National Defense: Let There Be Water

Throughout the drought-parched area in the Carolinas the Office of Production Management issued a strange order to power companies: don’t turn on the water, no matter what general orders it.

Cause of the order was bantamweight Brigadier General James I. Muir, commander of the 44th Division. In the battle of the Carolinas, General Muir had to get his outfit across the dried-up Pee Dee River, where the only available bridge had been “destroyed” and he could not get his motorized equipment across the rocky river bed. His solution: an order to the custodian of a power dam upstream to give him some water. The custodian deferred to military might. When the river had risen two feet, the General’s engineers took guns and trucks across on improvised floats. The General was later informed that he had wasted 65,000 kilowatt hours. He was much surprised.