Chapter 9: Partial Mobilization: 1939–41
The beginning of large-scale war in Europe on 3 September 1939 was followed five days later by President Roosevelt’s proclamation of a national emergency, accompanied by Executive Order 8244 which authorized an increase in the strength of the Army.1 These developments marked the start of a new, more energetic stage of military activity—of preparations which for many months were animated by a hope of avoiding conflict, but which after the midsummer of 1940 were pointed increasingly toward the defeat of the Axis Powers.2
Chemical warfare training in the initial phase of partial mobilization showed slight advance beyond the normal procedures that already were in effect. But the nation’s gradual girding for war during 1939 and 1940 pointed up certain basic deficiencies in the chemical preparedness program which became a matter of serious concern to the Chemical Warfare Service.
Chemical Troops in the Emergency Period
War Department planning at this time was based upon the quick marshaling of an Initial Protective Force (IPF) which was designed to resist invasion and to hold off an enemy pending mobilization under the Protective Mobilization Plan (PMP). The strengthening of the Regular Army and National Guard provided for by Executive Order No. 8244 was the first step in the development of this plan. The United States was not expected to use gas offensively during the IPF stage although it seemed likely that protection against gas attack would become important. The CWS regarded this prospect soberly and had developed its planning toward
effective defense against any invader employing toxic agents. The offensive use of chemical warfare by U.S. troops was reserved, so far as Army planners could foresee, for later stages of war and for application if necessary on hostile soil. These factors tended to lower the priority under which the main body of chemical troops would be mobilized and accordingly to defer their training period.
The 90 officers and 759 enlisted men in the CWS in September 1939 were the hard core around which the tremendous expansion of the next four years was to develop. Within this allocation seven Regular Army chemical companies had been organized, all at reduced strength. These were:
Headquarters Company and Company A, 2nd Separate Chemical Battalion, stationed at Edgewood Arsenal where they served as testing and demonstration units with the Chemical Warfare School (remainder of battalion inactive).
Company A, 1st Separate Chemical Battalion, assigned to Hawaiian Department and attached to the Hawaiian Division (remainder of battalion inactive).
Company C, 2nd Chemical Regiment, stationed at Fort Benning, Ga., as a school troops unit with The Infantry School (remainder of regiment inactive).
412th Chemical Depot Company, on duty at Edgewood Chemical Warfare Depot.
1st Separate Chemical Company (pack), assigned to the Panama Canal Department.
4th Separate Chemical Company, assigned to the Philippine Department.
At the outset of the emergency period, the initial problem was to build up these active Regular Army companies to full strength, or as near full strength as possible under the emergency increase. Later the inactive Regular Army units could be mobilized to bring up to strength the 1st and 2nd Chemical Regiments and the 1st and 2nd Separate Chemical Battalions.3 Once these measures had been accomplished, the main problems of CWS troop mobilization would revolve around activation of the additional combat and service units for which war planning then provided. These included ten chemical regiments and eighteen chemical service type companies.
Six of the regiments were officer-manned reserve organizations; four were designated as National Guard units and were allotted to corps areas (but not to individual states) for inclusion in mobilization planning. These,
with the two regiments classed as Regular Army organizations, provided a total of twelve chemical regiments, the maximum combat chemical strength contemplated under full mobilization. These units were assigned to GHQ Reserve in the proportion of two regiments for each field army. The service companies on the other hand were intended for assignment organically to armies in the proportion of one field laboratory, one maintenance company, and one depot company to each army. This allocation of chemical troops upon mobilization had been provided for by the War Department in 1931, in a directive which with minor variations was the basis for 1939 planning.4
Originally, definite mobilization dates were set for these regiments and service companies.5 This was later modified to leave open the date of activating chemical units under the Protective Mobilization. Plan. The 1931 instructions already referred to thus provided for the selection of chemical units for activation “depending upon their relative state or organization and training.” It was anticipated that at least two regiments together with appropriate service units would qualify for activation at about the time each field army mobilized.
There were two reasons for deferring a decision of the exact mobilization date for chemical troop units. First, there was general agreement that other types of combat units would be more urgently needed in the initial stages of an essentially defensive protective mobilization; second, there was continuing uncertainty within the War Department as to the exercise of combat functions by the CWS.
