.
Speaker 1: Right either, WELLBJ did that?
Speaker 2: Hey it was better than Mike Kennedy. How about that?
Speaker 1: It was fine?
Speaker 2: So you mentioned that we were going to kind of
Speaker 2: run into some of the critics early to this idea,
Speaker 2: and the first vocal critics were the military leaders themselves.
Speaker 2: They were like, this is no, we don't want to
Speaker 2: do this. Were not the armies, not to rehabilitate and
Speaker 2: educate people who got left behind in school, do something
Speaker 2: else with them. There were other people who were like Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's this thing called job corps. If you heard a
Speaker 2: job corps, that's what that's for. Don't send them to
Speaker 2: the military. So it wasn't like a home run once
Speaker 2: it left the Oval Office and started to spread outward
Speaker 2: on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But that's where it did go because
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six is when Robert McNamara formally announced
Speaker 1: Project one hundred thousand. But this was, like I mentioned,
Speaker 1: not only the US military tried to this before, but
Speaker 1: McNamara himself had tried this before two years earlier. In
Speaker 1: sixty four, he proposed something called the Special Training Enlistment Program,
Speaker 1: or the STEP program, And this was not full project
Speaker 1: from one hundred thousand. It was a little more like, hey,
Speaker 1: we got a like forty thousand guys that didn't meet
Speaker 1: the standards, but they're super close. Maybe they're just below
Speaker 1: the IQ test level, or maybe they need to put
Speaker 1: on a few pounds or shave a few pounds, And
Speaker 1: the STEP program was intended to kind of correct those
Speaker 1: guys up quickly in getting on board, but it would
Speaker 1: cost a little bit of money. They would enlist for
Speaker 1: three years receive this special training, and that special training
Speaker 1: was going to cost about sixteen million bucks. So Congress said, no,
Speaker 1: we're not going to pay for that. No.
Speaker 2: And one other thing you kind of mentioned it is
Speaker 2: that they were going to get remedial instruction like the
Speaker 2: soldiers in World War two got right. That was part
Speaker 2: of the program.
Speaker 1: That was what the sixteen million was for.
Speaker 2: Okay. So Congress said no, like you said, and mac
Speaker 2: namara is like, okay, whatever, I'm just gonna move on
Speaker 2: any of other things to do right now, like agitate
Speaker 2: for escalation in Vietnam. And in nineteen sixty six, apparently
Speaker 2: he was chatting with some Marines and they made mention
Speaker 2: that they had actually set up their own little special
Speaker 2: training program so that the recruits who weren't cutting it
Speaker 2: hacking it could be kind of like brought up to
Speaker 2: minimum standards themselves. And he had a a Eureka light
Speaker 2: bulb moment basically saying like, I'm going to steal the
Speaker 2: idea and make it military wide, and that way Congress
Speaker 2: doesn't have to have their greedy little fingers in it,
Speaker 2: because I can just use their regular training budget for
Speaker 2: this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they can. You know, those Marines had their
Speaker 1: private piles that they got up to speed and turned
Speaker 1: them into killing machines, just like in the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Private Pile is based on this Project
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand, and we're about to talk about like
Speaker 2: one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I feel like Forrest Gump has got to
Speaker 1: be inspired by this, even though that was now were
Speaker 1: a part of the movie that at least made it
Speaker 1: into the movie. I don't know about original script, if
Speaker 1: he had any kind of special training or anything.
Speaker 2: I don't know, or the book by Winston Groom. It's
Speaker 2: possible that he ran across that in the research, but
Speaker 2: not just Force but Bubba as well.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, good point.
Speaker 2: So I say we took a break and come back
Speaker 2: and talk about how Project one hundred thousand actually kind
Speaker 2: of made it.
