The Special Recruits Other Soldiers Called “McNamara’s Morons”
What would happen if soldiers like the fictional Forrest Gump and his friend Bubba were really sent to Vietnam? It actually happened in real life. To get bodies for the war without antagonizing middle and upper class Americans by sending their kids to Vietnam, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara came up with a shameful brainchild: Project 100,000. It was touted as a Great Society program that would take impoverished and disadvantaged youth, and teach them valuable skills in the military in order to break the cycle of poverty. In reality, Project 100,000 simply lowered or abandoned minimal military recruitment standards, and signed up those who had previously been rejected by the draft as mentally or physically unfit. Recruiters swept through Southern backwaters and urban ghettoes to sign up almost anybody with a pulse. That included at least one kid with an IQ of 62. In all, 354,000 were recruited.
Of course, Project 100,000 recruits were not given any special skills or training. Once they signed on the dotted line, “McNamara’s Morons” or “the Moron Corps”, as they were derisively called by other soldiers, were rushed through training, then sent to Vietnam in disproportionate numbers. Once there, they were sent into combat in disproportionate numbers. In combat, the mental and physical limitations that had caused them to be rejected by the draft in the first place ensured that they were wounded and killed in disproportionate numbers. The toll fell particularly heavily on black youths: 41 percent of Project 100,000’s recruits were black, compared to 12 percent in the US military as a whole.