Physical standards. Held at the university of kansas. This is about an hour and 15 minutes. We will begin or second session on the problem of morale and in order to mix up the format a little bit, we are having this time a series of short presentations, short talks by three participants. And then they will pullover chairs and sit in front to ask them questions. Our third participant jacquelyn rip who is an associate professor tried to leave from harrisburg yesterday morning on a 7 00 a. M. Flight and it turned out the earliest she would be able to come in because of a problem with the plane was 2 00 a. M. Yesterday. Shes not here with us. We have instead margory who is a graduate student and is going to read jackies paper. The questions will only be two the other two participants. Marjory is not going to try to answer questions for jackie. The speaker today, we begin with William Donnelly who is a senior historian. To be followed by eric flint who is the director of the u. S. Army museum at the joint base mccord and then finally jackie whits paper will be read. So ill welcome william. First ass federal Civil Servant i like to give the usual disclaimer that the opinions i express are not necessarily those of the secretary of the army, the chief of staff or anyone else in the department of the of the army. President johnson and the congress in june of 1967 decided to end almost all graduate school draft permits. Johnson deferred this decision in execution until july of 1968. And then from july of 1968 to july of 1972 109777 enlisted or were drafted into the aerrmy. This was 8. 2 of all male nonprior service skegzs uccessi the years. I have some slides to give you statistics. Theres no bullet points at all in this presentation. Prior to june of 1968 some College Graduates were answering the enlisted ranks, most notably oliver stone, but they were far outnumbered by men with some college and by High School Graduates as you can see there in the two fiscal years before the fiscal years during the war ran from 1 july to 30 june. Not the same periods we have today. High School Graduates is the biggest one for both years. And this was a point of pride inside the defense department, particularly the army. This was the best enlisted force ever fielded to date. Now, when the draft deferment ended, they did back end calculations and they thought that about 130,000 College Graduates, this included people who had left college after getting a degree and were in the work force or getting their bachelors and now in graduate school, about 130,000 would become added to Selective Services in fiscal year 1969. This sofs mawas so many that th staff feared the fiscal year would consistent almost entirely of College Graduates and project 100,000 which the next presenter will give you more details about that program. Then in the aftermath of the tet offensive, the army staff entered into negotiations about how to deal with this influx. The office of the secretary of defense were a valuable National Resource, particularly the men who had degrees in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and things like operations analysis. And would race the valuable National Resource to end the combat arms. They wanted these people to go into occupational specialties directly related to their academic fields. The army staff had a very different idea. They pointed out no mos in the army required a college degree. So regular assignment system could spot them wherever the army felt they were best needed. They had two other reasons for wanting to use these people outside of stem related fields. One, we need many of these men to revitalize junior officer and junior noncommissioned officer leadership. And again, that is not dependent on what your degree is in. Second, and this surprised me when i found it, many of the Senior Officers in the army and senior civilians in the secretary and a lot of the feel great action officers thought that the current drop was immoral. That people who could get out of the draft were getting out of the draft and people who couldnt get out of the draft, they were going to vietnam. And it was only right that College Graduates who by definition were more fortunate in what their Life Experiences share some of those battlefield dangers. As a secretary of the general staff wrote in 1968, quote, someone has to fight, unquote. Now, eventually a compromise was brokered by the secretary of the army who had a silver star and purple heart from world war ii and it came with four major parts. One, a new process would be instituted to screen drooafteeso match your academic skills. Men would be allowed to enlist in the regular army for specific mos. Third, men remaining after this would be placed into the regular assignment process and basically are mos at that point and it was determined by how well you scored on various assessment tests inside the service. Finally, there would be an intensive effort to get these College Graduates to volunteer for officer candidate schools and for the noncommissioned officer candidate courses. Also better known as the shake and bake sergeants. Now, within osd and the army staff there was also concern about what these College Graduates would bring into the army. Specifically antiwar, antimilitary sentiment and then they would become a virus undermining discipline and morale. How did this turnout in the years between 1968 and 1972 . Here you can see it at the flood of College Graduates didnt happen. Project 100,000 outnumbers them. The reason theres no project 100,000 for fiscal year 72 is the program was canceled early in fiscal year 72. Now, the army came to the conclusion that the flood didnt occur for several reasons. One, for reasons outside the armys control, local draft boards did not target College Graduates. That was one thing that osd and the army thought might happen. Second, some of the expected did enlist in the navy and the air force. Third, and this was a very important factor, College Graduates were good at gaming the system and avoiding induction. The switch to the draft lottery in 1970 brought in fewer College Graduate inductees and pressed the reasons to enlist in the army to avoid the draft. Finally through 1972 reduced the need near draftees and the Nixon Administration wanted to reduce draft calls anyway. Now, here you can see the drafted enlisted as a percentage of the total enlisted College Graduate expressions. For the first three years, you can see the blue, the draftees dominate how they