more cameras gathered here today than covered the visit of president eisenhower to western germany. questions at the event. the first and only news conference that the army has permitted its best known

sergeant, elvis presley, to give. just prior to his departure for the united states, i titled his elvis's army in part because of a remark that an officer made to me. and i was saying that, you know, if you really want an interesting army, an army that's really working with change, social change, military change, technological change, this is the best army that you can study. and he got very dismissive and he said, well, that was a terrible army. it had elvis presley in it. you know what? what kind of army is elvis presley? and as a historian, i thought that's a really interesting question. what kind of army does have elvis presley? what kind of society makes elvis presley? you know, serve and and what is the army that elvis enters? what does the army want from him? what does elvis expect from the army and all those sort of questions then spun out and became part of the book. well, historically, as today, the united states has always

been a small professional force. hopefully, of lifetime soldiers and there's always been a strong division between officers who tended to be educated and enlisted personnel, who tended to be tradespeople while, you know, soldiering being a trade. and that was pretty good. that was described in books like from here to eternity and so forth. where it changed is in the 1950s, with increasingly sophisticated technology. so you could no longer have lifetime privates, people with a sixth grade education and who served from society's margins. by the 1950s, you need people that are capable of doing putting together a nike missile or a computer or fixing a tank. and suddenly you have something like five military occupation specialties. and that requires a skilled labor force that's very, very

different from the previous 450 years. the united states army, when elvis was drafted, he was drafted into in many ways, the first peacetime conscript army the united states had ever had. we'd had conscription, maybe a year before world war two, but elvis was in the first draftee army, and that's a very unique and very dusty, linked military force that the nation has never had before or since. in many respects, it was militarily ineffective because of extremely high turnover. on the other hand, it was an enormous social experiment. it was the first peacetime attempt to bring people from all over the united states, from all sorts of socio economic groups, from all sorts of educations, religions and so forth. put them all together and create a sort of national army out of that. the one thing with conscription that people sort of forget is it's a contract.

there's a there's an individual contract nowadays when anyone that enlist but conscription is much more of a social contract that the american public agrees that they're that's time. they're male children between 18 and 25 have an obligation. but they also expect a contract back from the army that they will be better people when they will come in, they will come out. so the army needed, as i say, about 500, what they called moses military occupation specialties. and if you volunteered and you had a choice, assuming you could pass the qualification test and becoming a mechanic or computer science or electro phonics or all these very high skilled jobs. so that was one attraction to provide unskilled people with skills. and i have to say that in many respects, it was very successful. if you look at american productivity in the fifties and sixties and even into the seventies, you are seeing the results of that technical

education program all over the place. the second thing was education. you know, to come into the service and earn enough to go back to college. and they honored that commitment to the army, had an enormous education program. at one time, it ran the biggest library system in the world. the third was something called character guidance. and this was to take people and turn them into good citizens. originally run by the chaplains and it dealt with, you know, very simple ethics, morality, patriots ism and so forth. so in all three areas, if you think about technical skills, education and character, the army sought to fulfill its contract with the american public. and because of this, the army was very determined and and very concerned about a tracting good people that it could then make into good soldiers.

it didn't really expect that most of them would stay. it hoped they would. but part of the reason it needed to sell itself was to convince, you know, middle class american parents that they should send their sons into the army and they shouldn't fight it. you know, they shouldn't be calling up all the time to make sure that johnny was welfare ed or johnny was being abused by a sergeant, or this was going to be a good experience. public image of elvis and the public image of the military are intertwined. and one of the things the book talks about is how important public relations were for the army and how they tried to sell the army to american teenagers and to american parents. and it's interesting if you look at elvis presley's film career, for example, that right before he goes in, he finishes king creole. and right before that, he had done jailhouse rock. and there is if you look at those, the arch, typical teenage rebel, you know, the black leather jacket, the switchblade,

the you know, the criminal activity and so forth, which comes out and almost immediately makes g.i. blues, in which he's portrayed as a clean cut, wholesome, fun loving, patriotic american boy. and the flag seen in g.i. blues is him saluting the american flag or standing in front of a giant american flag, saluting his comrades and this transformed elvis. i mean, it turned him from every parent's nightmare to the all-american kid. but also the army was very you know, if you can read the background materials, they're very interested in this. they read the scripts. they made a number of suggestions. and so in a way, the army was part of this transformation of elvis and i show that movie to my students because it typifies not only how elvis changed, which is important in 1950s culture from, you know, the from

the juvenile delinquent to the all-american boy, but also because how it reflects how the service wanted to be seen by the american public. and and it's a very positive image. you know, the thing that's interesting about having someone like elvis in the army is is that, you know, it becomes a lot more real. i mean, people sort of forget that when president eisenhower or during the fifties served, his son was always in uniform to the eisenhower didn't have to wear his patriotism on his sleeve. he didn't have to go around talking about what a patriot he was or how much smarter he was than the generals or all this other stuff. and those fifties people didn't. they had a sort of sense of confidence about the service and in their standing about the service that i think was very good. i think they were very realistic about it. they found it. they were both proud they served. and they they liked telling stories about how dumb it was. and i really enjoyed talking to the people from the fifties

because they have such a practical realist stick view of military service and they're comfortable with their patriotism. they did their part and they don't feel a need to to wave the flag all the time. maybe we need something like that to sort of bring the

20 years ago, yesterday day, president ge