The funny thing about the "you darn woke kids would never have survived D-day" or "hey podcast/office/fast food working dweeb, you couldn't hack it in World War II" is, broadly, this:
Who the hell do these people think the army filled it's ranks with? Any of the armies?
If you're relatively physically capable, and relatively cognitively ca…
The funny thing about the "you darn woke kids would never have survived D-day" or "hey podcast/office/fast food working dweeb, you couldn't hack it in World War II" is, broadly, this:
Who the hell do these people think the army filled it's ranks with? Any of the armies?
If you're relatively physically capable, and relatively cognitively capable, you're in! Back in the 40s, pretty much all of the people in the army were soda jerks, stockboys, ex-accountants, clerks or fresh out of school. They make you exercise for 10 weeks, explain how to use your personal weapons with reasonable effectiveness, train you not to kill yourself or your fellow soldiers with the more destructive and dangerous heavy weapons you might use, and off you go.
This is the whole point of mechanized, industrial warfare. You and your fellow soldiers are an input, like the rifles, tanks, trucks, food, fuel, and all the other logistical material needed for war. High command moves you to the front, and violence happens. They replace you or your fallen comrades with more people like you. It doesn't really matter how smart you are, or how strong you are, or if you're a pure born alpha chad male. You will sit in the foxhole or trench and get shelled, and whoever's left moves up (or withdraws) to a different foxhole or trench, to get shelled there.
You're "winning" if you're foxholes and trenches are moving forward into enemy territory. There's no real skill necessary, and no amount of chad-dom or alpha-ness or physical prowess will keep you from getting blown into mist by a bomb or a shell.
I suppose that one personal characteristic that would determine how "good" a soldier you'd be is how much trauma, privation, acute existential fear (like "I am probably literally going to die now"), broad existential dread (like "it's pretty obvious to me that sooner or later I'm going to get killed"), utterly horrific and grotesque sights, sounds, smells, and sensations (all related to dead people and dying people), and basic, perfectly rational hopelessness you can tolerate before you are so emotionally and mentally unstable that you can't be relied upon to sit in that foxhole anymore. You don't really know where that limit is until you go through all of this.
I say this not as a veteran or anything, I just read a lot and deeply on war, and once you get through the thin veneer of rah rah stuff, you find people honestly trying to describe what war was like and what war means. I think I know enough that I'm happy to keep it hypothetical.
The funny thing about the "you darn woke kids would never have survived D-day" or "hey podcast/office/fast food working dweeb, you couldn't hack it in World War II" is, broadly, this:
Who the hell do these people think the army filled it's ranks with? Any of the armies?
If you're relatively physically capable, and relatively cognitively capable, you're in! Back in the 40s, pretty much all of the people in the army were soda jerks, stockboys, ex-accountants, clerks or fresh out of school. They make you exercise for 10 weeks, explain how to use your personal weapons with reasonable effectiveness, train you not to kill yourself or your fellow soldiers with the more destructive and dangerous heavy weapons you might use, and off you go.
This is the whole point of mechanized, industrial warfare. You and your fellow soldiers are an input, like the rifles, tanks, trucks, food, fuel, and all the other logistical material needed for war. High command moves you to the front, and violence happens. They replace you or your fallen comrades with more people like you. It doesn't really matter how smart you are, or how strong you are, or if you're a pure born alpha chad male. You will sit in the foxhole or trench and get shelled, and whoever's left moves up (or withdraws) to a different foxhole or trench, to get shelled there.
You're "winning" if you're foxholes and trenches are moving forward into enemy territory. There's no real skill necessary, and no amount of chad-dom or alpha-ness or physical prowess will keep you from getting blown into mist by a bomb or a shell.
I suppose that one personal characteristic that would determine how "good" a soldier you'd be is how much trauma, privation, acute existential fear (like "I am probably literally going to die now"), broad existential dread (like "it's pretty obvious to me that sooner or later I'm going to get killed"), utterly horrific and grotesque sights, sounds, smells, and sensations (all related to dead people and dying people), and basic, perfectly rational hopelessness you can tolerate before you are so emotionally and mentally unstable that you can't be relied upon to sit in that foxhole anymore. You don't really know where that limit is until you go through all of this.
I say this not as a veteran or anything, I just read a lot and deeply on war, and once you get through the thin veneer of rah rah stuff, you find people honestly trying to describe what war was like and what war means. I think I know enough that I'm happy to keep it hypothetical.