Chapter 17: End of the Replacement Problem
(1) The Turning Point
Early in February the replacement problem, like the shortages of major supply items such as tanks and field artillery ammunition, was still a major cause of anxiety. Estimates of future deficits varied from week to week, depending in part on casualty forecasts, but they indicated throughout January and February that the theater would still be short between 20,000 and 27,000 infantry riflemen and anywhere from 2,400 to 5,400 armored replacements on 1 March. The shortage of riflemen, it was predicted, would not be overcome until some time in April, and the shortages in armored force replacements would continue for several months.1
This pessimistic outlook resulted mainly from the theater’s forecasts of expected casualties. These forecasts had risen steadily in the light of the actual loss experience of November and December.2 To make matters worse, the War Department early in March informed ETOUSA that its shipments that month would be considerably smaller than previously estimated, owing in part to the use of infantrymen to provide additional armored force replacements, and in part to the shipment of additional units to the theater which the War Department had counted on using as a source of replacements.3
In actual fact, signs of improvement were already evident. The shortages within the army groups had begun to recede in February. By the middle of March, Colonel Shannon, chief of the theater Manpower Section, reported that there were more than sufficient infantry replacements available in army depots to meet all reported shortages. On the strength of this development, and on Shannon’s estimate that the situation would continue to improve in March, SHAEF finally suspended the allocations of infantry replacements between the two
army groups effective at the end of the month.4
In its communications with the War Department regarding requirements from the United States, meanwhile, ETOUSA pursued a more cautious course. Early in the month the War Department asked the theater to release 19,000 men per month from scheduled shipments beginning in May in order to bring units in the Pacific area up to strength and also build up stockages which would permit the release of men there when redeployment under the point system went into effect.5 ETOUSA objected strongly to the proposed cut, insisting that it could not get along without the scheduled shipments. The theater admitted that casualties had fallen off substantially, but it argued that an urgent new need had arisen for units to control the masses of displaced persons and prisoners of war which the armies were uncovering in their advance. At this time approximately 30,000 prisoners were being captured every day, and between 800,000 and 1,000,000 displaced persons had also been uncovered. As an emergency solution the theater had already begun withdrawing from the Replacement System infantrymen whose training had been only partially completed to provide over-strengths for MP, antiaircraft artillery, and heavy field artillery units being used for control duties.6
The War Department considered the needs of the Pacific area more urgent. It pointed out, moreover, that ETOUSA would still get 26,000 men in May even after allowing for the diversion of 19,000, and that 16,000 of this number would consist of infantrymen to be used in building up its MP units for military government duties. It noted that the theater was already employing combat divisions for such duties. In view of these developments it informed the theater that it planned to go ahead with the diversions unless there were other reasons for not doing so.7
ETOUSA agreed to cut the 19,000 for May. But it asked the War Department to reconsider carefully any additional diversions. On the basis of current casualty rates it estimated that its own resources—that is, the present stockage and the output of retraining—would be exhausted by late August, for it could not continue the withdrawal of specialists from service units for retraining without impairing the efficiency of those units. It therefore wanted the flow of men from the zone of interior maintained.8
At the very moment that ETOUSA was painting this relatively gloomy picture it was accumulating replacements far in excess of its immediate needs, and actually faced a problem of how to use the surpluses. Two developments had
operated simultaneously beginning in February to bring about the improvement. The most important was the very substantial drop in the number of casualties. Battle casualties came to 39,400 in February, as compared with losses of 69,100 in January and 77,700 in December. Non-battle losses continued fairly high, totaling 52,100 in February as compared with 67,600 in January. In fact, they exceeded battle casualties in February, and were to do so again in April. But total casualties came to only 91,500 in February, as against 136,700 in January and 134,400 in December. Battle casualties rose to 53,200 in March, and total casualties that month came to 101,000. In April battle casualties dropped to 41,000 and total casualties that month came to 87,100. Losses were consistently lower than anticipated. (See Table 10.)
