New Army

Last week saw the successful completion of a revolution in the U. S. Army. The U. S. as a whole was not aware of it, but the Army was. To all intents, it was a new Army -- new in dress, drill, organization, fighting methods, and newest of all in its peacetime fighting strength.

At Fort Benning, Ga., where new ways and weapons are tested, the soldiers of this new Army acted pretty much as sol diers always have. On their nights off they sought liquor and girls in the dollar-houses and tawdry taverns of staid old Columbus, Ga., or in the honky-tonk and juke joints across the Chattahoochee River in wild, wide-open Phenix City, Ala. The liquor was there, but the girls were gone or going, lining the roadsides in their bright dresses to bum rides to fairer pastures. This seemed strange behavior, for troops by the thousand were assembling in the South for maneuvers at Fort Benning this month, in Louisiana and Texas next month. By military precedent older than Xerxes, the commercial ladies should have followed the soldiers, not run away.

They were fleeing because mustachioed Brigadier General Asa L. Singleton noted an alarming increase of venereal disease at Fort Benning. Forthwith he laid down the law to Columbus and Phenix City: run out the tarts, or both towns would be declared "out of bounds" for Fort Benning troops.

Even newer than this display of military morals was the Regular Army, 1940 model, which was about to strut its stuff for the U. S. people. Although they have spent some $2,600,000,000 on their Army since its renaissance began, they undoubtedly expected to hear more poor-mouth talk about a skeleton Army, starved since World War I, not pretending even to itself that it could fight a battle. What they actually will see and hear is that their Army is over the hill and out of the poor house.

All Dressed Up. Seventy-eight days after the U. S. entered World War I, "Black Jack" Pershing arrived in France with 59 officers, 67 enlisted men, 36 field clerks, five civilian interpreters. If the U. S. chose to enter World War II this week, the Army's Chief of Staff George Catlett Marshall could immediately begin shipping upwards of 60,000 reasonably well-equipped, ready-to-fight regulars. He could put on the firing line five modernized, motorized infantry divisions, two cavalry divisions (one on wheels, one using both wheels and horses), a serviceable force of combat aviation (which could soon be doubled or tripled), along with artillery, engineers, supplementary troops for one Regular Army corps and part of a second.

As wars and armies go nowadays, General Marshall's initial force of regulars would be small potatoes. But against the background of U. S. military tradition, it is big potatoes. Its strength scraps the tradition that the democratic, isolated U. S. neither wants nor needs in peacetime a professional standing Army which, however small, is complete and ready to fight. George Washington's Continentals in 1777, mocking their martinets in song (Davis, wipe your nose . . . Mike Jones, turn out your toes), planted deep in the young U. S. mind a disdain for the professional soldier. And in 1917 the songs were Long Boy (Goodbye Ma! Good-bye Mule, with yer old hee-haw!) and I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be a Soldier. In the next big U. S. war, mama's boy will have to leave his mule and go off to fight again, for the new U. S. Regular Army is still only a core for a wartime army. But in a little war the Regular Army for the first time could do its own fighting without calling out even the National Guard.

The man who began this transformation (with Franklin Roosevelt's potent encouragement) was General Malin Craig, who retired last year as Chief of Staff. Finishing the job is war-wise, war-hating George Marshall, no West Pointer. Under Craig & Marshall, in spite of the top-heavy, tape-tied, wasteful, incredibly awkward administration set-up of the War Department, the Army has:

> Changed its clothes. Gone are the khaki breeches, and the wrap puttees which made many a War I doughboy late for reveille. The new uniform (khaki still) has a looser tunic, straight trousers (supplemented for rough going with easily handled canvas leggings).

> Changed its drill. Junked is the whole complex ritual of columns-of-four which the armies of the world slavishly accepted from Prussia's Frederick the Great. The infantry squad of eight, formed in double line, has made way for a squad of twelve riflemen in one line. Squads Right! is heard no more. Right Dress! is still in order, but the 1940 soldier lines up at arm's length from the next man, with Right Face! or Left Face! wheels in single column ready for Forward, March! For Parade, Rest! the new manual simply substitutes the old At Ease.

