laststandonzombieisland

Some 85 years ago this month.

Original Caption: “1st Army Maneuvers in the Carolinas. An M2A2 light tank of the 191st Tank Battalion. These tanks use a great deal of gasoline. South Carolina. October 16, 1941.”

In October 1918, the U.S. Army, gearing up to beat the Kaiser, had peaked at 2,395,742 active men in uniform with a few million more on the schedule.

Just 15 years later, the story was much different.

During the Depression, the Army was gutted to the point that in 1933 it could count only 135,015 officers, men, Philippine Scouts, and USMA cadets on active service.

Most battalion-sized units were so understrength they could not field 200 men for exercises. Keep in mind this included the Air Corps, which totaled under 20,000 men. On paper, the active Army had nine permanent infantry divisions and three cavalry divisions, but all save for four (1st Infantry, Fort Hamilton, NY; 2nd Infantry, Fort Sam Houston, Texas; 3rd Infantry, Fort Lewis, Washington; and 1st Cavalry, Fort Bliss, Texas) were cadre headquarters units. Empty shells in a hollow force.

Then there were the 138,513 men in the Organized Reserve (OR), almost all of whom (133,485) were officers accumulated over the years through a mix of former ROTC cadets, regular Army officers passed to the reserve list, and Citizens Military Training Camp graduates passed to the OR after receiving their commissions. Most of these were older men, as 1933 saw only 270 CMTC and 5,082 ROTC commissions granted. The small number of enlisted in the OR were largely organized into 30 company-strength MP battalions assigned to paper corps and army headquarters. By comparison, the Regular Army had only four active MP battalions, and the National Guard 11.

While the National Guard numbered 185,925 in June 1933, most were in units that rarely assembled other than for brief meetings at the armory one night a week (and not necessarily every week) for about 75 cents each pocket change (about $20 today), followed by a two-week summer camp (Annual Field Encampment) although attendance at the latter was often skipped, as many enlisted “cannot afford to let his family suffer while he is away at the field camps and consequently he elects to remain at work rather than go to camp.”

This was at a time when the National Defense Act of 1920 assumed a Regular Army of 280,000 men and a National Guard of 450,000, rapidly mobilizing to over a million in time of war, when new recruits would be quickly added, and the OR called back to the colors. Actual figures, if war had been declared in 1933, would have likely been half that.

This would markedly increase with FDR’s “Tree Army,” the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which took unemployed and underemployed young men aged 17 to 28 into regimented public works programs run by the Army. Enticed by a promise of $30 pay per month (which is only like $775 today) plus free room (tent) and board (chow) and 8 a.m.- 5 p.m. workdays, the program peaked at 500,000 men organized in over 2,500 camps in 1935, many later transitioning to the military or National Guard. It was estimated that 75 percent of the 3 million who cycled through CCC camps in the 1930s later served in the military in WWII.

Slowly, the Army and Guard beefed up as tensions rose overseas.

By August 1939, the Regular Army had grown to 187,893. The brand-new Regular Army Reserve (RAR) had been established for prior-service enlisted men and had 24,972 of them on its rolls. The Organized Reserve, primarily of officers, stood at 119,773. The National Guard had 199,491 effectives. Some 97,549 young men were in ROTC programs and another 36,783 in the CMTC. Around 240,000 were still kicking around the dwindling 1,500 CCC camps. All told, the country was approaching 900,000 men in Army fatigues when Hitler sent his legions into Poland.

In the summer of 1940, with Japan and China locked in a grinding military stalemate after three years of war while Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France had all fallen to the Germans in a matter of months– the last with help from Italy– the U.S. Army started to have division- and corps-sized maneuvers, including reservists and the National Guard.

However, size wasn’t everything. Equipment of every sort was lacking.

What looked formidable on paper looked much different in the field.

From the CMH:

The summer maneuvers of 1940 came too soon to permit any marked improvement in training techniques, but by bringing together a total of 90,000 troops of the First Army, including Regular and National Guard components, and by offering a natural if unfortunate comparison with current battlefield operations as reported from Europe, they evoked far more public attention than had any previous maneuvers, as indicated by the extended accounts in the daily press of that period.