Speaker 1: Let's do it all right. So where we left off,
Speaker 1: as McNamara found a work around from the official Step
Speaker 1: program to basically an unofficial Step program, And in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, they found that they really needed this because
Speaker 1: they had a pretty dire manpower situation. Because one reason
Speaker 1: is because of the incredible amount of deferments. I saw
Speaker 1: some stats that from draft eligible men in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: sixty percent of them took some sort of action to
Speaker 1: gain a deferment. A lot of them rushed off to
Speaker 1: get married because initially there was a marriage deferment. A
Speaker 1: lot of them went to college that maybe weren't too
Speaker 1: keen on it because there was a college deferment. There
Speaker 1: were medical deferments. They were certainly wealthy kids who had
Speaker 1: their parents pay their way out of the war with
Speaker 1: things like medical deferments. There were conscientious objector deferments, like
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy thousand of those people having kids
Speaker 1: like they could. They sort of started moving the goalpost
Speaker 1: a little bit with the marriage and kids thing, because
Speaker 1: at first it was like if you're married or not going,
Speaker 1: But then they're like, actually we need to marry you guys,
Speaker 1: maybe if you just don't have kids. So guys started
Speaker 1: having kids so long way of saying they needed they
Speaker 1: needed infantrymen on the front line. Another way to avoid
Speaker 1: it was obviously joining something like the National Guard or
Speaker 1: the Coast Guard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because then you could be like, the Coast Guard
Speaker 2: is almost certainly not going to Vietnam. I'll join the
Speaker 2: Coast Guard so I can serve and help out, but
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be shipped off to Vietnam. Some
Speaker 2: people also just fled the country, went to Canada. Sweden
Speaker 2: was another place where what are called draft dodgers ran
Speaker 2: off to. So yeah, there were a lot of people,
Speaker 2: particularly middle class and hire who were just basically not
Speaker 2: having to go fight in Vietnam. Right. And the other
Speaker 2: reason why they needed people, or the basic reason why
Speaker 2: they needed a bunch of people all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: or fighting men, I should say, on the front lines,
Speaker 2: is because in nineteen sixty six, the US sent combat
Speaker 2: troops to the ground in Vietnam, in South Vietnam. To
Speaker 2: that point, the US had been nothing but advisors and trainers.
Speaker 2: And then there was the Gulf of Tonkin incident where
Speaker 2: a Navy ship was fired upon. That kind of brought
Speaker 2: the US into the war and we started like doing
Speaker 2: firebombing raids. And then finally they were like, we need
Speaker 2: infantry men. And that's when they really needed a bunch
Speaker 2: of people to go fight in Vietnam. And that's when
Speaker 2: Project one hundred thousand was like, yeah, let's let's do
Speaker 2: this because we need to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And i' mean I didn't even look it up,
Speaker 1: but I imagine were they trying to get one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand soldiers. Was that that number per year? Oh, per year? Okay,
Speaker 1: because they ended up getting far more than that they did.
Speaker 1: They were officially active with this project from October first,
Speaker 1: sixty six through the end of the year seventy one,
Speaker 1: so about five years. And there were early critics of
Speaker 1: this you know, official program as well, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them, you know, kind of makes sense, but a
Speaker 1: lot of them early on were civil rights leaders. There
Speaker 1: was a congressman named Adam Clayton Powell who said, this
Speaker 1: is genocide for poor black Americans. It's nothing more than
Speaker 1: killing off human beings that are not members of the elite.
Speaker 1: But nevertheless they pushed on.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, the very fact that these these men
Speaker 2: came from high levels of poverty and had learning disabilities
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases meant that they were not
Speaker 2: going to get any kind of college deferment. They were
Speaker 2: almost certainly not in college, and even if they were,
Speaker 2: they weren't doing a good enough job to get a deferment.
Speaker 2: And then secondly, national guards, almost to a state were
Speaker 2: still segregated, so if you were black, you couldn't go
Speaker 2: join the National Guard and not be shipped off to Vietnam.
Speaker 2: So these were really vulnerable population of people that they
Speaker 2: tapped into with Project one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they called these guys the New Standards recruits
Speaker 1: Capital and Capital S and most of those New Standards
Speaker 1: guys were sent to Vietnam. Out of those guys, about
Speaker 1: half of them served in combat roles. And this is
Speaker 1: what that looked like.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think there were a total of three hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty four thousand men who were admitted in that time.
Speaker 2: Ninety one percent hadn't met the previous minimum i CUE requirements,
Speaker 2: and the score on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which
Speaker 2: measured intelligence among other things, was thirteen point six, which
Speaker 2: meant that the New Standards men had an IQ average
Speaker 2: around seventy five, whereas for all recruits the average was
Speaker 2: IQ of about one hundred. And that's the average IQ.
