Army & Navy: The Army Raids Its Desks

The Army had long known that when it reached full strength it would have more tail than teeth. Thousands of good soldiers would have to be tied up in noncombat duties, building the greatest supply system in history, training millions for battle.

Now most of the building-training job is done. By last week the Army was deep in a program of shifting its able-bodied service and administration personnel into the battle line. It hopes and intends to bring out at least half a million soldiers from desks and shops to combat duty. To fill noncombat jobs that still have to be filled, battle veterans and non-battle casualties fit for only limited duty are being brought back to rear areas.

It was time the shifts were made. Combat men have long griped about burly soldiers smashing baggage in Iceland, tending bar in PXs in Brisbane, have resented being equipped by healthy young quartermasters who had never heard a shot fired in anger. Plenty of the “rear-echelon commandos” resented their own lot, too, were ready for a chance at battle.

Transition. Groundwork for the shift was laid early this year when General Marshall ordered his personnel officer, Major General Miller G. White, to take inventory. “Counting the Army” was no easy job, had to be taken up theater by theater.

First to go on the block were the commands within the continental U.S. Service forces and training centers have already yielded about 250,000 men, who are now overseas. Next in line was the air forces which, in non-flying jobs in the U.S. alone, offered a tempting total of 400,000 able-bodied men, some of whom the ground forces would be glad to have.

Overseas, the North African theater was first found to have the greatest over-strength. It was ordered not only to move 10,000 general service troops into combat branches, but to return 10,000 limited servicemen immediately and 5,000 a month to the U.S. for replacements. In England, 12,000 were gleaned to be sent off with combat infantry.

The Pacific and CBI theaters would be the last to be heard from. They had always been shortest on manpower.

Mechanics. The mechanics of transition could not be accomplished by a snap of the fingers. The War Department ordered all theater commanders to retrain noncombat personnel in a tough, twelve-week course. Conversely, rear-area units raided of their physically fit were allowed to be temporarily over strength so that combat veterans, taking over, could be trained for their new jobs.

But there was an even bigger reason than efficiency and morale to make the Army raid its own desks. Manpower at home has already been heavily drained. Within its own forces the Army has probably the largest pool of able-bodied young men the U.S. has left.