Army & Navy – MORALE: Democracy or Mutiny

Still nursing a pulpy black eye after its noisy, unsoldierly demobilization rows, the Army got set for a bloody free-for-all. Next week a special board of six former officers and enlisted men* will begin hearings on the “caste system”—the hottest, toughest morale problem of all.

The Army had already made tentative attempts to break down some needless, irritating barriers between its officers and enlisted men. On Governors Island all restricted-area signs were removed, officers’ sections in movies were eliminated, officers and enlisted men ate in the same public restaurants. For 1948 use, the Army planned a new uniform of identical battle jackets and trousers for everyone.

But there was no lack of new incidents to feed the G.I. griping. At Washington’s War College the quartermaster sales store offered 25,000 pairs of nylons (at 87 cents a pair)—for “officers only.” New civil service application blanks asked for service “rank” or “rating” in five separate places.

Old Sores. Behind the week-to-week uproar was an enormous backlog of war-born complaints. Some of them were the product of ignorance or self-pity. Many of them did not apply in morale-proud combat outfits with first-line officers. But G.I.s remembered many a case of off-limits signs in rest areas, swank officers’ clubs, separate P.X.s, better food and better quarters for officers.

They protested that in the Army’s antique, creaking court machinery they were often defended by counsel with no knowledge of law, that sentences were unduly harsh; that an enlisted man was likely to get a stiff sentence for the same charge on which an officer would get off lightly, or go scot free.

Most Army officers agreed that injustices aplenty existed (76% of the officers had themselves come from the ranks). But they thought that much of it was the fault of individual incompetence and arrogance, which had given the whole officers’ corps a bad name.

Some also criticized the critics. Said Corregidor’s hero, General Jonathan Wainwright: “In my opinion, the Army should be reasonably democratic. At the same time, there has to be a gap between officers and enlisted men if there is to be discipline. . . . In some instances the stand of complaining G.I.s has been close to mutinous conduct. There critics are not typical American soldiers.”

* Head of the board: Lieut. General James H. Doolittle, now a vice president of Shell Union Oil Corp. Others: Robert Neville, former Mediterranean editor of Stars and Stripes; Lieut. General Troy H. Middleton, wartime commander of the 45th Division; Paratrooper Captain Adna H. Underhill; Medal of Honor Winner Jake W. Lindsey; onetime Air Forces Sergeant Meryll M. Frost, now a Dartmouth undergraduate.