WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE VETERANS?

THIRTEEN years ago the U.S. was at the peak of history's biggest demobilization of armed men. In a twelve-month period, no fewer than 10 million soldiers, sailors and marines charged through U.S. discharge centers, gleefully but uncertainly eyed themselves in civvies (which seemed ungainly, loose) and tried to pick up the tricky cadence of life in a competitive society. The homecoming was fraught with misgivings: never before had so many been away from normal life for so long. Could they ever catch up? Could they ever repair their "interrupted lives"?

Economist Sumner Slichter wrote that "in the opinion of many persons" millions (perhaps 8,000,000) would find no jobs in an economy which, like the service veterans, had to reconvert to peacetime production. Afraid that federal subsidies would lure idle vets to campus, the University of Chicago's Robert M. Hutchins warned that vets would breed "educational hobo jungles." Sociologist Willard Waller, recalling that World War I Veterans Hitler and Mussolini first recruited veterans, wrote ominously: "Veterans have written many a bloody page of history, and those pages have stood forever as a record of their days of anger."

By now, 15.3 million veterans of World War II, followed by 4,500,000 from Korea, have gone back into civilian life with hardly a ripple. They have, in fact, become the main stream, in many ways changing the course of U.S. life itself. Though only one in ten ever traded fire with the enemy, most grew to understand men and machines, brought back technical and supervisory proficiency that encouraged and staffed the postwar technological revolution--from TV repair shop to nuclear lab, from farm to Ford Motor Co. They coupled a broadened outlook with a conservative, down-to-earth manner that is reflected in the nation's growing calmness before cold-war threats. Many absorbed a sense of order, organization and responsibility that became the lifeblood of corporations, unions, colleges, etc.

Now an average 40 years of age, they are moving front and center to key posts of their companies, communities, professions. Two months ago Ohio Judge Potter Stewart, 43, a lieutenant aboard a Navy tanker in the North African invasion, became the World War II vets' third U.S. Supreme Court Justice, after Brennan and Harlan. (On the bench they sit with five veterans of World War I: eight of the nine Justices have seen wartime military service.)

Bonus in Advance

Why did the World War II and Korea transition go so smoothly? One key reason: the veterans found the way home paved with every comeback aid the nation could provide. The G.I. Bill of Rights and related laws offered what one vet calls a "bonus in advance," the most lavish assistance program in history (total Veterans Administration spending since 1946: $72 billion). Most important, the aid was given when and where it could help a man re-enter competitive society. U.S. Employment Service set up a nationwide job hunt. The VA guaranteed $50 billion worth of low-interest loans to help buy 5,700,000 homes, 73,000 farms, 237,000 small businesses. Riding a gravy train, 8,500,000 joined the "52-20 Club," by 1949 spent up to 52 weeks (average: 19) drawing $20 a week in special unemployment pay. Says Seattle Teacher Otto N. Larsen, 34, onetime B-29 instructor: "I think a lot of us got embarrassed over the loot we got from the Government."

No fewer than 7,800,000 World War II vets took on-job or school training, 2,200,000 of them in college. There they built no Hutchins "hobo jungles" but Quonset villages whence hard-working married vets set new high standards of academic achievement. "They knew how to move," says a Harvard dean, "and they moved." They more than doubled the number who, by prewar standards, would have been trained for the professions: 168,000 doctors and dentists, 105,000 lawyers, 93,000 social scientists and economists, 238,000 teachers, 440,000 engineers, 112,000 scientists.

"The veterans produced explosions of creative effort," says James F. Mathias, a 79th Division infantryman commissioned on the battlefield in Normandy, who came back to screen Yale's returning G.I.s and now helps screen candidates for the Guggenheim Foundation's annual awards. "The new talents are obvious in the sciences, but they are just as great in painting, music, writing and scholarship." In routine matters, they did still better. Veterans and their wives settled down and became the generation to cut the wartime divorce rate in half, raise the birth rate 26.2% in a decade, demand that schools teach their Johnnies how to read. Because unexpected millions of vets got to college, a college education became a near-necessity for their youngsters.