Speaker 2: I saw that seventy is the cutoff the beginning of
Speaker 2: mild cognitive disabilities. So if seventy five is the average,
Speaker 2: that means there were people with real cognitive disabilities who
Speaker 2: were in this three hundred and fifty four thousand men
Speaker 2: who were part of Project one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Forty eight percent of those guys were from the
Speaker 1: South compared to twenty eight percent of the total recruits,
Speaker 1: and thirty eight percent were non white, when minorities at
Speaker 1: the time made up just about ten percent overall.
Speaker 2: Right, so you can imagine that these men who didn't
Speaker 2: meet the minimum requirements that had previously been met, some
Speaker 2: of them couldn't even meet these new lowered requirements, and
Speaker 2: so recruiters stepped in and did some really shady stuff
Speaker 2: to get people into this project one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: Shoot, yeah, recruiters. I mean they can say whatever they
Speaker 1: want because they're not you know, you can't go back
Speaker 1: and say, oh, well, my recruiter said I wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to go to the front line. That just doesn't fly.
Speaker 1: So they could say whatever they want. They could say,
Speaker 1: you're not going to go to the front line. Maybe
Speaker 1: you won't even go to Vietnam. You may be you know,
Speaker 1: you're going to get really great job training and set
Speaker 1: you up great for later in life after you get
Speaker 1: out of the army. Their job is to recruit you,
Speaker 1: not to be held to anything that they say.
Speaker 2: So wrong, man, especially when you're dealing with people with
Speaker 2: cognitive disabilities, you know, for sure, especially people who are illiterate,
Speaker 2: and some of them were illiterate, so the recruiters would
Speaker 2: bring in ringers, people they paid to take the tests
Speaker 2: for the qualification tests for these men who were the
Speaker 2: new standards men, and they I mean that's just fraud,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, they were you know, once they got
Speaker 1: to basic training, they were bullied. They were obviously the
Speaker 1: object of ire from their you know, drill sergeants and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, but they were also bullied you know,
Speaker 1: physically and you know, emotionally within their you know, platoons,
Speaker 1: and they didn't have any understanding a lot of times
Speaker 1: of even what was going on when this is happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that writer Hamilton Gregory recounted the story of one
Speaker 2: recruit who couldn't tell you what state he was from,
Speaker 2: didn't know his left from his right, wasn't aware that
Speaker 2: the US was at war. I mean, like really profoundly
Speaker 2: cognitively challenged men in some cases who had no business
Speaker 2: being in the military. Not just because they were potentially
Speaker 2: in danger or most certainly in danger in a lot
Speaker 2: of cases, but they also posed a danger to other
Speaker 2: people in their platoon as well because they didn't know
Speaker 2: what they were doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, they did have the special training companies
Speaker 1: set up like you know McNamara had envisioned, you know
Speaker 1: from the tip from those Marines, but a lot of times,
Speaker 1: you know, that didn't work. And even when they failed
Speaker 1: to get through basic training, they would just recycle them
Speaker 1: back through until they pass or just say you passed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Those recruiters also they used something called administrative acceptance,
Speaker 2: that's what it was, where they were given the power
Speaker 2: to say, I think you're flunking this test on purpose,
Speaker 2: so you're actually going to be admitted anyway. They could
Speaker 2: use that to assign or to get these cognitively challenged
Speaker 2: men into the army, basically saying like I think you're
Speaker 2: smarter than your test reflects, right, So there was just
Speaker 2: no way that they weren't going to make it into
Speaker 2: the army and then through basic training, and I mean
Speaker 2: once they got through basic training, I think you said
Speaker 2: half or more of them were shipped off to Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and I think the majority of them ended up on
Speaker 2: the front lines. And the statistics about what happened to
Speaker 2: these men in Vietnam are just shocking, especially when you
Speaker 2: compare them to the statistics for just the military of
Speaker 2: the Army as a whole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, four hundred and seventy eight of them were killed
Speaker 1: in Vietnam, which was a fatality rate three times higher
Speaker 1: than your average soldier. Thirteen hundred those were killed by
Speaker 1: mines in booby traps, because a lot of times they
Speaker 1: were like, just put one of those guys up front
Speaker 1: and if they step on the land mine, then it's
Speaker 1: no big loss for us. Twenty thousand of them were injured,
Speaker 1: including five hundred amputees, which is again at a higher
Speaker 1: rate than other gis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I saw like fifty something thousand people
Speaker 2: were killed. Americans were killed in Vietnam, so like the
Speaker 2: new standards men made up like ten percent of that, which, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, that's just crazy. There are also like a
Speaker 2: lot of horror stories about these poor guys and just
Speaker 2: what happened to them over there. There was one who
Speaker 2: Hamilton Gregory wrote about he would change the names of
Speaker 2: these men, and he changed one of their names to Jerry.
