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