come into the army. Then it flips radically in the last year. Primarily i believe because the draft calls were so low and so infrequent in that last year. Now, this next slide shows how once the College Graduates progress through the junior pay grades, e1 through e5, private through sergeant, graduate degrees and then people with just undergraduate degrees, and you can see the big spike there in november of 1970. This data is based on what the army did at the educational level of its enlisted force. Interestingly i found no analysis within the army staff about what this might mean, what these figures might show or tell them about whats going on in the enlisted force. Now, the next slide, this shows the key concern of junior enlisted men. The white weapons infantry men, the same as mls 11 bravo, from 1965 to june of 1970. This data actually is a study related to the transition to the all volunteer course. Draftees used to get the u. S. Stamp for their Service Members for the regular army, and you can see that starting in 1967, and those are the calendar years, its very dangerous to be an 11 bravo draftee in vietnam. Now, the next slide is a little complicated, but its probably one assignment of the total enlisted College Graduates brought into the aermrmy. These are both draftees and enlisted. Priority one was what the army called wanted to be filled with a College Graduate. Some of the acronyms down there, men who volunteers for officer candidate school or enlisted for it. Csa stands for civilian acquired skills. They came in with skills that immediately translated and they were awarded the mls based on their skills such as 71 da ta legal clerks. A lot of lawyers drafted and wound up as legal clerks. And a lot of biologists went into that. Dapmu stands for department of the army preferred mls it required Armed Forces Qualification test such as 13 echo fire direction computer or 96 bravo Intelligence Analyst and men could be assigned that or they could actually enlist for it as well. Now, enlisted for an mos is men who went down to see the recruiting sergeant and signed up for three years for a very specific mls. Almost always and there are reams of figures for this, and i looked through all the reports, very, very few men enlist for one of the combat arms in these years. Now, at the far end you can see that the army was very successful in getting men to volunteer for ocs. Fiscal year 69 is the first year in the war in which a majority of ocs commissions go to College Graduates. Even when the numbers start falling of people who volunteer from among College Graduates, because they make other changes in the ocs program, College Graduates remain the majority of people get ocs commissions for the rest of the war. Now, the next slide, prior to two were mlss made through the normal computer driven assignment system in washington and were considered ones, quote, which challenged the leadership or Technical Capability of the average College Graduate. Now, across the bottom there, combat arms, those are the infantry arm or, Field Artillery and combat engineer mlss and broken out separately you can see the College Graduates who were assigned the college bravo. The 71 series, those are all the radar o rileys, the clerks. The 76 are the want to be binders. The 91 series are medical care and treatment mos. That does include combat aid men. The 95 series is Law Enforcement mos. I always find that last spike in the last fiscal year in the 95 very interesting. I havent found anything that is a smoking gun, but i wonder if they were sending more College Graduates into Law Enforcement mos because of the deteriorating discipline within the force and they thought they might be more reliable as mps and cid agents and things like that. You can see from the combat arms in the 11 bravo columns that for the first three years the army was fairly successful in getting a good number of College Graduates into the combat arms there by implementing the belief that, quote, the smartest people available should be squad leaders to help men survive, unquote. They wrote that on a report about what osd was thinking about doing and johnson who was the chief of staff from 64 to year 68 but was against the concept of using these men. I didnt put this auto a slide because i was busy enough, but College Graduate input to the shake and bake courses was 18. 1 in fiscal year 69, 8 in fit cal year 70 and then the program was canceled. Now, what was some of the effects on the army of increased College Graduation succession after tet . It was fulfilling mls in requiring good academic skills. There was a noticeable attrition rate and a lot of individual training courses that require those sort of skills and these men generally performed better in units. Theres no statistical study i found, but anecdotally thats what people are saying within the army. Second, and this is all anecdotal, they increased the number of junior leaders that the army defined as high quality, ocs and shake and bake ncos. The consensus among Senior Officers and then captain Barry Mccaffrey who went to vietnam and did a study of combat arms, what was going on in units, most Junior Officers and mcos were technically competent. They were trained in schools but lacked leadership for the complex situations they encountered after tet. Outside combat as though allison was talking about, when youre in the rear or youre a combat unit and youre not in the field a lot, those create lots of different situations that werent covered in the course of these. The consensus was that while most did bring antiwar sentiments into the service, only a handful ever acted on them. The army ran a very vigorous Counter Intelligence operation against the dissidents and resis tense in the army and theres summaries. I havent seen actual field reports, but summaries to the chief of staff never mentioned College Graduates as a source of problem for this. General william hughess prediction, if we dont engage these bright young men in responsible job they would be planning a right. Did not come to pass. Thats a good topic for the question and answer to tease out some of the reasons why that didnt come to pass with these men. Finally the army staffs objective of extending the worst cost beyond the working class but not to the extent i think it desires, but people like bruce pal mer, jr. , and some of the field officers. Earlier we heard about world war ii and korean war generation and the gap between them and the vietnam people. Part of