Speaker 2: And Jerry was on night guard duty at his posts
Speaker 2: in Vietnam, and he was told that if he saw
Speaker 2: anybody coming up to the fort that he was to
Speaker 2: say halt and tell them to say who they were,
Speaker 2: to identify themselves right, and even this basic order, Jerry
Speaker 2: couldn't follow it because when he saw somebody moving in
Speaker 2: the jungle, he just started opening fire and it turned
Speaker 2: out it was an officer from his camp and he
Speaker 2: killed them. He accidentally killed this officer because he just
Speaker 2: started shooting because he didn't know how to follow orders.
Speaker 1: You know why guys like you and I aren't fit
Speaker 1: for the military. Why because you had a hard time
Speaker 1: coming with the word order. Yeah, what's it called with that? Sara?
Speaker 1: Jealous about the thing he wants us to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the instruction. But like anger instruction, anng re instruction.
Speaker 1: I think that's the definition of orders, an angry instruction.
Speaker 2: I think that too.
Speaker 1: They also and this is you know, it gets even
Speaker 1: sadder new Standardsmen were referred for psychiatric evaluation ten times
Speaker 1: as frequently as other troops. And you know, they were
Speaker 1: obviously going through a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression,
Speaker 1: extreme agitation, and some of them frequently attempted suicide or
Speaker 1: you know when a wall or attack their filler soldiers,
Speaker 1: which all of a sudden you're in the stockade. You're
Speaker 1: getting a conviction and a dishonorable discharge, which we're going
Speaker 1: to talk more about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a big issue. But I mean I
Speaker 2: saw the a wall thing described as like, I mean, imagine,
Speaker 2: if everybody's really mean to you, beats you up, and
Speaker 2: you just don't understand why, of course you're going to
Speaker 2: want to get away from it. If you just can't
Speaker 2: make sense of that, heads or tails, right, So a wall,
Speaker 2: I mean there was a pretty good reason for a
Speaker 2: lot of these guys to go a wall. And again,
Speaker 2: I think Private piles experience in basic training was like
Speaker 2: pretty true to life for what happened to some of
Speaker 2: these guys. And you know, Private Pile chose kill and
Speaker 2: then die himself rather than a wall, but a lot
Speaker 2: of them chose a wall instead.
Speaker 1: What a movie?
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, that movie is just amazing.
Speaker 1: We're talking about The Full Metal Jacket. By the way,
Speaker 1: just in case people are like, what movie?
Speaker 2: Yes, so good, good call man.
Speaker 1: The Great Stanley Kubrick. Should we take our second break?
Speaker 2: I think we should.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, We'll be right back and finish up
Speaker 1: with Project one hundred thousand.
Speaker 2: So I said, there are a lot of horror stories
Speaker 2: and there are a plenty for the McNamara boys or
Speaker 2: Project one hundred thousand men. What's much harder to find
Speaker 2: are positive stories, like hopeful stories. I could find two,
Speaker 2: but it turned out they were actually the same guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this isn't a silver lining situation.
Speaker 2: No, definitely not. But the guy his name was Mike Sanchez,
Speaker 2: not his real name, and he had two different experiences
Speaker 2: while he was in Vietnam, and both of them were
Speaker 2: because he was essentially adopted by his commanding officers at
Speaker 2: both of his posts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which I mean, that's still not a silver lining,
Speaker 1: but at least there were some compassionate officers who took
Speaker 1: these guys under their wing and were like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to try and see that this kid doesn't go home
Speaker 1: in a pine box. So thankful for that obviously. But
Speaker 1: one of the things that happened was a soldier like this,
Speaker 1: and you know, apparently it happened to others. Is there
Speaker 1: they were given assignments sort of under the wing of
Speaker 1: that officer, like maybe be their driver. And in this case,
Speaker 1: this guy was assigned to drive an officer but couldn't
Speaker 1: drive and didn't have the capacity to learn how to drive,
Speaker 1: so that instead of just you know, sticking him back
Speaker 1: on the front line, this officer drove himself and just
Speaker 1: had this guy sit next to him in the passenger seat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I mean, like, that's really taking a soldier
Speaker 2: under your wing, Like, yeah, that is just straight up
Speaker 2: protecting him. That was after That was the second part
Speaker 2: of Mike Sanchez's stint in Vietnam. The first part of it,
Speaker 2: he actually distinguished himself in battle. And this is actually
Speaker 2: pretty similar to Forrest Gump if you think about it.
