I volunteered for the Air Corps, so they put me in the Infantry. After basic training, I went to Officer's Candidate School. I emerged three months later with a commission and all the sterling qualities and admirable virtues that come with those magic little gold bars - the prophetic foresight, the military genius, the enormous vitality, the dauntless courage, the sound judgement, the superior leadership, the tremendous drive, the dogged perseverance, the lively intellect, the quick insight, the sympathetic understanding, the magnetic personality, the great imagination, the vast wisdom, and the pure nobility of soul. -- A Second Lieutenant

So far in this little opus l have taken a number of cracks at officers. Before the last period is down there will be more. Perhaps it is a compensatory mechanism on my part to restore the old ego for not having made the grade myself. But I like to think that I speak for hundreds of thousands o£ less articulate Gls who feel the way l do: that the whole system stinks! Some of my best friends were officers and good ones, too. And I believe that the officers who did their best will find little fault with what l shall say, but will, in their hearts, be inclined to agree with me.

The American Army is made up of reasonable and intelligent men for then most part. Moreover, it is a civilian and not a professional Army, and its ranks are filled with men drawn from all walks of life who bring with them their civilian talents, their civilian likes and dislikes, their civilian outlook.

Being reasonable and intelligent these men recognize that in order to win wars there must be discipline and leadership and will accept them, but, only if it is good discipline end good leadership.

But " the vast majority of our men hate the Army with a hate that is more bitter by far than any they ever felt for our enemies. The Army sowed the wind...

The fault lies not with the top military command. The Chief of $taff conceived a sound program for giving the best soldier in the world treatment demanded to preserve the American qualities that make him the best soldier. Its essence was to treat the soldier with respect as an individual.

The fault lies in the Army system which allows any small mind anywhere in the chain of command to destroy such a program. An abstraction like the dignity of man was particularly vulnerable and abhorrent to the small minds. The result was that the majority of American soldiers throughout their Army careers have been insulted by the mutilation of every principle of personal integrity for which most of them knew in their hearts they were fighting. Is it any wonder they apply political pressure to get out?" *

Every EM knows officers for whom he would go through hell. And every officer knows that there are EM who would provoke Job into committing murder. But there is something wrong with a system in which men are arbitrarily divided into rigid castes, where there is an in-group with almost omnipotent power and an out-group with almost nil rights.

Brig. General Herbert C. Holdridge, a West Pointer, stated the Army's "medieval caste system sets up insurmountable barriers between the officer aristocracy and the enlisted man ... an excellent breeding ground for totalitarianism." His suggested remedy: eliminate the distinction between enlisted men and officers by (1) making uniforms identical save for rank insignia, (2) revising the pay scale to eliminate special officer allowances and (3) having all personnel live and mess together. Institute courses in democracy emphasizing leading rather than "driving." General Holdridge continued, "The Army leadership is class-conscious, ultraconservative, absolutist," His suggested remedy: provide a clear channel of promotion from bottom to top, so that any recruit can achieve top rank. He said "the Army's present-day judicial system is not a system of justice at all, but a system of military discipline and punishment carried over from the days of Gustavus Adolphus by way of the British Army." His remedy: establish a new system of courts apart from the hierarchy of command, to "eliminate open and covert pressures with permanent judges and juries drawn from all ranks." **

* An Army sergeant who served overseas as a morale technician.

** Editor's Note: Touche et bravo!