>>212115421 (OP)Willbanks was not alone in that opinion. “The morale, discipline and battleworthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States,” a retired Marine colonel wrote. In Vietnam, “the rearguard of a 500,000 man army, in its day…the best army the United States ever put in the field, is numbly extricating itself from a nightmare war the Armed Forces feel they had foisted on them by bright civilians who are now back on campus writing books about the folly of it all.” And as that withdrawal accelerated all the problems that plagued that fast-dwindling force—alcohol, drugs, indiscipline, fragging, racial conflict, plunging morale—spread to infect U.S. armed forces everywhere, including Germany. “The Army did some really stupid things,” Willbanks explained, “and one of them was sending to Germany troops from Vietnam with less than six months to go in the Army. You can imagine what kind of morale and motivation problems we had.” His platoon was half the size it was authorized to be. Six of his men were in prison when he got there, all for violent crimes, including murder. The use of heroin and other hard drugs was rampant. So was crime—extortion, thievery, armed robbery. White and black soldiers battled one another on and off the base. Weapons disappeared. Duty officers conducting inspection sometimes carried locked and loaded .45s. “There were places in the barracks where you took your life in your hands,” Willbanks remembered.
