Private Mailer Re-Enlists

Private Mailer Re-Enlists

Every Army psychiatrist is familiar with the strange phenomenon of re-enlistment. On Monday the rifleman hates the Army with a bitterness bordering on homicide. On Tuesday he signs up for a new hitch.

Clearly the impending transition to civilian life is more painful than the institutional adjustment which, however disagreeable, has become a habit. The soldier’s adolescent years have been consumed in becoming a man, as the Army understands manhood. Now he is reluctant to begin again, on civilian terms. In the Army he leads a half-crippled existence; if he has seen combat, he is perhaps a good deal more than half dead. Yet this is preferable to the painful changes which await him.

Something of this sort has happened t...


Socialist thought provides us with an imaginative and moral horizon.

For insights and analysis from the longest-running democratic socialist magazine in the United States, sign up for our newsletter: