 The first training regiment, Fort Dix, New Jersey, this is a big moment. The final day of basic training. The weeks of adjustment to Army life are over. Other challenges to be sure lie ahead. Perhaps even bigger ones. But this is graduation day. And for the members of Company E, as it is with all men who have successfully met the demands of maturity, it is a day of accomplishment. A day, if you will, of pride. Let me present the big picture. An official report produced for the armed forces and the American people. In the minds and hearts of the 200 men of Company E, as in every training company on its final day of basic, emotions of many kinds are today crowding each other for recognition. Here is one of the graduates, Ed Baker, recruit Edward Doolittle Baker, for him as for all the others, the last eight weeks have gone by quickly. Eight weeks? Is that possible? Was it really only two months ago? Indeed it was. You may think it was a red-letter day in the Army's history when they got you, Baker, but you've got to admit you were a pretty sad apple. And those first few days in the reception center didn't seem to you to offer much improvement. For the recruit, those first days are the most bewildering. As he moves from line to line, getting inoculated against diseases he has never worried about before, clothed in the uniform that will identify him from this day on, oriented, indoctrinated, processed. He acquires a new identity, but not a completely new one. When he comes into the Army, a man is, after all, the product of the years which lie behind him. His education, his experience, the basic skills he has lived and worked with. It is to both his advantage and the Army's that the Army find out as much about him as possible so that he can eventually serve in the most efficient way. But for every man who enters the Army, whatever his eventual service is to be, there must first come eight weeks of basic soldier training in a training company. And here, too, there are a few shocks to the recruit's system, a few new facts which at first he might find hard to assimilate. Stand-at-ease, I am Lieutenant Iset, your company commander. I want to welcome you to Company E, First Training Regiment. This will be your home for the next eight weeks. Home, the man said. Home was never like this, was it? The alarm clock never went off at 5.30. But now, the day starts when days should start. Should start? Where do you get this should start bit? Personally, I don't have anything against hearing an alarm go off at, well, say, 7.30 or so. That's a good solid recruit-type point of view, Baker. You think breakfast comes early in this new home, huh? It comes early, all right. But that's not all. You have to work for it, too. Pull-ups yet, before you can get in the mess hall. There was a time I wouldn't have believed I could eat breakfast at this hour. But then, there were lots of things I didn't realize I could do. Of course there were. In soldiering, as in everything else, everyone finds that things come harder at the beginning. And because so much is expected, most men respond to the challenge and try to do their best. That's the fastest way to make the adjustment. And certainly, adjustment is necessary, for the army is, after all, a completely new way of life. There is a quality which pervades those first days which no man who has been through it can ever forget. It is a kind of loneliness, but a special kind, reserved for the individual who suddenly finds himself part of an overwhelming organization, which is built not only on regulation and discipline, but on tradition, too, and an abiding pride in its past. He of rifle is against machine guns in the gloom. Bush till this one of twenty riflemen is doomed. Ball and Georgia in the Solomon ends a simple wooden cross alone to tell. That beneath a man, remember, keeps a man, is as loudly sung. The story of Private Roger Young Passes soon enough. The training schedule takes care of that. Everything is new. And to the recruit, everything seems to come at him fast. And none of it, or very little of it, comes easy. Generally, the trainee is so busy that he doesn't have much time to think about himself. You think about yourself all right when you find you've goofed. Oh, but sir, I'd like to explain about... You're an accountant, soldier. Well, it's a tough life, Baker. Yeah, it's tough all right, but nobody pretends it isn't. The commanding general himself warned us it would be. That first week when he said... I wish to welcome you men to this new phase of your life. And in welcoming you, I want to tell you a little bit about the kind of training you will receive while here. This is an infantry training center. The training you will receive will be tough and rugged. It will tax you and demand the best that you can give. It is not intended to be soft, slip-shod, or easy. The reason for this is fundamental. We are training you, and thousands like you, to be able and ready to defend this country if the need should arise. Such training to be successful has to be tough. We are counting on you, as indeed your nation is, to respond to it in the way Americans have always responded when called upon. It's not just the physical things that are tough. Your mind and your emotions get a good workout, too, until you're able to accept the way things are done in this new life. You're so right. Remember that session you had with the company commander the second week of training? How could I forget it? You had a problem, didn't you? Well, it didn't seem like much of a problem to me, but everyone else thought it was, so I took it to the CO. I wanted to get a weekend pass. But hadn't it been explained to you that you couldn't get a pass until the end of your fourth week, except in an emergency? Sure it had, but, well, this was an emergency. As I explained to Lieutenant Izet, I'd had tickets for one of the big shows in New York for a couple of months, and I'd been counting on taking my girl. It was her birthday. So far as I was concerned, it was a real emergency, and the rules that were blocking it were nothing that reasonable men couldn't solve