The Pittsburgh Press (October 27, 1940)
FEW WILL RECEIVE ARMY COMMISSIONS
…
Reserve Corps Already Has 120,000 Officers and Half of Them Will Be Given First Opportunities to Fill Ranks – ROTC Also Aids
…
This is the twelfth and last of a series of articles written especially for prospective members of the United States armed forces by two members of the West Point staff. These officers tell just what the rookie is likely to run into and how to find his way around in the strange new world of the Army.
By Captains William H. Baumer Jr. and Sidney F. Giffin of the United States Military Academy, Authors of 21 to 35: What the Draft and Army Training Mean to You
During the year of Army training under Selective Service, trainees will be given normal opportunities for promotion. The 10-20% occupational specialists more likely will receive, in addition to their grade from private to sergeant, various extra payments.
The first cook in a company of 188 soldiers normally will be a “first and third,” meaning that he will draw the pay of a first-class private and in addition the third-class specialist allowance of $20, making his monthly paycheck $50. Mechanics almost without exception will receive extra pay for their work, up to “first and first” – first-class private and first-class specialist, $60. Clerks may be promoted to private, first class, with specialist ratings added.
Time itself is really the only limiting agency in promotion, because the ability of some inducted men naturally will qualify them for the highest enlisted grades in the Army. By the time these high caliber men have completed passage through reception, unit training, and possibly the enlisted replacement centers, they will have completed from a third to a half of their year’s service. Jobs for which they would be eligible normally will probably have been filled temporarily.
Signing Up Again
While the incumbent is receiving a fair trial, further months are ticking away. Moreover, when an inducted man is nearing the end of his year’s service, the commanding officer will not want to place him in a high position for only a month or so. Capable men who enter the Army under Selective Service and wish to continue in the service automatically will make themselves eligible for the top positions.
Few of the Selective Service group inducted into the Army for one year’s service will be made officers, unless they hold qualifications much needed in the Army’s commissioned ranks.
The chances of obtaining a commission in the fall of 1940 are slight because the Army has 120,000 members of the Officers’ Reserve Corps who have actively participated in correspondence work over a period of years and have attended summer camps whenever such duty could be obtained under the War Department appropriation.
Training School Open
Because of their interest, these men – to a total of 60,000 – will be given the first opportunities to fill the officers’ ranks for this army of over a million men. The annual number of graduates of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps in our colleges and universities is about 9,000 – sufficient to fill many vacancies.
Recently, planes have been formulated for a 90-day officer training program open to drafted men, guardsmen, and regular soldiers who show qualities of leadership and intelligence. Under these plans, it will be possible for a man from the ranks to become a commissioned officer in the Army before completion of his 12-month training period.
Upon completion of the one year training period, the commissioned man from the ranks is able to remain in the Army or if he wishes to return to private life, he will be placed in the Officers’ Reserve Corps.
Little Traveling Seen
Travel in the Army is not extensive, for trainees under Selective Service will be sent merely to unit training centers and schools. Their year of training will be completed normally in that same location, or at one reasonably close by. Very few trainees will be sent to foreign service because the usual term of service is two years, and only Puerto Rico, or perhaps Panama, would be feasible unit training centers and permanent stations for trainees.
Later, if a trainee wishes to make the Army his career, and to enlist for three years voluntarily, there is a good chance that he will subsequently be sent to foreign service in the Philippine and Hawaiian Islands, in Alaska, Panama, or Puerto Rico.
From a family standpoint, the Selective Service trainee will find that life will be rather unstable during the period of the emergency. In normal peacetimes, the first three grades or sergeants – master, technical or first sergeant and staff – are furnished homes on Army posts. At the present time, the Army does not give a private permission to marry and remain in the Army.
General Wood Quoted
Lastly, you will have felt that you have done something more than talk about the advantages of being an American.
General Leonard Wood, writing in the Medical Pickwick of May 1917, had this to say of preparedness training for World War I:
We are not preparing our country for aggression but to resist it. We must train them under a brief system of intensive training and return them to their normal occupations the better for their training, not only physically but morally and from the standpoint; also from the standpoint of good citizenship and, consequently, from the standpoint of national efficiency.
You’ll Be a Better Man
They will come from their training with better physical bodies, with greatly increased knowledge of how to take care of themselves to ward off disease. They will be better economically from the baits of discipline, thoroughness and promptness which will come from the military training.
They will be better citizens morally because they will have learned to respect the law and the constituted authority. They will bring away with them a better idea of their individual obligation to the nation and an appreciation of the fact that the real foundation of democracy is equality not only of opportunity and privilege but also of obligation.
Preparedness is of vital importance to us from every standpoint. Training all together, at the same period of our lives, for a brief space of time,. say six months, will not only bring about a condition which will be the best possible insurance against war but it will put in being a force which will exercise the strongest possible influence in bringing about a sense of nationality, a feeling of obligation for service to the nation…