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Show , .I JSekind tke Jdeadlined - one is pleased. Is it any wonder then that all the services have been complaining complain-ing that enlistments and re-enlistments are falling off? Who's anxious to answer those recruiting recruit-ing posters urging the armed forces' for a career when a contract con-tract signed in November is repudiated re-pudiated by Christmas? No one has the answer. Practically everyone agrees the Army has to replace its "Old Soldiers" with the "Push Button Boys." But there must be a better bet-ter way to do it than the way the Sergeant Johners have had it done to them. The American Legion, Veteran of Foreign Wars and Reserve Officers Of-ficers Association are lobbying for more humane treatment of the "Old Soldiers" as well as better use of the services' wasted I brains. More than a dozen Congressmen Con-gressmen and Senators are preparing pre-paring bills for straightening out the mess in military morale. 37, isn't old. Nor is there evidence evi-dence of such a technological revolution in the Army between the time he was re-enlisted and mustered out a few weeks later. The Army which re-enisted him in November, 1957, after sixteen years of war an peacetime service, serv-ice, said it didn't want him any more less than a month later on December 10. Nor is he the only one. Colonels, majors, captains, and lieutenants in all the services serv-ices are being busted like paper bags the same way to make room for the needed technicians and scientists. Some of the luckier officers have been given chances to substitute stripes for bars and braid to serve as sergeants and corporals in the ranks. One may even get Sergeant Johner's job as a military construction supervisor. super-visor. What we have always liked to think distinguished our country ifrom the others, especially the Russians, is that there are always al-ways some consideration of the human equation, even in the Pentagon. At the same time, Johner was jolted by the letter cancelling his re-enlistment, the services admitted they were using scientists, sci-entists, technicians, mathematical geniuses and philosophers as menial as deck swabbing and KP. What the Sergeant Johners are saying is that they will do whatever what-ever you call menial to let the scientists work where needed, but Washington often moves slowly. In the meantime, brass busted down to the ranks, the skilled and the unskilled who must man the billions we pour into new weapons are at a new low in military morale and no Maj. Gen. John Medaris, chief of the Army's Ballistic Missile Agency, is the kind of trained, able and dedicated military science sci-ence coordinator the services need more of. Yet, as Newsweek magazine warned recently, these scientists and technicians needed most are deserting the services for more attractive civilian jobs. Pressed in between this need and tight military budget and manpower man-power quotas, the services are being forced to favor the skilled over the unskilled and are releasing re-leasing its "Old Soldiers" for the "Push Button Boys." You can imagine what this is doing to military morale. This is not of immediate concern con-cern to Gen. Medaris, although it could be eventually. I spoke to him as he unfolded some of the challenging problems he and others face in the race to space. He was elated following the successful suc-cessful launching of the Army's artificial satellite and spoke of manned trips to the moon by 1970, of spaceships to Venus and Mars and of an answer to the eternal riddle of whether there is other life in the void. Suddenly we are all space conscious. con-scious. Congress is establishing an Outer Space Committee. The President can speak of spaceships space-ships to the moon without having his head examined. Even that monument to frustration the Pentagon which is often last to stir, is deeply committed to winning our newest frontier. Yet its frequent lapse into a cavalry and Indian frontier era mentality are astonishing and disturbing, even as it forges ahead. Take a letter I have received from a Sargeant First Class Matt Johner of North Dakota1 and now living in Riverside, New Jersey. He encloses a carefully compiled record of a most enviable and complete seventeen years in the Army of the United States from 1941 until a month ago. He also encloses a copy of a letter from the Dept. of the Army, signed by the Adjutant General, Major General Herbert Jones, who says the Army doesn't want him any ! more. The letter is cordial enough. It even reveals the Adjutant General's Gen-eral's own regret that it has to say what it does at all that "many soldiers heretofore acceptable ac-ceptable for military duty must be denied the opportunity to perform per-form military service . . . since standards of performance of duty have been raised" to meet the technological challenge and to make room for needed scientists. Sgt. Johner is the first to admit he hasn't an Einstein's IQ. But you don't have to cover the Pentagon Pen-tagon very long to realize he isn't alone. Well, of course, no one can completely argue that the race for space isn't a young man's game. But it's hard to agree with it fully, either. Sgt. Johner, at Army Privates Duane Dixon and Alan R. Denhalter of Salt Lake City recently completed ten weeks of packet platoon training under the Reserve Act program at Fort Knox, Ky. Under this system of training they will become tank crew members for the remainder of their six month tour of active duty. They received basic combat com-bat training at Fort Ord, Calif. Dixon, son of Mr. and Mrs. M. F. Dixon, 974 Prosperity Ave., and Denhalter, son of Mr. and Mrs. C. R. Denhalter, 686 North 12th West, are graduates of West High School. |