Toward an Ideal Army

An army in which civilians do the housekeeping chores. A radar technician never washes dishes. A helicopter mechanic never mows the parade grounds. There are no inspections on Saturday mornings to delay enjoyment of a weekend pass. No one stands in line for anything for more than 15 minutes. The purpose of each training exercise is explained so clearly that even the most dim-witted recruit gets the point. Above all, each man is a soldier because he wants to be one.

A master sergeant's alcoholic reverie? Not at all. That vision of the future U.S. Army was soberly presented last week by the Pentagon as a realistic goal to be achieved within three years as part of an all-out drive to make the U.S. armed forces consist solely of volunteers. Ideally, Selective Service would be reduced to a stand-by status, its machinery available only in an emergency requiring an unusual mobilization of manpower.

The big guns lined up behind the plan. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird announced that he had ordered all services to begin the "zero draft" campaign immediately; Army Chief of Staff William Westmoreland vowed that "unnecessary irritants and unattractive features of Army life" will be eliminated as quickly as possible; and Laird's top manpower assistant, Roger T. Kelley, spent 90 minutes briefing newsmen on the program.

Pay Inducement. That kind of Pentagon commitment to a volunteer Army represents more of a yielding to political pressures than a solid conviction that the idea is sound. As one means of alleviating antiwar sentiment in the

U.S., President Nixon pledged in the 1968 campaign to work toward such a force. Privately, top Pentagon officials have opposed the plan, mainly because they doubt that they could get enough money from Congress to make the Army attractive to the kind of volunteer that a modern, highly mechanized force requires. Many generals still,are skeptical, but they are now willing to try.

To make the plan work, Westmoreland said, the current rate of recruitment and re-enlistment must be at least douled and possibly tripled. This will be difficult without the threat of the draft as an inducement to potential volunteers. At present, the Army figures that only about 40% of its volunteers would have enlisted if they had not feared that they would be drafted anyway.

To overcome volunteers' reluctance, the Pentagon stressed higher pay as a major attraction. A recent pay increase raised the salary of new recruits in all services to $124.50 a month; Laird proposed that by next January it be jumped again to $149.40. Kelley suggested that added pay of $30 to $150 a month be given to soldiers and Marines who volunteer for the least desirable duties with infantry, artillery or armor units, which normally come under fire in combat. This would be on top of present hostile fire pay.

Better housing, especially for enlisted families and bachelors, who often complain of a lack of privacy, is also promised by the Pentagon. So is an expansion of the Army's many educational programs. The toughest task of all may simply be to make daily military life more enjoyable, without impairing service efficiency or discipline.

Differing Mores. Facing that problem, Westmoreland told a Washington meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army that young men are readily "turned off" by Army exercises that seem to have no "perceivable need." He has already instructed commanders to avoid any make-work assignments. Noting that the average age of soldiers in the Army today is less than 23, he conceded that the "social mores" of many of them differ sharply from those of older officers. He suggested that some of these differences can be accommodated by the services. Aides explained that the Army will permit dissent if it does not involve violence or interfere with a soldier's duty; the Army also may become less concerned about how a soldier behaves and dresses when off duty and how he wears his hair.

The cost of making the Army attractive to enough volunteers? Possibly an extra $8 billion a year, according to Laird's rough guess. Thus there remains a serious question as to whether a volunteer Army would attract enough manpower to back up the U.S.'s worldwide commitments. Why is it being pushed so hard right now? Asked if the timing were political, Melvin Laird could not suppress a smile. "I don't know how you came to that conclusion," he replied.

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