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That would require roughly doubling the current re-enlistment and true volunteer rates. The Army now gets about 13,000 volunteers a month, but it estimates that 7,000 of these would not be enlisting if there were no draft to pressure them. Turning those figures about will be difficult.
To do so, all the services are seeking higher pay for their men, even though the pressures on the Defense Department budget already are extreme. But it is also true, as the Army's Colonel Robert Montague notes, that "you just can't go out in the street and buy people." Thus the services are also trying to upgrade their training programs to make more of their vocations interesting to career men and more readily transferable to civilian jobs for those who leave. Partly because it is less costly, the current emphasis is simply on making military life more comfortable.
The Making of a C.N.O.
Does all of this new concern for their men mean that the services are going soft and that the discipline necessary for effectiveness in combat is breaking down? The Navy's Bud Zumwalt does not think so. "The role of tradition in the Navy is to contribute to good order and discipline and pride in the organization," he says. "But I have yet to be shown how neatly trimmed beards and sideburns or neatly shaped Afro haircuts contribute to military delinquency or detract from a ship's ability to carry out its combat function."
Zumwalt found firsthand in Viet Nam that some relaxation of trivia can help, not hinder, a fighting force. He commanded a "brown-water" Navy, assigned to check Communist infiltration and shipping, and his men frequently worked hatless, bare-chested and bearded. Navy regs banned beer on all vessels, so Zumwalt brought six-packs to the crews himself. He got around the ban by inviting the men to step off the ships, generally onto a barge, to consume the brew. His tour as Commander of U.S. Naval Forces in Viet Nam was a big success, a factor in his elevation over 35 senior admirals to C.N.O.
Although he speaks softly and comes on in a deceptively low key, Zumwalt is a sharp logician whose mind seems to race many knots faster than those of most of his fellow officers. Yet he is "the only senior officer I know who always apologizes when he interrupts anyone, no matter how low their rank," notes one colleague. A combination of compassion and extreme competence has made Zumwalt the Navy's most popular leader since World War II; as long ago as 15 years, friends were predicting that he would wind up in the big C.N.O.'s house in Washington. At a recent annual meeting of the Navy's "tailhookers," pilots who have made at least one carrier landing, no one was sure how the black-shoe, surface Admiral would be received. But they stood on chairs and screamed: "We want The Big Z, Big Z, Big Z."
The Navy almost missed him. As war approached in 1939, Zumwalt was determined to attend West Point and later become a doctor. His father had served as an Army physician in World War I and would do so again in World War II. But an Irish friend of his father's came to their home in Tulare, Calif., raved about the sea, and "told a lot of wonderful stories about life on whaling shipsâand that did it." Zumwalt decided on Annapolis, where he starred in