The Question of Combat Functions
Although prewar planning called for activating twelve chemical regiments under full mobilization, a situation had developed within the War Department which now effectively debarred activation of any chemical combat troops. Even though some increased War Department interest in the offensive employment of toxic gas had accompanied the rise of militarism in Europe, the combatants did not resort to gas warfare when the war began. By the spring of 1940 military campaigns of striking success had been fought in Europe without recourse to the gas weapon. This development, which was contrary to many expectations, was taken to justify
a detailed re-examination of gas warfare organization and planning within the American service.6
In a plan proposed by the War Department General Staff as a result of a study of this subject in 1940, it was observed that the “Chemical Warfare Service has been permitted since 1920 to organize and train chemical troops armed with weapons developed solely for the purpose of projecting chemicals.7 The Chief, CWS, General Baker, objecting to such phraseology, replied: “This function was definitely assigned to it by law, which has required that they be so organized and trained under War Department orders.”8
The mission of chemical troops was “to supplement the arms in the tactical employment of smoke, incendiary material and nontoxic agents.”9 From the CWS viewpoint, this was merely an interim function; the real reason for the existence of special gas troops was to insure means for waging large-scale gas warfare once use of the gas weapon had been initiated by an enemy. There was thus to be considered two missions for chemical combat troops; first, a necessarily limited pre-gas warfare mission of supporting military operations with nontoxic chemicals; and second, unrestricted employment of chemicals after the gas warfare phase of combat had begun.
Chemical troops were at this time (1940) armed with mortars, Livens projectors, chemical cylinders, irritant candles, and chemical land mines.10 The projector and the cylinder were generally considered to be in need of improvement, and the 4.2-inch chemical mortar was in fact developed as the result of CWS effort to increase the capability of chemical troops to discharge nonpersistent gas. Yet production of this mortar—then regarded as the primary weapon of chemical troops—had been suspended since 1935, and after the lapse of some five years the 81-mm. mortar had been designated as the standard weapon for chemical troops. This
arrangement was unsatisfactory to the Chief, CWS, who maintained that the 81-mm. mortar was technically inadequate for major gas operations.
A settlement of this disagreement between the General Staff and the Chief, CWS, was aimed at in the 1940 proposal, which was “designated to relieve the Chemical Warfare Service of its combat functions” and distribute these among infantry, cavalry, and engineer troops. The branches would then determine military characteristics of weapons needed to undertake gas warfare missions within their appropriate spheres of tactical operation. The CWS pointed out that some of the conclusions advanced to support this proposal were tenuous.11 Both the Infantry and the Cavalry expressed reluctance to undertake large-scale gas operations. Disagreement also developed within the War Department General Staff itself.12 The net result was a decision which cleared the matter temporarily in the General Staff but which was far from satisfactory to the CWS.
Ensuing instructions were to the effect that the CWS would retain its combat functions, but that “combat units of Chemical Warfare Service will be limited to those now in being and future augmentations of the Army will make no provision for additional units of this character.” The Chief, CWS, was at the same time directed to “determine and report upon his future needs for Reserve officers with the possibility of reducing the enrollment in the two Chemical Warfare Service ROTC units, or if need be, the elimination of one of the units.13
At a time when mobilization of the Army was moving forward at a rapid pace, this order confronted the Chemical Warfare Service with difficult questions about the future of a substantial number of Reserve officers who had been trained for active duty with chemical regiments. Another consideration which affected these units was the decision, arrived at earlier that the regiment was not the most satisfactory type of wartime organization for special gas troops. Instead of the regiment, the battalion was determined to be the largest tactical unit that could be utilized effectively for controlling chemical weapons operations.
The latter decision did not affect the status of the Reserve regiments. Actually the regimental organization provided an ideal peacetime arrangement, since it permitted an effective chain of command to supervise inactive duty training and facilitated the attachment of nontactical Reserve officers
to military units for instructional purposes. The Reserve regiments were widely distributed geographically and the officers assigned to them were relatively well trained. Although the regiments were destined never to be mobilized, as war grew imminent they became increasingly active not only in perfecting their own readiness for mobilization, but also in aiding in the chemical warfare training of other civilian components.
