The Military View--From the Top and from the Ranks

In the face of growing public distrust and criticism, military men of all ranks are reacting with a mixture of resentment and resignation. Here are the comments of three professionals:

As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since 1964, General Earle G. Wheeler, 61, is America's top man in uniform. Groomed for the post by General Maxwell Taylor, Wheeler was assigned to give weekly briefings to John Kennedy during the 1960 presidential campaign. The one-time West Point mathematics instructor's presentations impressed Kennedy, and he was appointed Army Chief of Staff in 1962. When Taylor stepped down from the chairmanship two years yater, Wheeler took over. By law, he should have held the job for only two two-year terms, but Congress gave him an unprecedented extension requested by President Johnson.

Lately, as the debate on the role of the military gathered force, "Bus" Wheeler kept his own counsel. Last week, in a rare interview, he broke that silence. "You know, there have been only two wars in American history that one might call popular: World Wars I and II," Wheeler told TIME.

With Korea and Viet Nam, Wheeler thinks that "the American people are understandably wondering why we have to be involved in other nations' security affairs." The result, Wheeler believes, is that "Americans feel like saying 'Let everyone take care of themselves. We have done it long enough for them.' " Another cause of disquiet, he concedes, is the fact that "Viet Nam has gone on so long" with no clear-cut outcome. "This frustration is why people are hitting out at the nearest hitching post, much as the students strike at the universities when that is really not what they're mad at." The staggering cost of modern armament is a further cause of discontent, Wheeler says. "An ICBM is at least a million dollars a throw; a nuclear carrier, half a billion, an ABM system, $7 billion. And it is all blamed on the military, because at first glance our weapons and our uniforms are easily identified."

Despite the changing attitudes toward the military, Wheeler sees no change in its own concept of duty and service. He says: "What the military has tried to do for nearly two centuries of American history--and I hope will go on trying to do--is, if possible, to prevent wars, minimize the pain of peacetime defense as much as possible, and yet protect the American people so that they can live in peace and freedom as they wish."

As a boy in the Kentucky hill country, Brady O. Kelley would listen for hours to his father's tales of warring with General Pershing on the Mexican border. He joined the Army at 17, received a battlefield commission during World War II, and rose to captain. But with his sketchy education, further promotion was impossible. He reverted to noncom, now holds the rank of sergeant-major. Still hard and trim at 48, Kelley is in charge of re-enlistments for the Second Division Headquarters, about 20 miles north of Seoul, Korea.

"I signed a contract with my Government," he says."My Government promised to pay me once a month, whether I worked or not, to take care of my youngsters if I die, and to keep them healthy in any case. They kept their side of the bargain and I'm going to keep mine." Kelley likes to tell G.I.s who come to discuss "reupping" about the old days. "When I came in the Army, we still used carrier pigeons for sending messages, and oh my goodness, some of those farm boys like me had a hard time writing the message."

He does not go back to Kentucky any more. "The old people I knew all have big potbellies, and all they know about is the price of tobacco and who's running for sheriff." When he is Stateside, he goes instead to Southgate, Mich., and his wife, four boys (two in college on scholarships), three TV sets, two cars and comfortable house ("Just like my neighbors', only mine is paid for"). The Army, he says, "has been good to me. For an old boy like me from the hills of Kentucky to do as well in civilian life, I'd have to have $15,000 a year."

Behind his Michigan home, Kelley has planted a flagpole; now four or five of his neighbors have done the same. "Why, patriotism isn't dead in our country," he says. "The American soldier still sticks up for America. I think young men appreciate America a little more after they've been to a place like this. It would be better if there was no war, but do you think that's ever going to happen? We've had good men --Christ, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, but somebody killed 'em. Man, I guess, is just a fighting animal. And as long as that's true, we're going to have an Army."

- Senior Chief Petty Officer Richard Rose, 37, is a troubled man. Seventeen years ago, he quit college and joined the Navy; now he is in the public-affairs section of the headquarters of the Pacific Amphibian Force at Coronado, Calif. What bothers him is that while the Navy has found room for his liberal attitudes, his civilian friends treat him like a warmonger. Though he loves Navy life, he plans to return to college in 1972, when he will have served 20 years and qualified for a pension at half his top salary.

During a recent home leave in Los Angeles, he dropped in on a meeting of the Hollywood chapter of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. "These were my type of people--doctors, lawyers--but to them I was part of a fascist outfit," says Rose. "They told me I was brainwashed, living a lie. It was an automatic reaction. I'm a socialist myself, and I'm antiwar, but none of this mattered. I had to leave that meeting. In Los Angeles, a lot of my old friends wouldn't even talk to me. My mother-in-law threw a party for the boy her Barbara married, and a lot of people came and said 'That's nice, but I can't accept you.'"

Rose went back to the base shaken. Where would he fit when he returned to civilian life? "The people waving the flag are not the people I'd like to associate with. There's nothing worse than having a guy on your side for the wrong reasons--a guy like Curtis LeMay. But on the other side, there's silly, young, earnest Phi Beta Kappa housewives discussing how much strontium 90 could be in the milk.

"The American people are forgetting that the fighting man is still an extension of the society. He's Johnny Jones, who used to jerk sodas back in his home town. The only way the military can ever become a danger to this country is if the public turns their back on it, and that is what's happening. They're isolating it."

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