it is they came out of a world war ii experience particularly where it was the whole nation was engaged in the war. They felt it should be the same way in the vietnam. At least some of them felt that way. Theres not enough of the College Graduates to overturn any kind of consensus that this is still a working class war on the ground in the combat arms. So that is still true. The work is not challenged at all, but i think it does require a slight modification that n that in the posttet years there are more tim obriens out there in the bush than we think there were in those years. Id like to close with a somewhat larger question. Was there an unintended effect on American Society by ending the draft deferments . Did bringing 109,777 College Graduates into the army as well as an even greater number of College Graduates who successfully avoided getting into the army or being brought into the army help accelerate world weariness and antiwar sentiments in the year after tet . One general thought so at least after the war. The armys vice chief from 1968 to 1972, and by the way, had a son who got a high number in the draft lottery, so he was never drafted, he came to believe that, quote, the real demonstrations against the war didnt start coming until they started drafting upper middle class whites and blacks, unquote. As a matter of fact, he said that in an interview to paul griffin when he was researching the volunteer force book. I would like to close with asking perhaps thats one of the other questions we can consider today. Did bringing all these men into the army, and by the way, pretty much all of them went into the army. Only a few went into the marine corp actually help accelerate other changes in the greater American Society . Thank you. [ applause ] im eric flint. Im the director of the funding museum and i get to follow bill with a little bit of explanation about he mentioned something called project 100,000. A quick show of hands, who knows what project 100,000 is . Okay. So ill endeavor to kind of not burn you down too much. I had a slight presentation, but it was only existing solely of the smiling picture of Robert Mcnamara. But after some of my conversations last night, i decided that was just going to be a bad idea. One thing from the conversations last night, i did realize that we have some of my colleagues who are going to be touching on other elements of this program, so what im going to do is give you a wave top with some physical background to set the stage for further discussion and for the remainder of the day. So background. In august of 1966 at the same time as americas manpower requirements, vietnam were rapidly expanding, defense secretary Robert Mcnamara was speaking to the annual meeting of veterans of foreign wars and in that speech he introduced a new program that in his own words would uplift, quote, americas subterranean core by providing those young men who have previously been disqualified training, benefits and opportunities of military service. The project was titled project 100,000 and it was maeeant to ba win win for the United States military and American Society as a whole. The Program Officially began in october, 1966, and ran through december, 1971. And the program was a disaster. The destruction that it ultimate ultimate ultimately brought on the Armed Services and the individuals who were unfairly inducted on the lines of those who were either in danger or lost their lives because of the use of substandard men in military service, particularly in combat service. So how did this program come about . Why was such a disastrous idea made policy . Well, mcnamara as an integral part of Lyndon Johnsons team, the program was designed as a part of lbjs greater war on poverty, his Great Society program. In the early mid 1960s, approximately 1. 8 million men came of draft age every year. Of that number, about 600,000 were deemed unfit for military service due to mental or physical reasons. The split there was about 50 50. You had 300,000 mental, 300,000 fi physical disqualifications. Is it of those 300,000 who were dis kwaul disqualified for mental reasons there were men who possessed Innate Intelligence but yet their poverty prevented them from gaining the education to qualify for military service. In his 1966 speech, mcnamara said these young men had, quote, not had the opportunity to earn their fair share of this nations abundance. And in true military service, these disadvantaged men could return to their communities with skills and experience and by extension better those depressed and marginalized communities. The road to hell paved with good intentions i think keeps coming to mind. The goal the goal of project 100,000 was to in duct annually through voluntary or compulsory means 100,000, hence the title, previously disqualified men into the military. Each branch was a percentage of men from this program, what officially became known as new standards men, another marvelous euphemism. The army received a bulk of new standards men followed closely by the United States marine corps, believe it or not, even the air force and navy were required to take a certain percentage of new standards men as well. What were these new standards . For the purposes of induction classification, the military has five mental categories ranging from category 1, very high iq down to category 5, very low iq and category 3 being average iq. Throughout the late 1950s and 60s, the tests the military adopted, the military services were able to be very selective. During this period, almost 50 of draft age men were disqualified, and so during this period the military was able to only in duct personnel from the top three mental categories. Under project 100,000 however large numbers of category 4 were now eligible and available for military service. This meant men who scored between tenth and 30th percentile on the Armed Forces Qualifying test could now be inducted into service. How did the induction of low iq men impact manpower . The simple answer is it had a positive effect on manpower. It provided the bodies needed for growing requirements in vietnam. In total, between 1966 and 1971, 354,000 new standards men were inducted and served. Of that, 47 were but did the program truly work as advertised . No, it didnt. In my opinion, the program was a failure. Id like to take a minute and throw some statistics to illustrate what the impact was on the armed forces, particularly army and marine corps. Gift of new standsmen had an iq of less than 85. 