Although the 1940 staff proposals referred to above had to do with the exercise of combat functions by the Chemical Warfare Service, the crux of this matter was armament. The question of the official status of the 4.2-inch chemical mortar had been brought up so frequently by the CWS that it was almost continuously under study by the General Staff after 1935.14
When the Army was reorganized after World War I, it was assumed that war gases for the most part would be discharged by devices that differed essentially from conventional military weapons. But the later treed of munitions development was toward the conventional, rather than away from it. In 1940 the CWS was contending that no weapon was as useful in the tactical employment of gas as the 4.2-inch mortar. Yet there was nothing so technical about this mortar as to preclude its use by either infantrymen or artillerymen.
The G-4 position, repeatedly affirmed, was that standard and not special weapons should serve for chemical operations; and that since the combat arms used these standard weapons with explosive charges, there was no reason why they could not use the same weapons when loaded with gas and smoke charges. This view was summed up by Brig. Gen. George P. Tyner, ACofS, G-4: “I am against organizing ‘chemical troops.’ Why not use Infantry or Field Artillery to throw chemical ammunition? Another branch of the Army in the field is not necessary.”15 The Tyner view was in line with the military principle of simplicity: one less supply channel, one less organization in the chain of command, one less insignia in the combat zone, and, in the case of the chemical mortar, one less weapon to contend with. These all were worthy ends.
Yet the CWS was not convinced that the solution to the problem of gas warfare was as simple as G-4 maintained. Gas was a tricky weapon and its employment required special training not given by other branches. The 81-mm. mortar, which G-4 wished to substitute for the 4.2-inch
chemical mortar, was unsatisfactory as a means of projecting nonpersistent gas. On both these points the staff view differed from the CWS view. As far as the General Staff was concerned, they were closed issues in the spring of 1941, although the CWS never accepted their closure as final. As long as the General Staff maintained its position, the CWS could not activate the chemical combat units called for by prewar mobilization plans.
Action toward relieving the impasse between the General Staff and the CWS on the question of chemical combat troops was initiated by General Porter not long after his appointment as Chief, CWS. This took the shape of a formal recommendation of 26 July 1941 that each of the two active chemical weapons companies within the zone of interior (at Edgewood Arsenal and at Fort Benning) be expanded into battalions and equipped with 4.2-inch mortars.16 This communication, with the concurrences of G-3, G-4, and the War Plans Division, was hand-carried to the Office of the Chief of Staff. In the course of subsequent staff discussion, however, the Porter proposal encountered objections, particularly from G-4 who now held out for armament of the battalions with the 8i-mm. mortar. The matter was finally resolved by General Marshall, who approved activation of the two battalions and directed the Chief, CWS, to include in fiscal year 1943 estimates funds to equip these two battalions with 4.2-inch mortars.17 Formal instructions to this effect were issued by the War Department on 10 September 1941.
This action clarified a question that had been of paramount concern to the Chemical Warfare Service for half a dozen years and which was seriously impeding training on the eve of the war. That the decision of the Chief of Staff was well taken is evident from the battle record established by this weapon in firing high explosive and smoke shells. The incident affords an interesting example of the willingness of General Marshall to hear the presentation of the chief of an Army service and on occasion to overrule staff action.
Chemical Service Units
Although the War Department General Staff repeatedly challenged the need for chemical combat troops, it did not object to “service” type chemical
Troops of 3rd Chemical Mortar Battalion, firing 4.2-inch mortars in le Tholy area, France, October 1944.
units. Action to relieve the CWS of combat functions was in fact rationalized by a desire to enable the service to “devote full time to the organization and training of service troops required to perform essential service functions.”18
Three types of chemical service units were authorized at the commencement of the emergency period: laboratory, maintenance, and depot companies. These companies were organized on paper for many years but only one, the 412th Chemical Depot Company, had ever been activated. In the spring of 1940, when it became apparent that augmentation of PMP would soon necessitate the mobilization of a number of these units, the CWS initiated a study to determine the adequacy of the existing organizational setup in meeting the wartime service and supply functions of the branch. Reasons for this action were partly military and partly technical.
