Your old Sarge was right - gave good advice. But in this case - this head doesn't seem to require too close a reread... Funny stuff... thanks for sharing.
This one got by because the writer and the editor did not properly read the headline or take the proper editing steps. Back then everything was manually typed and the copy was taken to a typesetter, either linotype or one of the first computerized type setters that produced single-line tape that you then waxed and stripped onto the flat. It was easy to miss things back then among the thousands of words. In one case we missed a sports team headline that read “Center Women Run Around” instead of “Center Women Run Aground”. The worst was when we redid the masthead that listed the publisher (the commanding general), the public affairs officer and myself. I almost missed the mistake in the first proof page prints that listed my boss, the PAO as the “Pubic Affairs Officer”. I kept copies of that set of proof pages after we corrected the error and I put one of the proofs around the rest of the base paper for that week and gave him that copy when we got back to the office. It only took about a minute for him to howl in horror over the crap he would take over that mistake but was laughing at the joke after it was explained to him.