I worked in VN 1970 to 1973 with Mennonite Church relief efforts. In 1972, I visited a fellow American Mennonite who lived in the northern edge of South Vietnam. He started and supported schools in refugee camps. I accompanied him on a visit to a camp school located maybe 2 miles south of the DMZ. After that visit we drove north to the DMZ where there was a small army base. Two US Army sergeants (“lifers”) lived there with their contingent of South Vietnamese soldiers guarding the base.
The 2 Americans were delighted to see us and speak English. They had a lookout tower to watch for activity in the DMZ. They took us up the tower to show us their “toys”. They were happy to do so. Their powerful binoculars were “night vision” and did not depend on light rays for sight. Attached to the binoculars, on the same pedestal, was a radar unit for measuring distance. They would look at an activity and establish its location coordinates. They would radio these coordinates to a fire base 12 miles south. Soldiers – technicians – would shoot artillery in over our heads that landed within a meter of whatever was observed. They demonstrated the whole ghastly process for us. Two lifers were 3 miles from the dying; all other soldiers were 12 miles from the killing. Nobody saw blood. They were machinery operators.
That experience opened my mind to why Nixon could end the draft during the war. The army was hiring technicians, not drafting soldiers for hand to hand combat.
My grandfather refused to work where military hardware was made in WWI. My father was in alternate service in WWII. And to be likewise faithful to our pacifist beliefs I needed to not pay for technological war. I became a war tax resister.