Nation: Humanizing the U.S. Military

(6 of 10)

not train on weekends, and they wear their hair longer than at almost any other Army post. "I've observed since World War II," says Tolson, "that there is no connection between the length of a man's hair and his bravery."

The most innovative idea at Bragg is its enlightened approach to a particularly contemporary problem of the modern army: drug addiction. It has been standard practice in the Army to simply get rid of addicts by booting them out on a dishonorable discharge. That shifted the problem to the larger society. But Tolson decided that the Army was as prepared to help them as anyone else. Any junkie can now walk into special wards at Bragg's medical facility, announce that "I'm hooked−help me," and no disciplinary action is taken.

The emphasis in the rehabilitation program is on a lot of rapping with psychiatrists and fellow addicts. As in some civilian programs, methadone is used to help heroin addicts through the withdrawal period and satisfy their chemical needs. But the most dramatic technique is the "shoot-up" where the more serious addicts inject themselves or each other with a nausea-producing liquid. The shooting-up takes place in a crash pad of pulsating lights, acid-rock stereo, Day-Glo and even antiwar posters. The patients first smoke joints that taste like marijuana but are not, then inject themselves with needles. After the pleasant rush, they vomit into plastic bags for up to four hours. "It ain't worth it, goddam, it ain't worth it," one paratrooper repeated over and over after one recent injection.

Time Off for Overtime

The Air Force takes a more relaxed attitude toward all of the talk about humanizing military life, claiming, with some justification, that the interdependence of officer-pilots, enlisted crews and mechanics has long promoted an informal closeness. "There's no saluting in the flight line," observes a mechanic at Randolph Air Force Base. Indeed, enlisted personnel have normally lived in two-or three-man rooms since the 1950s, and their technical expertise has earned them better treatment than in other services. Major General Frank M. Madsen Jr., commander of Keesler Air Force Base, discloses that he has three enlisted men who report any ill treatment of airmen directly to him. "Their identity," he says, "is known only to me, themselves and to God."

Nevertheless, Lieut. General Robert J. Dixon, the Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, found it necessary last week to jump on the bandwagon. At a Pentagon press conference he summed up some of the new policies being pushed by his boss, Chief of Staff General John Ryan. They include reducing inspections, granting men time off in exchange for overtime work, giving airmen more time to get their families settled when they change stations.

Even as they modernize, demilitarize and humanize, the services find some imposing statistics mining the paths toward a truly all-volunteer military. The Army's situation is the most acute, since it bears the burden of the most dangerous duty in combat and the most boring chores when it is not fighting. The Army figures that it can get along with an all-volunteer force of 900,000 men (it now has 1,200,000). This will require about 26,000 enlistees each month. Half of these should be re-enlistments and