Great Leaps Forward

Aided by financing and free education, veterans quickly overtook nonvets their own age in earning power (from 15% behind in 1946 to 19.5% ahead in 1956). G.I. education boosted incomes enough, reckons the VA, to pay back its $14.5 billion cost in extra income taxes by 1970. Vets not only caught up on the old standard of U.S. living but became a mighty force in kicking off the postwar boom in consumer durables by founding the new suburbs, filling them with TV sets, home dryers, cars. Cartoonist Bill (Up Front) Mauldin, like many of his lesser-paid buddies, now treats himself to an air-conditioned car. "A few years of physical discomfort," he explains, "are a memorable experience." In final proof of their economic stability, veterans defaulted on only 0.8% of their Government-insured loans.

Across the U.S. last week, TIME correspondents found a big majority of veterans firmly convinced that they had caught up, certain that only the dead or disabled had suffered unrepaired damage from the biggest war's inevitable price. Most felt they had not only caught up, but taken a great leap forward. Atlanta C.P.A. Alvin E. Waldron Jr., who moved through Navy ranks and went to Georgia State College on the G.I. Bill, speaks in the thankful manner of many others: "If it hadn't been for the war, I'd probably be a truck driver today."

John Henebry, 40, Air Force Reserve major general, learned from commanding bombers in the Pacific enough to become the 26-year-old founder of Chicago's Skymotive, Inc. (executive aircraft servicers). Allen J. Lefferdink, 40, onetime Nebraska grocer boy, went to midshipman's school in 1942, captained subchaser No. 672 on Atlantic convoys, came out to build a Rocky Mountain empire of 42 companies in banking, insurance, a new luxury hotel. Sitting in his office under the old 672's flag, he says: "I run my businesses just like the Navy."

The net profit was by no means confined to the poor boy who made good; it also blessed many a well-to-do heir apparent. Among those whom service helped equip for heavy jobs waiting back home: Armour's President William Wood Prince (artillery captain), Ford's Vice President Benson Ford (Air Corps captain), IBM Boss Thomas Watson Jr. (Air Corps pilot). While an aircraft-carrier deck officer in three Pacific battles, Indiana's J. Irwin Miller, 49, gained the confidence it took to build the family owned Cummins Engine Co., Inc. into the largest U.S. maker of truck diesels. Says he: "I found out I could hold my own away from home."

Charles H. Percy, already making his young man's mark at Chicago's Bell & Howell Co. (cameras, optical equipment), went on duty in the Navy's purchasing offices, found that the torpedo sight his company was mass-producing for the Navy was useless. His blunt honesty in forcing fast cancellation of the contract so awed company officers that they later made him its president at age 29.

Quiet Dividends

Beyond specific skills and techniques, veterans have a certain sense of confidence for having worked at their generation's job, learned some of its toughest lessons as youngsters. Hollywood Writer-Director Richard (The Blackboard Jungle) Brooks, 46, a Marine rifleman in the Marianas campaign, tries to sum up one tough-minded discovery. "Before the war

I had a personal love for what is so badly described as 'the people,' "--he says, "but in the war I was completely disenchanted with the people in the mass, and by the same token developed a great respect for the individual. And I think I learned also the practical aspect of standing in line for something." Springfield (Mass.) Architect Francis Liberatori, 39, paratrooper (loist Airborne) who lost the use of both legs in Normandy, reflects something about a new quiet kind of patriotism: "I learned some useful things about men and about my country in the war. And those things I don't forget."

Too tough-minded to become easy optimists or cynics, too busy to be professional vets, the new generation of veterans flirted only briefly with a hundred or so new vet organizations set up at war's end. Only one in eight joined the American Legion (v. one out of three World War I vets); thanks to the "bonus in advance," they had very little to lobby for (1959 Veterans Administration budget: $5.2 billion). By fusing their talents, skills and energies into civilian life, the World War

II veterans became a major national asset instead of the oft-predicted liability. And as they move into the most productive period of their lives, the U.S. has every reason to expect that they will continue to pay unprecedented dividends.

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