50 of new standards men came from the south, when compared to 28 of the general population that was in the military at that time came from the south. 40 of africanamerican compared to only 8 of the American Population at the time. 80 were College Dropouts and 40 of new standardsmen could only read below a sixth grade level with 20 reading below a fourth grade level. With their relatively short period, the negative impact of in ducting large numbers of low iq men started to become clear. For example, by 1968, the armys continental standard con art press cess sore to todays training and doctrine command, the organization responsible for training all soldiers including new standardsmen. They excluded 64 from the army 237 entry level military occupational specialties. After they continued to identify more problems with training new standardsmen, they started excludeing more and more new standards ento more and more mlss, to the point they were excluded from 74 of all entry level mlss. In short, the new standards men were a drain on resources. They were difficult to train. They took longer, had much lower completion rates. You already had overtaxed and structured staff from basic to individual mos training. They were not given Additional Resources and said, okay, youre getting new standards men and they will require more training and therefore we will give you more resources in terms of manpower and other resources to train these men. Theyre taking the instructor staffs having to work a lot harder with less result. When youre spending all your time, for those who have been that junior leader and spend all your time with that 10 of your troops your biggest problems, these instructors were spending all their time trying to train a small number of new soldiers, and theyre neglecting all the others. So project 100,000 was a failure. The negative consequences of utilizing this substandard manpower, especially during wartime was understood by military leaders. Again, i want to set the stage for this further discussion. I want to end with a sobering statistic. Of the 354,000 new standards men who were inducted between 1966 and 1971, 5,478 died on active duty, the majority of them in combat in vietnam. New standards men were twice as likely to die in combat as their higher iq comrades. Its also estimated over 20,000 of them, they had to extrapolate this, over 20,000 new standards men were also wounded in combat as well. On the whole the program was a failure. I hope this overview sets up for discussion once we get over it. [ applause ] i know you were all hoping for dr. Ware. Sorry about that. I will try to do her talk justice. The first thing she put on the set pages, this traditional disclaimer, this presentation presents her views and not the official position of the u. S. Army or u. S. Army war college. So, hello, everyone. Im so sorry i could not join this fantastic lineup today. I was struck with a turbo curse from the travel gods with no reasonable way to get to kansas today. I hope you will accept my sincerest regrets and hope i catch up with you at the society for history meeting in may or sometime in the future and happily answer questions with soemced and email. I want to use religion to examine the question of the m e morale and the relationship between morale and Public Opinion. I focus on first accounts of chaplains and the registry from the chaplainsy. Today, i want to ask two questions. One, how did religious support from agency at home and their first hand positions affect morale in vietnam. Second, how did military chaplains, especially those who served tours before this and after observe the changes in troops morale. The basic trends on the Public Opinion on the vietnam war are wellknown. As the war escalated, american casualties mounted and the public support for the war declined. The National Media played a Critical Role shaping Public Opinion about the war. When the National Media portrayed religious people in the war in vietnam especially after 67, its coverage was overwhelmingly about religious protests. Yelling antiwar chaplain and other prominent religions leaders spoke about it. And burning draft cards and resist stores and the couple of churches released increasingly critical statements about the war in vietnam. By the end of the 1960s, the base about vietnam among religious communities had taken on a sharp edge and revealed deep devised. By the late 1960s, even conservative organizations such as the Baptist Coalition advocated an end to the war. The cleaning support from their religious communities alongside their first hand experiences resulted in a significant deline among morale against chap lanes. Chap lanes were increasingly aware of religious dissent at home and waning chances for success. One chaplain recalled thinking, quote during that sprint of 1970 i knew what the National News back home could not tell. We were not winning this war, end quote. He chose to reassure soldiers even as he considered it hopeless. As gods emissary to the troops i found myself telling them everything would be all right but in my heart i knew everything wasnt or count be all right. End quote. Another chaplain late in the war concluded chaplains angst was existential. They believed quote a sincere approach to god could possibly help any man to solve his problems and live a better life, end quote. The war, though, made them feel useless and helpless. The more seriously it takes the role of a clergyman weighed more heavily on his own morale. The chaplain morale was critical not only for the chaplain personally but also for the unit. A demoralized ineffective chaplain could only damage the mission. They were not subject to draft because serving as a chaplain required dual credentialing both from the military and the religious agency whether they would serve in vietnam. After 1968, some chaplains were asked to tour for a second tour in vietnam. If a chaplain did not want to do so he could ask his agency to render him ineligible as a chaplain and because he was a member of the clergy, not subject to being drafted. Fewer than 12 chose this route. Some chaplains who chose to do a second tour in vietnam said their experiences in first person accounts and these perspectives are especially important for understanding change over time. Of the chaplains who completed tours in vietnam after tet reported observations about morale, morality and ethics. We are to look at it critically. They wrote for public audiences after