The structure of chemical organizations in 1940 still bore the impress of 1918. Yet as the new war developed abroad it became apparent that many concepts of the earlier war were outmoded. Among the new realities,
White phosphorus from 4.2-inch mortars falling on enemy-occupied town of le Tholy, France, October 1944.
the most important with respect to chemical warfare was the growing dominance of air power. The range of gas was no longer held to the extreme range of artillery. Strategic bombardment implied that the entire communication zone as well as points in the zone of interior could be struck with gas. Nor was the mass of the attack to be limited by the quantitative restrictions imposed by ground methods. The prospects of gas warfare enlarged rapidly with expanding air power, and the defensive responsibilities of the Chemical Warfare Service increased in proportion.
CWS technical developments in the field of protection against gas meanwhile, had advanced so far as to suggest that the whole problem of technical field service for ground warfare be reviewed. Means were being perfected for impregnating and reimpregnating the uniform to afford protection against mustard gas vapor, yet no organizational provision had been made for accomplishing this in the field. As the scope of the problem of contamination (the quick destruction of persistent gas), increased with the rise of bombing capabilities, new techniques appeared for decontamination. Laboratory, maintenance, and depot units also required study in the light
of recent operations in Europe. This entire task was assigned to a board of officers known as the Service Units Board.19
After two months of careful study the Service Units Board submitted a report which provided a working basis for the subsequent organization and training of all but one of the CWS service units employed by the ground and supply forces.20 The board proposed the organization of two units hitherto unauthorized—the impregnating company and the decontaminating company. It redefined the functions of laboratory, maintenance, and depot companies. Tables of Organization and Equipment for all units were drawn up. It recommended that one of each of these five service companies be organized, equipped, and trained immediately as pilot units to test the adequacy of its proposals as a basis for later activations. These recommendations were approved with minor changes by the Chief, CWS, on 13 August 1940.21
In analyzing the training requirements for CWS service companies, the Service Units Board indicated that each type of unit would require certain specially trained individuals for jobs that had no exact counterpart in civilian industry. Individual training of such men prior to M Day was proposed. For unit training the board proposed a twenty-week, three-phase program involving military training, technical operations, and field training. The scope of strictly military training recommended is interesting in the light of standards later found necessary. It was limited to that “required in the initial development of a military organization and the insuring of a degree of discipline that will make certain compliance with instructions.22
Activation of Ground Service Units
Three new chemical service companies were activated in 1940 for duty with ground forces, in accordance with the recommendation of the Service Units Board. These were:
10th Company (Maintenance) activated at Edgewood Arsenal, 1 July 1940.
1st Chemical Company (Laboratory) activated at Edgewood Arsenal, August 1940.
1st Chemical Company (Decontamination) activated at Fort Eustis, Va., 1 August 1940.23
An impregnating company was not provided at this time because mobile impregnating apparatus was not yet standardized. With this exception, the 1940 activations provided opportunities to test out the organizational and training requirements of the several types of chemical service units, inasmuch as one depot company had previously been activated.
The experience thus gained was valuable in connection with the activation in the summer of 1941 of the next group of chemical units. This group included one of each of the five types of units then authorized. Three of them—the 3rd Laboratory, 3rd Maintenance, and 3rd Depot Companies—had been constituted in 1935 and assigned to the Eighth Corps Area for mobilization. Actually only the 3rd Maintenance and the 3rd Depot Companies were activated in the Eighth Corps Area at Fort Sam Houston; the laboratory unit was activated at Edgewood Arsenal. The 1st Chemical Impregnating Company and the 2nd Chemical Decontamination Company, which had been constituted in 1940, were also activated at Edgewood Arsenal.24
The procedure followed in organizing these 1940-41 units was to supply the new organization with a cadre of trained personnel drawn from one of the companies stationed at Edgewood Arsenal or Fort Benning. Fillers were then supplied from the Edgewood replacement center or were shipped from reception centers directly to the unit. Because of the leisurely rate at which chemical units were then being mobilized, unit training presented no serious problem.
