The Gi and the Legion

by HANFORD MACNIDER

1

ON an evening of late January in 1942, I was leaning over the rail of the Argentina, a suddenly and violently converted troopship, watching the lights of New York fade into the dark distance. Relief came welling up within me. It had been difficult arranging to be called to active duty, and until our Australia-bound transport was beyond recall of the Port officials, I wasn’t at all sure that I was going to get away with it. Not only had the top authorities in the War Department been dubious about the use of aged reservists, but it was all too apparent that some of them felt that a bad example of Middle Western isolationism might well be more bother than he was worth.

Mr. Mauldin, in his article “Poppa Knows Best” in the April Atlantic, says that the American Legion has always been of that same evil isolationist ilk. If he had been at the 1941 convention at Milwaukee, he would have found that its thousand-odd delegates, representing every state in the Union, were far ahead of the nation’s citizenry in wanting to start in at once on Mr. Schieklgruber and all his friends. Those of us who were on the other side of the argument discovered that it was the rank and file of the delegates, and not the top command, who were most vehement about taking us to the wars.

But to get back on the deck of the Argentina. I found that I had been joined at the rail by a curlyheaded, very young, anti-aircraft Major — one of those fellows, to quote Mr. Mauldin, “with stars in his eyes” —who was very much excited over our getting on our way.

“Boy, isn’t this wonderful?” he suddenly burst out. “We’re off on the big adventure. Now we won’t have to listen to those damned old Legionnaires the rest of our lives!”

It was not too light on deck, and as we had, to the best of my knowledge, never seen each other before, there was apparently nothing personal about his remarks. I agreed that it was all pretty wonderful and assured him that I knew just how he felt.

I could well remember how old the brethren who were Spanish War as well as World War I veterans had seemed to us when the Legion was started. Looking backward now, I can see where their wider experience and more mature counsel saved us from many mistakes in those early and formative years. Every now and then in this last fracas, we retreads would get a bad jolt when some wide-eyed GI would express his amazement that we could still get around. In the closing days of cleaning up Luzon, I was considerably startled to overhear a nineteenyear-old commander of a troop of dismounted cavalry wondering aloud “how in hell that old so-andso [I’m quoting all this mildly] ever got up this confounded mountain. Why, he must be almost a hundred!”

From “down under” and all the way up through the campaigns of the Southwest Pacific (where, incidentally, we had no such cartoonist or understanding historian as the justly famous Mauldin), we were usually too busy to worry much about what would develop in the way of veterans’ organizations after the fighting was over and we reached home, if over. That would be a different world and it seemed a very dim and distant prospect.

Later, when word seeped through to us that the Legion would open its membership to those who were serving in World War II, it evoked no great enthusiasm among us. When I so expressed myself by letter to some of the old-timers who had been most active in building the Legion, they responded that they felt the same way. Some of them, I imagine, would be included in what Mr. Mauldin characterizes as the top echelon of Legion affairs, but it was apparent that they had neither been consulted nor listened to by the rank and file of the Legion delegates in convention assembled who wanted this splendid new generation of American fighting men along and were ready to turn the Legion over to them. When a newly elected National Commander visited our theater some months later, he was astonished that any of us should be lukewarm over the proposed expansion. In fact, he was even then busy advocating that membership requirements of an honorable discharge should be waived in order that everyone could join while still in the service.

That proposition never materialized, but the die had been cast and the Legion was already a two-war organization. Looking back now, I think that the Legion’s action was the proper course for everyone concerned.

What bothered me then was that all this magnificent GI generation, if it joined an already existing organization, would never have the happy and exciting experience of starting from scratch and building up a great new company of kindred souls, bursting with shining ideals and young ideas, determined to give of their best all through their lives to see that those who had borne the battle got a square deal from their country, that this time the bitter lessons of our habitual unpreparedness should not be forgotten, and to ensure that the mutual understanding and faith in each other which comes only to men serving together in dangerous days were preserved for future service to our communities, states, and nation.

It didn’t seem right that they should miss what, for those of us who had battled t hrough the early days of the Legion, were some of the busiest, happiest, and most constructive years of our lives. It had not been all fun by any means and we had been suspected of almost everything — both good and bad — and called everything from “jingoes" to “panhandlers” in the process, but we knew that we were building an organization and working out a program which could contribute as much to the life of our generation and to the nation as any organization in American history. Critics to the contrary, I believe that our best hopes have been fulfilled. The average Legionnaire is a pretty fine citizen of proved loyalty to his country. The Legion, representing his hopes and aspirations, combining his efforts with those of his like, has become a great and constructive force in the land.

