EXCITABLE BOY, THEY ALL SAID

An excitable boy at age eighteen is a good thing.

I had a great year at that age.

Graduated from high school, got a summer job, hitch-hiked to Iowa and back.

I left town for college, then turned nineteen and joined the Army the next fall like it was school.

That’s where I saw older guys all jacked up.

The top chart shows why the male draft age for the military is eighteen.

The Vietnam Veteran Project shows more numbers:

 

• Of those killed, 61% were younger than 21.

• 11,465 of those killed were younger than 20 years old.

• 76% of the men sent to Vietnam were from lower middle/working class backgrounds.

 

In 1974 the Drill Sergeants were Vietnam guys, the Range Masters were Vietnam guys, and the Captain had gone to Vietnam as an enlisted man, came back for Officer Candidate School, then went back.

The most impressive of the group were the Range Masters who looked and acted like they lived on the range because they wouldn’t fit in anywhere else.

Maybe it was all show, an act, but I was convinced.

They had a look about them, and moved around in a strange way, that I read as dangerous.

If they weren’t dangerous guys, they sure fooled me.

 

 

Maybe that’s part of the plan, hire killers to show us how to kill?

How to throw a hand grenade, fire the big machine gun called an M30 if I remember correctly, and put three rounds from an M16 inside the circumference of a quarter to qualify.

The sergeants and officers were in their thirties and forties, leading with clear testosterone vision based on the chart.

The trainees in my group ranged between seventeen with a parent’s signature, and thirty-five as a last ditch effort to be somebody.

We were all excited to learn new things, old things, anything, and the teachers knew which buttons to push for best results.

Loud and deadly were attention getters.

 

Exciting Times For Young Men

According to my charts, we are full of testosterone in our twenties, raring to go.

So why not go and keep going?

Because by the time we’re thirty we see things through a different lens.

The fog has lifted.

So smart people figured out how to motivate guys in their twenties to do things they wouldn’t do in their thirties and beyond.

A lot of it has to do with peer pressure.

 

“If your buddy can do it and you can’t, what’s that say about you?”

 

They pitted us against each other one on one, platoon vs platoon, for bonding purposes.

Our top guy was a skinny kid from Portland who was just stronger and faster than everybody else.

He scored an even 500 out of 500 on the physical training part; I scored 460 on one leg.

 

“You won’t do this, or I’ll find someone who will.”

 

That’s the ‘next man up’ idea.

Guys in their twenties are the next man up, and they want to prove it.

They are loud and rambunctious and get louder and more rambunctious.

This could be the ‘boys will be boys’ part of life?

Based on science, it’s a result of testosterone.

So what can you say about guys forty and up being loud and rambunctious?

Are they faking it?

Reenacting what they recall of their youth?

Their performance is suspicious to say the least, unless they’re coaching a team of young men needing motivation.

 

The Age Difference For An Excitable Boy

I’m a fan of historical documentaries.

Why? Because I hold a history degree with decades of work in the historical industry.

That’s my excuse for watching a new batch of WWII docs.

They include thoughtful investigations into the rise and fall of Germany in the thirties and forties.

They rose like a rocket, an economic miracle during the Great Depression, and fell hard in the forties.

Their leader started out in office with a history of being a corporal in WWI, and a convict in the 1920’s where he served time and wrote a book, before becoming their leader, their guide, their furrier.

How did the furrier gain traction with his background?

 

• The average age of German citizens during World War II is estimated to be around twenty-five years old.

• Germany had a large cohort of young people due to the post-WWI baby boom, which contributed to a lower average age during the war. 

 

He made promises to the people pumped up on testosterone, promises they were happy to hear, promises they were excited to act on.

And boy, did they ever act.

They were so eager to please that they descended into the depths of human depravity.

But, they had help:

 

The use of methamphetamine, better known as crystal meth, was particularly prevalent: A pill form of the drug, Pervitin, was distributed by the millions to Wehrmacht troops before the successful invasion of France in 1940.

Using Pervitin, the soldiers of the Wehrmacht could stay awake for days at a time and march many more miles without resting.

A so-called “stimulant decree” issued in April 1940 sent more than 35 million tablets of Pervitin and Isophan (a slightly modified version produced by the Knoll pharmaceutical company) of the pills to the front lines.

 

Young testosterone fueled dudes high on meth, carrying machine guns and a maniac’s message, ransacked Europe like it’s never been ransacked before.

It’s mesmerizing to watch soft, pale, old men in comparison to those in the field doing horrible things on their orders.

 

 

It’s a study in failure that plays out time and again: a blowhard gets amped up and convinces a nation to do the same.

Only after it’s too late does the nation realize they’ve been on a one way journey with their guy, and he decided to check out early, leaving them to pick up the pieces.

How does a bad man convince a modern nation like Germany that he has all the answers?

The last response was found in a pile of ashes with a hint of gasoline outside a Berlin bunker.

It seems fitting.

How can the same results be avoided when another sharp guy decides he’s the shit?

A good answer needs more research.