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Serving Same Old System: New Action Army, Kills Two Recruits

By VVAW

The U.S. Army has spent hundred of thousands of dollars promoting its new image to cover over the scars of Vietnam. Billboard, magazines and TV screens are plastered with the "Action Army" ads promising a bright future to those who are smart enough to join up. Glib-tongued recruiters sign up the unwary with dreams of foreign travel, a career in a skilled job, and all the great vets' benefits waiting for you once you get out. Even the hard-nosed drill sergeants got a face lift to reappear as "personnel counselors" who train their recruits with manuals and good English.

On June 29th this facade crumbled enough to expose the real Army, when two recruits on their first day of training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, collapsed and died. The Army stated, officially, that the recruits had died from heat stroke after extensive, strenuous and prolonged exercise, which is contrary to policy at Ft Jackson. Four members of the training company clarified the Army's rhetoric when they charged that the dead recruits were forded to crawl on their stomachs in sand pits as the temperature went past 90 degrees, carry 100 pound duffel bags during a tort in the midday sun, and as punishment in the early evening to perform calisthenics and run in place for 30-40 minutes.

In an effort to salvage the image of the military, the brass and its ruling class bosses began trying to bail out their system by digging a deep pit for the drill sergeants. Closed hearings are being held to determine if the DI's should be court martialed on charges of involuntary manslaughter, dereliction of duty, and maltreatment of recruits. No hearings are planned for the system that values GI's only as cannon-fodder.

Two Senators and Congressman are demanding a full investigation, while the House Armed Services Committee is probing the incident to find if this is an army-wide problem or just an "isolated incident." The brass has worked overtime to put on a similar face of false concern. The Commandant of the Drill Sergeant School explained that drill sergeants are from the top 50% of the Army's non-coms, and that today, the DI's must be "the most professional man in the Army." Chief of the recruit reception center, LT COL Lenti, said, "If I see anybody swearing or dropping trainees to the ground for push ups in my area, he's out." And the commander of the basic training brigade, COL Katter, asked, "With a 1000 drill sergeants in the Army, how are you going to legislate against one drill sergeant who is a goof?"

Of course all this pious concern does nothing for the dead recruits nor for other recruits in the future. So long as the U. S. military is being used as the strong arm of the country's rulers the brass will continue to have to brainwash the GI's, to break down individual ability to think—a thinking GI is too likely to see what he is being used for. This is the reason behind the hours of repetition, the stupid classes from dreary sergeants, the hours of drill, exercise—and the abuse of DI's. Wash the brain clean and then fill it up again with the ideas of "nationalism" and "patriotism" which are necessary to be willing to go off to fight and die.