Plans for Air Service Units
The looming importance of aerial warfare necessitated consideration of air as well as of ground organizations for chemical service functions. This matter had already been studied by the GHQ Air Force and T/O’s had been prepared for organizations believed best suited for air needs. The general scheme for chemical service units within the Air Corps was
based on an analysis of requirements of the GHQ Air Force for CWS personnel, drawn up at Langley Field, Va., 28 January 1939.25 Under this plan, a section from a chemical platoon, air base, was provided for each operating GHQ air base. These detachments were to be trained in chemical supply and maintenance functions. They were also to be prepared to conduct the chemical warfare training of tactical units. Their supply functions were to include the operation of chemical service points, where chemicals could be delivered directly to airplanes or poured into tanks before attachment. The plan also included the operation of air base distributing points, which were small chemical depots located near bases or advanced airdromes. It was not foreseen that units larger than platoons would be needed at operating air bases.
Rapid expansion of air power after 1940 necessitated activation of many additional chemical platoons for the Air Corps. Cadres and fillers for these units in most instances came from Edgewood Arsenal. In March 1941 a chemical service company, aviation, was set up for each numbered air force. Thereafter the separate chemical platoons serving bases within the air force area were drawn into the company organizations.
The organizational plan for air chemical units was at this time altogether tentative since the U.S. Army had no combat experience upon which such planning could be based. The CWS was interested in developing the project and was concerned with the technical training of the troops involved. But the determination of unit requirements devolved upon the GHQ Air Force and later upon the Army Air Forces.
Replacement Training at Edgewood Arsenal
Organization of a CWS Replacement Center at Edgewood Arsenal was directed by the War Department in 1940 in accordance with a scheme which provided for a general opening of replacement centers.26 The replacement center system, which became operative in the spring of 1941, changed completely the peacetime arrangement for the introductory military training of enlisted personnel. Before the beginning of mobilization, recruit instruction had been handled by the units themselves and was an accepted feature of the general Army training program. The prewar replacement
plans called for the establishment of replacement training centers to provide inductees with such basic military and elementary technical training as to enable them to be assimilated by Army units without difficulty. The units, freed from the necessity of giving basic training, could then concentrate on the job of preparing as teams for combat operations.27 The supply of trained enlisted replacements was carefully planned under mobilization regulations to avoid a difficulty which had been serious in World War I—inability to maintain combat organizations at full strength by means of a steady supply of replacements provided through special installations organized for that purpose. While the planning, in principle, was sound, the replacement center system in practice left much to be desired because planning sights were set too low. The primary, long-range mission of the replacement centers was to furnish loss replacements; that is, to supply trained soldiers to fill vacancies as they developed in military units. As the number of centers and their expansion capacity were limited, the rapid expansion of the Army after Pearl Harbor compelled the War Department to send most inductees directly from reception centers to units in training. Although the training of filler replacements to bring newly mobilized units to authorized strength was also a replacement training center function, the centers were never able to meet both demands satisfactorily.28
Administrative control of the replacement centers was retained by the War Department which set up authorized capacities and regulated the movement of men into and out of the centers. In this way it was able to coordinate the utilization of manpower by military components with troop bases. Management of training within the centers was left to corps area commanders, except for the Signal, Ordnance, Armored, and CWS centers; control of the latter was retained by the War Department and exercised, in the case of the Edgewood Arsenal center, through the Chief, CWS.
The CWS Replacement Center with a capacity of 1,000 trainees, was the smallest of the twenty-one ground and service replacement centers opened in 1941.29 Its mission was to receive, train, and forward to destination enlisted replacements for all CWS units.30 The capacity authorized
was adequate for the training load foreseen under the then current CWS Protective Mobilization Plan, since a trainee capacity of 1,000 meant (at least in theory) that with the eight-week training schedule then in effect, some 6,000 replacements could be turned out annually. Organization of the center was to be completed by 15 February 1941, or one month prior to the opening date. Assignment of instructors to receive special advanced training for this duty was indicated. Accordingly a special Replacement Center Officers’ Course, of nine weeks’ duration, was conducted at the Chemical Warfare School from 15 December 1940 to 15 February 1941.