the war and religious communities to make sense of the war. To place blame for loss and manage erratically shifting social landscape in the United States in the 1966 and 1970s. As the war went on, many chaplains became disillusioned towards soldiers apathy towards the religious and behavior whereas before their ministry and effectiveness, they were generally despondent. One wrote an official after action report filed in 1973 quote as the total number of men diminishes, the relative posty of those attended religious services becomes apparent, killing time, waiting out ones date of earliest return from overseas, a sense of boredom, et cetera all contribute to making the men apathetic and lackadaisical. Many of the men were religiously immature and grossly uninstructed. Unquote waterproof therefore quote failed to see any evidence or applicability of religious practices end quote. The chaplains official reports about a number of services conducted, counseling senses services were different from compared earlier in the war and spotty attendances and chaplains complained about the sinful and heednistic lifestyle of many soldiers in vietnam. One wrote the overwhelming of majority of men are either actively engaged in excessive drinking habits, prostitution or immersed in a continual inescapable blasphemy, profanity and renders them unfit of becoming in contact with the sacred and so they stay away in droves, end quote. The tenor of the war in americans views changed dramatically by the 1970s not only because of increased drug use by american servicemen and protests, also because the var nature of the war changed. Individual chaplains recall the profound effect these changes had on their ministries. A chaplain who did not want to leave his troops in 1967 recalled having quite a different attitude at the end of his second tour in 1970. Quote in 1967 i had returned to an america where patriotism was still somewhat in vogue. In 1970 i returned to an america where patriotism and americas young soldiers were increasingly held in disdain. End quote. Chaplain thomas confro identified a change in civil attitude of the war and soldiers as one of respectful support in 1960s to outright hostility in the early 1970s when quote drugs, antiwar sentiment and racial conflict affected the troops. He said his work as a chaplain was greatly affected by these changes as it went from positive ministry during his first war to a sometimes defensive ministry in the second, end quote. During his second tour he recalled he had to approach his ministry as one of immoral or improper acts rare than in couraging religious faith and positive action. Restricting. In the accounts and official record we see significant relevance in morale and declining support in the waning years of the war from religious communities and sense of hopelessness in the war effort. Chaplain also observed changes in morale among troops on the ground as the war went on. They noticed changes in morale, religious and philosophical changes of their soldiers. Thank you. [ applause ] justice us . Okay. Yall have to excuse me. Im used to the smh, where were always behind a table during the questions and answers. You have that feeling of exposure . Yes. Very much so. Can everyone hear me . Okay, good. I think it would be better if you took care of calling them. Jackie is available through twitter. If you have questions for her, we can relay them for you as well. Open to the audience, any questions. A basic question about manpower, especially after 68. What was preventing the u. S. From just inducting more soldiers . Talked about the shortage of soldiers in europe. Obviously, there was still a cold war mission. Why were these shortages . Was it fiscal or political . Any background would help me understand what youre talking about, especially after tet. Theres a political reason for it. We had enough qualified men, especially with the project 100 thousand lowered mental standards. There were plenty of men out there. Immediately after they touched on this, there was so many deferments, so many people were able to get out of it, this was deliberate, from my reading, the Johnson Administration did not want to tap into the reserve component. We had an norms reserve component. How it was utilized during vietnam and today is absolutely blackandwhite. There was a real ret sans to dip into that already existing resources. They wound up not really mobilizing any reserve units in sizable numbers and still small until after 1968, when they were forced to. Sorry i was a little distracted there. I was the wrong way. Would you rephrase your question . I was wondering about the dynamics that drove manpower levels especially with the u. S. Army because of the requirements in europe and escalation after 65 in vietnam. Why did jim will banks experience such shortages in europe in the 70s . Why couldnt the u. S. Department of defense figure out ways to bridge the gap . For jim, a third of his soldiers were in jail. Thats just effective leadership. In some ways, its deja vu all over again because the army had the same problem in the korean war. They could not keep combat in the theater at full strength. The congress and the president never gave the army a big enough authorized active strength to do everything it called upon the army to do in both wars. You find in the korean war they put crane soldiers in american units. Didnt do that during vietnam. The u. S. Army and vietnam were short in 66 and the infiltration system was the dominant way to get people into the country. The army never had enough bodies to do that and there were supposed to be pilots and the retention rate collapses and it creates a efficiency cycle. They try orttize vietnam and thats why jim has the size of the platoon he does and they dont have a big enough authorized strength to take care of everything theyre supposed to take care of. I dont think we should dissmis a medal of honor. Thats true. You ask at the end of where the consequences of College Graduates being part of the army. Do you think one of those consequences may have been the graduates commanded the post war narrative, clearly that post war narrative is eccentric and combat combat eccentric and the soldiers experience in vietnam. When you look at obrien, David Donovan and later on afterwards, larry hideman, it seems College Graduates were able to at least articulate their experiences in a way that have resonated with american Popular Culture . Is that one of the consequences those on