Army & Navy – Faces Up

In Atlantic City’s Ritz a beribboned young fighter pilot with the taut-strung face of his trade stood looking out of the window of his room. He wondered why a pilot with a combat career behind him and a restless uneasiness in his soul had been ordered to Atlantic City, of all places. He was not wounded. He was not consciously sick of anything but British flying weather.

He surveyed his room. Irving Berlin’s “Army” was never like this. There was no bedside telephone, but the room was carpeted and curtained. There were twin beds, easy chairs—all the comforts of the travel folders. He looked back on the day. He had been met at the train like a distinguished visitor. The lumpy overseas kit he had personally lugged from New York to Britain and back had been picked up and carried for him. He had been driven to the hotel, registered and roomed like a guest. He had heard someone say that there would be no formations, that the first bugler who sounded his trump would be exiled.

Welcome Committee. The lieutenant was, in fact, a guest of the Army. The most elaborate machinery ever devised lor refitting fighting men had begun to roll, and he was among the first to go through it. Developed by the Army Air Forces, the new program is called, in typically tongue-twisting Army language, the A.A.F. Redistribution Center. Two “stations,” at Miami Beach and Atlantic City, are in operation. Others are planned for the Midwest and the West Coast.

Redistribution is not to be confused with rehabilitation, which cares for the wounded and the warworn who need hospital treatment. Nor is it to be confused with reclassification, a harsh word in the Army, where it sometimes leads to demotion or discharge for incompetence.

Redistribution is concerned with getting the right men into the right jobs. In full swing, each Redistribution Station will be able to handle some 2,000 men at a time.

Under the old Army method of pushing people around on paper, too often men and jobs were mismated. A pilot still full of fight might find himself, restless and bored, in an instructor’s job. Another, “browned off” by the strain of too many combat missions, might better be given a ground assignment. Many an airman thought (and angrily said) that as a highly and expensively trained individual he should have some say in his future.

Old Home Week. The atmosphere at a Redistribution station is deliberately relaxed. It is more like a class reunion or a company convention where men from the field come home for a good time and a good talk. Men report to the station after a 20-day leave, are told briefly the purpose of their 15-day visit, assigned to a place in a temporary squadron and to a room. Officers and enlisted men have equivalent accommodations, two to a room, although in different hotels. At Atlantic City, offi cers go to the Ritz, enlisted men to the Ambassador, both newly refurbished and operated by the Army.

Between appointments for his informal interviews and examinations, a man may do as he likes. There is every possible recreation facility, from chess to deep-sea fishing. Sports activities are there if he wants them, but he can take them or leave them, just as he likes. For those too taut to ease off in a couple of weeks, the Center has special camps for solid rest.

Golf to Bridge. Local citizens’ committees have arranged for golf and riding (only activities for which there is any charge), for dances and rainy-day bridge games. There are even provisions to mend uniforms, bring war-scattered records and pay accounts up to date, provide low-cost quarters for family visitors.

A.A.F. Redistribution operates like a command, under the direct eye of General H. H. Arnold and Brigadier General James M. Bevans, the Assistant Chief of Air Staff for Personnel. As a token of its importance, Colonel Henry M. Bailey was assigned from the Air Staff to head the program.

Much of the detailed planning was done by men long experienced in civilian personnel work. Lieut. Colonel Lewis B. Cuyler, deputy commander and chief of planning, is a former personnel officer of the National City Bank of New York. Lieut. Colonel A. W. Neske, who whipped the plan into operational form, was in management engineering.

Personal Touch. Under the Redistribution program a man has a chance to speak for himself, some choice in the selection of his new assignment. General Arnold himself set the key for this personal consideration of the individual which has changed the old Army game of shuffling people like playing cards—face down. Said he: “We took him out of civilian life when his future was brightest . . . when he returns, we want his outlook and his chances for success to be just as brilliant.” In the approach and scope of the project, military men see more than a thoughtful scheme for fitting Air Forces men and jobs smoothly together. They see what may be a preview of demobilization. If the Redistribution Center can ease men into new military jobs they are glad to get, it may set the pattern for the right return of millions to civilian life.