Speaker 1: Well, I think this might have been directly inspired by that.
Speaker 1: That was my feeling.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Mike Sanchez when he first got to Vietnam,
Speaker 2: his first commanding officer also took him under his wing
Speaker 2: to protect him and was like, you have no business
Speaker 2: being here. I'm going to see to it that you
Speaker 2: make it out of here alive. And Mike Sanchez was
Speaker 2: the kind of guy who just if you were nice
Speaker 2: to him, if you were kind to him, if you
Speaker 2: treated him with respect, he would he would loyal to
Speaker 2: you to the end, like you just captured his heart.
Speaker 2: And that happened with his first commanding officer. He felt
Speaker 2: deeply loyal to them, and they ended up in a firefight.
Speaker 1: Together, right, Yeah, and kind of just like out of
Speaker 1: the movie Forrest Gump. The officer ended up in big trouble.
Speaker 1: Mike couldn't find him. Everyone said he's back there, he
Speaker 1: got hit, but no one was going back to get him.
Speaker 1: So that's what this guy did. He ran back, ran back,
Speaker 1: you know, foregoing his own safety, called out for him,
Speaker 1: found him wounded he couldn't move, and carried him to
Speaker 1: safety through some serious, you know, bullet fire and was
Speaker 1: got the Silver Star for that action.
Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't that cool?
Speaker 1: It's pretty great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mike Santez, he's just one of those rare, hopeful
Speaker 2: or nice stories. He actually went on to become a barber,
Speaker 2: which was his dream because his brother was a barber,
Speaker 2: so he got to go work with them after the army.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again, don't bother googling because his name is
Speaker 1: not Mike Sanchez.
Speaker 2: No, but you can find an account of this by
Speaker 2: the second CEO who he was the driver for. His
Speaker 2: name was Jim Bracewell. He wrote an account about Mike Sanchez.
Speaker 2: It's worth reading, for sure.
Speaker 1: There was another one. This is from Dave Rus. One
Speaker 1: of these guys, his name was Elmer. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's his real name or not in this case
Speaker 1: but he was apparently just a real had a real
Speaker 1: talent for keeping things super clean and orderly, and he
Speaker 1: was assigned his assignment was to clean a sick bay
Speaker 1: on a big navy ship, and he may not have
Speaker 1: understood like what sterill meant and things like that, but
Speaker 1: he really knew how to get stuff done and keep
Speaker 1: the place clean and sterile. And he apparently had a
Speaker 1: pretty rare positive experience, and that everyone loved this guy
Speaker 1: and everyone thought he did a great job. And that's
Speaker 1: sort of like, that's sort of what I was thinking earlier,
Speaker 1: is you know, they knew so little about different intelligences
Speaker 1: and things back then, and they probably could have found
Speaker 1: a lot of roles that might have been suitable for
Speaker 1: some of these guys. Instead, they were just like, we
Speaker 1: want warm bodies on the front line because they're basically expendable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like basically booby trap catchers essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, those stories are very rare. For the most part,
Speaker 2: the Project one hundred thousand recruits suffered greatly, and not
Speaker 2: just in battle, but also at the hands of their
Speaker 2: own platoon members, Like they just had it horrible all
Speaker 2: around in a lot of cases, and so it's not
Speaker 2: much of a surprise that when they were studied after
Speaker 2: they left Vietnam and came back to the United States,
Speaker 2: they had a much harder time than even the average
Speaker 2: Vietnam VET who had a hard time themselves. These guys
Speaker 2: had it even harder. They were apparently significantly more likely
Speaker 2: to suffer PTSD compared to other vets, and that they
Speaker 2: had harder time holding on a job, they had a
Speaker 2: harder time with everyday living, and that they were more
Speaker 2: likely to experience homelessness, drug addiction, and suicide than even
Speaker 2: the average Vietnam VET.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which, you know, the big thumb in the alley
Speaker 1: in all this is it was kind of posed as now,
Speaker 1: these guys are going to be so much better off
Speaker 1: after serving their country in the army. YEP, They're going
Speaker 1: to get better jobs, They're going to you know, work
Speaker 1: themselves up into a maybe lower middle class situation when
Speaker 1: they came from poverty in a lot of cases. And
Speaker 1: they've studied this when compared to even when compared to
Speaker 1: other low IQ Americans of the same age. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: has been the veterans had worse financial outcomes. There was
Speaker 1: a study in the eighties that found that ten percent
Speaker 1: of low IQ veterans were unemployed compared with only three
Speaker 1: percent of low IQ non veterans, and earn less money
Speaker 1: an average of eighteen thousand dollars a year compared to
Speaker 1: twenty four thousand dollars a year for non veterans.