This course, in which fifty-two student officers were enrolled, broke with the past and enabled the school to prepare CWS personnel for specific branch operations. The course was designed to broaden the base of the individual’s technical knowledge and at the same time prepare him to function as a replacement center trainer. However, subjects having to do strictly with training accounted for only 79 out of a total of 364 hours of instruction.31 Applicable mobilization training regulations were not studied exhaustively, while the emphasis placed on gas defense training suggested that the school was still leaning heavily upon its peacetime curriculum. Yet the course was undoubtedly helpful in preparation for replacement center duty.
The Replacement Center Officers’ Course raised an issue which certainly was not new in the Army but which was to plague the CWS continually during the war. A basic question in training was: Does the training fit the man for the job? The immediate corollary was: Is the man then assigned to duty for which he has been trained? The answer to the latter question would in many instances be no. Much training effort was wasted and standards of performance were at times unnecessarily low because students, after being trained for one type of duty, were assigned to another. An instance is seen in this early course at the Chemical Warfare School. Of the fifty-two officers attending the Replacement Center course, only seventeen were assigned to duty at the replacement center when it opened.32
Lt. Col. Henry Linsert, a Regular Army CWS officer, arrived at Edge-wood Arsenal early in December 1940 to organize and take command of the replacement center. A site for the installation was selected in the troop area previously included in Fort Hoyle, where the necessary barracks, mess halls, and company administration buildings—seventy-nine structures in
all—were erected.33 A pistol range was constructed and other facilities were staked out for later completion. The training organization provided for one battalion of four lettered companies (A, B, C, and D) plus a headquarters company, a band, and an enlisted specialists’ school. In order to activate these units, seventy-four noncommissioned officers and thirty-two privates were furnished as cadres from CWS units then stationed at Edge-wood Arsenal.
As of 29 April 1941 the actual trainee strength at the Replacement Training Center was 701 white and 226 Negro soldiers.34 The training plan provided for assignment of up to 225 men to each lettered company, which carried also a permanent cadre of 3 (later 6) officers and 25 enlisted men. Training began on 15 March and continued until this entire group completed the prescribed course of instruction. At the end of the first training cycle, 648 soldiers had been processed at the replacement center and were shipped (June 1941) to various CWS units in the zone of interior. The second cycle produced in September 652 men, and the third cycle, completed in December, 447 more. Thus in 1941 the inductees receiving basic military training at Edgewood Arsenal before assignment to chemical units totaled 1,747. However the strength of CWS units shot up during the year from 1,506 to 5,591, so that the aggregate of 1941 replacement trainees was far short of the total number of soldiers required. As a result, many chemical units were obliged to accept as fillers substantial numbers of recruits who came directly from reception centers and who had to be absorbed without preliminary military training.
Replacement Training Programs
A perennial problem with every technical service is whether the accent in training should be placed upon the military or technical aspects of training. Both types were necessary. Yet the growing ferocity of modern warfare has tended to increase the emphasis that must be placed upon the purely military training if the technical soldier is to survive and function in the combat zone. In branches such as the CWS the strictly military side of the training program was necessarily subject to close staff supervision, while the more technical aspects of training were properly left to the branch
concerned. Standing prewar instructions on this subject were embodied in War Department General Orders No. 7, 1927:
Military training is required for all recruits of noncombatant branches immediately upon their entrance into service. The responsibility for such training is placed upon the immediate commanding officer of each recruit. ... This training will be regarded as purely military training, and as such should be conducted concurrently with special instruction and performance of technical duties pertaining to the branch to which the recruit is assigned.
In order to coordinate training among the arms and services under this general directive, a Board on Revision of Training Methods studied this matter and submitted a report to the War Department in 1934 which led to the publication a year later of the first series of mobilization training programs (MTP’s). These early MTP’s merely formalized the application of General Orders No. 7; they represented very largely the views of the several arms and services on allotment of time between basic military and branch technical training.