It was a public disturbed by discovery that National Guard divisions (the old “square” type), whose wartime strength was listed at 22,000 men each, reported as present an average of 10,414 enlisted men each; that in one of these were 3,000 recruits who never previously had attended field training; that a typical division had none of the new light or heavy mortars, none of the new antitank guns, and only one-fourth its quota of new rifles; that another was drilling still in armory-drill fundamentals; that some of the “cannon” used in the maneuver were merely iron pipes; that many of the “tanks” were actually commercial trucks used in simulation for purposes of the exercise; and that “bomber” planes similarly engaged were light observation planes serving an imagined role. As simulations for maneuver, they served well enough. They also served as demonstrations of the Army’s critical needs and gave eloquent support to the Chief of Staff’s recent arguments for better armament.

Then came the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, adopted in September, which by New Year’s Day 1941 had placed 18,933 draftees into active training, originally just for one year. Before Pearl Harbor, 922,000 American men had been conscripted, with a rough 2.4:1 ratio of men going to the Army (650,000) vs. the Navy (272,000).

Also over the next year, the now 241,612-strong National Guard was federalized in waves, adding 18 thin infantry divisions, 80 separate regiments, and 29 Army Air Corps squadrons to active service.

All eligible RAR soldiers were mobilized for active service on 15 February 1941.

In July 1941, the Army, swollen by conscripts, activated reservists, new volunteers (often with tree sap under their nails) and federalized Guardsmen, could count 1,462,315 officers and men.

In September 1941, the great maneuvers in the Louisiana-Texas area, employing 400,000 men of the Second and Third Field Armies, were by far the largest the Army had ever held and spanned 30,000 sq. miles from Shreveport south to Lake Charles and from Jasper, Texas, to the Mississippi River.

The next maneuvers, the last before America entered the war, were in the Carolina area. Conducted in a more compact area (9,375 sq. miles straddling the North Carolin and South Carolina border), they employed fewer troops but used armor more intensively and, for this reason, were of lively interest to Washington.

The forces involved would include the newly-motorized 4th Infantry Division, the brand new 1st and 2nd Armored Divisions, the more leg-borne 1st, 8th, and 9th Infantry divisions; seven NG infantry divisions (26th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st, 43rd, and 44th), six horse and hybrid “horse-mechanized” cavalry regiments (active 3rd and 6th, NG 101st, 102nd, 104th, and 107th), as well as such novel organizations as the 502nd Parachute Battalion (which had only been activated three months prior).

They fought across two major Blue vs. Red campaigns, the Battle of the Pee Dee River and the Battle of Camden, with troops beginning to stage in the first week of October and the exercises wrapping up on 30 November.

The photos from the event show a force in transition, and it is amazing to think that the same Army would take on the Afrika Korps in Tunisia just over a year later– with almost totally different equipment.

After the Carolina Maneuvers ended, the Secretary of War summoned a conference in his office “to familiarize the officers present with the lessons which had been learned from the maneuvers and to exchange views.”

The after-action conference held by the War Department on 3 December 1941– just four days before Pearl Harbor- concluded the following:

(1) There was still dissatisfaction with the training of small units, and this training was to be stressed in coming months

(2) The outstanding question was the struggle between tank and antitank, fairly well tested in Carolina by the use of 865 tanks and armored cars, against 764 mobile antitank guns and 3,557 other pieces of artillery;155 the tactical employment of antitank weapons called for restudy, armored units likewise had not been sufficiently massed for field operation, and there was a demonstrated need for a higher ratio of medium tanks.

(3) The horse units had not proved their value.

(4) Tactical air forces were poorly coordinated with the ground units they were to support.

(5) Motor transport was used without a realistic sense of limitations that actual field maintenance would impose.

(6) Larger and earlier use of mines was called for.

(7) Radio communications from ground to air were “awful,” in General Arnold’s judgment.

(8) Communications generally were too slow.

In the main, the maneuvers were declared better than earlier maneuvers, which was to be hoped for at this late date, and there was a difference in the judgments of air and ground officers as to responsibility for the admittedly poor co-ordination of those elements. One hopeful situation was pointed out: the ammunition plants were beginning to function more fully, and during the winter a far better supply of small arms cartridges would come to hand for training the troops.

They would need them.

Things would change dramatically after Pearl Harbor, and in one month alone, just a year after the Carolina Maneuvers, 514,345 enlisted men would be added to the Army’s rolls in the single month of October 1942.