26

The anti-war song 19 by Paul Hardcastle claims that:

In World War II the average age of the combat soldier was 26... In Vietnam he was 19.

Are these figures accurate?

I'm more interested in the claim about Vietnam, but ideally I'd like an answer that covers both figures.

Evan Carroll
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Tom77
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    Statistics about Vietnam can be found [here](http://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics.html#age) – Oliver_C Jun 11 '12 at 09:02
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    Draft age for Vietnam was 19 to 25, draft age for WWII until 1942 was 21 to 45, in 1942 changed to 18 to 38. – vartec Jun 11 '12 at 09:23
  • What is the definition of a "combat soldier?" Soldiers who actually participated in combat, or was it sufficient to have been deployed into Vietnam in a combat position? (But, i.e., recalled before actual combat) – Flimzy Jun 11 '12 at 13:54
  • @Flimzy: my guess would be any soldier serving in combat unit, as opposed to support units. – vartec Jun 11 '12 at 14:49
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    Are you only talking about US soldiers or also other soldier that participated in those wars? – Christian Jun 11 '12 at 20:10
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    @Christian: I understand the claim to be about US soldiers – Tom77 Jun 11 '12 at 20:26
  • @vartec what unit size? A division is a combat unit, but has considerable non-combat components deployed outside the combat zone. An aircraft carrier is a combat unit, but only a small part of its crew is at risk from enemy fire (certainly in Vietnam). – jwenting Jun 10 '13 at 07:05
  • @jwenting: OK, I agree it's bit ambiguous. By strict definition even a guy operating a drone in Afghanistan from an office in mid-west US is in combat. OTOH, I wander what was the definition US military used, as per recent change, that allowed women "in combat" (apparently for example flying AH-64 in warzone wasn't considered "combat"). – vartec Jun 10 '13 at 08:15
  • @vartec those drone operators are indeed considered combat troops, and get the same campaign medals and other citations that their brethren on the ground do that actually get shot at. The rules for women in combat have always been questionable. In WW2 there were female ferry pilots who occasionally engaged German patrol aircraft over the Atlantic. They were not combat pilots but did fly combat capable and armed aircraft and did perform combat duty when the occasion arose. I'm not sure what Apaches you refer to, maybe it's a similar case. – jwenting Jun 10 '13 at 08:18
  • @jwenting: I'm referring to the fact, that for decades now, women were allowed in US military in "non-combat roles", this "non-combat role" definition included stuff like flying combat jets and helicopters. So it layman terms it would be more like "non ground-combat role". – vartec Jun 10 '13 at 08:25
  • @vartec they can and could operate combat vehicles, but not in (planned) combat operations. So a woman could be a driver at a tank depot, testing tanks and driving them between parking and maintenance sheds, but not drive the same tank on the battlefield. The distinction has always been whether the situation would place the female in a combat situation, not if she had contact with combat equipment. The USAF was the first to relax those rules and allow women in combat units, albeit starting with continental air defense where combat would be expected to be BVR only. – jwenting Jun 10 '13 at 10:24
  • @jwenting: I'm referring to situations [like this](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129707736), note that this is story from 2010, while rules for women in US military have changed in 2013. – vartec Jun 10 '13 at 12:38
  • and are you looking at the military as a whole, or just those deployed to Vietnam? – warren Jun 22 '13 at 16:05
  • @Tom77 Based on what information do you understand the claim to be only about US soldiers? If that is specifically the claim you wish to examine, you should probably state so explicitly. Personally, I think the implicit assumption that the average age of US and other soldiers is the same, is *very* questionable, and I certainly don't think an anti-war song writer would care only about US soldiers. – gerrit Aug 10 '14 at 16:37
  • I think a more relevant claim (and possibly the original fact that got distorted over time) to examine would be the age at induction. The "average" age would only be able to stay close to the lowest induction age if you had no experienced/lifetime soldiers, no officers, at all, and no one survived out of their first year. So, on the face of it, that claim would almost be impossible to be true. – PoloHoleSet Aug 28 '18 at 18:07

2 Answers2

18

Vietnam

Taking KIA's as a good cross-section of the serving force, the average age (according to (Combat Area Casualty File) November 1993) was 22. However, using publicly available information, it appears this figure is closer to 23 (see below).

Assuming KIAs accurately represented age groups serving in Vietnam, the average age of an infantryman (MOS 11B) serving in Vietnam to be 19 years old is a myth, it is actually 22 [CACF]

Source: http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html

We can also easily verify this data using the casualties by age statistics on the archives.gov website (Thanks @Oliver_C). Using this data (and extrapolating slightly) to assume that the 4,927 deaths of soldiers 30-39 were evenly spread across each year of age, and making the same assumption for the 40-49, 50-59 and 60-62 age bands gives us the following table of data:

Age Casualties
17  12
18  3103
19  8283
20  14095
21  9705
22  4798
23  3495
24  2650
25  2018
26  1414
27  917
28  768
29  710
30  492.7
31  492.7
32  492.7
33  492.7
34  492.7
35  492.7
36  492.7
37  492.7
38  492.7
39  492.7
40  115.6
41  115.6
42  115.6
43  115.6
44  115.6
45  115.6
46  115.6
47  115.6
48  115.6
49  115.6
50  12.1
51  12.1
52  12.1
53  12.1
54  12.1
55  12.1
56  12.1
57  12.1
58  12.1
59  12.1
60  40.33333333
61  40.33333333
62  40.33333333

A weighted average gives us a figure of 22.96 (Standard Deviation: 5.85) which is pretty close to the linked information above from the CACF. Somewhat interestingly, the median of this same data set is 21 - one year the opposite way from the quote at the start of this answer!