the ground in vietnam that had the capacity to not just see and conceptualize what they see but write it down in a way we could consume . I would agree thats true. I would say thats a long tradition in the 20th century, the two world wars, many if not the most important narratives we refer to from veterans of those wars were from men either College Graduates or College Students who went into the service or after the war, like sledge, went to college and moved into that part of American Society. Theres a long tradition there. I didnt have enough time during my presentation but i reviewed a number of oral histories and you get men who didnt go to college as well as the College Graduates. I fiscal their experiences in vietnam are very much the same and one reason why the College Graduates dont become the vanguard of the resistance is that the troops dont need a vanguard of the republicans to show them whats wrong after tet. While the College Graduates may dominate the most popular wellknown narrative of previous combat experience, i dont think its radically differently from backgrounds of what other men experience in the war. My question is, do you think mcnamara really wanted to provide opportunities for lower iq soldiers . Right. Or do they just need bodies for victim . I put this out on twitter and some person said they think it started out that way, that he did really want to help they do really want to help but it changes as the war continues and they really do need to get more soldiers on the ground . I would say it originated from a tennessee desire for social betterment, studies done in the early 1960s as part of looking at the Great Society and impoverished communities and impoverished youths, in different ways. In 1964, it was one of the first times they came and said, hey, this is before the large scale commitment in vietnam, that the administration wanted to utilize, lower those standards to bring more people in, to give them the benefit of military service and return them to their communities and uplift those communities by extension. It was successfully fought off by military leadership who said, weve been down this road before. We utilized and had bad experience is in world war ii and korea with low iq soldiers. Essentially, they were able to resist it at that point. By the tame mcnamara announces project 100,000, to my knowledge never said this is really just another way to get bodies into vietnam, it always still had the veneer of a social program to Better Society as a whole. In reality you now get to leave a college basically families and young men who are better off. Youre able to leave them alone. You dont have to dip into the reserve component. In actuality it really was a program to funnel folks into vietnam. I think it started as a sincere belief. If i could just add, when you read the correspondence within the army staff, they never ever liked project 100,000. Just another reason to dislike mcnamara. Thats when you see College Graduates become a source of manpower, there are explicit requirements internally among the state of florida, these are the men we want, not the new standardsmen. We want college boys, as the drill sergeants would tell them. Several times they said, if you are going to keep giving us new standardsmen quotas we need access to other high quality manpower, as they define it and on several cases they were afraid they would get a flood of College Classes and you need to cut our new standards quota. And all through the Senior Leaders did not like the program and felt it was something foisted upon them. If you could stand up when you ask your question. Can i comment on the effect of the elites, manpower and especially project 100,000 . Do i need to elaborate on the elites . Rich guys . I think theyre wellknown. Were not going to name names. I guess, if you could clarify a little more, with the impact of elites, talking about the ability of people who are better off to avoid military service . If you read like best and brightest as an example, they put a lot of pressure on mcnamara and johnson keeping their kids out of war. And the manpower plan and especially project 100,000 is sort of id like your opinions on that. I dont know the specifics but it gets back to, in its implementation project 100,000 really went after the most vulnerable. I think thats why it became so egregious. In very short order everybody could see it. Throughout training nobody was supposed to know. You were not supposed to know who the new standards men were in your organization. I dont have data. An tech dote tally, every military man i served with knew who they were. It was clear who these folks were. As i said, the army did not like this program and felt it had been foisted upon them. In the army, many of the Senior Officers, world war ii generation had this discussion, about what a good well run war should be, that the nation should be all in. Theres a real feeling some of the college boys as field officers would call them, too, were putting one over. The antidote that sums this up, a physicist drafted out of the ph. D. Program actually got an mos related to physics in one of the laboratories and said, i am being wasted. Theyre not treating me as a scientist. Im just an errand boy but it was clipped out and sent to their division chief, for your information. On it, the full colonel wrote his area was high particle physics. Poor guy, what a hard time he is having at the army laboratory. Perhaps we can do fullspeed presentation with 180 grains, the weight of a bullet. It was a feeling a segment of america was putting one over on the lest fortunate people. Less. Like, meredith, i have a comment masquerading as a question and the question is for jackie witt, which gives me the floor. I would ask jackie, if you were here, could you think about like we were talking about the last panel and relate to your own scholarship about the chaplain experience and religiosity. We were talking in the last panel about the connections between america and life and whats happening on the ground in vietnam especially with enlisted soldiers. We enough ask that question about the officer core, chaplains core and officer core. There is something happening in American Life that may explain that the officer core during vietnam is becoming more explicitly religiously conservative, more evangelical and more fundamentalist. You can find johnson is a person who is having this experience at this moment, but so were younger soldiers who would