Intellectual Conservatism and Class Bias against Soldiers

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri May 14 14:11:50 PDT 1999


JayHecht at aol.com wrote:


> Apropos to the above: My dad was a front-line infantry grunt during the
> Battle of the Bulge. He told me that when his company finally got to the
> Elbe and met the Russians (who were in rags and without much food), his Sgt.
> - who was a union man from the midwest - told my dad that they shouldn't stop
> but just keep rolling on to Vladivostok! My dad and his buddies thought the
> guy was nuts.

I think this is an excellent illustration of my general point about citizen soldiers. Under the right conditions, anyhow, and the end of WW2 was one of them, a huge majority of citizen soldiers will refuse to be (or even think) as scabs.

Does anyone have concrete information on a possible event, to which I have seen hazy references for years but never seen any detail or confirmation, that of the effect on China policy of the demands centered in the Philippines of U.S. soldiers to be immediately demobilized following VJ day??? I have seen vague claims that SWP militants in the ranks had something to do with this. But I know nothing concrete.

Carrol



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