ARMED FORCES: Gently, Sergeant, Gently

Glowing with hangdog good cheer, like a saloon bouncer turned babysitter, the U.S. Army bravely launched itself, last week, into a kind of ordeal by politeness. The first men of the new peacetime draft began reporting for induction, and the ground forces, by fiat from the Highest Brass, were duty bound to welcome them with smiles.

The New Army draftees were not to be regarded as species of a low zoological order but as young citizens, each with a militant Mom poised and ready to holler outside a Congressman’s door. Furthermore, they were to be treated with patience, tolerance and understanding and were never to be subjected to the flash-burn of Old Army profanity.

As the first seven arrived by bus at Fort Dix, N.J., the Army seemed almost startled by its own Rotarian effusiveness. Cameras flashed, and a lieutenant colonel stepped forward to bid the thunderstruck youths a warm but manly welcome. Then noncoms, who seemed to have gone through some defanging process, took them gently in tow, and ordered them to write letters home.

After they were handed equipment and $230 worth of uniforms, a tailor took their jackets away, altered them, pressed them neatly and delivered them back with inconceivable politeness and promptness. They were told all about their eight-week training course (to prevent a feeling of strangeness); they were informed that the old “obstacle course” had been renamed the “confidence course” (for the benefit of their morale).

There were other improvements over the rude camp life of World War II. Food was better, mud and duckboards were missing, and television sets, golf courses and swimming pools were close at hand. But many an old soldier, eyeing the young inductees, had an idea that they would soon find themselves in the Same Old Army anyhow.

At Fort Benning, Ga., where the new philosophy of training was being experimentally used on Regular Army recruits, one young soldier tardily said: “The noncoms were polite when they first started off, but they hadda get rough or nothin’ would be done. If they didn’t act that way there would not be no Army.”