Word: combatting
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...slash their current authorized manpower (2,800,000) by 100,000, thereby enabling the Pentagon to reduce its 1958 budget needs by almost $200 million. To reassure U.S. allies abroad, especially NATO, Wilson carefully pointed out that the cuts could be made "without materially affecting deployments of major combat units abroad, including those in Western Europe...
...aroused neither joy nor grave misgivings among service planners. U.S. muscle, they agreed, will suffer little. The Army will come down from 1,000,000 to 950,000, but will keep its 17 authorized divisions; the Navy, from 875,000 (including 200,000 Marines) to 850,000, will maintain combat units at authorized size, keep the Marines at three divisions; the Air Force, from 925,000 to 900,000, will make no cuts in combat outfits. One probable overall effect: a further cutback in draft calls...
Standing toe to toe against the looming Soviet-satellite army of 175 divisions keeps the five-division U.S. Seventh Army in Germany on constant alert against the day the "balloon goes up" in Western Europe. Merely staying combat-ready in peacetime is tough enough, but the hard-training Seventh is plagued by an even tougher problem: one in three of its 165,000 tankers, atomic cannoneers and plain gravel crunchers should never have been sent overseas in the first place. Reason: they are "eight balls," mentally equivalent to sixth-grade schoolboys, a disciplinary headache to their commanders and a serious...
...grave is the eight-ball problem that tough, alert Lieut. General Bruce Cooper Clarke, Seventh Army commander and veteran combat soldier (World War II and Korea), has sent down the word to his subordinate officers: "These individuals require special motivation and instruction. This group contains many of the misfits who, if they cannot be assimilated, must be eliminated." Last week West Pointer Clarke reported that more than 4,200 misfits had been sent home for discharge, another 3,000 put through special remedial courses. But some 41,000 low-grades still burden Clarke's round-the-clock training program...
...Navy and Marine Corps officers with combat awards or commendations are jumped one grade in rank-but receive no pay hike-upon retirement...