The training directive followed initially at the CWS Replacement Center was MTP 3-1, 18 September 1940, “For chemical regiments at unit training centers and for chemical troop replacements at enlisted replacement centers.” This MTP, like all early ones, was admittedly tentative and subject to development in the light of experience. A revision of this program, undertaken while the first training cycle was in progress, was ready for use at the beginning of the second training cycle in June 1941. A second revision was completed in September and remained in force until after replacement center activities were transferred from Edgewood Arsenal.
The MTP used initially was unsatisfactory. It was designed to produce replacements for chemical weapons companies, although few such companies were then in existence and War Department policy did not then contemplate the formation of additional units of this type. Rather, the need was for fillers and loss replacements for chemical service companies and platoons, which required very different technical training from that provided for weapons units.
Another objection to the early program was the insufficient time allowed for the replacement training cycle. This cycle was initially set at eight weeks. All men were assigned to basic companies for the first two weeks during which period they received identical training. During this time schooling was emphasized and some technical training was introduced. At the beginning of the third week promising trainees were screened out
for specialized training while the remainder continued in basic companies for the “technical” phase of the program.35 Under current requirement rates for occupational specialists, 20 percent of CWS enlisted personnel were needed as truck drivers, clerks, and cooks.36 Accordingly a fifth of the early trainees were selected to attend the replacement center specialists’ school during the technical training phase, where they were instructed in one of these military occupational specialties.
It was found in practice that satisfactory development of the individual soldier could not be achieved within the time originally allotted. This was evident in connection with both military and technical training. More time was required for hardening and conditioning many inductees, while on the technical side more opportunity was needed for applicatory and group exercises. The same criticism of MTP’s was made by other arms and services, so that in the fall of 1941 the replacement cycle was extended from eight to thirteen weeks.37 Under the new setup, basic military training was emphasized at the start of the course and was continued to some extent during the first eight weeks; technical training was spread over the first nine weeks; while the last three to four weeks were employed in special technical exercises. This general allocation of time was found to be satisfactory. Later improvements in the training program were in the direction of more realistic military training and more specialized technical training. But it was now clear that, at this stage of mobilization, a well-indoctrinated replacement could be produced on a quarterly basis.
Conduct of Replacement Training
The group of young Reserve officers initially assigned to staff the replacement center proved to be satisfactory. The enlisted cadre on the other hand was less adequate. It was provided largely by Company A, 2nd Separate Chemical Battalion, a unit that already had been stripped of cadre material to meet earlier calls. When the requirement arose for 106 men to provide overhead for the replacement center there simply were not that many men available of the type needed for this exacting duty. The men assigned were satisfactory although unseasoned soldiers, most of them without
instructional ability. A substantial number had to be replaced at the conclusion of the first training cycle.
The usefulness of the initial cadre no doubt would have been increased had these men been given specialist training at the Chemical Warfare School in a course paralleling the Replacement Center Officers’ Course. This was not done. However, a two-week Replacement Center NCO Course was conducted at the school between the ending of the first and the beginning of the second RTC training cycle (26 May-7 June 1941). The course record of this class reveals that the seventy-one hours of instruction included little training that was directly helpful to the thirty students who attended.
Experience with the early training cycles clearly indicated that some inductees would be unable to undertake the standard course until after special development training. Defects most common were illiteracy, language difficulty, emotional instability, and physical defects. To accommodate such individuals, a Special Training Company was organized on 15 August 1941 in conformity with MTP 20-I. The unit consisted of two platoons, one for white and one for Negro troops. This RTC preparatory training had to be expanded with the growth of basic training activities; it was responsible for acclimating many men to military service who otherwise would have been rejected.
Early replacement training at Edgewood Arsenal was handicapped by the lack of training aids, training literature, and classroom facilities. Trainees were armed with the pistol, a poor substitute for the rifle in recruit training. Instructors were, at the outset, inexperienced in high-gear instructional procedure. Because training time was not efficiently allocated, graduates had to learn after joining chemical service units much that they should have been taught at the replacement center. Yet the 1941 trainees on the whole did compare favorably with those who later passed through the more highly developed CWS Training Center. Two reasons explain this fact. Most of the 1941 inductees proved to be of especially high caliber. And the instructors made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in experience.
