Search Results

“To Rub Smooth the Sharp Edges”: Universal Military Training, 1943–1951

Amy J. Rutenberg

in Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance

This chapter contends that members of Congress were reluctant to draft students and fathers during the Korean War because they believed the conflict was just the opening salvo of a much longer Cold ... More

This chapter contends that members of Congress were reluctant to draft students and fathers during the Korean War because they believed the conflict was just the opening salvo of a much longer Cold War. America was entering an indeterminate period of militarized peace, during which conscription would remain necessary. Therefore, the nation’s economic and domestic future depended on careful and reasoned deliberation over who to draft and who to defer. The draft law that emerged during the Korean War, the Universal Military Training and Service Act of 1951, militarized fatherhood and civilian occupations defined as in the national health, safety, or interest by making them eligible for deferments. Yet, by keeping certain groups of men out of the armed forces in the name of national security, the law broadened the definition of service to the state and limited the reach of the military itself.Less

Training

Emma Newlands

in Civilians into soldiers: War, the body and British Army recruits, 1939-45

This chapter investigates the processes by which civilian bodies were converted for military purposes within the first sixteen or so weeks of army life: the phase of basic training. It suggests that ... More

This chapter investigates the processes by which civilian bodies were converted for military purposes within the first sixteen or so weeks of army life: the phase of basic training. It suggests that there were two key principles to this process. Army instructors had to achieve control over the recruit’s body in order to subject him to the authority of the regime. Thus, men were told what to eat, when to rest, what to wear and how to behave during their free time. Instructors also proceeded to transform the recruit’s body into an effective military machine by making it, fit, ordered and productive. This was achieved through a strict regime of physical exercise, field exercises, team sports and military drill. Soldier’s testimonies suggest, however, that while some men came to identify with the army’s ideals and worked hard to transform their bodies, others found ways of circumventing the army’s rules. In the safety of their barrack rooms both officers and men got drunk, dressed as women and had sex with each other. By drawing on these experiences this chapter therefore considers the dynamics of compliance, resistance and participation in modern regimes of the military through corporeal transformation.Less

Promoting Security

Jonathan S. Addleton

in Mongolia and the United States: A Diplomatic History

This chapter explores interaction between the United States and Mongolia on security issues, including support for Mongolia's increasing presence on UN and other peacekeeping missions around the ... More

This chapter explores interaction between the United States and Mongolia on security issues, including support for Mongolia's increasing presence on UN and other peacekeeping missions around the world. Most notably, Mongolia joined international efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Mongolian soldiers have also served under the UN flag in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Chad, Darfur and South Sudan, among other places. The United States supported these efforts in a number of ways, including through a partnership established between the Mongolian Armed Forces and the Alaska National Guard and periodic exercises such as Khaan Quest and Gobi Wolf. Joining with other countries, the United States also helped Mongolia in its efforts to establish an international peacekeeping training centre at Five Hills, west of Ulaanbaatar.Less

Epilogue: Walter Reed, Then and Now

in War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America

This chapter evaluates the status of Walter Reed Hospital, which has become the primary receiving hospital for injured American soldiers. Known as the “center of gravity” in army medicine, today's ... More

This chapter evaluates the status of Walter Reed Hospital, which has become the primary receiving hospital for injured American soldiers. Known as the “center of gravity” in army medicine, today's Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) operated as a general hospital that provides a wide array of services equivalent to those found at any major university hospital in the civilian sector. The pride of Walter Reed was its orthopedic and rehabilitative care. Walter Reed rehabilitation team depended on Scoville's testimony and on their experience of working within a hospital bureaucracy when they put forth a formal proposal for a new amputee center. Their arguments that better technology and space were needed for better care proved persuasive. The Military Advanced Training Center presented a host of psychological and occupational therapy services that assist patients with adapting to their individual circumstances.Less

Training Tactical Fighter Pilots for War

Brian D. Laslie

in The Air Force Way of War: U.S. Tactics and Training after Vietnam

Chapter 2 traces the tactical and doctrinal changes that occurred in the air force through the 1970s and 1980s and focuses on the development of new opportunities to train. Several concrete changes ... More

Chapter 2 traces the tactical and doctrinal changes that occurred in the air force through the 1970s and 1980s and focuses on the development of new opportunities to train. Several concrete changes occurred to air force training regimens immediately following the end of the Vietnam War. First, fighter pilots meeting at Nellis Air Force Base created and instituted the designed operational capability (DOC) statement. This allowed fighter squadrons to focus only on a primary and secondary mission rather than having to train toward numerous missions and never reach combat proficiency in any of them. These same pilots also instituted the “building-block” approach to air combat, a step-by-step process to train pilots in operations from basic fighter maneuvers to more advanced air combat training. This chapter also details the creation of dedicated “aggressor” squadrons. The aggressors were trained in Soviet combat techniques and flew aircraft similar in size and power to enemy MiGs. These squadrons flew against other fighter squadrons to demonstrate just how the enemy functioned in battle. Finally, a secret program code-named Constant Peg allowed select pilots to fly against actual MiG aircraft obtained by the U.S. Air Force.Less

