No Safety in Numbers

by LT. GEN. ROBERT C. RICHARDSON, JR. (Ret.)

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SOMETIME this year Congress will have to decide whether our country shall have universal military training in time of peace. This momentous decision will affect so greatly the lives of our youth that all aspects of this training should be considered. There seems to be an awareness among the people that some form of military training is necessary while the world remains so unsettled. They are troubled, and anxious for Congress to do what is needed, but they want to feel satisfied that we do not embark on a program that is a waste of time. From a long command experience in the Army, I have come to the conclusion that the benefits that it is alleged will flow from universal military training are largely illusory.

Despite the many excellent features of the Army’s proposed plan, it will afford only a limited degree of preparedness; and its adoption, I fear, will give the people an erroneous impression that the Army will be ready for any emergency, when in truth it will not be. In urging its plan upon Congress, the Army states among other things that “it will create a pool of trained manpower”; but when all is said and done, this pool will be only an unorganized mass of partially trained adolescents.

What is really needed at the outbreak of war is highly trained officers, noncommissioned officers, and specialists. Universal military training only partially solves the problem. Instead of drafting youth, all time and money should be spent on training the future leaders of our troops and the specialists needed for mobilization. This training was lacking at the outbreak of World War II.

In total war nearly all the officers are drawn from civil life; therefore, the quality of their training in time of peace should be of paramount concern to every citizen because if. is the barometer of his own security and of the nation’s preparedness. In any emergency the crying need is for officers who are well trained. This I know to be true because it was my good fortune to command successively a regiment, brigade, division, corps, and for three years during the war, all Army forces in the Pacific Ocean areas. During that period, twenty divisions came under my command for training, besides many thousand service troops. Experience taught me t hat almost every failure of any import was due primarily to untrained officers and rarely to untrained enlisted men.

Officers with the best will in the world and even with a fair military background failed to measure up to their responsibilities because they had not had their powers of observation and habits of thought sufficiently cultivated to foresee those things which prevent failure. If the officer knows his job, it follows automatically that he will have trained men.

Why spend so much time and money on a system that attacks only the elementary aspects of the problem and produces results that are ephemeral? Why not give top priority to the training of officers?

To appreciate the meager results that will accrue from the proposed orthodox system of universal military training, let us follow a youth through his induction and his return to civil life. He will be inducted sometime between his eighteenth and twentieth years for a year’s training. lie can fulfill his obligation either by remaining in camp for a full year, or by taking six months of camp and then choosing any one of a number of options such as enlisting in the National Guard or in the organized reserves, applying for specialist training or for ROTC, entering West Point or Annapolis or the Coast Guard Academy as a cadet, or enlisting in the armed services.

His first six months must necessarily be devoted to basic instruction and fundamentals, which unfortunately are always the dullest part of any training, whether it be the Army or any other profession. Six months is a very short time in which to learn all that is necessary to acquire even a foundation. It is hardly long enough for the man to get the “feel” of the service and to learn to subordinate himself to constituted authority. Much of his time will be consumed in routine duties of the orderly room, the kitchen, and the latrine, in visiting the hospital, in checking records, in drawing clothing, and in all the thousand and one things essential to his daily life quite aside from his purely military instruction.

It is inevitable that the young man will be irked by duties so alien to his experience, and his boredom will be reflected in his lack of attention and enthusiasm, and in the rate at which he learns. No matter how excellent the program of instruction prepared by the Army, it will never be able to overcome the inherent distaste for military life which I have observed in Americans in two world wars. It is only when enlistment is voluntary, as in the Regular Army, that we find men with an aptitude for the services. At the end of six months the trainee has his foot only on the bottom rung of the ladder; and although he is better than a completely untrained man, his knowledge is indeed limited. If he elects to remain in camp for the full year, his value will be greatly enhanced in the last six months and make him a decided asset if war should be immediately declared.

But if the trainee elects only six months of camp, he must then make his choice of one of the options. For the majority, we can rule out any opportunity of going to West Point, Annapolis, or the Coast Guard Academy inasmuch as there are so few vacancies at these schools that not more than a hundred inductees out of the million stand any chance of selection. Should the trainee enlist in the National Guard or the organized reserves, he will have infrequent opportunities for further training. His best chance of developing his military knowledge will be by enlistment in one of the armed services.