Furthermore, it appears that in times of war when a Draft is in operation (as it was for the Vietnam conflict) soldiers are drafted using a lottery process starting with 20 year olds, followed by 21, 22, 23, 24 and finally 25 year olds (source). It would seem that this would further the argument that the average age of combat soldiers was into the early 20's as this would have been the largest group of drafted soldiers.

WWII

The average age (according to General William C. Westmoreland before the Third Annual Reunion of the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association (VHPA) at the Washington, DC Hilton Hotel on July 5th, 1986) was 26

The average man who fought in World War II was 26 years of age. [Westmoreland]

Source: http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html

Finding similar data to the above for Vietnam in order to verify with some simple statistical analysis is proving hard.

rjzii
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Jamiec
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    I don't buy the conclusion made here at all. First, use of KIAs is a terrible idea, as one might argue that an older "grizzled" veteran might have a better chance of living longer than a kid who just got thrown onto the front lines. –  Jun 11 '12 at 12:09
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    Second, one must be careful about use of the arithmetic average versus the median. Very often a median is a better measure compared to the arithmetic average, and the median may have been used by whoever made that original claim. Of course, the two measures can be quite different when a skewed distribution is involved. –  Jun 11 '12 at 12:13
  • I totally agree on the first point (I even commented as such when @Oliver_C posted the original comment), however with lack of any better metric, this was the best of the bunch IMO. – Jamiec Jun 11 '12 at 12:21
  • @woodchips: regarding median vs average, although in generally you're right, I doubt it makes any difference in this particular case. The outlying data points might be few high ranking officers or veteran NCOs, but because of military structure, these are few. And even so, their age will be at most double that of enlisted men. So not really enough to make median and average vary significantly. – vartec Jun 11 '12 at 12:38
  • Median added just for you @woodchips – Jamiec Jun 11 '12 at 13:34
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    Most drawn-out wars use younger (and older) soldiers as the conflict goes on (and the "prime" candidates are "used up"). So if a large number of 17 year-olds were enlisted/deployed, it would have been in the final months, and they would likely not have died in as great numbers. – Flimzy Jun 11 '12 at 13:52
  • @Flimzy - [citation required]!! Do we *know* that younger soldiers were deployed late in the vietnam conflict? I took the lack of deaths amongst 17 year olds to imply that those <18 were not usually deployed (with some possible exceptions for eg/ 18th birthdays a few days/weeks after deployment). – Jamiec Jun 11 '12 at 15:02
  • @Jamiec: let me clarify... U.S. draft policy dictates that younger and older soldiers are used later in a conflict. My memory of anecdotal evidence of other wars from other countries suggests the same has been true of many other wars/armies as well. – Flimzy Jun 12 '12 at 00:08
  • @Flimzy - Can you link to details of this policy? I think it could make a useful addition to this answer if the ages are skewed by such a thing. – Jamiec Jun 12 '12 at 09:02
  • @Jamiec: This isn't very authoritative, but it has the basic info: http://usmilitary.about.com/od/deploymentsconflicts/a/draftprocess.htm – Flimzy Jun 12 '12 at 14:41
  • @Flimzy - ok, but that doesn't backup your assertion that "younger and older soldiers are used later in a conflict", only that the draft begins with 20 year olds, followed by 21, 22, 23 etc. This further blows away the original assertion that "The average age was 19" in that far more soldiers would have been in their early 20's due to drafting rules than 19 year olds. Have added a section to my answer re:draft rules. – Jamiec Jun 12 '12 at 14:46
  • @Jamiec: 19- and 18-year olds are at the very end of the list (not explicitly mentioned on that page). – Flimzy Jun 12 '12 at 14:51
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    Not to mention during the vietnam war, that it was North vs South. Not everyone was drafted in an army, the viet cong or NLF were not drafted, but mostly farmers. I'm doubting that these will be added in the KIA list. – Lyrion Jun 10 '13 at 09:29
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    @Lyrion - Very good point. I always read this as "The average age of *American* combat soldiers", whereas thats never explicitly stated. And that could very well drive the average down. – Jamiec Jun 10 '13 at 09:50
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    Is using KIA stats really a valid way of getting a random sample? Flag officers tend to be exposed to a lot less frontline danger than conscripts. – GordonM Aug 28 '18 at 11:39
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The Paul Hardcastle single 19 contains many samples from the 1982 ABC TV documentary Vietnam Requiem - and the statement that the average age of a Vietnam "combat soldier" was 19, is one of those samples. We can assume that the ABC journalists sourced the claim somewhere - but where?

I was able to find the same claim elsewhere, with a claimed source. The New Jersey State Council of the Vietnam Veterans of America repeats the claim in their Vietnam War Statistics page. They also repeat the claim that the average age of a WWII soldier was 26.

Their stated source for the claim is:

Vietnam Veterans of America, Speakers Bureau Handbook provided by the Public Affairs Committee

This is a handbook produced by the VVA, as a resource for its members.

Several other sources refute the claim, based on the average age of soldiers killed in action. I'm not sure that it's reasonable to assume that deaths were evenly distributed among ages.

slim
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