DURING many years personnel turnover has been subjected to intensive study. Ways to reduce or prevent unnecessary or uneconomical turnover have been given administrative consideration and action. A degree of success has come from these efforts. Among the causes of premature separation from the service “inability to take it” produces a loss of approximately 1 per cent of the total personnel every year. In this group statistical returns show separations from service as follows:
The cost of this loss of man power may be estimated in dollars, in terms of lowered efficiency, in terms of human misery. The cost need not be statistically expressed to be fully appreciated. Over a 10-year period losses from disciplinary discharge have reached an all-time low, the others remain more or less stationary. Reductions in loss that have occurred may be accounted for by changing conditions, economic and other, in the country as a whole. Changing conditions in the Navy itself have, however, greatly contributed to the comparatively excellent record now being made. Nevertheless, even so low a loss as 1 per cent of the total personnel a year is far from negligible and is worthy of consideration in the hope of finding improved methods.
Underlying these apparently unrelated causes of premature separation from the service is a common cause, maladjustment to life or to naval life. Some of these poorly adjusted or maladjusted persons are inherently antisocial persons, able to get along without trouble only in environments adapted to their individual needs. Others have, to use an aviation simile, crashed because of difficulties that have come from shore contacts, economic, marital, social, etc. Debt, alcohol, and disease increase these difficulties and bring them to the attention of authority. A few find adjustment to the naval environment itself a major difficulty. In their attempt to escape from their difficulties these persons come in conflict with naval discipline, or they show a tendency to nervous or mental illness. A few become so disturbed that they seek to end it all by desertion or suicide.
For many years commanding officers acting as magistrates have dealt with these persons when their inability to “take it” has resulted in conduct that has necessitated “putting them on the report.” Understanding, mercy, clemency, and probation have influenced magisterial procedure, and final action ending in separation from the service is not taken without giving the offender “his day in court.” Seldom is disciplinary action initiated until after efforts to solve the difficulties have been undertaken at the level of executive action. Many come to “mast” one or more times, learn there the lesson which that experience teaches, and thereafter adjust themselves successfully to the naval environment. Others fail to adjust and eventually are lost to the service through one of the channels already enumerated. It is believed that among first offenders and those who are below par in their work are some who may be more surely assisted to a successful adjustment by special study of their individual problems. It is believed that in these groups more frequent resort to discharge for inaptitude or constitutional inferiority may lessen the present toll of separation through these channels. What can be attempted that is not already being done to reduce the damage of these losses?
Attached to or interested in the action of civilian magistrates are social workers, special investigators, mental hygienists, probation officers, and many other persons whose objective it is to assist in the administration of justice. These persons study the causes of delinquency. They attempt to find the causes of antisocial behavior. They seek ways to reduce the number of offenses and to find preventive methods to lessen the damage to society that is caused by the failure of maladjusted persons. Many influences, drives, and activities are set in motion to combat conditions which lead normal and abnormal persons into antisocial behavior. Improved economic opportunity, good housing, education, religious training, wholesome social contacts, boys clubs, settlement houses, reform schools, and mental hygiene clinics illustrate the many approaches taken.
The Navy gives much attention to these matters. Each year sees better recruiting, improved living conditions, increased provision for athletic, recreational, and religious activity. It keeps ever before its men the advantages to be derived from health, clean living, honest effort, sobriety, and ambition to forge ahead. It encourages wholesome social contacts for its men on liberty. It publishes action taken toward those who fail, in the hope that knowledge of the seriousness of failure will be a warning to all.
Social workers and mental hygienists have long labored in this field. While far from having attained their objectives they have thrown some light upon the problem of maladjustment, a basic factor which distorts human behavior. The Navy cannot and need not employ social workers and mental hygienists. It may, however, be in order to examine the techniques of their approach to these problems. We have long followed the trail marked by their efforts. Can we not study their techniques and attempt to apply them to our remaining problems?
How much of every executive officer’s time each day is taken by problems of debt, alcohol, minor infractions of discipline, and conflicts with persons ashore or aboard ship? How many of these situations reach the chaplain? How many are brought for one reason or another to the attention of the head of a department, the doctor, or the division officer? Perhaps these problems might be better approached or solved if the techniques of the social worker and of the mental hygienist were studied and utilized in line with navy needs. It may be thought that executives, heads of departments, chaplains, and medical officers have no time to learn these techniques. It may be that already they have learned enough for the solution of these navy problems. If these techniques are practiced, if these officers are able to form, each in his own mind, a clear picture of the persons for whom they are each partly responsible, how often do they pool their knowledge so that it will be fully available to the commanding officer when an offender is brought to mast!
The recruit in the training station lives in a protected environment. He is there subjected to an intensive course of military training. He is well housed, well fed. Habits of personal cleanliness and hygienic living are taught. He is inoculated and vaccinated to protect him from certain disease hazards. His dental condition is inspected and given initial corrections. During this training period he is seldom found guilty of serious infraction of naval discipline. The adjustment of most young men to the training station routine is, in general, rapid and successful.
