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Boredom. To many an outfit, already through maneuvers, toughened physically and on the way to becoming a first-class fighting machine, the repetition of training with no immediate prospect of fighting has become monotonous. Bolstered by no feeling of being a hero, no sense of filling a breach in the nation's dike, many a civilian soldier sees his Army only as a dull job at low pay.
Officers. In units which have West Pointers or other regulars as officers, morale is generally good, but 85% of the Army's officers are Reservists or Guards men. Many of these are excellent, but a few poor officers can spoil the morale of a regiment, and there are more than a few officers in the Army who are dull, untrained, unfit as leaders — some over-tough, some over-soft, some uninterested, some lazy.
Food. One fault of poor officers is the fact that many outfits have a just complaint against Army food. When the food is procured by the Quartermaster Corps, it is the best that money can buy. When it reaches the mess table, at many a camp it is sloppy, monotonous, unappetizing even to hungry men. To be sure that food is well cooked is a responsibility of every commander, but many a commander has neglected the first fundamental of morale : good eating.
Equipment. In their early stages of training the civilian soldiers gladly played that a forked stick and a lath were a machine gun, that two wheels and a wooden barrel were an anti-tank gun; today they are tired of stage properties.
In spite of all these shortcomings, the first year's training of the raw civilian army has not been wasted. All its soldiers have profited by physical conditioning, even clerks and haberdashers have become mile-eating marchers. But its mental conditioning is still incomplete.
Said an old army sergeant: "Give us a shooting war and there won't be a morale problem." For, once all officers and men become aware how much the new army still has to learn about the art of fighting, they will know they have a job to do. Last week the civilian soldier's real complaint was that he had no worthwhile job to do.
* The Marine Corps, whose hallmark is morale, and the Navy, where morale has long been effortlessly achieved, had no such worries.