together. Lieutenant Izet was fair enough if you can consider any man fair while he's turning you down. He explained that there were rules and that exceptions couldn't be made for one man, and that important as my reason may be to me, it didn't quite classify as an emergency as far as the Army was concerned. Well, I can't say I liked it very much, and I guess my face showed that I didn't. Let me give you a little advice, Baker. This is your first setback in the Army. Don't let it throw you. It won't make your job or ours any easier, and it may make it tougher. Yes, sir. What did you do in civilian life, Baker? I just got out of school, sir. I had an offer of a good job and when I was planning on being married in a few months. It's still a little hard to get used to the idea. There's been a change in those plans, isn't it? Well, yes, sir, a little. You don't resent having to come into the Army, do you? Resent it? Oh, no, sir. Only you. Only what? Well, sir, it's, well, it's just that, oh, we're not at war or anything, and well, it's a little difficult to understand. And it's hard to understand why your life has to be conducted as if we were at war. Is that it? Yes, sir, something like that. Baker, do you have a very clear idea of why we're not at war? Well, let me tell you why we're not. We're not at war because you and several thousand men like you go into the service every year and train just as if they're worry war. If we weren't a strong nation, it's anybody's guess what would have happened to us before now. And the only way we can remain a strong nation is to have a fighting team that's ready to go, anywhere, anytime. That's why you're in instead of back with your job. You're training for a war we hope will never have to fight. And the only real hope we have that will never have to fight it is for you to soldier with everything you've got. That's why you're not going to be able to get that pass until the proper time. Does it make sense now? Well, yes, a little anyway, sir. Good. You're going to learn a lot about yourself in these next few weeks, Baker. You'll discover things you'll never dream were in you. Apply yourself as best you can and watch what happens. Yes, sir. Well, I watched. And I felt lots of things happen. For Baker and the men with him, the days were filled with many new experiences. Training in the things and infantrymen, any soldier has to be able to do. They learned one of the first things a soldier on the battlefield has to know, how to locate targets quickly and identify them. However well-comouflaged those targets might be. They learned the paramount lesson, how to use their weapons. Firing the rifle is one of the oldest exercises in the army. But now, the method of learning how to fire it is one of the newest training techniques. For years, soldiers learned how to shoot by firing at a fixed target a known distance away. But studies of performance and actual combat showed that a new way of learning was needed. Baker's group was among the first to learn under the new technique, which is called train fire. This technique is based on the idea that in combat, a soldier doesn't know where his target is going to be or when he'll see it. Targets pop up anywhere and they're hard to spot. Training in this new technique goes on through the whole training cycle on a lot of different ranges, representing all kinds of combat conditions. The soldier gets the feel of the rifle and he develops a sharpness in spotting targets. He learns to be fast, but just as important, he learns to be alert. Baker and his fellow soldiers found that about midway in the cycle, the trainee begins to feel that he is out of the knack of a lot of things. Well it's still tough, but it's coming easier and now you know you're going to make it. But there's something even more important. Like any man in any job, the soldier begins to feel a sense of accomplishment, something close to personal pride, when he does what he has to do as well as he can. Along with his aching muscles, he is suddenly aware of newly acquired skills in things he has never done before. There's another thing too. By this time he has made friends, associations that are going to be important to him for a long time. There's something about being in the army together, doing the same things together, making the same adjustments that gives a special meaning to friendship. He gets a new perspective on the other parts of his life too. That's true, you do. For instance, you get a kind of thrill out of coming home in uniform on that first weekend pass at the end of four weeks. The folks didn't think I looked any the worse for wear. In fact, they seemed to think that army life was agreeing with me. Mother confessed that she had been a little worried about whether I was being taken care of properly. She was kind of concerned about the sergeants at camp, were they really as tough as everyone said? Well, I assured her that all the sergeants I knew were really sort of a motherly type. Dad was interested in exactly what kind of training we were getting. By this time I had the training schedule down by heart, hour by hour. One aspect of training that particularly interests parents is the training and character guidance which soldiers get all through the cycle. The army's position on this is simple. A man's character has already been formed, at home, at church, in school, and so forth, before he ever comes into the army. But the army accepts the obligation of carrying on the guidance of that character so that the individual will keep on developing a moral and spiritual toughness that will enable him to handle whatever problems he has to confront. Both of Baker's parents were interested in what would happen when he finished basic training. His mother hoped he would go to electronics school. She thought that sounded like an excellent way for him or for anyone else to get some valuable technical training in the army. And indeed, Mrs. Baker is right. Today's modern army relies heavily on electronics to give it its margin of superiority over its potential enemies. And the training in electronics which soldier