At the end of his year of training the soldier returns to civil life. He at once begins the battle for his bread and butter, which transcends every other thought. For a short time, perhaps a year, he will retain some of the knowledge acquired in the Army, some of his enthusiasm, and a certain satisfaction in having partially discharged his duty to his country. But the years roll by very quickly and what he has learned begins to recede into the past, becoming blurred by the events of his busy daily life. His potentiality as a soldier ready for war rapidly diminishes, and as an asset to national preparedness his rating after two years is indeed low. It is only the men who are actually under training and those who have been recently discharged who may be said to be ready for their mobilization duties. Even their knowledge is far from what is needed. They are of course an immediate asset, but this product of universal military training is incommensurate with the time and money spent.

Universal military training as advocated does not go to the root of our problem and is therefore defective in conception. In addition, the idea of drafting our youth in time of peace for military training is so repugnant to such a large segment of the population that their sentiments must be given careful consideration by Congress.

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REALIZING the urgency of taking measures to prepare this country adequately to meet a call to arms, I offer an alternative plan which is more profitable and more democratic, and has the virtue of eliminating a peacetime draft distasteful to many Americans. As a safeguard, Congress should pass the universal military training law, so that the President might invoke it if need be without further reference to Congress, and should at once suspend it. Meanwhile this plan should be given first trial and top priority: —

First, let us insist upon a superior standard for all officers and noncommissioned officers of the Regular Army.

Second, eliminate at once, without regard to politics or fear of offending sensibilities, all reserve and National Guard officers who are fifty years old. Transfer them to a nonavailable list and set the age for eventual exit from the civilian components at forty-five.

Third, revitalize the training of the reserve and National Guard officers. Lift it out of the routine.

Fourth, establish a new and radical system for the procurement of new young officers for the civilian components by organizing division candidate training centers to which all ROTC students must go for aptitude tests to become officers. These centers shall be open to members of the CMTC (Citizens’ Military Training Camps) and to all enlisted men of any branch of the armed services, organized reserves, and National Guard.

Fifth, establish vocational and technical training centers where all types of specialists for the future armies will be trained. Attendance at these centers will be voluntary, and open to any American youth except that members of the CMTC will be required to spend one half of their six-week training period at a center. Any youth accepting this specialized training must obligate himself to enlist in either the National Guard, the organized reserves, or GHQ reserve for five years. Let me elaborate the features of this plan.

The Regular Army, it goes without saying, should be required to maintain only a superior standard for its officers. Keeping “satisfactory” and “below average” officers on the lists should be abolished. It is true that in the past there were not many of them, but the Army did not do a thorough job in eliminating the unfit. Recent legislation, however, should correct this defect.

Since the war the Army has commissioned several thousand officers who were good battle leaders but who are a little short on formal education. It is of the utmost importance for the public interest that some of the money appropriated by Congress be used to send these men to college for two years so as to place them on a more equal footing with the officers from West Point or from universities and colleges. If this action is not taken, these officers will soon become a liability, for they will be unable to keep abreast of their profession.

There are many officers now holding commissions in the reserves and in the National Guard whose active usefulness has waned if not vanished. It is wrong to keep them on the available list, for by so doing we are lulled into a belief that we have a large reservoir of officers ready for an emergency. These are for the most part older men who think that they are as good physically and mentally as they ever were, but who could never stand the rigors of another war. This group should be eliminated immediately and be placed in an honorable status of nonavailability, retaining the titles or rank, honors, and emoluments which they have richly earned. To initiate the policy, all such officers of the civilian components who have reached fifty years of age should be retired, and when the new flow of officers is running into these components, the retirement age should be reduced to forty-five.

Of course there will be officers above this age who in war would be utilized but they will be exceptions at the time, and the lists in peace should not be encumbered with superannuated officers. We would then have a cadre of reserve and National Guard officers who would be young and ready for any emergency. The atmosphere of their units would be revivified and their peacetime training would become more vibrant and enthusiastic.

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WITH that accomplished, we should give reserve officers greater training opportunities than formerly. In the past, the training of the reserve officer was necessarily theoretical for the most part, and given at his home station by Regular Army officers. Promotions were made, after appropriate written tests, on a basis of time in grade and age. No personality or aptitude tests prevailed. Practical work was limited to a two-week period in camp each summer — which of course was ridiculously short to accomplish any real training. Lack of money and the business commitments of the officers prevented a longer period. Some of the reserve officers regarded the camp as a holiday or picnic, but many serious officers were chagrined and disappointed that so much of the time had to be devoted to the dull routine of administration rather than to field exercises. Under such conditions, the Army was unable to prepare them properly for their war duties. When war came, they had to learn their jobs after being called to active service. We were lucky to have had time in the last war; in the next, time will not be available. We must therefore “seize the day” now.

