Mr. GAVIN. Before we proceed to that, under this amendment here he will now be required to serve approximately 7%1⁄2 years in the guard rather than 12 years, as the legislation is written. Mr. BLANDFORD. Well, he would be required to serve under this law in the National Guard from the day he enlists up to age 26. Mr. GAVIN. Right. Mr. BLANDFORD. It could be at 17 or 18. Mr. SHORT. In 1951 we extended it to 35 to prevent that escape valve. The CHAIRMAN. That is right. Mr. BLANDFORD. That is exactly right. Mr. SHORT. But this is to bring him back to 26, which will compel 71⁄2 year service. The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Mr. SHORT. Which, I think, is a very good thing. Mr. GAVIN. However, on that point, if his record is not satisfactory in the National Guard, then he is still subject to the draft. Mr. BLANDFORD. Yes; and would be up to age 26. Mr. SHORT. That is right. The CHAIRMAN. Up to age 26 under the amendment. Mr. BLANDFORD. That is right. Mem Now, Mr. Van Zandt has raised a very interesting point. bers of the organized units of all of the armed services who were members on February 1, 1951, and who have since remained in organized units of the National Guard, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Army, any of them, are exempt and thus not deferred from induction so long as they participate satisfactorily. Now, that gives those individuals a favored position, since at the age of 26 they can leave an organized unit and they have not been deferred, they have been exempt from induction. So the age of liability does not extend to them, to age 35. On the other hand, we have no protection in this law for any person who joins an organized unit or did join an organized unit after February 1, 1951. Now, that question will have to be considered by the committee under the national Reserve plan because it ties right into the building of an Organized Reserve and the method by which you wish to build an Organized Reserve and, therefore, I would suggest to the committee that they not attempt at this time to discuss the subject. The CHAIRMAN. That is right. Mr. BLANDFORD. Because it is a very complicated one. Mr. RIVERS. Let's vote. The CHAIRMAN. Then following that line of thought-we will bring that matter up when the Reserve bill is being considered, and Mr. Van Zandt is a member of that subcommittee, I think, that will consider it. Now, I think we all understand the objective of the amendment. Is there any objection to the amendment? If not, the amendment is agreed to. Mr. BLANDFORD. All right, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Now, take your next amendment. Mr. BLANDFORD. The next amendment would be section 4 of H. R. 3005: Section 6 (b) (3) of the Universal Military Training and Service Act, as amended, is amended to read as follows: "(3) Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, except section 4 (i) and paragraph (5)"-which is the special registrants for doctors and dentists"of this subsection, no person who has served honorably on active duty_after September 16, 1940, for a period of six months or more in the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, or the Coast Guard, or for a period of twenty-four months or more in the Public Health Service, shall be liable for induction for training and service under this title, except after a declaration of war or national emergency made by the Congress subsequent to the date of enactment of this title." Now, let me read to you the present law, which is very interesting: No person would, after the date of enactment of this title which has June 24, 1948 Mr. VAN ZANDT. Explain that date. Mr. BLANDFORD. That was the date that we passed the present law that we are operating under now. That was Public Law 759, and that was the draft law of 1948 which was passed upon the recommendation of the President because they could not maintain the size of the Armed Forces on a voluntary basis. Mr. SHORT. That followed the lapse of the draft? Mr. BLANDFORD. Yes, sir. The old law, the 1940 act, if you will recall, expired in March of 1947. Now, this is the way the present law reads, and you will see that you are in a rather peculiar situation and, as General Hershey said, a rather embarrassing situation. No person who, after the date of enactment of this title June 24, 1948 is honorably discharged upon the completion of a period of three years or more of active duty in the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, or the Public Health Service, shall be liable for induction for training and service under this title except after a declaration of war or national emergency made by the Congress subsequent to the date of enactment of this title. Now, you are in this situation: We have three groups of veterans. First, we have the man who served for 90 days during the shooting war. He is out. He is safe. Except in time of war, he can't be touched. Then we have