technicians get is just about the finest in the world. Baker's father also was aware of the advantages of technical training. But like many another veteran who served in World War II, he was aware too of the advantages of continued infantry training, which is in a very real sense, training for manhood. Anne, that's my girl, had a few questions of her own. All this training stuff was important, sure. But she wanted to get down to the basic facts, like what kind of social life was I having at camp? I explained to her that it was pretty wild. One big string of parties hardly had any time at all for training. That's what she had been halfway suspecting anyway. So I suggested that she come out and find out for herself. There was going to be a dance at the service club the next weekend. Well, could she make it? Could she? Well, what do you think? The folks came out with Anne. They were part of the 15,000 visitors who come to the post each weekend. We ate by the lake, just as if we were at a resort. They were delighted with this recreation area, and so are all the other families who are able to spend part of their visit here. I took them on the Deluxe tour. They were impressed with everything they saw, and there's a lot to be impressed with. There is a lot to be impressed with. There are facilities to take care of just about every recreational need, and to provide just quiet relaxation. There are facilities to develop any interests the soldiers have. Baker's parents, like all the others who visit an army post, found in short that it's very much like a regular town. Only it's better equipped than most towns. Invariably, parents are pleased to see the consideration the spiritual life gets on an army post too. An impressive landmark on the main parade ground at Fort Dix is a statue that seems to dominate the entire post. This statue is called the ultimate weapon, and it symbolizes the army's belief that the man with his feet on the ground is still the only indispensable weapon in war. This concept of the combat soldier's indispensability in war comes through in force to the recruits in the final weeks of training. It gets tougher, but by now you realize that it all actually has a real point. While you're learning how to take care of yourself on the battlefield, you begin to understand how vitally important every individual man is in battle. You learn how to fight together, how to take care of each other, and that's just as important. For most of the time, you're only as good as your team. And through all of it, the recruit finally emerges with an understanding of what soldiering is all about. It's a way of life, a hard way in many respects, a different way, certainly, but a way with its own special rewards. It's a rare man who doesn't feel it and feel the pride that builds right along with it. The pride of service. You hear a lot about that in the army, and then one day it's not just a phrase anymore. It's something you begin to feel, you know? It's... well, let's face it. It gets to be a part of you, just as you're part of an organization that has 185 years of proud and honorable duty behind it, and which has a mission today as vital as any it's ever had. Coming to know all this is as important, I guess, as anything else you get in basic training. Well, it's all over now, recruit Baker. You're at the end of two of the most challenging months of your life. A short eight weeks ago, you were green, timid, a little lonely, uncertain about your place in the new life which had abruptly replaced your old one. You remember what your company commander told you? You're going to learn a lot about yourself in these next few weeks, Baker. You'll discover things you never dream were in you. Apply yourself as best you can, and watch what happens. Touch food, hold! Receive awards are present. You did learn. You discovered as much about yourself as you did about your rifle. You came across reservoirs of strength which you had not tapped before. You discovered capacities and skills which had been lying dormant for years waiting to be exploited and developed. You found, as men have always found, sometimes in the pressures of battle, sometimes on the training fields of peace, sometimes to their surprise, always to their credit, that you had a talent for soldiering. It has been a self-discovery extensive enough to bring you honor. recruit Baker, I present this award to you for becoming the outstanding trainee of the cycle. In this marksmanship badge we're having achieved expert during range practice. Baker is a symbol. A symbol of what might happen, what can happen, what does happen to men in the course of basic training. Obviously, not every man in the company can emerge from basic training as the outstanding trainee of his cycle to receive his award from his battalion commander and take the salute of his fellows. But every man whose life is touched by his nation's need for him and who finds himself in the army in response to that need, every such man is changed at least to some degree. Every such man learns new things about himself, and he is richer for it, and his nation is also richer. Baker will carry his progress a step further. All these men on this final day of basic training now know what their next assignments will be. Some are going to electronic school and other technical training programs to develop and lend their technical proficiency to the complex might of the modern army. But even a modern army still needs its basic combat soldiers, and some of these men are going to continue infantry training like recruit Edward Doolittle Baker. How does that square with you, Baker? It's okay with me. It's been okay with a lot of other good men in their time, recruit Baker, and it always will be. For as long as man is the ultimate weapon in war, as he is the final hope of peace, no challenges can be greater and no rewards finer than those of leadership in the company of men. The Big Picture is an official report for the armed forces and the American people. Produced by the Army Pictorial Center, presented by the Department of the Army in cooperation with this station. Thank you.