If you liked the Southeast Asia War Games (as we players sometimes called them), you’ll love Bush’s war of choice in the Middle East. Excerpted from the Times of London:
The cost of direct US military operations — not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans — already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are projected to be almost ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of the First World War. The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion.
But "cost" measured how? Between the draft and rationing and the Internment and things like blackout requirements, a lot of World War II's "costs" were externalized onto the people of the country, not paid directly by the government. (On the other hand, I'd like to see how the daily pay of soldiers would compare.)
Posted by: Martha Bridegam on February 27, 2008 1:34 PMWhen I was drafted in 1955 the daily pay for privates was in the three-dollar range — $90 a month as I recall. It was paid over in envelopes holding cash by the first sergeant, with the company commander standing behind him.
It must have been less in World War II, but probably not by a whole lot. Anybody remember?
Posted by: Jerry Doolittle on February 27, 2008 2:21 PM$19 per month was the top of the pay scale for the most highly skilled Japanese American internees (e.g. doctors at camp hospitals) because someone had decreed it must be less than the lowest pay of an Army private.
I've read online today in various places that $21 was a private's pay at the start of the war. The bottom of the scale may have risen to $50/month per the Web site of a Merchant marine organization at http://www.usmm.org/barrons.html and an eccentric-looking veteran's site at http://www.rinfret.com/ww2pay.html . I'd want to check it against a better source of course.
IIRC George Orwell wrote in a newspaper column after D-Day that American soldiers were becoming resented in London for being much better paid than their British counterparts, hence more able to afford luxuries and better able to court civilian women.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam on February 27, 2008 2:49 PMOr, as the Brits used to say, "Oversexed, overpaid, and over here."
Posted by: Fast Eddie on February 27, 2008 3:43 PM