Pink Is for Learning

The scene at the U.S. Army's Mechanical and Technical training center at Fort Belvoir, Va. looked more like a visit to the fun house than serious military business. In a darkened classroom, a group of G.I.s peered blindly around trying to identify mysterious sounds, then put on infrared glasses and saw a jet plane overhead, a Jeep picking up a wounded man, an enemy infiltrator creeping toward them. In another room a model missile aircompressor system went whoomp, shooting a miniature missile ceilingward. In a third, a miniature carbon-dioxide plant emitted a cloud of gas and strewed bits of Dry Ice on the floor. The gadgets are just a few of the ingenious devices that Colonel Frank J. Polich has built to help 10,000 soldiers each year understand the increasingly complex jobs they must perform in the missile age.

When the lean, weathered colonel took command of the Army's "Mech and Tech" school four years ago, he found that there had been little change in training since the early days of World War II. "But there is 100 years', perhaps a thousand years', difference in terms of warfare," says Polich. At a time when five enlisted men are supposed to operate nuclear-armed battlefield missiles with the power of 1,000 World War II bombers, instructors were still droning through confusing, poorly illustrated lectures more likely to put students to sleep than turn them into well-trained technicians. Says Polich: "In the old days we used to hand the student 62 Ibs. of manuals and say, 'I'm gonna learn you to fix this.' " A reserve officer in the engineers, who saw action at Cassino (Bronze Star for clearing minefields) and decided to make soldiering a career, Polich abruptly discarded the old methods and set out to bring the twelve-week school up to date.

Bulldozers & Buses. Making liberal use of the big workshops at his disposal, Polich invented dozens of classroom de vices to illustrate the latest engineering and electrical developments for 32 courses. Instead of the standard black board sketches and one-dimensional charts, he mounted cutaway engines on huge boards, indicated power flow by beads, lights and liquids. A model of the fuel-injection system for diesel engines spouts real flames; the school also has a huge cutaway bulldozer that actually works with most of the moving parts exposed to view. "A chart of a missile system in static form would send a student back to Kentucky," says Polich. To help keep the boys awake during movies--and to make note taking easier--the school uses rear-view projectors that operate efficiently in well-lighted rooms. The movies are shown in extra-minute snatches, sandwiched between snappy discussion periods. "Normally," says Polich, "when a movie is over, you have to wake the student up to tell him what he has just learned."

Out in the field, the Army's familiar olive drab gives way to bright paint on all equipment used for demonstration. A bulldozer is a shocking pink; a grader is orange, a crane is red. Green rockets tell the students which piece of equipment to follow at each phase of the action. And the students do not watch from bleachers; they study from the windows of air-conditioned buses. Says Polich: "The one thing you learn in an outdoor bleacher is that rain and snow trickle through your clothing." These ideas may make training more expensive, and some oldtimers may complain that pink is too precious a color for this man's army, but Polich thinks it is well worth the expense. "If you allow a man to paint a bulldozer pink," he says, "it helps relieve him of the restrictions he feels the Army imposes on him, and he begins to think and have ideas."

From Unsatisfactory to Superior. This month at 47, Colonel Polich retires after 20 years of service; as a reservist and an engineer, bird colonel is about the highest peacetime rank he can achieve. His job at Fort Belvoir is completed. In four years he has raised Mech and Tech's efficiency rating from "unsatisfactory" to "superior," the military's top grade. The Army is gradually adopting some of his ideas in its other schools, and now Polich intends to employ his imaginative methods in civilian life by taking up one of the offers from the dozens of firms that have helped build his equipment and then visited his school to see how he uses it.

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