The theater’s stepped-up retraining program had begun to produce results. Conversion training for enlisted men under the program announced in January did not get under way until early the next month, and the results of the expanded program therefore did not appear until March. Under the impetus of events in December, however, the theater had already begun to retrain greater numbers of men. The output in January totaled 7,685 infantry riflemen, representing some gain over November and December conversions, which had come to only 1,325 and 5,751 respectively. The February output, totaling 8,193, was only slightly higher and, likewise, did not yet show the results of the expanded program. In the course of that month, however, the Replacement System accepted more than 32,000 men for retraining—about 17,700 from the Communications Zone and 14,500 from the Air Forces. The fruits of these large withdrawals finally began to be realized in March, when the output of the conversion training centers totaled 17,195.9
(2) Withdrawals Are Stopped
The expanded conversion program had been in operation barely two months when theater officials began to consider the curtailment or complete cessation of the entire program. At the beginning of April the theater’s program called for withdrawals totaling 88,450 men between 1 February and 14 May—55,180 from the Communications Zone, 32,920 from the Air Forces, and 350 from SHAEF. In the case of both the Communications Zone and the Air Forces the planned withdrawals comprised approximately 9 percent of their total strength. Plans tentatively called for the withdrawal of an additional 10,500 from the Air Forces and 22,400 from the Communications Zone in the period 15 May-15 June.10
Lt. Gen. Carl Spaatz’s request early in April for a cut in the Air Forces quota led to a re-examination of the entire program. General Eisenhower was reported to favor the cut in view of the combat situation and the smaller number of casualties. General Lear’s first reaction was to disapprove any reduction in withdrawals on the ground that neither the Communications Zone nor the Air Forces had yet suffered any net loss of strength because the withdrawals had been replaced
with limited assignment men, and because the prospects of getting replacements from the zone of interior were deteriorating. As a safety measure, he preferred to ensure the maximum flow of replacements for at least a few months. Nevertheless, Lear asked for a restudy of the entire replacement picture, specifying that it take into consideration the above factors, plus such factors as the smaller rate of hospital returnees in recent months, the need to continue retraining in order to permit the absorption of limited assignment men becoming available in numbers in excess of normal replacement needs, and the possibility of heavier casualties.11
COMZ officials generally favored a suspension of the retraining program. There was no denying, as both General Eyster and General Larkin pointed out in their appraisal of the situation, that casualties were now running considerably below the estimates on which replacement requirements were being calculated. They thought there was no longer much danger of another strong counteroffensive by the enemy, or even the probability of a very determined defense. Replacement requirements were therefore definitely on the decline.
The main consideration in deciding whether retraining should continue was an estimate as to the effect which withdrawals were having on the service forces. There was no question as to the number of qualified troops available for retraining. The main question was whether a sufficient number of replacements could be supplied to offset withdrawals and also ensure that efficiency of the service forces would not suffer. COMZ officials claimed that the efficiency of many service units had already been impaired by the exchange of untrained limited assignment personnel for trained general assignment men, and insisted that the units could not stand additional losses. Furthermore, they argued that service units would have to operate at maximum efficiency even after V-E Day, and that the theater would have to furnish well-trained units for early deployment to the Far East.12
Section commanders and the technical services provided ample documentation for these arguments. In fact, to judge from the tenor of their claims it would appear that the entire Communications Zone was approaching collapse. General Plank claimed that over-all efficiency in the Advance Section had already been reduced by an estimated 18.8 percent in the supply services, and by as much as 30 percent in the signal and ordnance services. The Office of the Chief Quartermaster stated that quartermaster units had suffered a 40-percent decrease in efficiency through the exchange of limited assignment for general assignment men. It cited as a specific example bakery companies, in which heavy lifting required able-bodied men.