Under the plan I am proposing, training will be given at home stations as in the past, but there will be sufficient money for the Army to give a really good, imaginative course of instruction. The Army knows how to do it, but it must have the money to do it. Most important, the existing promotion policy for these officers must be abolished. It is a paper affair and routine. The officers are not required to work hard enough for advancement or to give proof that they are capable of holding the next higher grade. It should be the policy of the Department of the Army that no reserve officer will be promoted without having attended one of the service schools for three months. There his qualifications for advancement will be determined by his actual work and his personality. He will be tested in theory and its application. Such a policy should be the absolute sine qua non for promotion. In addition, practical training can be given by assignment to division training centers where candidates for commissions will be assembled.

As for the National Guard officers, their training policies should follow those prescribed for the reserves, and no new officer of the Guard who has not had war service will in the future be Federally recognized until he has qualified himself by attendance at one of the service schools for the three-month period. Nor will he be promoted in Federal service without having undergone the same course of instruction. The law gives the Army full power to give or withhold Federal recognition, and if it does not succeed in having good National Guard officers it has only itself to blame. What is needed is moral courage, high qualification standards rigidly enforced, and a complete divorce from politics.

If, however, the Army is to achieve the same success with the National Guard training as with the reserves, there must be a radical change in the relation between the Regular Army instructor and the National Guard. It has often been difficult for an instructor to accomplish all that he was capable of doing, because he had no authority over the Guard. The Guard insisted on this policy. He could advise, suggest, and instruct, but he could give no orders. He had a lot of responsibility but little authority. If he found a Guard unit unsatisfactory and reported it to the War Department, his action oftentimes caused such resentment that pressure was brought to bear on the War Department to replace him with a more complaisant instructor. For this reason many Regular Army officers have avoided duty with the National Guard for fear that it might be injurious to their careers. In the future the Army should insist that its instructors with the Guard have the authority that goes with their responsibility.

The training of officers of the civilian components is one of the most delicate and difficult problems that confront the Army because both the reserves and the National Guard are political as well as military organizations — especially the National Guard. When the Army tries conscientiously to eliminate those who are inefficient, it is subjected to all sorts of pressure to prevent action which is known to be in the interest of the nation, and it is often unjustly accused of prejudice. Where national security is involved, politics should be shoved into the background if they cannot be eliminated entirely. The fact that thousands of our reserve and National Guard officers did a wonderful job during the war should not blind us to the fact that there was a terrific drag in getting the war machine started, and should not deter us from thinking up a better way of training them, to offset the lack of time that will confront us when the next war comes.

Some, no doubt, will consider that the plan to give a reserve or Guard officer three months at the service schools is not feasible, but I cannot subscribe to that defeatist idea. If we are serious about this matter, then Congress will pass the legislation that will make it possible, recompensing the civilian officers financially and making it a duty for business and industry to cooperate. Congress will have to protect the interest of the individual, and the people must demand that their representatives support appropriations that will enable the Army to carry out this vital duty to the country.

The next important step in the training plan I am proposing is to provide a constant flow of new officers into the civilian components. First, instead of getting a commission upon graduation, an ROTC student will by law be required to enlist for six months’ training as an officer candidate, at the end of which time he will be commissioned if found to be suitable. Those not commissioned will become noncommissioned officers of the reserve or National Guard and will sign up for five years’ service. Associated in the same training will be candidates from other sources, enlisted men of the various components or CMTC. The training will be given at training centers to be established. There the candidates will be organized into divisions and will perform duties from private to lieutenant or even captain during the six months.

The candidate will be rotated in grade as often as possible so as to learn the duties of every noncommissioned officer and subaltern. He will remain a private during the entire period but will have the authority of any office that he may hold. The higher grades in the division will be filled by Regular Army officers and by reserve and National Guard officers called to active duty with their consent. The whole training will be under the direction of the Department of the Army. Service in the regiment and the division is the best school to teach a man his war duties, and it offers the best opportunity for culling out the men who should not be commissioned.