Speaker 2: Yes, and so again, just to clarify, they were supposed
Speaker 2: to have a better life, like you said, after the
Speaker 2: war than and they had a worse life. And one reason,
Speaker 2: a huge reason why is something you touched on earlier.
Speaker 2: A lot of them, I think something like half of
Speaker 2: them were discharged under conditions other than honorable. And if
Speaker 2: you have anything but an honorable discharge from the military,
Speaker 2: you are stigmatized for the rest of your life. Not
Speaker 2: only will businesses typically not hire you, there's plenty of
Speaker 2: businesses who won't. The military itself, like the VA, will
Speaker 2: help you less than it will help other vets, Like
Speaker 2: it's harder to get access to healthcare and to job
Speaker 2: counseling and to all the things that somebody like a
Speaker 2: Project one hundred thousand recruit would need after they got
Speaker 2: back to America, that was shut down to half of
Speaker 2: them because they were discharged dishonorably.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's just so shameful. There was at
Speaker 1: least one guy that was a recruiter who I guess
Speaker 1: felt pretty bad about taking part in this. Is a
Speaker 1: veteran named Bill Daniel, and he, you know, put a
Speaker 1: lot of thought into this after the war and said,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm gonna They called it bad paper
Speaker 1: if you got a dishonorable discharge, and so he wanted
Speaker 1: to appeal as many of these bad paper discharges as
Speaker 1: he could, and he was successful in four hundred cases.
Speaker 1: You know, one hundred and eighty thousand of them were
Speaker 1: dishonorably discharged, So four hundred isn't much, but you know,
Speaker 1: this for Bill Daniel to take, you know, to spend
Speaker 1: his time and his life getting four hundred of these
Speaker 1: guys cleared is pretty admirable.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then one more thing about the bad paper,
Speaker 2: the dishonorable discharges. Apparently, among Project one hundred thousand recruits,
Speaker 2: the main reason that that was given for their dishonorable
Speaker 2: discharge was that they were unsuitable for the military, and
Speaker 2: that was the case from the outset. The military brought
Speaker 2: them on on purpose anyway, and then spit them out
Speaker 2: the other end, saying you should have never been in
Speaker 2: the military in the first place, and now here's the
Speaker 2: stigma for you to carry around for the rest of
Speaker 2: your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Man, So did Robert McNamara feel bad about all this,
Speaker 1: because he's certainly somebody who, maybe more so than most
Speaker 1: secretaries of Defense, looked back a lot on his life
Speaker 1: and he wrote about it, and it was a memoir
Speaker 1: called In Retrospect colon the Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam.
Speaker 1: He also very famously was in the Great Aarra Morris's
Speaker 1: documentary The Fog of War, where he talked at length
Speaker 1: about things that he did right and wrong. So surely
Speaker 1: he looked back on Project one hundred thousand is a
Speaker 1: big mistake.
Speaker 2: Right, No, No, I could tell by your tone that
Speaker 2: you knew that, But he didn't. He actually did apologize
Speaker 2: for things like his involvement in pushing for escalating the
Speaker 2: war in Vietnam. Like he he wasn't one of those guys.
Speaker 2: He's like, no, I never did anything wrong, You're all wrong.