For the most part the withdrawal of
critical specialists had been avoided. There were instances where a single section of an installation took the heaviest loss of men because the other sections were staffed with specialists. In a single depot company, for example, the loss fell almost completely upon the storage and issue sections because all the men in the repair section were classed as key personnel.13
Meanwhile the claim was made repeatedly that the limited assignment men who were supposed to replace the men withdrawn did not arrive until long after vacancies had occurred. The ADSEC commander claimed at the beginning of March that white units in the Advance Section were understrength by an average of 16 percent, and that some units were as much as 34 percent understrength.14 Plans had provided that limited assignment replacements should be assigned to service units as much as thirty days before the actual withdrawal of the men they were to replace, and that they be given on-the-job training. But these intentions were not always fulfilled. Withdrawals of general assignment men actually exceeded allocations—to say nothing of actual deliveries—of limited assignment replacements until late in March, and there were over-all shortages in both the Communications Zone and the Air Forces until at least that time. Consequently many replacements did not get on-the-job training from the men whose jobs they inherited. An attempt to provide specialist training in certain job categories, such as truck drivers, cooks, and bakers, at schools in Shrivenham, England, and at the 19th Replacement Depot on the Continent, also fell short. These training centers simply lacked the capacity to handle the thousands of men thrust upon them, beginning in February, and the pressure to fill the vacancies in units led to the assignment of many men before they were prepared to occupy positions.15
The loss of efficiency occasioned by the exchange of untrained limited assignment replacements for trained general assignment men was, at best, difficult to measure. The Communications Zone itself tended to reject the claims of the sections as unfounded, insisting in the case of the Advance Section that it had actually gained rather than lost in the exchange of personnel,16 that its quotas thus far had necessitated no surrender of specialists, and that the number of key specialists in at least two technical services—ordnance and signal—had actually increased.17
COMZ officials nevertheless supported the general argument that further withdrawals would be harmful, and recommended that they be discontinued, and that all limited assignment men in excess of normal requirements be assigned to
service force units as over-strength.18 Colonel Shannon urged a more conservative course, arguing that the curtailment or cessation of the retraining program would involve too great a risk in view of the higher casualties which the army groups had most recently forecast. He also again called attention to the problem of absorbing limited assignment men if withdrawals were discontinued. He recommended that the withdrawals continue as scheduled until 15 May.19
But the surpluses which had begun to accumulate in the Replacement System provided a compelling argument for suspending the retraining program. In mid-April the theater Manpower Section reported a stockage of 50,000 infantrymen in the Replacement System in excess of shortages reported by the field commands.20 Vacancies in branches other than infantry totaled about 20,000. Even assuming that these would have to be met with infantry replacements, there were still 30,000 men available in excess of needs.
Colonel Shannon thought that about 20,000 of this surplus could safely be used to meet the rising requirements for prisoner of war guards and for military government. About 5,000 had already been provided 12th Army Group for this purpose. The theater provost marshal had indicated a need for an additional 10,000 men to meet prisoner of war guard requirements. One corps reported that it had already diverted about 6,000 men to military government duties, and both army groups reported that their combat effectiveness was being dissipated by the necessity to divert combat units for occupational duties. The use of infantry replacements for this purpose obviously involved some risk, and General Bull at first opposed it. But in the end he approved the idea and arranged for the release of 10,000 replacements to the two army groups in proportion to their divisional strength. An additional 10,000 were earmarked for use as prisoner of war guards as required. But Bull informed the army groups that they would have to use the over-strengths furnished in this way to meet their combat losses in the event they could not be met by the Replacement System. On 21 April General Lear ordered the suspension of withdrawals effective at the end of the month.21
With the manpower problem apparently solved, the theater Manpower Section became more or less superfluous. Early in May the theater announced that the general assignment men already withdrawn from the Communications Zone and Air Forces would complete their
conversion training. At the same time it ordered the theater Manpower Section to revert to its original status as a section of the G-1 Division of the theater general staff effective 15 May. The G-1 was thereafter to assume responsibility for the staff supervision of all matters concerning the morale, welfare, and proper use of manpower, responsibilities which had been exercised by the deputy theater commander, General Lear. Meanwhile the trend of events largely nullified the work of the ETO Manpower Board, which was still conducting detailed job analyses in the theater designed to save personnel. On 4 May General Lear approved a proposal to dissolve the Manpower Board upon the completion of the surveys it was then conducting, estimated at about 1 June.22
