That situation had to stop, and stop soon. Thus, as a first order of business, Schlesinger determined to 'rebuild deterrence' in our conventional forces in order to fight and win in Europe. That was his answer: Focus on Europe. Focus on stopping the Warsaw Pact, if it decided to start something. Focus on winning a war there, if we were called upon to fight one.
In Creighton Abrams and Bo Calloway, Schlesinger found effective partners.
Abrams became Army Chief in October 1972, well aware that the Army needed to intensify the work begun by his predecessor, General William Westmoreland, to remake itself in the wake of Vietnam. Abrams had just come from four years as the senior U.S. commander in Vietnam; he knew the Army in the field. He also had a justly deserved reputation as a soldier's general; he was not given to airs or to spit and polish, but to hard, tough soldiering and aggressive actions on the battlefield. Abrams had also been arguably the Army's most celebrated and successful tactical small-unit commander in World War II in Europe. He brought with him a spark, a steady hand, and impeccable integrity. When General Abrams talked about the Army to the public or to Congress, he did it with a candor and with an emotion born of genuine love.
General Abrams was to repeat his theme over and over again: 'You've got to know what influences me. We have paid, and paid, and paid again in blood and sacrifice for our unpreparedness. I don't want war, but I am appalled at the human cost that we've paid because we wouldn't prepare to fight.'
Together, Abrams, Schlesinger, and Calloway made the case to Congress for necessary resources. The national security interests in Europe were simply too high, they argued; the Europeans' regard for U.S. credibility was too low. Something had to be done
Part of that money went for manpower levels. The Army needed to operate with steady and predictable force levels, and needed to know it would have those levels for enough time to rebuild a credible force without having to argue for them each budget year. In a since-famous 'handshake' agreement, the Army got that. Schlesinger told Abrams, 'I am prepared to freeze your manpower at 785,000,' enough to set the total Army on a course that in the 1980s would reach to sixteen active and twelve National Guard divisions (it would remain at that level until after Desert Storm). This gave Abrams and the Army what it needed to blend together the active forces and Reserve components (National Guard and Army Reserves) into what came to be known as the Total Army Concept. Never again would the active forces be called upon to fight a war alone. The Reserve component — the force closest to the everyday fabric of American life, to the American people — would be fighting right along with them.
QUALITY
To rebuild the Army, however, meant finding the right people. Though it can't do without them, the Army is not weapons, or machines, or vehicles, or organizations, but is the quality of the personnel. The Army needed people who could train with all the fire, intelligence, and intensity of world-class athletes to fight on a battlefield that was more lethal and fast-moving than the leaders of World War II or Korea could possibly have imagined.
In rebuilding this foundation, the Army got off to a rocky start, yet to its credit, it did not wait for directives, nor did it get defensive and try to excuse its actions. The Army attacked its problems.
In the fall of 1968, as the Vietnam War had worn on, Army Chief Westmoreland commissioned a study to see if an all-volunteer Army could offset the growing morale and discipline problems. In the early 1970s, the Army leadership was already moving toward what they considered the inevitable ending of the draft. In 1971, to make service life more attractive to young Americans, they began Project VOLAR. It was a huge experiment, and it touched every facet of the Army's daily life, from haircuts to pass and leave policies, to reveille formations, to beer in barracks and mess halls, to the establishment of enlisted men's councils to give soldiers some say in the chain of command. In 1971, VOLAR adopted a slogan: The Army Wants to Join You. Barracks were even painted pastel colors.
In the main, the experiment didn't work. To attract young Americans, the Army had let itself slide into practices that could only fail. You can't have a 'touchy-feely' Army.
In making Army life 'nicer,' VOLAR compromised some of the Army's basic principles of discipline; it began to resemble a social club where everything was up for discussion. Something was very wrong if the Army had to compromise its basic identity in order to attract volunteers. The enlisted men's councils, for instance, did not so much give ordinary soldiers a voice in the halls of power as they undercut the legitimate chain of command. Unit commanders were predictably unenthusiastic about this and other 'reforms.'
The Army Wants to Join You…?
'God, I just want to vomit,' General Bruce Palmer, then Army vice chief of staff, announced when he heard that slogan.
It was not that they did not need good ideas to make service life more attractive, or that the Army culture did not need adjustment. It was just that those adjustments had to be made while simultaneously maintaining the good order and discipline necessary for the exacting duties of soldiers in combat. It was simply a case of too much too soon. The Army culture in the field was just not ready for such sweeping changes in such short order.
But some good came of all this tension. The professional Army learned quickly how to make necessary adjustments in discipline and equal opportunity without compromising readiness. And senior-level policy makers learned that overly directive and restrictive policies from Washington were likely to be met with failure in the field. The VOLAR experiment, though itself a failure, turned out to be a useful time of growth for the Army as an institution, and better prepared it for the time when the all-volunteer Army became law in 1972.
The Army moved on:
• It established major equal-opportunity policies, including work-shops, mandatory classes on prevention of sexual harassment, and ethnic sensitivity sessions to alert leaders to expected language and behavior.
• It established a zero-tolerance policy on drugs, with regular urinalysis drug testing. More and more soldiers came into the Army motivated and drug free — and these soldiers did not want to be around soldiers who used drugs. Peer pressure began to move soldier culture in a positive direction.
• Similar programs were instituted for alcohol abuse, and alcohol was no longer glamorized.
• Women were actively recruited, and in 1980, for the first time, women graduated from West Point.
• Weight-control programs were started. Passing physical-fitness tests became a part of officer and NCO fitness reports.
All these programs together created a winning and proud climate in the Army. Now soldiers not only felt like winners, they wanted you out of their outfit if you didn't feel the same way.
One hurdle still remained in the quality of the volunteers. The aim was relatively simple in concept, though hard to implement in practice: the smarter the better. On the new battlefield, you were going to need not just physical strength, but knowledge, resourcefulness, mental agility, and leadership. For its volunteer force, the Army's initial goal was 70 percent high school graduates. By 1974, Army recruiting was up to 55 percent high school graduates, but that still was not enough. Something was needed.
That something was Max Thurman.
Major General Max Thurman assumed command of the Recruiting Command in the summer of 1979. From his previous position on the Army staff, he'd come to three conclusions: First, the Army was having a hard time recruiting high school graduates. Second, the Army had a lot to offer to young people graduating from high school, if only they could get the word. And third, young Americans wanted to be challenged.
The Army is a big organization, he reasoned, a melting pot, like the nation it serves. Quality people joined up and stayed for many different motives, some of them utilitarian, some closer to the heart and soul.
You feel you're a winner if you're on a winning team, he thought, if you feel you're living in a climate where you can truly realize all of your potential. Here was the Army: a place of equal opportunity for everyone — men, women, white, black, Hispanic. There were opportunities to work with new, high-tech weapons systems; opportunities for better pay; and incentives, such as help for higher education. Why not broadcast them to the world?
Before assuming command, Thurman had done his homework. He'd gotten himself a tailor-made course in modern advertising and recruiting techniques from the Army's advertising agency. Soon after that, Recruiting
