ARMED FORCES: Nation-Mending at Home

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Like the disciplined, daredevil corps of '60s prose and ballad, the Special Forces, or Green Beret, teams slipped quietly into the countryside miles from their base. Soon the Berets, many of them veterans of countless similar operations in Montagnard villages in the mountains of South Viet Nam, were moving among the natives, ministering to the sick, refurbishing schools, teaching preventive hygiene and first aid. In many ways it was a textbook exercise, except that the locale was not Viet Nam but two poverty-stricken counties in rural North Carolina.

This kind of civic action at home has not been an Army practice in the past, even though the Green Berets made their reputation by doing just that —along with more dramatic feats of counterinsurgency—in Viet Nam and other underdeveloped nations round the world. But the Berets' luster has been dimmed by scandal, the war backlash and the withdrawal of the last remaining Special Forces units from Viet Nam last February. From a wartime peak strength of 9,000 men, the Green Beret force has been whittled down to 6,000. Consequently, two pressing concerns within the corps have been how to sanitize its image, and what will be the role of those Special Forces based in the U.S.

Lieut. General John J. Tolson III, now deputy commander of the U.S. Continental Army, last year came up with a notion that may well provide the answer. Why not apply the skills of such specialized units as the Green Berets where they are most needed—at home? If Green Beret civic action teams in Viet Nam could combat sores, human parasites, rats, venereal diseases and other miseries, Tolson reasoned, how much better to do the same thing in the Army's backyard as part of regular training for their primary role as a topnotch fighting force.

The result was Project Nation-Building, perhaps better called nation-mending, or simply domestic action. By any name, it is a very tentative experiment, essentially a pilot project, but one that so far has gone remarkably well. Since the project's first action teams entered Hoke and Anson counties this January, Special Forces men and various units of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Fort Bragg have been quietly engaged there, and more recently in South Carolina and Montana. Their mission may well lead to a new role for the Berets in the Army of the '70s.

Tolson, at the time commanding general at Bragg, picked the initial two counties for their proximity as well as for their poverty. Immediately south of Bragg, Hoke County has only two doctors (both in private practice) for 16,436 people—compared with a national ratio of 1 to 650—one dentist and a tuberculosis rate four times higher than the state average. More than half its residents are either black or Lumbee Indian. Anson County, some 60 miles to the west, is only slightly better off medically.

"I Am a Rat." Among the first nation menders into Hoke County were a doctor, Captain George Reavell, and five medics, including Green Beret Master Sergeant Jesse Black, a career soldier with 19 years in the service, including four in Viet Nam. The ground rules were strict: the medics could not act as doctors, even though Special Forces medics are so highly trained that they can perform amputations. All medical equipment was supplied by state, local and private agencies.