The relatively low casualties in April, plus a record retraining output of nearly 25,000 that month, had resulted in the continued accumulation of replacements in the depots of the Replacement System. Toward the end of April the stockage reached a total of 86,000 men, and was beginning to exceed the capacity of the Replacement System’s accommodations. Partly to relieve the burgeoning Replacement System, partly to meet the needs of the armies in their occupational role, the theater late in April made two additional allocations to the 12th Army Group as over-strengths. On 27 April it ordered the release of 10,000 infantry replacements for attachment to the 106th Division to serve as prisoner of war guards, and two days later it released another 15,000 to the 12th Army Group for similar duty.23
While the expanded retraining program thus more than met the need for infantry riflemen, the shortage in at least two other rather critical categories—armored force enlisted men and infantry officer replacements—was never completely eliminated. The shortage of armored replacements, particularly tank crewmen, became especially acute in March and April 1945, when deficits ranged from 3,000 to 5,000. The War Department insisted that it could no longer furnish armored replacements in the numbers desired except by diversions from infantry training as well as diversions of replacement tanks, conditions which the theater was reluctant to accept. The Replacement System itself was ill-equipped to offer the required training. A proposal by General Eyster, the COMZ G-3, to use recently arrived armored divisions like the 16th and 20th as training units, or to withdraw other armored units for use as training cadres, found little favor with the field commands. Rather than release units for that purpose, both army groups preferred to conduct their own training, converting either their own armored infantrymen or other infantry replacements into tank crewmen. Divisions in the First Army attempted to meet their requirements by transferring men to their attached tank battalions for training. But this proved impracticable, and the army
finally established its own training center for the conversion of new infantry replacements into tank crewmen.24
The training of infantry officer replacements had got under way late in February, the officer candidate school at Fontainebleau beginning on the 23rd and the course for the conversion of officers of other branches on the 24th. The theater planned to meet by far the greatest portion of its needs through the officer candidate school, which was scheduled to start three classes of 240 men each per week, each class graduating about 200 men. The officer conversion course was planned to start classes of approximately 200 officers each at two-week intervals.
Early in March the outlook for eliminating officer shortages was still gloomy. Officials predicted a shortage of nearly 5,000 as late as the end of May, even taking into consideration the eventual output of the training program. Personnel officers saw only two possibilities of reducing the deficit earlier—by shortening the officer candidate course, and by increasing the number of direct commissions. Any results from the first would obviously be deferred several weeks. Nevertheless, General Lear in March ordered the officer candidate school course shortened from twelve to eight weeks, effective with the first class. At the same time the theater commander again urged on both army group commanders the necessity to increase the number of direct appointments as the only means of quickly alleviating the acute shortage.25 The 6th Army Group had possessed an especially good source for appointees to officer candidate school in the several thousand ASTP students and preflight cadets who had been distributed among several of its divisions before they left the United States.26
The outlook on infantry officers soon took a turn for the better, mainly because of lower casualties in the last months. The number of battlefield appointments never lived up to expectations, despite the change in policy which permitted units to retain the officers they appointed. Meanwhile the entire officer training program proved too belated to have any effect in relieving the theater’s shortage. Neither the officer candidate school nor the conversion program, both of eight weeks’ duration, produced any infantry officer replacements until the last week of April, less than two weeks before the end of the fighting in Europe.27
(3) Results of the Retraining Program
Statistically, the results of the emergency conversion program were impressive enough. Between 1 February and 30 April, when ETOUSA suspended the withdrawal of general assignment men from the Communications Zone and the Air Forces, 78,708 men were transferred to the Replacement System for retraining as infantry riflemen. About 30,000 of these had come from the Air Forces, and 49,000 from the Communications Zone. Approximately 70,000 out of this total eventually completed retraining, at least half of them after V-E Day. Adding the conversions carried out between August 1944 and February 1945 raises the cumulative withdrawals to 147,600 men and the total completing retraining to 113,700.28
The training of infantry officers, unlike the enlisted conversion program, was almost wholly a product of the emergency program begun in February 1945. The officer candidate school at Fontainebleau, the twenty-ninth and last class of which finally completed training on 14 July, commissioned a total of 4,171 second lieutenants out of a total of 6,614 candidates. In addition, the Replacement System gave conversion training to 560 officers of other branches, organized into five classes, and indoctrination courses to about 500 men commissioned in the field, organized into four three-week courses.29
Organized and expanded in great haste and under pressure, the conversion program suffered several shortcomings which it would not have suffered had planning and preparation been more deliberate. Not the least of these was the haste with which men were withdrawn from service units before their replacements could be properly trained. In most cases there was no time for formal training in the schools established for that purpose, and in any case the facilities for such training were limited. When the conversion program got under way in earnest the demand for replacements in service units became so great that men had to be assigned immediately and given on-the-job training.