When the recruit goes to his ship he finds a more difficult environment. Adjustment to seagoing is easy for most but difficult for a few. Homesickness, seasickness, the importunities of unscrupulous salesmen, the dangers of alcoholic indulgence and of exposure to venereal diseases manifest their influence. Separation from former home social contacts causes him to seek new social contacts. Those ready to meet his needs are not always of the best. Add to these the crowded regimentation of ship life and it is not difficult to understand why some recruits find heavy going and find adjustment difficult or even, in some cases, impossible. Slow adjustment may bring the new man to the attention of the executive or commanding officer for minor infractions of discipline. Failure properly to meet temptations to insolvency, the menace of alcohol or of disease ashore may get him into trouble. Uncertainties, confused directives, social difficulties, and misunderstanding may bring him to the attention of his division officer or the chaplain.
It may be that the only practical way to determine which of these newly enlisted men can learn to “take it” and which of them cannot learn to “take it” is the method of “trial and error” and accept as inevitable the present toll of desertion, disciplinary discharge, mental alteration, and suicide. It may be that improvement may come from applying individual attention to the special group of maladjusted persons in line with the techniques of the social worker and the mental hygienist. Some may need only friendly counsel, others may need a better explanation of their opportunities, a few may be found constitutionally inferior or emotionally unstable. Here is a problem, solution of which may bring big dividends.
Aboard ship we have long shown a special interest in the newly arrived “rookies.” They are often, for a time, partially segregated and given over to the care of a chief petty officer or division officer interested in helping them make their first adjustment. Medical officers often interview these men individually when their health records are first received. Chaplains take a special interest in these new men. In this group there is a normal curiosity about life and especially naval life that needs to be adequately met. Lessons about the danger of debt, alcohol, and venereal disease receive more interested attention. These young men are still malleable, still in need of special guidance and special supervision.
Among those who have been less than a year out of the training station are those who have not yet had time to become deeply entangled with responsibilities and conflicts ashore. In this group adjustments to naval life are being made. A few will find adjustment difficult. The division officer has knowledge of those who are somewhat out of step. Their names and difficulties could be brought to the attention of an interested chaplain, medical officer, or department head for special study. The mature judgment, sympathetic understanding, or searching analysis of these older officers might help to speed up adjustment, might act to prevent first or second offenses and to bring about, for a few, earlier and less damaging separation from the service. Some reduction might result in the number who, through failure to adjust, desert, are dishonorably discharged, suffer mental derangement, or end in suicide.
In reading the enlistment and health records of those who have failed it is possible to find some, it may be many, in which is recorded evidence indicative of earlier difficulties inadequately met. Study of such records and of the men who find “heavy going,” application of the techniques of the social worker and the mental hygienist might reveal ways to prevent serious difficulties which develop because the earliest symptoms of maladjustments are not subjected to critical analysis. Within the division to which men are attached, in the contact of the men with the Medical Department, and in their contact with the chaplain, there may be evidence which, if properly used at the critical time in the lives of these men, might prevent serious crashes later. Do we now combine these sources of information early enough? Would not executive officers welcome expert, adequate, combined information of this sort? Might not intensive study of first offenses be productive? Does not the commanding officer welcome such assistance when available? A method indicative of the value of pooling such information is already in existence. At “mast” the service record, the executive officer, the division officer, perhaps the chaplain and the medical officer are present. Judgment of the offense, however, rules this assembly. The offense, if obvious, is handled by disciplinary action. Studies of the man in relation to his environment, his difficulties, his conduct, and his offense as an indication of maladjustment need attention before the moment of magisterial decision. The punished offender, after sentence has been pronounced, may need special guidance to prevent repetitions of similar conduct.
Perhaps such studies and plans for special guidance might be given by boards composed of heads of departments including the chaplain and medical officer as special investigators. Study of conduct disorders and a search for correctives might be very helpful to the few who are out of step. The executive officer is a very busy man. He would welcome a more than usual analysis of misconduct or inadequacy before it becomes reportable. Such a board, pooling information from many available sources within the command, might prevent some summary courts, might discover a few constitutionally inferior persons who should be recommended for inaptitude discharge on more liberal grounds than are now deemed advisable. Any method that will better utilize information now available is worthy of consideration. Methods which give hope for reducing the number of men now separated from the service for disciplinary reasons are worthy of trial. The techniques of the social worker and the mental hygienist applied to evidence of misconduct before and after it has reached the commanding officer’s action supply such hopes. Carefully guarded but more liberal and early use of inaptitude and medical discharges will eliminate more of the unfit from the service early enough and often enough to reduce desertion, bad conduct discharge, mental cases, and suicide.
Four apparently unrelated means of separation from the service are related to a common factor, maladjustment. Studies of this condition have been made by the techniques of social worker and mental hygienists. Evidence of antisocial conduct is obtainable aboard ship before it becomes evident at the level which requires disciplinary action. Study of obtainable evidence with these techniques may prove of great value. Detection and recognition of maladjustment early in the service lives of men may come from early pooling of information obtainable from several sources. An administrative set-up for accomplishment is indicated.
Increased attention to young men during the first year at sea, increased attention to first offenders, more individual guidance and observation of those who are not readily “making the grade,” and liberalization of the basis for inaptitude and medical survey discharge will correct more of the correctibles, detect more of the unstable or unfit, and focus attention upon the problem of maladjustment.
An altered approach to this human problem may reduce the toll of 1 per cent of the total force who yearly desert, are dishonorably discharged, become mentally deranged, or commit suicide.