The success of this training will depend upon the vision of the program and the enthusiasm with which it is executed. West Point and Annapolis are schools that inspire their students, and these divisional training centers can do likewise. In Hawaii, during the war, I caused to be established the Pacific Combat Training Center, at which over 300,000 men were given battlefield training under fire. Simultaneously we had a swimming school which taught 157,000 men how to swim. All of this training was enthusiastically received. For once there was no griping; on the contrary, many letters came back from the front from soldiers who said that they owed their lives to the training which had been given. By this method we can be sure that only men are commissioned who have a talent for the Army and who are capable of leading their units in the reserves or National Guard.

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So MUCH for the officers. I now suggest a new radical plan for training the much needed specialist for all units for mobilization.

Concurrently with the training centers for officer candidates, the Army shall establish technical and vocational schools to train the specialists. Courses in motor maintenance, radar, radio, electronics, welding, telephone construction and operation, photography, cargo handling, stenography, typing, cooking, supply — to mention only a few of the needs — will be given by civilian instructors under Army supervision. These courses will be open to any American youth of good character and will be of variable duration, depending on the course followed, but in no case longer than six months. Attendance at these schools will be entirely voluntary, and the only obligation demanded will be five years’ enlistment in either the organized reserves or the National Guard upon entering the course.

Such training centers would be of inestimable benefit to the nation in providing the needed war specialists, and at the same time would give thousands of underprivileged young men a chance to prepare themselves to earn a good living, and would furnish industry and business with men of skill. I think that we would be surprised at the number of men who would attend. In Hawaii, I often broached this question to groups of soldiers, having in mind the establishment of schools of this kind to take up possible post-war unemployment, and invariably the reply would be: “Why, General, that is just what I would need.”

Once such a program got under way, I venture to say that industry would be clamoring for its graduates because they would be trained and in a sense would have had their apprenticeship experience. I do not believe that there would be any objection from labor as a whole, because it would be in the interest of the unions to have as many skilled men as possible. We have everything at our disposal in the country — extensive military camps used during the war, equipment of every kind that could not be reproduced for billions, all ready to be put to intelligent use. Their operation would be a godsend to many a youth anxious to learn, and simultaneously would further national preparedness. All that is needed to get started is the money and the drive.

Now for the cost. Universal military training aims to train a million youths a year at a cost approximately of a billion dollars annually. This is a tentative estimate. If, however, the Army will concentrate on the training of officers, noncommissioned officers, and specialists — who are the real heart of the Army — it will not be necessary to have anything like a million men under training. Accurate figures are not available, but a total of 300,000 men — of whom the majority will be the volunteer specialists — in the proposed training establishments will be a maximum.

If, then, the men under instruction are restricted to pay of $25 per month in addition to shelter, meals, clothing, and hospital care, the budget should not exceed three or four hundred million dollars. One principle should be adhered to: most of the money should be spent for training and not for pay, which as a rule consumes the largest part of any Army budget. While under instruction, the individual should have a temporary prolongation of his former status, whether it be ROTC student, enlisted man, or civilian, so that the government may not incur additional legal responsibilities, as would be the case with universal military training.

Aside from all the considerations of cost, my plan would give the nation greater security and a more efficient military establishment. It would advance preparedness and would remedy to a large extent deficiencies which resulted in painful experiences in the last war.

It cannot be said too often that the training of the individual soldier is relatively simple compared with that of the officer and the noncommissioned officer and specialist. But the word “trained” must have a meaning and a standard. Those charged with the selection of officers should always be guided by the query: “Has this man the knowledge and character to lead my son in battle?” If he has, then there is no doubt that he should be commissioned.

The Army has a most difficult role vis-a-vis the public in its efforts to maintain any sort of preparedness. It works intelligently and unremittingly to get the most value out of the funds appropriated by Congress and out of the material at its disposal, often with little moral support from the people.

The people are slowly beginning to realize, however, that the Army goes into action only when diplomacy fails, and in consequence it must be ready and prepared. The Army never draws the country into war, but it is the agency of the government that gets the country out of war and back on the road to peace. When negotiations between the State Department and the Empire of Japan failed, the Secretary of State said with disturbing finality, “It is now up to the Army and Navy.”

Nothing can be clearer than the necessity for the people to give the Army full support in its efforts to train the civilian components in time of peace. From past experience I am convinced that our major peacetime effort should be placed on the training of the officer, noncommissioned officer, and specialist.