He was this big war hawk and tough guy yet he dodged the draft with the help of the studio. John Ford, who served, would cut him down for that hypocrisy. The story goes that Ford and Lee Marvin reduced Wayne to tears on the set of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" by giving him such a hard time about avoiding service. Marvin is buried in Arlington and won a Purple Heart, the Presidential Unit Citation and a couple others as a Marine in the South Pacific. Wayne is a tough guy to guys who don't know much about these actors beyond their screen images. Marvin was the authentic tough guy/bad^ss. Keep in mind that guys like Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable, among others, also served, so it's not like it was some unheard of thing for prominent actors to serve during WWII. Stewart was a very good pilot and went out of his way to ask to be sent into combat for the Army Air Forces, flying several missions. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was on active duty into the late 1960s.
Wayne was also another one of these moralizers who was a serial cheater on his wife, just like Ronnie. That isn't much of a man.