Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 24, 1993 TAG: 9301240060
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ARMY GIVES ITS BREAST DEFENSE
It was a rough year for detente, 1983.We invaded Grenada that year, the Soviet Union shot down a South Korean airliner and Congress spent $625 million on the MX missile. President Ronald Reagan still considered the USSR to be "The Evil Empire" and the Defense Department was spending $84,000 on breast pumps.
Uncertain whether World War III would erupt in the 1980s and whether women would be in combat, the Pentagon bought 46,032 breast pumps.
You can never have too many breast pumps in the defense of democracy. It is ideals like those, espoused by the likes of Jefferson, Monroe and Ralph Lauren, that are at the very foundation of our system of government.
By way of refresher:
Breast pumps are plastic devices that extract breast milk from a woman's breast so the milk can be fed to an infant at a later time via a bottle when the breasts are not available.
A Roanoke businessman who has requested anonymity noticed that the Defense Department was soliciting bids for the 46,032 surplus breast pumps.
Journalistically challenged by this issue, I pursued the story via telephone to Battle Creek, Mich., and Memphis, Tenn., to Mechanicsburg, Pa., and to Philadelphia. No one could explain why these breast pumps were no longer needed or when or where they were purchased.
Answers were sparse, but a few readers of a midweek column on the breast pumps were resourceful enough to call the New Cumberland Army Depot, where they are now stored, and ask for a few. Their requests were denied.
Finally, Frank Johnson has stepped forward from his post at the Defense Personnel Support Department in Philadelphia.
Johnson called Friday to report that, "the breast pumps are perfectly good breast pumps. It's a supply-and-demand problem."
You've heard a lot about the peace dividend that was thundering your way like an avalanche of leftover money - cash even the Pentagon couldn't spend in light of the collapse of communism, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the diminishing need for a U.S. military big enough to overwhelm an ant colony.
Of the breast pumps, Johnson says: "As a result of the end of the Cold War, we've got, obviously, way more than we need."
This passel of pumps was bought in 1983, said Johnson. Since then, about 80 pumps are taken out of storage each month and shipped to military personnel around the globe.
There isn't much demand, because there aren't as many women in or dependent upon the military as there were when the Russkies menaced us with Armageddon.
As we lower our guard a bit, these breast pumps aren't needed.
"We're getting out of the breast-pump business," said Frank Johnson. "We used to keep absolutely humongous stocks of things like scissors and old Dr. Ben Casey smocks. By the time we'd take them out of storage, they'd be obsolete. We're trying to get away from that."
Once the surplus breast pumps are gone, servicemen and servicewomen will be asked to buy them as needed at the local drugstore, and to submit the receipt for reimbursement.
It's a new era in military breast pumps.