The Reserve Officers Training Corps has never been a favorite extra-curricular activity at Harvard. Something less than five per cent of all undergraduates now enroll in Army, Navy, Marine, and Air Force ROTC combined. But this year, with the sudden increase in draft-awareness born of the war in Vietnam, a boom seems to be beginning in ROTC enrollments.

No student can ignore the stories of seniors who have been classified 1-A and sent to Vietnam because they were a course short, or of frenzied appeals to provincial Selective Service boards who fail to understand Harvard's system of course credits. The draft has become an inevitable stumbling block for any student who considers the slightest deviation from a program of four sequential full years of college. The desire for security has led many of them to reconsider ROTC.

The government, the students are discovering, has met them half-way with a new two-year program. The college sophomore may devote six-week chunks of two successive summers to a leadership-oriented, genteel version of Basic Training, and in the next two years give up only enough time to take four half-courses in ROTC and two hours of drill each week. He graduates, spends two years in the service, and he's out.

But despite the new program, ROTC officers admit, if somewhat reluctantly, that the threat of the draft still pulls in many applications. "Enrollment always varies with the student's evaluation of the world situation," says Major William F. Scott, associate professor of Military Science. Scott points out that enrollment in ROTC declined sharply immediately after the Korean War, then increased again with the Berlin crisis in 1961. Enrollment, Scott expects, should increase again next year.

Yet much of the increase can be traced to the two-year program. Harvard's Navy unit expects to swell from 74 to 126 this year, and mostly in two-year enrollments. The Air Force, composed of six cadets, now offers only two-year contracts, and has received 100 applications for summer camp. The Army expects similar increases, while the Marines generally follow changes in Navy enrollment.

Cadets who choose the two-year program must attend a summer camp (or summer cruise, in NROTC) between their sophomore and junior years. After six weeks of practical instruction in first aid, foxholes, artillery, tanks, and defensive gas warfare--after dismantling, cleaning, reassembling, and firing a panoply of weapons ranging from the .45 pistol to the M-60 machine gun, the cadet finally decides whether to sign the contract.

Four Harvard men went through the program at Fort Knox last summer; this summer, 40 are expected to enter the two-year gauntlet at various camps. Again, Vietnam may have had much to do with the rise in applications, but few students knew about the two-year program last year. It was not the subject of an intensive information campaign until last September.

The war in Vietnam affects ROTC in other ways. For the first time, ROTC cadets are learning counter-insurgency, now a standard part of both the military and Marine curricula. In Mil. Sci. 2hf for instance, cadets take a unit on the basic tactics of guerrilla warfare. Their June final has included questions like, "You are an infantry captain directed to command a combat patrol consisting of three rifle squads and two mortars. Your mission is to attack and seize the hamlet in the following sketch. State your plans." The sketch which follows contains areas marked "jungle," and a body of water labelled "Dukong river." The hamlet depicted in the sketch is protected by fortification marked "moat--sharpened stakes. Also included are miscellaneous data on the number of rifles and mortars which the enemy has, and the fact that there are 100 women and children the hamlet.

Cadets in Naval Sci. 52, the course for prospective Marine officers, answer questions like, "Describe brief the manner in which the Viet Cong approaches the problem of winning the support ...of the South Vietnam ese villager," or "What does (Vo Nguyen) Giap consider the really decisive factor for victory in any revolutionary war?"

Last fall Harvard's Army ROT unit formed a counter-guerilla platoon. About 15 or 20 cadets continue to practice bridge-building, ambus demolition, and small-group movements as an extra-curricular active for which they get no ROTC credit.

Harvard's ROTC faculty, however deny that the counter-insurgency instruction is a preparation of officers for Vietnam. They point out that counter-insurgency should be a part of modern military training, even if the United States is not fighting a guerilla war.

Military and Naval Science course though not exactly guts, are among Harvard's less demanding offerings. According to the Office of Tests, the average Naval cadet scores half of a grade point higher on his NROTC courses than in his other courses. Cadets consider the easy B in a half-course one of the attractive fringe-benefits of ROTC.

What some cadets find attractive, however, other cadets complain of. They say that the material covered, while necessary for officers, is dry, tedious and unchallenging. They complain that they are learning facts and dates rather than concepts; that they are being taught by soldiers rather than teachers; and that they take too many objective tests and too few essay tests.

There are some petty, albeit indispensible, objective questions on ROTC exams. The cadet is asked to "determine in yards, to the nearest ten yards, the straight-line distance between monumented Bench Mark 295 in grid square FL9975 and monumented Bench Mark 300 in grid square FL9780." He must be able to fill the blanks in the question, "When marching at quick time, swing your arms--inches straight to the front and--inches to the rear of the seams of your trousers."

But at the same time he must be able to "Discuss the relationships and differences between Dulles' strategy of massive retaliation and MacNamara's doctrine of flexible response. Indicate the role of conventional war forces in each strategy." In other questions cadets must discuss the impact of new technology on strategy and tactics in the Civil War. Or explain the significance of limited warfare, as opposed to conventional warfare, within the context of nuclear stalemate. About half of the questions on most of the ROTC exams are essays.