When The Army Was Weak

In early 1973, the Department of Defense announced the beginning of the all-volunteer military for US forces. Today, DoD officials say it has proven to be a success. But in the 1970s, there's no way that could have been said. Recruiters could not meet their required quotas and cut corners and cheated to get volunteers inducted. It was so severe that some were sent to jail for illegally enlisting volunteers. Some couldn't pass the required testing so others took the tests for them. Some had criminal records that recruiters somehow bypassed. I personally witnessed a man taken away because he had a warrant for his arrest for a rape he had committed before enlisting. The reading level in the US Army was at the fifth-grade level. And, some had a hard time reading material at that level. I witnessed all of this and more while enlisted in the US Army in the late 1970s. The all-volunteer force might be considered a success today but during my enlisted time, it was a mess.

This book is not a written document which attacks the Army but instead my personal account of what a mess things were during the time I spent with them. It may, at times, sound like an attack coming from a former Marine but I sincerely don't mean it that way. My enlistment in the Army was a sort of last resort method of supporting my family at a time when the economy in this country was terrible and jobs were far and few and hard to find. So, the Army supplied that source of income and I endured four years of what I often referred to as military welfare. This book is humorous, eye opening and maybe even shocking to some. But everything in it is absolutely true. There is no exaggeration or false claims. The Army of the 1970s was at it's weakest it had been in years.