2

ALL up along the New Guinea coast and the unhappy islands of the South Pacific we lived, fought, and chased the Nips, in as mean and nasty a sector as men were ever asked to face. It was like operating in the inside of a great wet, dark mattress, and our vision was limited, both mentally and physically, to a few feet at best. All ranks, as the British like to put it, lived pretty close together. A Command Post was just another muddy foxhole.

Falling into the category which Mr. Mauldin would probably call “minor brass,” I cannot pretend to know much about what, if anything, the average GI had in mind for his post-war activities. Each monotonous day was just more mud, rain, bugs, and heat,—no furloughs, no entertainment, no diversion of any kind, — with little hope of anything different. For many of our youngsters, this went on for years. But the average soldier was magnificent despite it all, with only one common, expressed desire and that was “to get to hell out” of there. I’m afraid that at times they all evolved definite plans about establishing a future hide-out where no Recruiting Sergeant or Draft Board could ever find them again. The only mention of any postwar veterans’ activity ever volunteered within my hearing came from a hitchhiking battle casualty who allowed as how, if he had actually lost an eye. as seemed probable at that moment, he was all through until he could show up at one of those Legion Conventions, which he assured me were something!

Now nearly two and a half millions of his GI colleagues have joined the American Legion. There are over 16,000 Posts of the Legion today as against some 10,000 in the pre-war days. Despite Mr. Mauldin’s doubts as to the wisdom of this amazing trend, it is hard to believe that those young veterans, after having looked over the field, can all be wrong. What is bad, Mr. Mauldin infers, is that these new and younger members will have nothing to say about the Legion’s affairs.

Well, let’s look at the record only a little less than two years after V-J Day. Not only are the National and State Headquarters teeming with vigorous, vocal World War II veterans, but the same situation obtains throughout the Legion. Without going into the details of the whole Legion structure, the story in two representative states will give the picture. In Illinois, 483 out of 1100 Posts are headed by World War II veterans. In Ohio, 70 per cent of all Post offices are held by veterans of this war. In the traditional American manner in which the Legion operates — with the Posts electing delegates to the State Conventions, who in turn elect delegates to the National Convention — the World War II veterans will control, and the future of the Legion will be in their hands. The younger Legionnaires are taking over the Legion, and that is as it should be.

3

THERE are few, if any, organizations nearly thirty years old that cannot be charged truthfully with some sins both of commission and omission. That includes them all, from one’s church to one’s own family. It is simple enough to take a quick glance and then to pull them all apart. Mr. Mauldin, a very new veteran with no background of Legion experience or participation, is apparently very unhappy over the failure of his particular veterans’ group, the American Veterans Committee, to fill its faltering ranks. He gives the Legion a cursory glance, visits its National Headquarters for a day or so, and then proceeds to belabor the Legion with every imaginable accusation of bad habits and bad faith. To my mind, most of them are based on mistaken premises, and even factually he is more often than not on false grounds.

Let’s examine a few of his statements. First, he tells us that, his own group, the AVC, “has been on the receiving end of a great deal of the Legion’s invective.” “The red paintbrush has been applied generously,”he says, and adds“ not without reason.” Now there is no doubt the AVC has, deservedly or not, acquired the reputation of being a left-wing aggregation. That would make it appeal to only a limited number of GI’s, because after a man has offered his life to his country and its existing institutions, he usually feels that he has a special stake in their preservation. However, if the Legion has ever mentioned the AVC officially, or any responsible Legionnaire has called it names, the record does not show it. There would appear to be a little supersensitivity on that score. The Legion’s attitude has always been that in this country any law-abiding citizens are free to organize in order to promote whatever policies they deem best for the national welfare.

An entirely erroneous impression is created by the reference to the Legion’s “comparatively small membership before World War II.” Comparative to what? No other veterans’ organization in all history has ever enrolled and retained so great a percentage of eligible veterans as the Legion. At the time of Pearl Harbor, more than 30 per cent of those who served in World War I were paid-up members of the organization.

Earlier Mr. Mauldin states that “the Legion’s officials condemned Senator Robert Taft as a radical because he helped write the Wagner-Ellender-Taft housing bill.” There is no record available of any such action, although the Legion declared itself, at last year’s convention, as opposed to this type of legislation. It might be interesting right here to note that the Legion’s Housing Commission, upon whose recommendations the Legion has acted throughout this whole sorry situation, is headed by a GI Vice-Commander and manned by World War II veterans. Their program, as embodied in the Legion’s “Operation Housing,” emphasizes community rather than governmental assistance and undoubtedly is disappointing to anyone who thinks that government bureaucracy is the only suitable agency to promote better living for Americans.

