THE AMERICAN ARMY SEARCH FOR PUBLIC RESPECT AFTER VIETNAM SCANDALS

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32564, 25 March 1971, Page 10

THE AMERICAN ARMY SEARCH FOR PUBLIC RESPECT AFTER VIETNAM SCANDALS

(By

STEPHEN BARBER

in the “Daily Telegraph," London)

(Reprinted by arrangement) The United States Army is about to fire the opening salvo in a IS-week experimental radio and television recruiting drive which will cost about $9 million.

It is part of "Project Volunteer," for which the Defence Department has set aside no less than $l2OO million for the coming year in the hope of achieving President Nixon’s aim of virtually ending military conscription by 1973.

The radio and television campaign has been devised by N. W. Ayer, Inc., a “trendy” agency whose accounts include some giant concerns and has advertised processed foods, cosmetics, bed linen and a national magazine. After months of market research and conferences, the Madison Avenue men sold their Pentagon clients on a slogan as the central theme for what is clearly a somewhat desperate wooing of the nation’s young: “Today’s Army wants to join you!” To their credit, there is no beating about the bush among Pentagon officials: the United States Army faces a severe morale problem as a result of the longest and least popular war in its history—Vietnam. Will enough volunteers enlist to maintain America’s projected post-Vietnam military manpower figure of 2,500,000 without conscription?

The computers show that more than four million young Americans dodged the draft by getting college deferments and other canny, if legal, means between 1965 and 1970. An Army survey has disclosed that nearly twothirds of the volunteers on active duty last year signed on for minimum three-year stints simply in order to avoid conscription and find a relatively safe billet in some technical branch. Only 2.5 per cent expressed a desire to join combat units. The result has been that the burden of fighting and dying—in Vietnam has fallen on reluctant conscripts. It is a wonder morale is not very much worse, seeing that the children of the affluent, the more articulate, collegiate youth of America have been largely spared the bloodshed they most vociferously protest about, leaving it to the poor (and black) to suffer more than their share.

Standards blamed Senior officers admit, too, that the public’s attitude to the armed services has been shaken by events like the My Lai massacre. My Lai would never have happened, one is told, had Vietnam been a different sort of war. Standards for officers and recruits had perforce to be lowered to make up numbers. The culprits were not of the same stuff as gentlemen graduates from the Military Academy at West Point. The excuses are as shaming as the incident itself. More damaging, perhaps, have been revelations of widespread corruption in the PX system—the equivalent of Naafi. Then there is the problem of drug addiction both m Vietnam and among returned Vietnam veterans. The problem has been accelerating as the war winds down—boredom in rear areas is one explanation. Officials say that a 30 per cent rate of drug abuse among troops in Vietnam two years ago jumped to 60 per cent last year. In a single seven-week period last autumn an average of one American soldier died every day from an overdose of heroin. To all this must be added the race problem. For a brief time, camaraderie in the field seemed to ease tensions between black and white American youngsters. Then came “black power" and the "white backlash.” Barracks race riots are not infrequent. Again, it is surely to their credit that officers discuss these sore subjects so freely. But, unless they can get across the idea that the Army is seeking imaginative ways to work out answers to problems that affect the entire community, they will find it increasingly hard to attract the dedicated professionals they are seeking. As one career major put it: “What with My Lai, the PX scandals, ‘pot’ and now this ‘fragging’ thing, one

begins to feel people in the streets giving one the fishy eye as they wonder if you are a murderer, a crook, a junkie or just a damned fool.” Officers in danger

The verb “to frag” is surely one of the more revealing additions to American soldiers’ slang. It derives from fragmentation grenades, and the use thereof by undisciplined, not to say mutinous, troops against officers who display an unwelcome eagerness to engage the enemy in combat. How extensive the practice really is, or how much is merely chatter, no one seems to know suffice it that officers take it seriously enough to think twice before, for example, opening a gift box of cigars from their men. To make good the damage done by Vietnam to both the Army’s prestige and selfesteem, and at the same time end conscription after 30 years, while also maintaining adequate strength to fulfil America’s world-wide obligations, may be impossible. The Secretary of Defence (Mr Laird) has said in Congress: “We are going to have to concentrate on people.” Senator John Stennis, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is frankly scornful of Mr Laird’s hopes that the President’s target can be reached.

General Westmoreland, the Army Chief of Staff, who formerly commanded in Vietnam, recognises that it is going to take ingenuity and internal reforms to overcome the anti - military prejudice that permeates America’s youth. “We can’t expect to have the proficient and dedicated' Army we need,” he said, “if so many of our leading educators are always knocking it.” He has, perhaps surprisingly, been convinced that the Army has to “get with it” if it is to appeal to the “now generation”—to employ the ghastly jargon of Madison Avenue. To this end, he has instituted “humanising” measures, such as have been initiated in the Air Force and Navy. What is termed “Micky Mouse”—meaning strict dress rules, needless kit inspections, close-cropped haircuts

and so on is to be eliminated. Barracks quarters are to be divided into individual cubicles. There will be rugs on the floor and bedside lights. Week - end leave passes will be more plentiful.

A citizen Army And, most important, pay is to be sharply increased for all ranks to a minimum of $4O a week for a raw recruit—plus a $2500 bonus, over three years, to those opting for infantry, tanks or artillery.

These things are all very well in their way—although they have been sharply opposed by some high-ranking traditionalists who predict the creation of an Army of pampered ne’er-do-wells—but the even bigger object of the new publicity programme is to re-establish the image of the United States Army as an integral part of the civil community. American officers like General Westmoreland himself are deeply attached to a “citizen service” tradition that dates back to George Washington. They earnestly eschew pretensions to being a Junker-type elite. The American military’s fear of elitism has always held out against the inculcation of regimental esprit de corps, with special uniforms and customs, on the European model. In the field, the American general wears the same garage mechanic’s overalls of shapeless olive drab as the lowest private, even if they are well-ironed and starched.

The public relations campaign will emphasise the role of the Army as a highly efficient public service, anxious to play a “with it” role in such things as the antipollution campaign, in medical research, using helicopters to rescue flood victims, and so on.

The message is in the slogan: “Today’s Army wants to join you!” It is a plea for popular acceptance rather than a call to arms . . . Love me as I love you and you can bring your beards and sidebums, bell-bottoms and psychedelic posters to the barracks. As for the drill sergeant, he’s feeling groovy too.

It is going to be fascinating to see if it works.