Waiting

Behind the closed doors of the House Military Affairs Committee room, the Big Three of the U.S. Army hammered urgently at a well-worn fact: until Congress makes up its mind, U.S. military men are hog-tied.

Last week Secretary of War Patterson, Army Chief of Staff Eisenhower and A.A.F. Boss Spaatz unrolled the figures again. By July 1 this year, the Army will need 1,550,000 men for occupation forces, home defense and replacements. Within a year it will be cut to 1,070,000--a figure it must maintain until the need for occupation is over. Of the total Army strength, the Air Forces want 400,000.

To get and maintain an Army of that size, Patterson insisted, continuation of the draft was an absolute necessity. Demobilization had already drained off most of the old Army. He had promised to release all drafted men as they reached two years' service, beginning June 30. Though the total of volunteers had passed the 600,000 mark, the monthly rate was beginning to fall off. Without the spur of the draft, it would probably drop sharply. The Army could not afford to gamble; it needed the assurance of a constant manpower reservoir.

Down from Glory. There could be no doubt that the once-great U.S. military machine was sadly rickety. Ike Eisenhower had already found that not a single division in the U.S. was fully trained and equipped. Even the staff organization, which was ready in 1940 to guide the growth of the war-born Army, had come loose at the seams. Eisenhower's flat prediction: "It would take another year to establish the framework of an organization with an efficiency that would compare with what we had in 1940."

The Air Forces was slightly more optimistic, yet it still had not a single group ready for combat. The world-girdling A.T.C. was falling to pieces for lack of ground crews and proper maintenance.

Buried in Dust. Of the three services, only the Navy would say that it was ready for even limited action. Said Vice Admiral Forrest Sherman, Deputy C.N.O. for Operations : "Within two weeks we can put a fast carrier task force into action in the western Pacific and another simultaneously in the Atlantic . . . and expand them rapidly."

But though the Navy had been able in some part to avoid the Army manpower crisis, it had its own troubles. Its blueprint for a postwar Navy of 551,880 officers and men, with a 108,000-man Marine Corps, had been shelved by the Senate Naval Affairs Committee until after the atom-bomb tests. Its $6-billion budget for fiscal 1947 had been cut by $2 billion.

The backlog of other legislation gathering dust in Congress affected all the services equally. The proposed 20% pay boost was still just a proposal. In an election year, no one liked even to talk about universal military training. Plans for merger of the armed forces were stalemated. Congress was still thinking it all over.

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