companies, platoons, and even squads whenever advantageous. This meant that throughout the second half of the war, NCOs carried a major share of the leadership burden. They ran the squads and fire teams on patrol, constructed listening and observation posts, and set ambushes. Thanks to the superiority of American firepower, the troops could usually offset any initial enemy advantage in numbers once contact was made. The squad leader in Vietnam had more firepower under his control than an entire platoon in World War II. At his side was the modern counterpart of the color sergeant, the ever-present radio telephone operator (RTO) with a PRC-25 radio. Weighed down with a full infantryman's basic load as well, the radioman was the squad's link to artillery, armed helicopters, and tactical air strikes-and to prompt medical attention and occasional hot food and clean clothes. The enemy realized that fact, regularly targeting the RTO first in any firefight or ambush.

But while some aspects of the war enhanced the status and authority of the noncommissioned officer corps, others diminished them. The Vietnam War was the nation's longest struggle, lasting over eight years, and it became steadily more unpopular the longer it lasted, especially among young Americans. Tension soon developed between draftees and long-serving NCOS. More ominous to the NCO corps was the lack of experience that began to emerge among its younger members. Rotation on a fixed one-year tour sent personnel home often just as they acquired useful experience. Many first-term enlistees won their stripes rapidly and then rotated out before they could become mature, fully rounded NCO leaders.

The cumulative effect produced a crisis among

troop-leading NCOs. As early as October 1967 one brigade noted in its quarterly Operational ReportLessons Learned (ORLL) that it was short over 300 sergeants and staff sergeants. The Army tried to fill that void in Vietnam by changing training cycles. Recruits identified during basic training as having leadership potential were used in advanced individual training as additional cadre, to cut down on the number of experienced NCOs dedicated to daily operations. Others were dispatched to a special six-week course after finishing their advanced training to receive formal instruction in basic leadership techniques. Upon completion of that program, they received immediate promotion to sergeant and were sent to line units. These improvised efforts succeeded in large part in meeting the Army's need for NCO leaders, but they also revealed the need for a permanent system of NCO education.

A centralized program was needed to distill the lessons earlier generations of NCOS had learned on the job and to transmit this knowledge in a systematic way to the Army's future junior leaders. At a time when seven specialists in support and service roles in-country backed up every soldier in the combat arms, the growing gap between the technical specialist and the troop leader had to be bridged. After Vietnam, it was clear to everyone that all troop leaders in the modern, high-tech Army had to be technical specialists in order to contribute to an effective combined arms team. At the same time, it was understood that traditional leadership skills remained an essential part of any technical specialist's abilities.

If anyone had told the sergeant major when he enlisted that he would find himself sitting, like some recruit, in a classroom with other senior NCOs as he approached the end of a thirty-year Army career, he would not have believed it. But today he was attending a refresher course in something he had either been doing, or supervising, for over ten years-records management. The sergeant major had joined the Army during World War II. In a way, the classroom symbolized how much things had changed since then.

One of the most obvious differences was the instructor. For most of the sergeant major's career, he had seen only male officers or NCOS carry out that function. The female soldiers of the Women's Army Corps (WAC) with whom he had come in contact had been involved mainly in administrative duties. Now WACS and WAC NCOs could be seen in the most visible leadership and technical positions. The grade insignia on the instructor's sleeve marked another major change-the introduction in 1954 of specialists (replacing the "Techs" of World War II) with their insignia combining an eagle and stripes.

Whether in garrison or in the field, the Army had always needed NCO instructors, to teach everything from the correct way to wear the uniform to the proper employment of weapons. This tradition had been strengthened

by twentieth century developments. As the Army adopted ever more sophisticated equipment, the need for trained personnel to teach young soldiers how to use it, and to supervise its use, increased. To keep their expertise current, NCOs in the Army of the 1970s now had to return to the classroom several times in their careers, either to update knowledge in an established field or to learn a new subject.

