Rejection Rates for Military Service

[Aragorn243]

I’m currently reading a book on US Military medicine during WWII. I was surprised to read that rejection rates for service were in excess of 40%. I did some checking of other sources and found numbers between 37% and 50%. I found that surprisingly as I just assumed they took almost everyone.

And then there’s today with a rejection rate of 77%.

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[browningautorifle]

And then there’s today with a rejection rate of 77%.

I personally was tagged with a loss rate of 40% in my trainees. That was back about 15 years now at the end of my recruit teaching. We now have a wide open policy and I'll bet our losses aren't near that let alone 77%. I was aware that not everyone made it to WW1 even though many did use a back door approach if they were dedicated to going. Others used the same approach when they were set on not going.

[Sapper740]

I was in the butts once scoring for a female recruit when the warrant officer came up to me and asked how she was doing. "She can't hit the broad side of a barn with a shotgun" came my reply. The warrant then took out a pencil and punched a bunch of holes in the target and told me to score the target. "Even the pencil holes?" I asked. "What pencil holes!?!?" came his stern reply.

[Daan Kemp]

There are many reasons for rejection in wartime, medical/health is only one of many. Consider essential services, age, religion, race, politics, etc.

[Bob Womack]

I wonder what exactly is the aggregation method here? If a man was rejected from Army Air Corps and Navy due to impaired eyesight without glasses, he was still eligible to be drafted into the Army and Marines. Would his rejection from the Air Corps or Navy be aggregated into the the overall rejection rate even though he was subsequently drafted into the other services? It strikes me that the data survey methods of the period might not have been sophisticated enough to differentiate.

Where my interest comes from is the experience of my father and myself. My father excelled in Naval ROTC and was selected for officer candidate school. He was near-sighted but hid that fact all the way through the selection boards by using edge refraction around the edge of the card used to cover the eye not being tested. That is, he moved the edge of the card over to where the eye being tested could resolve the test poster via edge refraction. He got all the way to OTC before a smart chief barked, "Get that card over your other eye!!!" and he was discovered. They rejected him and sent him to boot camp, where he scored sharpshooter on his range time with the Garand and was top of his class. In fact, when George Patton visited Great Lakes induction center, as top of his class, my father carried the class' guidon and received Patton's salute.

However, soon after graduation he ended up in the detailer's office being told the Navy had no position for him because of his glasses. At that moment the detailer noticed that my father had a rare and mysterious skill (for the period): At the beginning of his senior year at high school he was caught in some mischief during "study hall" and sent to typing class as punishment. Men weren't typically taught that skill and he was the only guy in the class. But that skill saved him from being discharged and dumped into the draft pool. He ended up spending the war as a Navy classified documents technician at the radar research school on Navy Pier in Chicago. He would take his lunches down to the end of the pier and watch paddle-wheel aircraft carriers Wolverine and Sable ply Lake Michigan doing carrier qualifications, and thus witnessed many of the aircraft we are now fishing out, going into the drink when fledgling birdmen misjudged their landings. But he missed discharge by THAT much.

Me? I was of the generation who watched their numbers for the Vietnam draft approach. I said to meself, "You need to find a better approach than humping the jungles!" As a young man who was absolutely bonkers over aircraft (still am) I joined the Civil Air Patrol and began training to fly so that I'd have a marketable skill for the Air Force. Somewhere along the way a gentle CAP officer took me aside and asked, "Hasn't anyone told you that they don't accept people with impaired vision for aircrew?" Midlife crisis while still in my teens. I dropped back and waited for my draft number to come up but it never did. I was of the first year's worth of young men who weren't drafted. But for that kind officer I would have attempted selection to the Air Force and would have been rejected.

My father and I would have made two rejection statistics if not for circumstances.

Bob

[CINDERS]

Passed all the tests and physicals to join the ADF - Army as a grunt then the Airforce as a firey got to the signing the dotted line then basically made up my mind I was having too good of a time with fast motorbikes & faster women!
Probably disappointed my dad after his WWII service as my brother was in the RAAF at the time (He did 20 years) I did 3 years in the cadets and loved it but in early adulthood with my then rebellious nature I feel the writing was on the wall of me being DOD'd.

[browningautorifle]

my then rebellious nature I feel the writing was on the wall

You can't tell for sure, I saw lots of those guys do well once they fell in behind the right guy. You might have made RSM...never know.

[Aragorn243]

I'm proceeding through the book very slowly. It is somewhat boring in these early stages. Now I don't know how accurate it is but from what I'm understanding, the Army got all the draftees. The Navy and Marines all got volunteers, those who didn't want to go to the army or go through the draft. Their rejection rates were however very similar to the Army's.

During the lead up to the war, and this is where I am now in the book, the Army had rejection standards which were quite strict. If you didn't meet the standards, you were rejected. But as time went on and they needed more men faster, they decided that some things which could be corrected to meet standards would be accepted. These included missing teeth and poor eyesight. So, they would take these individuals now, give them glasses and dentures.

I actually had to put the book down the first time I started reading it. I had a PTSD moment and came close to passing out. This leads me to believe that the book will get much better after I get through the boring introduction to military medicine. Very descriptive account of a bullet wound to the stomach which led to massive internal bleeding, blood spurting everywhere and removing the clotted blood from the abdomen by hand. 3 1/2-gallon transfusion. My surgeon told me I more or less burst when he cut into me, my chest was full of clotted blood, and they transfused 5 1/2 gallons to me. It was a bit much while eating lunch. Over it now.

[CINDERS]

I have only learnt through reading allot of my 1st Ed WWI books on the AIF I have that all notions of war being clean and heroic are out the window todays society is still desensitised to it as they do not see the real face of armed conflict.
With how it throws one back to their most primal actions to stay alive, I fully understand the training and camaraderie but nothing I feel completely prepares you for what it is actually like at that pointy end.
I chose 1st ed WWI AIF as later editions of books can end up being heavily edited with descriptions, at times in my books I have to put them down and walk away as what the combatants are going through beggars description no matter how many lines they use, 19th century tactics V's 20th century weapons.

Then with WWII you get into New Guinea, New Georgia, Tarawa, Guadalcanal, Peleliu the island campaigns again brutal & bloody no those of you that went to fight the good fight in any era my unflinching respect and also to those as well that have served.

[Bob Womack]

With the old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa by Sledge. Just brutal. Worth a second read but that's a tough hill to climb.

Bob