The Forgotten Seventh Army

ON a visit to Germany last month, Army Chief of Staff General William C. Westmoreland offered some cheering words to U.S. troops. "You are now the first priority in my book," he told a Seventh Army unit at Gelnhausen. Such reassurance came none too soon for the Seventh, which stayed on in Europe at the end of World War II and has served for more than two decades as the bulwark of NATO's ground troops. With a strength of approximately 180,000 men, the Seventh will soon be the largest U.S. force overseas; troop strength in Viet Nam is now down to 215,000 and declining steadily. Despite its importance, however, the Seventh is an army twice lost--forgotten at home and neglected abroad. Totally overshadowed in over a decade of increasing Asian commitment, the Seventh has been bled of needed money and experienced men. The result has been an upsurge of racism, drug abuse and disastrous morale.

The Seventh Army is assigned to blunt and delay Soviet attacks from the east until stronger forces can be assembled. To accomplish this, it has infantry and armored units scattered from Frankfurt to Bavaria. About 90,000 troops are considered combat ready. They include an advance guard of the Second and 14th Armored Cavalry regiments, which patrol the East German and Czechoslovakian borders, and the Berlin Brigade. The remainder of the Seventh is of uncertain efficiency.

Make-work and Macaroni. The Viet Nam buildup left the Seventh with an inexperienced cadre and second-class equipment. Lack of money meant less field training and more make-work. "They send me to the motor pool every day and tell me to paint that truck," complains a G.I. in Kaiserslautern. "The next day they tell me to chip the paint off, and then I paint it again." Insists an armored division lieutenant: "There's just so much you can do to fix a tank." Scorning the Army as "the Green Machine," the Seventh's soldiers adopted a "mox nix" attitude, from the Yankee pronunciation of the German macht nichts (it doesn't matter).

Boredom and resentment were heightened by shabby living conditions. Many units are garrisoned in barracks once used by Hitler's Wehrmacht, some built in Bismarck's day. Heat and hot water are inadequate, plaster peels, pipes leak, and toilets overflow. Nearby Bundeswehr (West German army) troops, meanwhile, live comfortably in post-World War II quarters.

Off-post accommodations are bad. Gasthaeuser catering to G.I.s charge triple the local price for beer, and prostitutes raise their fees as well, double when the customer is black. In many instances, enlisted men's families exist at close to the poverty line. Out of a private first class's pretax pay and allowances of $282.65, he and his family must spend up to $150 a month for rent in West Germany's tight housing market, $18 for utilities and $9 for a telephone that is mandatory (for recalling men in case of a Russian invasion). Moonlighting to compensate for a 10% increase in living costs in the past four months is difficult. G.I. wives lose out to German nationals who can work at Army jobs for less than the U.S. federal minimum wage. "Towards the end of the month," says one sympathetic officer, "lots of enlisted families are living on macaroni. It's like a scene from Appalachia."

High-grade Hashish. Bad living conditions, the lack of a sense of mission and plain boredom have contributed to a heavy increase in the use of drugs. In one survey of 3,500 men, 46% admitted to some level of drug use. High-grade hashish imported from the Middle East or North Africa is easily available at $1.25 a gram (v. up to $15 a gram in the U.S.). Although heavy hash users rarely become violent, they often wind up in the stockade as a result of apathy and loss of memory that make them incapable of obeying orders.

Drug use is particularly high among black soldiers, who quickly discover, as one says bitterly, that "racism is as international as Coca-Cola." German landlords refuse to rent them apartments. Within the Army, discrimination takes the form of slow promotions and extra work details. From time to time, as blacks rebelled, the Seventh has been shaken by racial rioting, club-swinging bar fights between white and black soldiers, and even such extreme sights as KKK-type crosses. Sometimes, blacks fight whites for control of the lucrative drug trade in the barracks. Though black soldiers constitute less than 15% of the Seventh's personnel, they account for 50% of its prison population.

Human Touch. Changes seemed to be glacial under former commanding General James Polk, an old-fashioned "spit and polish" soldier who retired last spring. He was succeeded in June by General Michael S. Davison, 54, who formerly commanded Field Force II in Viet Nam and served as Commandant at West Point. Davison, rated by a Pentagon colleague as "a professional with a human touch," is already having an impact. After an inspection, Davison pronounced the Army's barracks "a scandal and a disgrace," and will supervise the spending of $70 million earmarked to refurbish the worst of them.

Davison strongly encourages white officers and noncoms to attend sensitivity sessions with black soldiers at which both groups openly explain what they dislike about each other. In Viet Nam Davison once said, "I think you have to discriminate in favor of and overcompensate for the blacks." At his new headquarters in Heidelberg, he insists: "We should be able to create conditions in which the black soldier can feel that he is getting a fair shake." Davison has also continued the use of flying squads, originated under his predecessor, which make unannounced visits to units to check on discriminatory practices. The squads will be supervised by his new deputy chief of staff for personnel, Major General Frederic E. Davison, who also happens to be the Army's highest ranking black officer.

Street Clinics. The new commander's biggest strides have been against drugs, to which he is applying lessons learned in Viet Nam. "The really difficult part," General Davison said recently, "was to get officers and NCOS to understand that we weren't dealing with dope fiends, but with young men who had a very real-life problem and who needed compassionate, humane concern and not punishment."

The Seventh Army now tolerates a certain amount of hashish use while educating men against excessive smoking and the use of hard drugs. Major Forest S. Tennant Jr., a Third Infantry Division medical officer at Wuerzburg and a pioneer in the study of drug abuse, for instance, holds sick call in two street clinics called "Now House" and "The Attic" that are decorated with psychedelic posters. Tennant also runs a traveling road show of ex-addicts ("the only people aside from doctors that drug users will listen to"). The message, delivered between ribald, attention-getting skits: "If you can't quit smoking, at least smoke sensibly." Sensibly includes restricting smoking to twice a week (more, and you are a "hashaholic"). The message seems to work; fewer men are being treated for bum trips.

General Davison admits that under old conditions "our combat readiness went down, but that is all behind us now." What Davison means to do is to restore pride and commitment to a group that has too long been an idle but necessary pawn on the chessboard of the cold war. That, in its way, has proved as debilitating as the problems of war in Asia for American forces.

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