Well, I know that people even younger fought in previous wars -- i.e., he would have had to have lied, I think.

How did he go to Vietnam at 17? Did that really happen to some guys?

It is also entirely possible that, as with the writing crew for Buffy, the writers of Supernatural are all English majors and cannot count.

Well, yeah.

It is also entirely possible that, as with the writing crew for Buffy, the writers of Supernatural are all English majors and cannot count.

*gigglesnort*

Yeah, probably.

Nutty, they cited some of that. Do we have a hard birthday for John? I thought it was speculation...

The badges in his journal indicate that he was a rifleman, and apparently high school graduates would have ended up on a different track.

Yeah, this is hooey. VN era draftees went through Infantry basic before being assigned to their MOS-Miltary Occupational Specialty: cooks, motor pool, quartermaster, etc. Those assigned to infantry went on to Advanced Infantry Training and were shipped off to Nam as soon as their training was done, regardless of their education level. You earned your rifle marksmanship badges in AIT.

It was common practice to give teenaged miscreants the choice of jail or the military at the time, so theoretically, John could have been "volunteered" this way. You could also sign up voluntarily at 17 with parental permission, if you had no job prospects, no plans to finish high school, several younger siblings for your parent(s) to support, or wanted to save for college. There was some choice of specialty for volunteers, whereas draftees were simply sent where there was need, and assignments were marginally better for volunteers than for draftees. All of which are possible reasons for John to volunteer before he was 18.

And Bev comes in with hard facts. (For, you know, those of us who weren't even conceived at the time of the Vietnam war...)

John was definitely staring down the barrel of a blue-collar life, I would guess. I wonder sometimes if his father was military.

Do we have a hard birthday for John?

We have his gravestone in "What is and blah blah". It's an alternate universe, but, considering it's constructed out of Dean's own head, I don't think he'd be making up alternate birth years for his own father. (It's just the year, IIRC.)

Really, they couldn't have invested in a bottle of that gray frosting-paint they use in theatre? It washes out, so Denny Duquette would not even have had to look old. And then they could have John be a much more likely age in all his flashbacks to 1983 (to say nothing of to 1989). Because, I mean, really. If John is 29 in 1983 then I am Mickey Mouse.

Was JDM appearing on SPN and GA at the same time?

signed, has no clue about GA AT ALL

Yes. This is why John Winchester always looked so tired. (Also, the woman who plays his fiancee on the one show and the man who plays his son on the other show are the same age.)

Also, the woman who plays his fiancee on the one show and the man who plays his son on the other show are the same age.)

Oh, like that would never happen.