> Changed its arms. New mortars, field guns, anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns abound. Most important: the famed Garand semi-automatic shoulder rifle, with an effective firing rate 2.5 times the old Springfield's ten aimed shots per minute. About 24,000 will be displayed at next month's war games. On order are 65,000 more from Winchester Repeating Arms Co. A young Boston reserve officer named Melvin Johnson has raised a williwaw in Washington with claims that his new rifle is better than the Garand, if Army bureaucrats would only admit it. But the Army (unbureaucratic George Marshall included) stands pat on a mass of official evidence that the Garand is hardier, better all around than the Johnson rifle.

> Changed its organization. Most important change: the new "streamlined" division, whittled down from the unwieldy old division of 22,000 (war strength) to a tighter unit of 8,500 peacetime, 13,000 wartime strength (with retired regulars called in from the new Enlisted Reserve).

> Remade the Air Corps. This once ramshackle service has expanded into an effective, offensive fighting arm, with planes so fast (over 400 m.p.h.) that France and England want to grab the newest ones at factory gates. Last week General Marshall, Secretary of War Harry Woodring and Assistant Secretary Louis Johnson convinced Congressional committeemen that the Allies should be allowed to do so. Wartime business, said they, has already upped U. S. production capacity from 6,000 to 17,000 planes per year, should soon have it up to 30,000. Result: the U. S. Air Corps can safely do without 2,100 reserve planes which were included in the Army's 1941 goal of 5,500, let France and Great Britain have new planes (but not new, secret devices) which otherwise would soon become obsolescent and have to be replaced. Timid Mr. Woodring, who had opposed just such a policy last year, insisted last week that the new policy is now his. "I am not very easily pushed around," said the push-happy Secretary of War.*

George Marshall now has 227,000 men in his Regular Army. He wants 15,000 more. But his immediate concern is more equipment first, more men second. Thanks to the recent largesse of Franklin Roosevelt and Congress, funds already appropriated are enough for 78% of the planes, tanks, guns, etc. which George Marshall wants for his Regular Army and National Guard. The 1940-41 Army budget ($914,525,009) now before Congress carries enough for equipment to give him 92%.

Where To Go? Any foreign attache looking at the new U. S. Army this spring will recognize it for what it is: a standing expeditionary force, designed for prompt, conscript expansion into an expeditionary Army of 750,000 active troops, 250,000 reserves. When Congressmen, scared by World War II, scream for underground bombing shelters in the interior U. S., for permanent anti-aircraft installations at Kansas City and points west, the General Staff in Washington shudders. Remembering that the U. S. Army has fought in China, Siberia, Central America, France, the General Staff has planned an outfit ready to be packed up and sent anywhere. The last place the Army expects to fight is on the U. S. mainland.

Nearest potential fighting zone, in the Army's mind, is the Panama Canal. No sound Army planner expects an enemy to land troops, guns, tanks in or near the Canal Zone. But last January the U. S. Navy showed George Marshall and many another Army man what a foe might do with aircraft carriers. In joint Army-Navy practice off the West Coast, U. S. Navy planes flew at will over the fog-bound mainland, "demolished" every Army aircraft base in the game, flew gaily back to their carriers outside the fog area. Meantime, Army bombers and defensive planes were helpless on the ground, unable to take off because they would have had to land in the fog. George Marshall returned to Washington with furrowed brow, wondering whether the Canal Zone might, after all, be the locale for a Blitzkrieg in the Western Hemisphere.

* Louis Johnson, who used to push Mr. Woodring around without mercy, cordially aided the Secretary during his testimony last week. This change did not surprise those who had seen hanging in Mr. Johnson's office a sign: "We ain't mad with nobody."

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