become important, like john wickham. I wanted to meditate on our question about where we see officers telling stories or having the experience of a permissive group of enlisted soldiers in vietnam. Might that not only be colored by dollar own experiences of transformation and own perceptions about what is permissible, what is not, what is moral and not and acceptable and is not increasing ridgiosty. That ridgiosty only grew in the 1970s, at the moment theyre rereflecting on their experiences and what went wrong in vietnam. So maybe jackie can circle back around on that very long comment. Maybe something for us to think about as we go forward to connecting panels. Any questions . I have a question about the return of the new standards men to their communities. Did nib look at whether they in fact benefitted . Yes. I found the information is somewhat scattered. Hearings were held at the congressional level in the 1970s, some 1980s. The last one i found record of was 1990. The initial reports showed it was a failure. They went back and performed worse than their cohorts. However, the 1990 testimony i recently found a few days ago, says in the long run, they, as a cohort ultimately performed better. 51 of new standards men asked about their feelings of military experience, over 70 said it was positive and made them better. They were able to look at economic and ploiemployment dat before, they were less likely to be employed and now more likely. It looked like it didnt those men and their communities, we can assume they did better than their families did. By 1990, they did have a positive impact. It was about 10 years or 20 years after the cases, is it possible that data reflects their experiences after they left the military . Quite possibly. I dont know if their military experience set them up for ultimate success. I know if we look at the overall veteran experience in the 1970s and approximate 80s, maybe someone else can speak to this employability. I know there was an issue were experiencing now with veteran homelessness, im only tangentially aware it occurred in the 1970s and 80s, as the economy began improving, maybe their attitude towards the military and v. A. Benefits, probably a huge piece of it, more resources became available for them to utilize. I cant say. I dealt with some until 1989. Theyre still having their problems, at least the ones i knew. Thank you. An observation and then a question. The reason the reserves were not utilized more was, as you said the fact was a political one. There was tremendous opposition to the use of the reserves, especially during korea, many people who had served on active duty in world war ii and got called up for korea. Also the mobilizations for the berlin incident, berlin blockade, reserves were called up, and performed very poorly, as a generalization. There was also polarization for that and so the decision not to use the reserves followed. One of the consequences of that, the reserves were trying to avoid active service. Thats pretty well established. The question is, what we talked about religiosity and its impact onthe question is, what talked about religiosity and its impact the question is, what wed about religiosity and its impact the question is, what we talked about religiosity and its impact on morale im asking more, has there been any study on the impact of popular music on morale and the country as a whole. For example, green beret was number one in the charts in 1965 and number one overall, the year of 1965 according to billboard. Other examples would be strap doctors rag which covered every diverse affirmative available at the time. Where have all the flowers gone pete seeger wrote in 1955, was a major hit pretech. I havent looked at post tech. There seems to have been some role played particularly in youths. Youre leaving out we have to get out of this place. Thats funny. I actually was reading something just quite recently. Im fixing to die. We have to get out of this place. That was the most popular song among people for and actually against vietnam in vietnam. It was a reflection it was a reflection of Popular Culture. I mean, theyre americans and they will be influenced by whats going on back in the states. Theres a book about music of vietnam about three years ago in wisconsin, i think. Doug bradley and craig warner. What they do is take it on a year by year basis and track the most popular songs and relayed that to political and cultural views of sentiment and how it results in changes and attitudes of democracy and the weve got to get out of here. I guess this is sort of twopart. One is, can we be make doing much out of the distinction between grant and volunteers because of the second and third category motivated volunteers who were given some prom, whether faithful or not they might not be serving as 11 bravo for not if they volunteered. Viwhen i was there, the only people despised more than the psychiatrists were the chaplains by the troops because they kept looking to us for some sort of justification for what they were doing there, whether its right for your Mental Health or your spiritual health. I think both groups suffered because there was no way out of that for them. The army was very much aware of the power of the draft for enlistments in the army. They counted on it explicitly, all the way back to korea. People like tom lair and other people, College Graduates who enlisted to avoid being drafted in between the two wars. Speaking of the reserve components, Army National guard and army reserve recruiting publicity explicitly says, join us to avoid being drafted. This starts right after the korean war. And answer from jackie. Yes. The wonders of technology. Jackie says, the main turn towards religious and evangelical conservativism happens late in the war and due to difficulties of fulfilling rough quotas and main line protestants and black churches the main service of having any chaplain is more specific than having a flavor of chaplain. They do think the criminal behavior aspect late in the war is due to declining spirituality and morality. I have an answer for jennifer, too. Amazing. Jackie says the chaplains and officers arent immune from the conflicts and trends back at home. They say increasing distance between military virtue, even when it is imagined versus realized and society at large. The conservative chaplains who come to dominate the Chaplain Corps after the vietnam are especially concerned with trends on social effects on military personnel