More Bodies
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plain
2026-01-25T23:20:06+00:00
Sober received his orders to Vietnam in 1968, the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War for America, where nearly thirty percent of the total U.S. fatalities of the war occurred.
"My first stint on KP in basic training, I was squad leader for the first five of eight weeks. Then they fired me because I could not keep up on the marches back from the sands. I had really bad shin splints and I would come struggling back. I had flat feet. None of that mattered in 1967."
A year prior to Sober enlisting in the Army, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, started "Project 100,000," otherwise known as "McNamara's 100,000." The project's goal was to create more American men eligible for the draft by lowering mental and physical standards. While Sober may not have been directly affected by McNamara's plan, Project 100,000 only added to the disproportionate impact on American men drafted and sent to Vietnam, similar to deferment and its exacerbation of racial and socioeconomic inequalities.
When talking about the concept of the U.S. military just "needing more bodies" in Vietnam, Sober agreed, "It did not make a difference. I had flesh and I could see."
Sober was deployed not even a month after the Tet Offensive, the series of surprise attacks targeted over a hundred cities and towns launched by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces over the Vietnamese New Year festival. The Tet Offensive proved to be a key turning point in the Vietnam war for Americans. U.S. Generals at the center of the campaign requested to add more than 500,000 troops in Vietnam in hopes to launch a counteroffensive. However, the Tet Offensive taught those at home that a U.S. victory was not imminent, and public support began to rapidly decline.
