WHENCE MORE BODIES?
Rodell, Fred
Whence More Bodies? By FRED RODELL THE PROBLEM of military manpower grows grimmer and mesfcier. With D-Day presumably drawing near, with draft boards all over the country behind on their quotas...
...Bothersome Questions Then, there is the question of our Good Neighbors to the South, several of whom are "allies" of ours...
...And of course, even the obvious 4-F's, men with a really bum leg or bum arm or bum eye, could handle desk jobs...
...That the supply of bodies might interfere with the subsequent supply of arms or food is someone else's headache, not theirs...
...Presumably, judging from the record to date, they are not bothering the Army or the Navy or the President...
...When the pinch comes here in military manpower—as, without question, it has come, why should we not call on our vaunted Good Neighbors for a bit of help...
...Where are they to dig up all the extra bodies...
...I don't know the answers...
...Moreover, food and arms production is not their responsibility...
...It seems to me, too, that I remember the very recent disappointment of the Army at the low rate of enlistment in the WAC's, and the assertion that failure of more women to join up would mean the drafting of more men...
...In Washington there is the customary confusion—caused, as usual, by the President's past and present refusal to delegate to anyone else authority to make a clear-cut decision, and by his delay in announcing such a decision hypself...
...I'm only asking...
...the services want well over a million men before July...
...may come to wish the questions had been considered somewhat earlier...
...If more bodies are what we need to invade across the Channel, why shouldn't Brazil provide the proportionately small figure of a million or so...
...Not so the Army and Navy—and not so Congress...
...Brazil has a population of over 40,000,000...
...To do so would require some thought, some work, and some readjustment of present personnel...
...As for Congress, its preference for the drafting of young key workers, if necessary, instead of family men is based on increasing, though still somewhat stifled, civilian resentment at the induction of older fathers of dependent children and the consequent disruption of long-established homes...
...But what if the alternative is a decrease in arms production, in food production, or in civilian support and morale...
...Perhaps none of these men is fit for any kind of overseas service, but it needs a bit of proving...
...The tenor of the questions carries the implication that perhaps there need be no such uncomfortable choice as that with which the President —and the nation—seem to be confronted...
...At least, satisfactory bodies do...
...Our own armed forces prefer to take men away from U. S. factories and farms and families rather than go to the trouble of transporting and training young, healthy, unattached, non-war-working Brazilians, or of sending men to Brazil to help train them on their home grounds...
...We have never learned what England has long known with regard to its dominions and its colonies (and this is not to suggest that Brazil is any dominion or colony of ours), that men of other lands can be turned into highly useful, effective, and brave fellow-fighters...
...Brazil is "at war" with Germany...
...For an important element of civilian morale, of continued and active support of the war on the home front, is clearly involved...
...about a quarter of a million healthy boys will become 18 in the next three months...
...The services say they want young men, physically fit for fighting, and preferably unattached young men whose minds will be on their fighting and not on their families...
...With D-Day presumably drawing near, with draft boards all over the country behind on their quotas for the past many months, the Armv and Navy relentlessly continue to demand what are called at the front "more bodies...
...What sort of jobs were the girls going to do that men with slight or, in some cases, major defects could not perform just as well...
...While the President continues to shy at offending either side (as a choice one way or the other inevitably would), this skeptical citizen is going to be so brash as to ask out loud a couple of questions about the military manpower muddle which have been bothering him for quite a while...
...I rather suspect that the answer to all this is that the Army simply can't be bothered to change either its ways or its assembly-line physical standards...
...Surely not fighting, which is what the Army suddenly claims is the only thing for which it needs bodies...
...And Civilian Manpower Director McNutt—who is scarcely disinterested, since his job is to keep the farms and factories adequately manned—chimed in joyfully...
...Army and Navy desks in Washington and throughout the nation, thousands upon thousands of them, are sat at by men thoroughly fit for combat service...
...The accepted assumption is that the bodies must come from either or both of two dwindling sources: (1) pre-Pearl Harbor fathers, not already in uniform who are for the most part in their '30s and heads of sizable families...
...in time of war, preservation of the home is less important than production of food and arms...
...Capital's Customary Confusion On the surface, it looks a little like Hobson's choice, although the completely disinterested citizen's quick answer would be: Draft the fathers...
...There are less than half a million recent and rickety 1-A's still undrafted...
...2) younger men who have been deferred because they are doing trained and expert work in essential war industry, or because they are making major contributions to the production of food, not only for this nation, but for its servicemen abroad, as well as for civilians and fighting men of other nations all around the world...
...Everybody knows a dozen such—men with one weak eardrum, men who had a mild hernia years ago, men with one slightly short but thoroughly muscular leg who would not look pretty marching...
...Certainly this was the immediate answer of Draft Director Hershey...
...How on earth does a big country rate as a full-fledged member of the United Nations, eventually to be hailed as one of the victors in a global war, and yet contribute literally nothing which involves the slightest sacrifice to the common cause...
...Most of them do now—but not for the Army or Navy...
...The fault, I feel certain, is not all Brazil's...
...As did WPB Boss Nelson, for obvious reasons...
...Just as they do with the bodies, when they want more food or arms they simply ask and expect to receive...
...Inasmuch as this nation never used the Nazi system of bonuses-fdr-babies, legitimate or illegitimate, the bodies grow increasingly hard to find...
...Even Germany, in its unpleasant way, has cashed in on this procedure...
...Take Brazil, for instance...
...Maybe there are easy answers to these questions, which I am too uninformed or obtuse to appreciate...
...But if the draft digs deep enough into arms production or food production or into sympathetic and whole-hearted support of the war by the folks back home, even the armed forces and F.D.R...
...Moreover, most of these men, rather than enjoying their involuntary exemption from service, are quite uncomfortable about it and would be delighted to serve in some capacity—if the Army would only let them...
...Under ordinary circumstances, it might not be worth the bother...
...These, briefly, are the questions that have been bothering me...
...But easy answers are not always satisfactory answers...
...the present standard seems to be that only those fit for every possible type of service can be used abroad at all...
...Nor is Congress, as is commonly and casually charged, playing purely selfish politics in remaining sensitive to popular pressure...
...Army Can't Be Bothered In the first place, there are the hundreds of young and able-bodied 4-F's, with minor defects or old and cured ailments, who have been totally rejected...
...As this is written, no decision has been reached as to which of the two groups is to supply most of the bodies...
Vol. 8 • April 1944 • No. 14
