AMERICAN ARMY

Evening Star, Issue 25113, 1 March 1944, Page 2

AMERICAN ARMY

GENERAL STRESSES REQUIREMENTS (Rec. 8 a.m.) NEW YORK, Feb. 29. Between 75,000 and 100,000 men are needed every montJi to replace United States army casualties and those discharged as medically unfit, said the Assistant Army Chief of Staff, Major-general L. W. Miller. He was amplifying President' Roosevelt's statement that the American army was 218,000 below strength. The total strength of the army at present was 7,482,000. General Miller urged that closer attention should be said to the standard of the men being taken into the army. The present standards for general service, he said, produced men of lower quality than desirable, but that situation had been met in part by more careful attention to personnel assignment. General Miller revealed that during the height of' the army's expansion 20 per cent, of the conscripts were fit only for limited • service, but this figure lias now been reduced to 5 per cent. ; • A special commission which inquired into troop shortages reported to White House that the deficiencies in army numbers must be made up by drafting fathers and defence workers, not by a lower physical standard. It urged that the present reserve pool of 8,500,000 men should be tapped. This consists of 3,850,000 deferred for occupational reasons, and 4,650,000 for family reasons.