IT was not exactly an intimate rap session, as nearly 600 seamen, submariners and officers jammed a base theater at Pearl Harbor last week. But the pert WAVE spoke up boldly on behalf of two of her service friends with an unusual problem: "She works a day shift while her husband is on the night shift. Can't something be done?" The officer directed her to leave their names, and since that officer was none other than Admiral Elmo ("Bud") Zumwalt, Chief of Naval Operations and the U.S. Navy's uniformed boss, the pair will soon be on more compatible assignments.
Similar scenes could be observed elsewhere in the U.S. armed services:
≫ At Fort Benning, Ga., it was 0600−reveille hour−but no bugle sounded. So SP/4C Terry Reed dozed blissfully until 7 a.m. Reveille has gone out of style at Fort Benning; all a soldier need do is get to his first duty post on time.
≫ Wearing dungarees and a flag-striped crash helmet, a sailor reported for his day's duties at the Charleston Naval Station, S.C., by gunning his motorcycle up to the main gate.
≫ On the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy in the Mediterranean, Captain Ferdinand B. Koch conducted an electronic forum via the ship's closed-circuit TV, answering questions phoned to him from sailors below decks.
Those episodes are all part of a radical drive now under way in the U.S. armed forces to humanize military life. It was launched most effectively by the Navy, whose ships' horns still bark, "Now hear this! Now hear this!" but whose officers more and more seem to be saying to men of all ranks: "We hear you! We hear you!" The movement was given further impetus last week by new directives from the Army and Air Force that seek to make life in the service more bearable and attractive. It aims to meet at least in part the demands of a brighter, more restive generation of young Americans who reject the artificiality of make-work chores and spit-and-polish regimen, who want to know the why of orders and the wherefore of authority. Each officer has his own definition of the new mood, and not all approve of the change. For one who does, Major General Bernard W. Rogers, commander of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, it is simply to make everyone in his service "give a damn for the soldier."
A Matter of Survival
The reform of military life is not a luxury or even merely an idea whose time has come, mirroring the changes in the rest of U.S. society. It is a necessity. Largely because of the Viet Nam War, the prestige of the military is plummeting. Many servicemen, including cadets and midshipmen from West Point and Annapolis, try to hide their military connections when on leave among their peers. There is even a wig market in Annapolis where middies can acquire hirsute camouflage. Re-enlistment rates have dropped to their lowest levels since 1955. Barely 31% of servicemen of all ranks and branches now volunteer for a second term.
The mounting antimilitarism in the U.S. threatens even the extension of the draft, which Congress must debate next year. Top Pentagon officials expect the vote to be extremely close. Until they have time to effect all the reforms that might make service more appealing, they consider Selective Service the only weapon they have to maintain adequate manpower. Declares Secretary of