The noncommissioned officers withdrawn from service units posed a special problem. In many cases the noncommissioned officer held his rating because of technical qualifications. He often had no experience in command except in an administrative setting. As a trainee under the conversion program he had to learn to be an infantryman and also how to lead a squad or platoon. In the early stages of the program in 1944 noncommissioned officers were given every opportunity to retain their ratings. If they did not meet the minimum standards after ten weeks of training they were turned over to classification and assignment officers for reassignment. Under the accelerated and expanded program in 1945 noncommissioned officers were examined at the end of six weeks. Those who did not meet the minimum standard were immediately enrolled for another period. Those who did not qualify after the second period were subject to reduction in grade. Many of the retrained noncommissioned officers did not meet the test of battle.30
Opinions vary as to the quality of the men trained under the emergency program
of 1945. Both the officer candidate program and the enlisted conversion program were organized in great haste and under definite handicaps. The fact that none of the officers trained after January 1945 were tested in combat makes it hazardous to guess at the state of their training and preparation to lead other men in combat. Since the candidates for the officers’ course were selected men, many of whom had had experience in combat; since instruction was modeled on that given at the Infantry School at Fort Benning; and since instruction was actually given by an experienced cadre dispatched from that center, it is reasonable to assume that the products of the school at Fontainebleau would have met the test of combat creditably.
Opinions vary as to the caliber of the infantrymen trained under the conversion program. Divisional commanders generally agreed that it did not match that of replacements trained by the replacement centers in the United States.31 The two factors mainly responsible for this were: (1) the lower standard of training which the Replacement System was obliged to offer, and (2) the poorer material which the Communications Zone and Air Forces released for such training. Training was not one of the major duties originally assigned the Replacement System, for it had been established policy that the theater should avoid duplicating the training function performed in the United States. The Replacement System had been called upon to offer some conversion training in the summer of 1944, and thus had had some experience. But it was not prepared, from the point of view of either equipment, personnel, or sites, for the sudden expansion early in 1945. The Replacement System at that time had a training capacity of approximately 18,000 men. The new program required that it increase its capacity for infantry retrainees to 40,000, and, in addition, provide facilities to train nearly 6,000 officer candidates and officers simultaneously. General Matchett estimated a need for 3,200 training personnel for the expanded program. Two provisional depots, the 6900th and 6960th, were in fact established early in 1945, but the Replacement System was consistently handicapped by lack of both training personnel and equipment.32
There is no doubt that the quality of manpower released for retraining to infantry was distinctly inferior to the average of personnel sent to the replacement training centers in the United States. Commanders of both the Communications Zone and the Air Forces saw in the emergency retraining program an opportunity to rid their units of misfits and undesirables, and the absence of any qualifications other than physical fitness and a maximum age limitation led many a commander to make the most of the opportunity to “clean house.” The results which such practices could have were strikingly illustrated by a survey of replacements in one of the First Army’s
forward battalions early in April, which revealed that 514 men released by the Air Forces had a total of 231 court-martial convictions. Later that month General Lear complained to General Spaatz that about 22 percent of all Air Forces personnel released for retraining had records of court-martial convictions. USSTAF admitted that as a result of “undue haste, overzealous and faulty administration” it might have transferred a disproportionately large number of men with inferior records, and promised to prevent a repetition of the error. But by that time all withdrawals had ceased.33