Speaker 2: He soul searched, like you said, more than most other
Speaker 2: people in his position, But he never apologized for Project
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand. And I don't know what that says
Speaker 2: like on his face you would suspect, well, he really
Speaker 2: was a true believer. He didn't think it was a
Speaker 2: like he wasn't doing anything nefarious. But I mean, these
Speaker 2: guys who were like planning and carrying out the Vietnam War,
Speaker 2: you had to be nefarius to be doing that, you know.
Speaker 2: So how much credit can you give him? How much
Speaker 2: benefit of the doubt do you give him?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I mean the vet that wrote
Speaker 1: that book, Hamilton Gregory, he himself was like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what, I think he actually had good intentions. I
Speaker 1: think he really did think he could coach them up
Speaker 1: into a better life and that the military would be
Speaker 1: genuinely good for them. And then it was just a
Speaker 1: tragic misjudgment and not just an attempt to you know,
Speaker 1: supply the front lines with warm bodies. But you know
Speaker 1: that's it may be generous. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, other people like the guy who wrote We Were Soldiers,
Speaker 2: Joe Galloway, He was embedded with the seventh Cavalry in
Speaker 2: battle with in Vietnam. He actually was one of the
Speaker 2: rare civilians decorated with the Bronze Star for valor during
Speaker 2: a battle. He was just a war. Corresponding in he
Speaker 2: was like, no, this is unforgivable. Yeah, he essentially said
Speaker 2: in a column the day after McNamara died, like just
Speaker 2: from Project one hundred thousand, he's on his way to
Speaker 2: hell basically.
Speaker 1: Yep. I mean that's what he said. Not I'm not
Speaker 1: saying he's on the side hell right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm paraphrasing too, but that's that's basically what
Speaker 2: he said. Yeah, and I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: agree with him for that too. You got anything else?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else? Looking forward to moving on to
Speaker 1: more positive stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Who was the person that suggested it?
Speaker 1: David Bryant's mom.
Speaker 2: Thanks David Bryant's mom. We appreciate that that was a
Speaker 2: good idea. I'm glad we learned about it. I'm glad
Speaker 2: we could tell everybody else about it because it's not
Speaker 2: a very well known part of American history. Totally, Chuck said, totally.
Speaker 2: He just triggered listener mail, this.
Speaker 1: Is about R Shorty. Can you not have a name? Hi? Guys,
Speaker 1: my second time emailing. Just listened to can you Not
Speaker 1: Have a Name and had to email about a most
Speaker 1: unusual name I've come across in my fifty plus years
Speaker 1: of working with the public, thirty in the restaurant industry,
Speaker 1: sixteen doing vacation rules, and now four and a half
Speaker 1: years owning a flower shop. Nice About seven or eight
Speaker 1: years ago, a customer came in of Asian descent and
Speaker 1: gave me his credit card that showed me his surname
Speaker 1: as Why Why. I commented, I said, what an unusual
Speaker 1: last name, and he asked if he was if it
Speaker 1: was a common Asian name, and he said, actually, my
Speaker 1: last name is only Why. But American Express does not
Speaker 1: accept the last name composed of just one letter, so
Speaker 1: I had to add the second why well, just to
Speaker 1: get the credit card. Also, my sister and I are
Speaker 1: both baby boomers, and we were not given middle names,
Speaker 1: so we could take our maiden name as our middle
Speaker 1: name once we got married and not have to drop
Speaker 1: that middle name.
Speaker 2: Oh I never thought about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, worked for my sister, but I'm still single and
Speaker 1: looking for a man with a short last name.
Speaker 2: What's her name?
Speaker 1: So this is Jane Trahanofski, who is the owner of
Speaker 1: Levon's Florals in Newport Beach, California. And I even went
Speaker 1: to the website. It's like a lovely flower shop business
Speaker 1: and so you know, pop in and see Jane. If
Speaker 1: you you're a boomer with a short last name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could do a lot worse than going to
Speaker 2: Newport Beach for a day or two. Totally well, thanks
Speaker 2: a lot, Jane. We appreciate that. We love anecdotes and
Speaker 2: stories about stuff that have to do with episodes we've
Speaker 2: recently recorded, and if you have one of those, you
Speaker 2: can talk to us via email. Send it off to
Speaker 2: Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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