Thank volunteers who built today’s Army

By David W. Kuhns Sr., Northwest Guardian

Veterans Day is a time when most of us try to remember and honor those who fought in our nation’s wars. This year, I want to remember the veterans of a different struggle — a group that is rapidly disappearing from the Army.

I am talking about those last remaining veterans of the early days of the All Volunteer Army.

From the time the last draftees were inducted in December 1972 until the Army began to turn around in the 1980s was a tough time to serve in the Army. Senior leaders who entered the service in the ’50s and ’60s oversaw the rebuilding of the Army. But it was the young officers and enlisted Soldiers who took the unpopular step of volunteering in the ’70s — and then stayed in — who finally built the Army we are so proud of today.

To fully appreciate what these men and women did you have to understand how bad things were. Everyone hears extreme stories — like most war stories, you take them with a grain of salt. But the stories of the ’70s are mostly true.

Drugs were rampant in the Army. The smell of marijuana was as common in the barracks as it was in a college dormitory. And it wasn’t the behavior of just a few malcontents, either; more than a few NCOs and officers were guilty, as well. In Alaska, my battery first sergeant made a practice of patrolling around the barracks every spring, to pull up the marijuana that sprouted after a long winter of Soldiers throwing their seeds out the window.

Racial tension boiled over into actual violence in many parts of the Army. Barracks crime was rampant, too. In some areas, company commanders needed armed escorts to visit their barracks at night. In my unit the CQ carried a sawed off pool cue when he made his rounds, accompanied by a runner with a baseball bat.

The average volunteer in those days had dropped out of high school — or been thrown out — and fell into one of the lower categories of mental aptitude. While stories of judges telling criminals they could go to jail or volunteer for the Army were rarely true, desperation and dishonesty among recruiters meant that many who would have been disqualified for enlistment made it into uniform with sanitized or fraudulent records of their past.

It was pretty bad.

But it wasn’t ALL bad. There were still good people who stepped up to serve. They saw all the bad stuff, but saw more, too. They saw the vestiges of the traditions, history, teamwork and dedication that had made the American Army great in the past and recognized that these were things worth striving for in the future.

While the generals and political appointees at the top were getting the funding and support to make a better Army possible, there were others, down at the lowest levels of the hierarchy, who were making even more valuable contributions to turning things around.

There were platoon leaders and young captains who refused to give up. They looked for the best in their Soldiers and encouraged it. They raised their standards, when all around were finding reasons to compromise. They made the hard choices, took the less-traveled paths, because it was the right thing to do.

There were young Soldiers, too, who didn’t let themselves be sucked into the mess they saw around them. They took pride in themselves when doing so was not the popular thing to do. They “broke starch” and shined their boots, despite the disparaging stage whispers of “lifer dog” they heard. They worked at their jobs, too. They took their combat skills seriously and did the best they could to get better, every day. Gradually, they set examples that, day-by-day, became something for others to emulate, rather than make fun of.

They stuck it out. By the time of Desert Storm, when the nation took such pride in having an Army second to none in the world, those early volunteers were the battalion commanders and first sergeants and platoon sergeants who led the victory.

And now they are mostly gone. Those pioneers of the All Volunteer Army have mostly retired. Those who remain in the active force are sergeants major, and colonels, and general officers.

The Army today is a far cry from what it sank to 30 years ago. It is an Army of professionals — smart, well trained, well educated and dedicated to accomplishing the many missions that come their way. Soldiers can all take pride in the Army in which they serve.

They should honor those who fought a personal battle in that internal war of the ’70s, though. The victory those early volunteers won is what made this great Army today possible.