The Ax Falls

The high command of the U.S. Army faced with foreboding the vital but unpleasant job of overhauling its officer list. Its particular problem last week was: how to persuade the U.S. press not to arouse public emotion over officers relieved of commands.

During this week three National Guard division commanders were relieved. These orders were news. Many another officer of lesser rank got local publicity when he was turned out, went home feeling disgraced. Extreme result of one such instance: a veteran lieutenant colonel of the New Jersey National Guard, father of two volunteer non-commissioned officers, went home and killed himself.

Regardless of whose feelings get hurt, and how deeply, the U.S. Army has to rid itself of officers who are incompetent, too old, or badly trained. It intends to continue transferring improperly assigned officers from combat commands to administrative work where they can do better. The process will continue for several months, reach far down into the second lieutenants before it is ended.

Well does the Army remember that, after General Pershing arrived in France, he had to ship 32 incompetent generals home. But this time the Army has to do the job in peacetime and under the jealous eyes of the public.

Almost every day Army orders carry the names of two or three field officers "retired at their own request." They are regulars, and the Army is worried least about them, because they are used to taking what comes, are not big news figures in their own communities. But among

National Guard and Reserve officers, the same process is going on. The Army would like to tell the folks at home that the relieved officers are not disgraced, that they are relieved because they are in the wrong jobs, that their patriotic service is appreciated and should be honored. So far, the Army has not been able to find a way. Said General George Catlett Marshall, Chief of Staff: ". . . The earmarking of an individual as a failure results in two reactions, both unfavorable to the corrective action taken. In the first place, the soldier is encouraged to be supercritical regarding his officers, and the American soldier is given to a critical attitude regarding even the best of officers. But what is more serious, the officers concerned are so stigmatized and branded . . . that their release amounts to a public humiliation and possibly the ruin of their civilian careers. This last result is most unfair and unjust. The majority of these officers have done their level best and the more quietly they can be eased out of the picture, the more just the procedure. The search for news stories results in the opposite direction."

So far, a higher percentage of regular generals have been relieved than National Guardsmen. How the ratio will change before the job is over, not even George Marshall knows. But in the lower ranks it is certain that the ax will swing most heavily on National Guard and Reserve officers, who were picked with less care, trained less intensively than young regulars. Best bet is that around 30% of the Army's citizen-officers will be sent home, to be replaced from the bottom by R.O.T.C. graduates and new second lieutenants from the Army's officers' schools.

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