The Legion’s National Legislative Director, John Thomas Taylor, comes in for special individual attention from Mr. Mauldin. The legislative program is laid down each year by the delegates to the State and National Conventions. After it has taken final form, and received their approval, it becomes a mandate upon the National Headquarters and the Legislative Committee for the ensuing year. Normally, it is largely related to national defense and veterans’ affairs, although child welfare, Americanism, immigration, law and order, accident prevention, and even foreign affairs are included in its scope.

Colonel Taylor’s activities before the Congress are, and always have been, confined to the mandates created by the National Convention’s resolutions. He is an extremely able and enthusiastic exponent of the Legion’s interests, and his efforts have been successful because Congress knows that he stays within his instructions from the Legion in convention assembled. The average member of Congress is deluged by resolutions from organizations of every conceivable sort. Often he finds the rank and file are hardly aware of what they are purported to support. Colonel Taylor’s methods, so graphically described in the Mauldin article, are designed to make it plain to our lawmakers that the Posts of the Legion are not only aware of the resolutions of the National Convention, but solidly behind them.

No one with any Legion experience and background would make the unqualified statement that a few Legion politicians determine Legion policy. If there ever was an organization whose program stemmed from the desires of its Posts and their membership at grass roots level, it is the American Legion. There is not one important Legion policy down through the years which has not run the gamut of Post, District, State, and National Convention action. As a result, the Legion has often moved too slowly for some impatient enthusiasts, because of the very weight of this legislative machinery. There, I presume, can be found the cause of Mr. Mauldin’s nose-puckering at what he calls “Legion conservatism.” Calling the Legion conservative will come as a considerable shock to many of the Legion’s crusty old critics of the last twentyseven years.

4

THE Legion is a typical cross-section of the nation, with all elements of our veteran population represented. If it is conservative for the Legion to attempt to protect, perpetuate, and conserve the American way of life, our system of constitutional government, and the rights of the individual, then the Legion is conservative and probably always will be.

To the charge that the Legion has indulged in partisan politics, the answer can be a categorical denial. Not only has it clung firmly to a policy of strict neutrality in party politics and individual candidacies, but it has leaned far over backwards, as any citizen conversant with politics over the last quarter century will testify. That is an accusation that no man can make with justice and impunity.

As to the Legion’s legislative record, no man can deny that, starting with the passage of the National Defense Act of 1920, which it had a large part in writ ing into law, the Legion has fought almost singlehanded for adequate preparedness. It went on record for universal military training at its National Convention in 1920, and has worked for it consistently ever since. If the Legion’s own plan for the universal draft, adopted in convention the following year, had ever been placed upon the statute books, there would have been no Pearl Harbor. The drafting of capital and labor on the same basis as men’s lives would have made America so strong and so impregnable that no nation would have ever dared attack us, and the world’s history of the last few years would have been a different story.

Year after year, the Legion struggled and labored to arouse the nation and the Congress to the need, but while even the most politically-minded of our lawmakers agreed in principle, it was impossible to get many of them to risk their political necks by advocating such a drastic and far-reaching plan. To quote from Richard Seelye Jones’s recently published History of the American Legion, “The career of this proposal in government circles was a long succession of debates, investigations, reports, partial acceptance and basic avoidance. America would not adopt a law to take the profit out of war because America was not ready to admit that there might be another war.” The Legion was still in there punching for such legislation when the bombs started dropping on our Pacific fleet.

The Veterans Administration, formerly known as the Veterans Bureau, is the child of the American Legion, which forced its establishment, and which has ever since been its most vigilant watchdog. The care of the disabled veteran has from the beginning been the Legion’s first consideration and its first duty. Congress and the nation have always been willing to see that the men and women who survive our wars are properly and generously treated; but it is no reflection on that attitude to state — what every fair-minded American wall admit — that practically all the legislation now in effect for the disabled veteran has not only been written, but pushed through Congress, by the efforts of the American Legion. In any controversy with the Veterans Administration — and there have been many, not only recently but from its beginning — that fact must be recognized. To see that the laws are properly and humanely implemented and administered is and always has been a Legion job.