the individual who served for a period of 12 months or more between the period September 16, 1940, the date the first draft law was passed, and June 24, 1948, the date we passed the last draft law. Now, Congress said that anybody who had served 12 months at that time was a veteran and he could not be drafted under this law. Now, the only other veteran under the law, as you can see, is a person discharged from the armed services after June 24, 1948, with 3 years of service. Well, you are only inducting people for 2 years. So in order for a man to be absolutely safe and to be considered a veteran under the law, he would have to extend for a year. Now, you can't, obviously, legally draft a man twice who has completed his complete total obligation under the draft law of 24 months. You could go to court and get a writ of habeas corpus on that. But a man who is drafted for 24 months and serves for 23 months and 29 days could be drafted again. The proof of it is the fact that they are drafting people who have been discharged with less than 6 months of service and who have since been reclassified. Mr. SHORT. Yes, and right at that point, I hate to impugn the motives of anyone in any branch of our armed services, but it seems to me that if not encouraged, certainly it wa' condoned, and the ones in authority allowed these boys to get out just a month before having served their full 24 months in order that they could grab them and bring them back in. It was a rank injustice. Mr. BLANDFORD. Well Mr. SHORT. It is not only an embarrasing position, but it is ridiculous and very unfair. Mr. VAN ZANDT. Mr. Chairman, at this particular point I agree with what the gentleman from Missouri has said to some degree, but it does not apply to all. Mr. SHORT. That is right. Mr. VAN ZANDT. Some have been granted a discharge based on an application of hardship. Mr. BLANDFORD. That is the point. Mr. SHORT. That is right. Mr. BLANDFORD. What worries me to some extent is that we are in an early discharge operation right now, as you all know. The Army is going to let people out after 21 months. Now, I don't believe the Army has any intention of drafting those people at all. Mr. RIVERS. They haven't anything to do with it. Mr. BLANDFORD. But the President did say, for the reasons Mr. Van Zandt has stated, that he wanted local board reclassification for those people that had less than 6 months' service. Those are people who had a situation such as this: Let's say there was a death in the family and the family became dependent upon that member. So he applied for a hardship discharge. It was approved by the Red Cross. They investigated it. They went to the local board and the local board said, "Yes, let him out." A month or 2 months later there is a settlement of an estate, we will say, and the mother inherits some money or there is a changed circumstance. The mother gets a job or one of the youngsters gets a job or something, or the children get a little bit older and take jobs. Now, the circumstances have changed. "Those people who served less than 6 months," so the President said, "reclassify them, and if you want to reinduct them, reinduct them." There is nothing wrong with that, even though it is a double reinduction. But it is a situation that had to be faced. Now, if the President could say 6 months, the President could say 12 months or 18 months or 22 months or 23 months. This law would say that if a person had over 6 months of service, you couldn't touch him again, except upon a declaration of war or national emergency declared by the Congress. Now, in addition to that, if you will recall, I told you that you had this group of people who did not get 12 months of service in prior to June 24, 1948. They might have had 12 months in July of 1948, but they didn't have 12 months on June 24, 1948, and some of those people were discharged with as much as 33 months of service and and have sine been reinducted. The CHAIRMAN. Now, the effect of the amendment would be that anyone who had served as long a period of time as 6 months after September 1, 1940, is not eligible for reconsideration by the draft boards? Mr. BLANDFORD. Yes, sir, except in time of war or national emergency declared by the Congress. Mr. RIVERS. May I inquire right there? Is this the first time we have taken care of the Public Health? Mr. BLANDFORD. Well, the Public Health Service is a little different situation. Since July of 1952 they have not been members of the Armed Forces, and there has been no way by which a person in the Public Health Service could be retained on active duty with the Public Health if he decided he wanted to leave. Now, the Public Health Service came up here and said, "Well, now, if you pass this law"-we left the Public Health Service out entirely because we recognized they were no longer members of the Armed Forces. We didn't want at the same time to impose something different on them. So we left it