National Defense: Problem of Morale

I’ll tell you what morale is. It is when a soldier thinks his army is the best in the world, his regiment the best in the army, his company the best in the regiment, his squad the best in the company, and that he himself is the best damn soldier-man in the outfit.

This definition is by the U.S. Army’s morale chief, Brigadier General James A. Ulio, and it describes a quality that a large part of the U.S. Army conspicuously has not got. Last week, when the news was broadcast that the Senate had passed and sent to the House a bill extending the service of the National Guard and draftees to two and a half years, around thousands of radios in thousands of tents from coast to coast angry soldiers growled, “Those obscenity obscenities in Washington! Obscenity the whole obscenity lot of them!”

Such words did not come from the whole Army by any means. Nor did they mean that the speakers were unwilling to defend their country. But they did mean that soldiers were exercising something more than their immemorial right to grouse. Those among them who like to talk big spoke darkly of wholesale desertions when their year was up. In one National Guard division, once reputed for its high morale, soldiers carried out a species of “V” campaign: they chalked “Ohio” on latrine walls and artillery pieces. “Ohio” meant “Over the Hill in October” (when the division’s year is up).

Another outfit used another word as response to almost any question: Snasu (“Situation normal: all screwed up”). For the low state of Army morale was merely brought into the open by the draft-extension bill. Its roots went back much further and ramified through perhaps two-thirds of the 1,531,800 men now under arms.

The third of the Army* not affected included notably:

> The 517,000 regulars, serving three-year enlistments, who have the pride of professionals.

> The Army Air Forces (90% enlisted regulars), engaged in the fascinating project of taking wing.

> The Army’s mechanized troops, learning the mastery of new tools and proud of their accomplishments.

> Negro regiments everywhere—whether draft or National Guard—all full of enthusiasm to become good soldiers.

> Texan outfits in many places, men of a fighting breed, not easily diverted from the joys of soldiering.

There were other exceptions, but the exceptions did not invalidate the general rule that the great bulk of civilian soldiers had little pride of outfit, little joy of service. Like many soldiers now canonized as heroes—men who fought in the Revolution and the Civil War—they wanted to go home. Prime reasons:

Urgency. Many a draftee, many a Guardsman called to service on the premise that the U.S. needed an Army in a world filled with aggression has now no sense of imminent national danger. (At a Mississippi camp last week uniformed men booed newsreel shots of Franklin Roosevelt and General George Marshall, cheered a thumbnail speech by Isolationist Senator Hiram Johnson.)

Boredom. To many an outfit, already through maneuvers, toughened physically and on the way to becoming a first-class fighting machine, the repetition of training with no immediate prospect of fighting has become monotonous. Bolstered by no feeling of being a hero, no sense of filling a breach in the nation’s dike, many a civilian soldier sees his Army only as a dull job at low pay.

Officers. In units which have West Pointers or other regulars as officers, morale is generally good, but 85% of the Army’s officers are Reservists or Guards men. Many of these are excellent, but a few poor officers can spoil the morale of a regiment, and there are more than a few officers in the Army who are dull, untrained,unfit as leaders — some over-tough, some over-soft, some uninterested, some lazy.

Food. One fault of poor officers is the fact that many outfits have a just complaint against Army food. When the food is procured by the Quartermaster Corps, it is the best that money can buy. When it reaches the mess table, at many a camp it is sloppy, monotonous, unappetizing even to hungry men. To be sure that food is well cooked is a responsibility of every commander, but many a commander has neglected the first fundamental of morale : good eating.

Equipment. In their early stages of training the civilian soldiers gladly played that a forked stick and a lath were a machine gun, that two wheels and a wooden barrel were an anti-tank gun; today they are tired of stage properties.

In spite of all these shortcomings, the first year’s training of the raw civilian army has not been wasted. All its soldiers have profited by physical conditioning, even clerks and haberdashers have become mile-eating marchers. But its mental conditioning is still incomplete.

Said an old army sergeant: “Give us a shooting war and there won’t be a morale problem.” For, once all officers and men become aware how much the new army still has to learn about the art of fighting, they will know they have a job to do. Last week the civilian soldier’s real complaint was that he had no worthwhile job to do.

* The Marine Corps, whose hallmark is morale, and the Navy, where morale has long been effortlessly achieved, had no such worries.