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Content: As in any war, the increased number of men (and increasingly women) in the military draws labor from farms and rural communities. That, in turn, hastens the move toward more mechanized agriculture. During the Vietnam War years, rough 9 million people served in the military, compared with the 16 million who served during World War II. Of the 9 million, roughly 3 million served in the Southeast Asia area, and half of those actually saw combat in Vietnam. By 1970, roughly 25 percent of the U.S. population was living on farms or in rural communities where hired hands would be hired from. So, using the 9 million figure, roughly 2.25 million men would have left rural communities for the military during the Vietnam era. The Vietnam War had a significant impact on the rural workforce. In the 1960s, almost all farms were mechanized, but the war forced many farmers to become even more efficient by buying larger, more specialized machines and concentrating their operations on one main crop. Economic costs. The Defense Department reported that the overall cost of the Vietnam war was $173 billion (equivalent to $770 billion in 2003 dollars).