and clergy and bad behavior of the military. The military has a corrosive influence on virttuous young men. There is little difference between the ent and though saying military training will corrupt a virgin. You talked about the army command somewhat resistant to the new standards men and if the army command was really looking, excited about the College Graduate program, both were logical. Do you think there wassen any element of race that played into this when you say 40 were africanamerican and i imagine College Graduates were not 40 africanamerican. Was there a race resistance of the new standards men . I cant speak whether the resistance was racially based on behalf of the army command. It is clear that when you looked at local draft boards and once they dropped the iq requirements, youre drafting new standards men, that draft boards now are able to more readily induct people on the whole, disproportionately ethnic minorities. Whether it was deliberate racism on the parts of the army command but it was so inherent in our culture and society at the time, i dont believe you could discount it. Pardon me . President johnson talks about that. In other words, hes got a section where he verbally address this issue and raises that factor. The idea is to try and from the stated intent to raise the Africanamerican Community up. The language he uses with nwords and stuff its pretty clear. Theres no doubt. I quoted him, so it definitely has a racial component to it. I guess what im asking, you talked about the Army Commands resistance to the new standards men, they were resistant to the new standards program, were they resistant because it represented a large group of africanamericans coming into the force . Have to say at least from the level of the chief of staff and deputy chief of staff of personnel, if they felt that way they didnt leave it on paper. For them, it was a matter of more of combat effectiveness and utility more than race. After tet, the army at certain levels inside the army staff is very sensitive to this question of the perception of Racial Disparities in different fields. For example with College Graduates, the overwhelming majority of College Students getting into the army reserve and National Guard to avoid active duty are white. At one point, an assistant secretary of the army from manpower and affairs, should we do away with the draft a reserve component because its clearly a place information white people to hideout from the war . The army staff says, no, sir, we really need this to keep the National Reserve and army up and those have been the selling points since the ends of the korean war. This is also why some thought it was immoral to have student draft deferments because the majority of College Students using those to avoid active service were also white. It was a clear perception, this was a way for white kids not to have to go to vietnam. Mumuch theyre thinking otherwise and talking among themselves, we dont have a way to capture that. Also, in the pretech period, the army became very sensitive to the fact that minorities were becoming casualties at disproportionate rate to the percentages in the army. Yes. They do try to take steps to put more africanamericans in noncombat moss. I havent looked in any detail about it so i cant say how effective those efforts was. Theyre very sensitive to these issues post tech, whether moral point of view or Public Affairs part of it. Im not sure of what would be whats motivating their action. Since i couldnt get the first question answered, this is a completely different topic, wasnt the draft test itself racially biased and the whole assumption all africanamericans brought in on project 100,000 were lower iq and the proof was the test wasnt a test to prevent . Yes. Muhammad ali was the great example of that. Before they lowered the standards for project 100,000, his draft board in kentucky had brought him in two or three times, i forget which. He had been examined for military service and rejected because he had failed the mental category tests. I dont think its because muhammad ali has a very low iq, because the tests exactly how theyre designed. Then, when they lower the standards, the draft board calls them in again. This used to drive the army crazy. They had no control over Selective Service. They were out there on its own doing its own thing. Sometimes the army didnt appreciate what Selective Service was doing. When they brought ali in for his next one, the army sent a psychiatrist from the Surgeon Generals office to take the next test and he passed because they lowered the standards and they immediately set about his local board set about giving him the invitation from general hershey. Then, when he shows up at the armed forces and examination station thats when he refused to be inducted. Ali was never exactly in the army because he refused induction. Thank you very much for an excellent session. [ applause ] tonight, on the communicators. Well talk about the future of broadcast television and challenges they face with netflix and amazon and National Association of broadcasters president and ceo, gordon smith. Were there still as to the answer whats happening to journalism, were still reporting and still investigating and Still Holding people accountable. I think the future for broadcasting is not just one we will survive, we will thrive because the people need what we do even though they sometimes take for granted we will be there. We occupy what i describe as an irreplaceable in dispensable niche in communications. Watch the communicators tonight at 8 00 eastern cspan2. This month, a preview whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight, a look at the life and career of richard nixon. In 1974, he became the only chief in u. S. History to resign. Discussing his life and career and how they influenced his presidency and what ultimately led to his downfall. Mr. Farrell is the ah shore of Richard Nixons life and career. Join us every week and weekend on cspan3. This is a special edition of American History tv, a sample of history programs that airton American History tv. Lectures, artifacts, the civil war, oral histories, the president sy, and special event coverage about our nations history. Enjoy American History tv now and every weekend on cspan3. A former u. S. Army psychiatrist and a retired u. S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel who both served in vietnam now join historians to discuss the problem of low morale in the