In this new all-volunteer Army, there was no lack of courses, old or new. There were the standard subjects that the Army had long needed to support field operations-the Morning Report, Unit Supply Procedures, Preventive Maintenance Checks and Services, Range Safety Procedures, and Principles of Instruction. But the flood of new technology since World War II had led to a parallel stream of courses for NCOS in electronics and communications. The coming of the computer had added a new list of skills to those considered necessary for basic NCO effectiveness. The information explosion in the Army affected more than course content; training itself had become a specialty, involving much more than a loud voice and a half-dozen posters. NCO instructors now had to be familiar with a growing variety of instructional techniques, such as movie projectors, closed-circuit television, individually paced skills training, and video cassette recorders.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an accelerating succession of inventions had created a

new technology for the Army. The most dramatic invention was the internal combustion engine, which

enabled the Army to move faster in a variety of vehicles and aircraft. But there were others as well: radios and other electrical devices, improved metals for lighter and more dependable weapons, refrigeration to preserve food, and improved and more effective explosives. This new technology dramatically changed the personnel structure of the Army. The traditional field army structure-dependent on infantry and artillery, backed by a minuscule service and support system—was reversed in less than half a century. At the end of the Spanish-American War, only about 8 percent of the Army's manpower was engaged in service and support specialties. By the end of World War I, that proportion had increased to 58 percent; by the end of World War II, to 67 percent.

Another long-term trend well under way by the 1970s was personnel integration, a term implying more than the elimination of racial barriers. Until 1948 the black experience in the Army had been restricted to segregated units largely commanded by white officers. An executive order issued by the President in that year started the forces of change in motion, and within seven years all segregated units had disappeared. In succeeding years, large numbers of other ethnic groups turned to the military as a way to improve their opportunities in life, and the Army's overall personnel composition began more closely to mirror that of society at large. In addition, World War II had seen the creation of the Women's Army Corps (WAC). For the first time women in large numbers were recruited directly into the Army and given a variety of duties, several of which had long been considered as masculine. Having clearly demonstrated that women could perform many tasks in the military, the WAC was continued after the war.

A more recent event shaping the Army in the 1970s was the Vietnam War. As the nation's ground forces, the Army bore the brunt of the fighting in Southeast Asia. Although the Marine Corps' loss ratio was higher, the casualty totals recorded the heavy price paid by the senior service. Of approximately 58,000 Americans who died in that war, 38,000 were soldiers. The effects of the war on small unit leadership and personnel policies were pronounced. The one-year tour disrupted both small unit cohesion and leadership in Vietnam and training in the United States. Fire-team leaders, squad leaders, and platoon sergeants in many cases had barely learned their duties when they rotated out of the war zone, only to be replaced by less experienced men. As the war continued finally becoming the longest in American history-a severe shortage of NCOS developed. In an effort to alleviate the situation, the Army assigned fewer experienced NCOs to training camps and attempted to cover that deficiency by appointing temporary NCOS from among recruits, a policy which inevitably degraded

the effectiveness of the training.

Rapid changes in civilian society also affected the Army during the Vietnam War. Drug abuse, racial tensions, and resistance to traditional authority developed in the streets and on the campuses and inevitably spread into the Army as the draft continued. The results were distressing to commanders in and out of the war zone. Discipline and unit effectiveness at all levels were threatened. Alarming for the future of the Army was the decline of public esteem for all the uniformed services, a change of attitude reinforced by continued publicity about their internal troubles.

Of all the post-Vietnam developments in American military policy, the most influential in shaping the Army was the coming of the Modern Volunteer Army (VOLAR). The Army faced the most difficult transition of all the armed services in attempting to rely on volunteers to maintain a large, quality force. In previous eras, an all-volunteer Army had meant a small domestic force carrying out limited missions during times when the nation's main defense had been its remoteness from the quarrels of Europe and Asia. After World War II, however, the Army was given international missions which its leaders believed could be fulfilled only through continuous reliance on a manpower draft. To answer the need, Selective Service had been extended into peacetime. Except for a fifteen-month period in 1947-1948, the draft remained in effect from September 1940 through most of the Vietnam War period.

The Modern Volunteer Army of the 1970s was planned to strengthen both the Army and national defense in several respects. For the short term, VOLAR would answer charges that the draft during the Vietnam War drew too heavily on the economically disadvantaged and on ethnic minorities in the population. For the longer term, the Army Staff hoped that VOLAR would make the Army a higher quality force. Enlistment standards would be raised, enlisted personnelespecially NCOs-would receive more specialized training, and the retention rate would increase. At the same time, the training base and the administration required to handle draftees would be cut back. Achieving these goals implied not only improving the professional qualifications of personnel already in the Army, but also altering recruiting methods to enlist young people who possessed higher aptitude levels. To attract quality recruits, many traditional features of Army life were changed dramatically. Pay was increased to make the Army competitive with entry-level positions in the private sector. Once in uniform, soldiers were offered a range of benefits previously unheard of in the military. Soldiers had more military occupational specialties (MOSS) to pick from during initial enlistment and, after making their initial choice, a greater opportunity to