ARMY: Discipline Wanted

Through the swamp country of western Louisiana all last week, the highways rumbled with mud-stained Army trucks and lurching guns. The 400,000-odd men of the Second and Third Armies, weather-beaten, lean and good-humored, were on their way back to their posts from the biggest maneuvers any U.S. soldier had ever seen. They were headed for pay day and furloughs.

Their officers had less pleasant things to think about. Before they left they had heard what was wrong with the Army—from the Army’s severest critic and one of its best-informed: cave-eyed, earnest Lieut. General Lesley J. McNair. As he had the week before, he called the high-ranking officers of the Armies together, sat them down to listen. In the front row were the two Army commanders: bluff, burly Lieut. General Ben Lear of the Second, and stocky Lieut. General Walter Krueger of the Third. Next to them sat Lieut. General Delos Emmons, boss of the Army’s Combat Air Force.

General McNair wasted no time in repetitions. The time between the two mock battles had been too short to expect much improvement in leadership, reconnaissance or defense against aircraft. He patted the engineers on their sweaty backs for crack work in blowing up bridges (for the Second), building substitutes (for the Third), threw a bouquet at the Second Armored Division for its expert crossing of the Sabine River near the battle’s end.

But what impressed his officers most was one snort. Said General McNair:

“There is no question that many of the weaknesses developed in these maneuvers are repeated again and again for lack of discipline. … A commander who cannot develop proper discipline must be replaced.”

Newsmen who covered the maneuvers had seen plenty to corroborate the General’s assertion. They had seen it in the casual air of some officers in “battle.” They had seen it in the listlessness with which some soldiers carried out orders.

Some, who had once hoped to see a “democratic” Army, where officers and enlisted men were friends in a big happy family, looked with dismay on isolated instances of Army democracy: officers drinking off-duty with enlisted soldiers, officers soft and indecisive in their enforcement of quick, football-field obedience. There was no question about it: the U.S. Army, model 1941, had plenty of steam, but it lacked snap, dash, spit & polish.

To get discipline into its troops, the Army had a job ahead. Somehow the soldier had to be fired with pride in his job. Today, working away at his term of service and anxious to get out, the draftee who makes up most of the Army is a guy in a baggy, ill-fitting, dun-colored suit. If he gets no lift from his job, it is partly because civilians do not recognize him for what he is: a self-sacrificing server and defender of his country.

Another remedy for slack discipline is more within the Army’s power: a crack officers’ corps—the kind the Marines and Navy have, the kind regular Army outfits had before they were diluted with citizen soldiers. In Louisiana’s maneuvers its beginnings could be seen in the achievements of the engineers, in such outfits as the Armored Force and horse cavalry. It could also be seen indirectly in the low maneuver death record of the two armies (34 deaths in two weeks, three by natural causes, one suicide, the rest accidents).

The Army had already taken a decisive step toward improving discipline: bringing up 18,000 new officers (see col. 3) while it was weeding out the backward. In the armies of Ben Lear and Walter Krueger are more good officers than sluggards. Soldiers returning to posts from furlough are likely to find life different—and tougher.

This week another big slice of the armed forces, 359,000 troops of Lieut. General Hugh Drum’s First Army, went into eight-week battle maneuvers in the Carolinas. Canny Hugh Drum had had his test postponed from summer to fall to give more training. From afar he had a chance to scout the Louisiana battle. Now in October the Army’s center of self-criticism—General McNair’s GHQ staff—settles down in the Carolinas to see what they will see.