Operational Exercises

Brian D. Laslie

in The Air Force Way of War: U.S. Tactics and Training after Vietnam

Chapter 3 places the training that began after the end of American involvement in Vietnam into the context of new large-force exercises designed to simulate combat at operational-level exercises, ... More

Chapter 3 places the training that began after the end of American involvement in Vietnam into the context of new large-force exercises designed to simulate combat at operational-level exercises, such as Red Flag. The creation of Red Flag in 1975 and subsequent exercises were the most important steps in achieving the later battlefield successes of the 1990s. The Red Flag exercise was created to simulate a pilot’s first ten combat missions, after which a pilot’s life expectancy greatly increased. The brainchild of Lieutenant Colonel Richard “Moody” Suter and with strong backing from TAC commander General Richard Dixon, Red Flag altered the air force’s concept and execution of aerial warfare. The exercise expanded at an amazing rate throughout the later 1970s and 1980s, eventually growing to train thousands of airmen each year and including international participation from eighteen countries.Less

“Digging for Deferments”: World War II, 1940–1945

Amy J. Rutenberg

in Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance

This chapter argues that proposals for universal military training (UMT) for all American men failed for several reasons. Opponents of UMT attacked the idea’s efficacy for national defense, but they ... More

This chapter argues that proposals for universal military training (UMT) for all American men failed for several reasons. Opponents of UMT attacked the idea’s efficacy for national defense, but they also questioned the assumptions that military training made men or should be an obligation of citizenship. Despite the support of the War Department, three presidents, and the majority of American citizens, UMT failed to gain legislative traction, in part because Americans did not share a common definition of masculine citizenship. The failure of UMT confirmed that military service in the United States would be selective rather than compulsory and that it would not be directly tied to masculine forms of citizenship. Its failure reinforced the notion that there were alternative acceptable ways of being a man and a citizen in the United States.Less

Radical Numbers

Marjorie Garber

in Loaded Words

In 2003, Drs. Sean and Judith Palfrey, the masters of Adams House at Harvard University, invited students and other concerned citizens to get involved in the debates and to reflect upon the ... More

In 2003, Drs. Sean and Judith Palfrey, the masters of Adams House at Harvard University, invited students and other concerned citizens to get involved in the debates and to reflect upon the implications for themselves and for the country. In this case, the conflict in question was the pending invasion of Iraq. On January 5, 1968, Dr. Benjamin Spock, the celebrated author of Baby and Child Care, the bible for a generation of anxious American parents, and four co-defendants were charged with conspiracy “to hinder and interfere with the administration of the Universal Military and Training Act.” In other words, they had advised young people to resist the draft. The defendants in the Spock trial became known as the Boston Five. The Boston Five, the Chicago Seven, and the New Haven Nine are radical numbers. To at least some of today's audiences and readers, these numbers will be more mysterious than revealing. Each of these was a group of radical intellectuals, or intellectual radicals, trying to make a difference.Less

What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? A Story of a Puerto Rican in the Second World War and Korea: Captain Harry Chabrán Acevedo, 1925–1986

Rafael Chabrán

in Island at War: Puerto Rico in the Crucible of the Second World War

The final essay is Rafael Chabrán’s moving personal account of the experiences of his father, a Puerto Rican military man. Chabrán, a noted Hispanist, through his family´s (and his own) history, ... More

The final essay is Rafael Chabrán’s moving personal account of the experiences of his father, a Puerto Rican military man. Chabrán, a noted Hispanist, through his family´s (and his own) history, throws light on how the war transformed the life of many veterans. ‘He never spoke about the war, or wars, and I never asked,’ Chabrán noted. “‘He does not like to talk about those things’, my mother warned me many times as I was about to ask or had asked without thinking. All I had and still have are those pictures in family albums that I loved to look at when I was a child.”Less

Young Ladies Seduced and Carried Off by Terrorists: Secrets, Spies, and Anticommunist Moral Panic

Benjamin A. Cowan

in Securing Sex: Morality and Repression in the Making of Cold War Brazil

Chapter Five investigates the impact of moral technocracy—the ways in which doctrinalized moral panic suffused security institutions and made inroads into repressive practice. Categorical alarm about ... More

Chapter Five investigates the impact of moral technocracy—the ways in which doctrinalized moral panic suffused security institutions and made inroads into repressive practice. Categorical alarm about youth, decadence, media, and working women manifested itself throughout Brazil’s security establishment. These notions, moreover, did not merely percolate at the higher levels of government authority. Police and security forces on the ground, the foot soldiers of countersubversion, also bound sex and morality into their approaches to the “enemy.” Intelligence and political police agents surveilled sexual deviance; the nation’s spy agencies shared information about supposed orgies among leftist educators and their students; state representatives, from top-brass intellectuals to cops on a beat, wrung their hands over the “loss” of young people via sexualized subversion; and military and police guides to identifying and dealing with subversion outlined sexual seduction, “free love,” and public eroticism as tactics of communist insurgency. The intensity of repression, like the reasons for arrest and atrocity, varied over time and in keeping with the multifarious paranoias of police; but the notion of sexual, gender, and moral deviance as a communist conspiracy framed police work in important ways.Less