out. Then the Public Health Service came up and said, "Now, look, this is in effect what the situation is: We want to be able to keep our people in the Public Health Service, because if you put a provision in there that they can get out after 6 months, they will all walk out"—not all, but a lot of them will walk out because there will be no way of getting them, except under the special registration of doctors and then they would have had prior service and they would be in priority 4, and you would have yourself in a rather peculiar situation. So they asked that we protect the Public Health Service member but require 24 months of service. Mr. SHORT. And the others only 6 months? Mr. BLANDFORD. This is not inconsistent because you are dealing normally with doctors and there are not the hardship discharge cases and things of that nature that you normally run into with enlisted personnel. The CHAIRMAN. Now, I think the members of the committee thoroughly understand the purpose of the amendment. Mr. VAN ZANDT. Mr. Chairman, will you have the amendment read again, please? The CHAIRMAN. Yes; read the amendment again. It simply means that a man who served as much as 6 months from September 1, 1940, cannot be drafted again. That is all it means. Mr. BLANDFORD (reading): Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, except section 4 (i) and paragraph (5) of this subsection which is the special registration of doctors in the doctors draft law— no person who has served on active duty after September 16, 1940, for a period of 6 months or more in the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, or the Coast Guard, or for a period of 24 months or more in the Public Health Service, shall be liable for induction for training and service under this title except after a declaration of war or national emergency made by the Congress subsequent to the date of enactment of this title. Mr. COLE. Mr. Chairman, could I ask him a question? Mr. COLE. Would that not make it possible for a man who had served, we will say, 7 months and who applied for a discharge on the ground of hardship and who was discharged, to be exempt from further liability, even though the economics of the hardship may be removed? Mr. BLANDFORD. It would. 55066-55-No. 2-12 Mr. COLE. What is the justification for that? Mr. BLANDFORD. The justification, Mr. Cole, for that is that that individual has already served 6 months. There has to be a cutoff date on everything, of course. He has served 6 months. Obviously, the hardship was not of his doing. I mean, he had no control over it. He had been in there 6 months. The situation arose in the seventh month. It is a long enough period away from the time he entered the service so it is something over which he had absolutely no control. And the chairman felt that in fairness, we should not reinduct that individual. Now Mr. SHORT. And comparatively very few numbers. Mr. BLANDFORD. There are very few of them, actually. Mr. SHORT. Very few. Mr. BLANDFORD. We could make it 12 months or we could put a provision, except in cases of hardship. But when you start doing that, that is when the administration becomes difficult. And General Hershey said this will certainly help to remove The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Mr. COLE. The argument is, then, even though the discharge was at his request, the circumstances on which the request was based was not of his own making. The CHAIRMAN. That is right. Mr. BLANDFORD. That is right. Now, it is true for the man having 5 months, I will admit that, but that is a little less period of time. There doesn't seem to be quite as much equity in that man's case. We had to come up with a cutoff date of some kind, and we just decided on 6 months. Mr. ARENDS. Let me ask you a question. This is not applicable to doctors and dentists? Mr. BLANDFORD. Not this provision. Mr. ARENDS. The reason I brought that up is I had a doctor close to home that served 16 months and he got out and they called him back for 2 years. I don't know how he got out at 16 months, but they called him back. Mr. BLANDFORD. Mr. Chairman, General Murphy, Colonel Norrell, and Mr. Buddeke are here from the Department of Defense. They want an opportunity, I think want an opportunity, to present their position. Is that correct? They would like to present their position now. The CHAIRMAN. All right, come around. Mr. GAVIN. Before we take action on this amendment- Mr. BLANDFORD. On both amendments. Mr. VAN ZANDT. On both amendments? Mr. BLANDFORD. Well, on the second amendment. The CHAIRMAN. Now, General Murphy, what is the attitude of the Department in reference to this amendment? Are you opposed to it or for it? General MURPHY. Mr. Chairman, I brought with me today, in the absence of Mr. Burgess, who is appearing before the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Buddeke and Colonel Norrell, who are much more familiar with the effect |