ARMED FORCES: Forces on the Ground

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Sample: about dawn one day last month 47 newly commissioned West Point second lieutenants streamed into the Ranger school dugout on a mountain near Dahlonega in the rugged forest of North Georgia. For 72 hours they had dodged and fought blank-firing Aggressor troops (Russian-like insignia and uniforms) across 50 miles of tangled underbrush. By map and compass they traveled at night, kept on alert all day (about two hours' sleep each), set off live explosive near TVA's Blue Ridge Dam. For food they had one C-ration can, a share in a live chicken. (New problem for the city-bred: how to kill and cook it.) They had learned in earlier problems to live on snake meat in Florida's Everglades, cross open country on a run (about five miles every 40 minutes). Sent to tactical units, the Rangers are under orders to set up five-week courses of similar toughness throughout the Army, will soon introduce a new standard physical-fitness test for basic trainees. ARMY AT THE READY

The Seventh Army in West Germany, effective instrument of close-in engagement, works at the diverse, contradictory problems of cold-war alertness in the nuclear age. The Seventh has to be ready, perhaps for years to come, for instant attack from the nuclear-armed U.S.S.R. land and air forces poised across the border. It offers enemy nuclear missiles no good targets, encamps no unit bigger than a battalion in a single area. Senior officers roam distant outposts to make unannounced tests of how fast and accurately the outposts could report a Russian tank attack to Army headquarters.

Also constantly tested Army-wide, often at 3 or 4 a.m.: how fast each unit can be combat loaded and on the road toward prepared battle positions. Minimum requirements for each unit's mobilization of manpower: 50% strength in 30 minutes, 35% more in two hours, no more than 15% on leave at once. Yet in their drills the battle-ready battalions never roll all the way to their carefully prepared positions. Reason: in the age of tactical missiles, battle positions are secret; the Seventh wants no fixed Russian missiles zeroed in on battle targets.

Working on the grim, untried tactics of nuclear battle, the Seventh has adopted the "shield and spear" principle. Its five-division conventional weaponry would be a shield to stop the first assault, force the Russians to concentrate in attack forces big enough to be devastated by the Seventh's nuclear "spear." The spear is made up of half a dozen Corporal ballistic-missile battalions (100-mile range), Honest Johns, Redstones, 280-mm. cannon, 8-in. howitzers—together capable of delivering at least 100 atomic warheads simultaneously.

Anti-Nibble Role. The Berlin crisis focused attention on the U.S. Army at work—and made clear the urgency of a convincing definition of the Army's mission in the crises that are bound to lie ahead. Gone is the day when the U.S. needs a massive Army to match the enemy's massive Army, for an all-out struggle would soon bring tactical nuclear air-power into play, ultimately the Strategic Air Command and carrier strike forces. But gone also is the day when airpower theorists can write off the Army as mere "trip wire" or "plate glass" to sound the general alarm for all-out nuclear war.