Quote:
Originally posted by Sparhawk
YOUR CONDUCT UNDER THE LAWS OF ARMED CONFLICT
"The laws of armed conflict tell you what you can and cannot do in combat situations. With the training you receive, you will have the necessary discipline to do the right thing. But if you do not learn how to conduct yourself in combat, you will be punished for mistakes."
I used "boys" not in a pejorative way like the person I was quoting, but in the general "our boys" sense. I am curious as to where you got your stats on the average ages, as well as the friendly fire rates, which according to this site are inaccurate.
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interesting read on the laws of armed conflict. thanks for the link. war crimes are a curious social construct indeed.
the lunaville stats are accurate to my knowledge. apologies for being misleading. i was thinking of may in particular when i posted, but wasn't looking at any charts at the time. i'll be more careful next time, it's good to see people are thinking hard about this and checking up on the facts. thanks for keeping us honest and accurate.
my source for the age info is private conversation with a pentagon reporter. we were talking about the average age of the enlisted infantryman (which is 19, i believe by the offical DOD proclamation) as we discussed a volunteer program to get paperback books to the troops. this reporter said don't just send them comic books, a surprising number of those currently deployed are guardsmen (i seem to recall that figure is higher than 20%) in their late 20s and early 30s, or specialized infrastructure units like seebees and MPs which tend to be older than frontline combat units.