The Administrator of that vast and complicated government agency is at the moment General Omar Bradley, one of the great field commanders of all American history. He has accomplished great things and is doing a tremendous job, but on this present detail he is a very public servant and he must expect to hear from the Legion, which represents a great proportion of those he is expected to serve, whenever it believes the VA’s huge, sprawling machinery can give better service. There are over 30,000 Legion Service Officers in the field, in immediate contact with the disabled veterans, and when the Legion speaks of unhappy conditions, it knows whereof it speaks. The Veterans Administration will, in the end, be more helped than hurt by the Legion’s constant vigilance on behalf of disabled comrades-in-arms.

It has been charged that the Legion makes no attempt to discriminate between its members on the basis of types of wartime service. Happily, that is correct. In 1922 the Legion said, and it can repeat twenty-five years later, “it is the spirit that prompted a man to enter the service that counts in the American Legion, not the circumstances that followed his enlistment and over which he had little control. There can be no distinction between men who have offered their life to their country. There is no comparative degree in an offer of all one has.”

Naturally that statement, and all other reference to veterans, include the good women who marched out under the colors in both world wars, and whose standing in the Legion is on exactly the same basis as that of the men.

5

LET anyone poll any of the ten or eleven thousand communities where Posts of the Legion have been in existence over the years, and it will be found that the overwhelming majority of the citizens will tell him that the Legion has served it well, not just the veteran population but the whole community. Last year, for example, 800,000 teen-aged young Americans played in the Legion’s Junior Baseball Program. There were 160,000 entries in its annual National High School Oratorical Contest. School award medals were awarded to 14,000 young pupils as a part of a continuing annual program. Over 2000 Boy Scout Troops operated under direct Legion Post sponsorship; and this summer, as in previous years, 20,000 boys will attend Legion “Boys’ States” in forty states, where they will study and actually apply the mechanics of the government of this republic.

These are but a few of the constructive activities directed and sponsored by the Legion and its amazingly active and industrious women’s Auxiliary throughout the nation.

Some twenty-odd years ago, in a small Iowa Post, the membership worked out what later became known throughout the Legion as the Iowa Plan of Community Service. They had found that, because their members comprised almost a complete cross-section of every phase of life within their community, all bound together by their common service and understanding, they could in turn reach into and bring together in common understanding and effort practically every other group in the community. Since they were so equipped, they felt that it became their duty either to lead off or to assist all movements for community betterment.

Legion Posts everywhere were busy at work along similar lines, but the Post originating the Iowa Plan was not content until there was included in the Iowa Department’s program a mandate upon every one of its 600-odd Posts to accomplish within each Legion year at least one unselfish, constructive, and worth-while project for its community or surrender its charter. Finally the national organization incorporated a similar plan within its Americanism Program, and through its encouragement and direction there are today scattered across all America thousands and thousands of worth-while completed projects inspired by, or wholly accomplished by, local Legion Posts and their Auxiliaries. They furnish evidence, if evidence is needed, that the men and women of the Legion did not terminate their service to their country when they took off the uniform, but were determined that nothing should be left undone which could help make their country and their individual communities better places in which to live and bring up their children.

Today the Legion is enrolling 1947 memberships at a rate that averages one member for every eight seconds, night and day, throughout the year. The membership is now running about two hundred thousand ahead of this date a year ago.

The Legion has become a tremendous force in America. It has grown and continues to grow because its activities have become an integral part of life in the thousands of home towns which make up America.

If the Legion “in that imperfect manner that attends all human institutions” has here and there fallen into indifferent or selfish hands, it does not follow that its millions of members or constantly changing elected leaders are veterans first and citizens second. There are professional veterans just as there are professional do-gooders and dobaders in every American institution and organization. If they are occasionally found in control, it is because such people work at the job twenty-four hours a day. They are in office by default on the part of those who could give better leadership. That’s true in one’s political party, one’s union, one’s trade association, one’s church, or one’s lodge — in every organized group in the land.

The cure is apparent, and I suggest earnestly and seriously, to Mr. Mauldin and any other veterans who are unhappy over the Legion’s course, that they get in and make it right. Such an organized movement cannot be changed or guided from the outside. The place for those eligible citizens who may disapprove of any part of the Legion’s program is within the organization, lending their efforts to its improvement. Men and women who are sincere and persistent and who are right can make their Post right, and in turn their State and National organizations right. It has been done and is being done every day.

I do not claim that “poppa” always knows best. I do claim that both the Legion and the nation will profit from the active participation of the average GI, who, as those of us who served with him can testify, is about the best there is.