The practice of officially referring to the installations as replacement training centers began in the spring of 1941. Previously, mobilization plans, mobilization training programs, and mobilization regulations had all omitted the word “training.” The final adoption of the term served to emphasize the fact that training was the dominant function of the centers.
As training improved, it became increasingly apparent that the CWS center was inappropriately located. Edgewood Arsenal was selected in the first place because of the concentration of research and development as
well as school and troop activities at this station. Some land was available, and a few barracks; yet neither area nor buildings were adequate to the needs of replacement training. Housing facilities could be supplemented by new construction, but there was no way to increase the land available for training purposes on narrow Gunpowder Neck. The limited number of ranges could not even meet requirements for CWS proving and experimental firing. Although a pistol range was developed, space was not available for a rifle range. The manufacturing activities of the arsenal were expanding rapidly during 1941 under priorities which impeded the development of needed replacement training facilities. Had requirements for CWS basic training remained at the projected levels of 1940, it might still have been possible to wedge this activity into the multiplicity of functions that were being undertaken on the constricted Edgewood reservation; but by the fall of 1941 it already was apparent that much more than the current capacity of the training center would be required.
The Chief, Chemical Warfare Service, was informed early in December 1941 that CWS replacement training capacity would have to be increased shortly to 2,430 trainees.38 This step became necessary largely because of a recently approved increase in chemical service troops to meet expanding AAF requirements. The War Department wanted the additional replacement training load to be undertaken without construction of additional barracks. This could only be accomplished by the removal of an appropriate number of troops, including one Field Artillery battalion, from the Edge-wood Arsenal reservation. In addition, it was necessary to project the construction of a number of new facilities, both administrative and instructional, in order properly to accommodate the greatly increased training activity. Planning was in progress when the Pearl Harbor attack occurred.
Gas Defense Training: 1939–41
During the period of limited emergency, the U.S. Army mobilized thirty-six divisions and activated seventy air force groups—together a phenomenal achievement. With these developments the Chief, CWS, was closely concerned as technical adviser to the War Department on gas defense training. It was his responsibility to counteract the inevitable tendency to neglect, in the rush of such rapid mobilization, a type of training for which need was not immediate. It was his job to see that a serious flaw—vulnerability to gas
attack—did not develop in the course of preparations for battle. He had to push a military specialty, yet do it with tact and with a nice appreciation of larger objectives.
There was no lack, in 1939 of definite channels of responsibility for gas defense training. Under peacetime procedures the War Department set the objectives, the Chemical Warfare Service provided certain of the means, corps area commanders supervised training, and unit commanders were responsible for its execution. But this originally simple arrangement became more complicated as growing mobilization resulted in the appearance of an increasing number of ranking unit commanders with varying views as to how gas warfare directives should be interpreted.
The over-all War Department objective was stated as: “Our peacetime preparation in chemical warfare will be based on opposing effectively any enemy employing chemical agents and weapons.39 This was amplified, as previously noted, by detailed instructions on gas defense training.40
A field interpretation and amplification of instructions on chemical warfare training appeared in a training memorandum issued by Headquarters, Sixth Corps Area, in December 1940.41 This monumental directive presented a complete picture of chemical warfare training as presumably undertaken in the U.S. Army at that time. The memorandum meticulously considered every detail to insure observance of all instructions that bore in any way on the subject. Full compliance would have been gratifying in the CWS since troops so trained would unquestionably have been capable of meeting any enemy who chose to resort to gas warfare.
The Sixth Corps Area memorandum represents the high tide of training under the corps area system. The old Army had taken such directives in stride and had mastered the technique of according them a degree of compliance which satisfied higher authority.. The new Army, on the other hand, was inclined to heed the full letter of formal instructions, a feat which in practice was seldom possible.
In peacetime training the CWS sought to cultivate respect for, while averting unreasoning fear of, war gases. This aim had been rather generally accomplished as long as training time was not at a great premium; but once the momentum of mobilization began to build up, unit commanders became
increasingly reluctant to spare time for the degree of gas defense training which the CWS considered the minimum for realistic war preparation. In order to decide where emphasis should be placed, officers who never before had given the matter serious thought began to ask themselves what the prospects actually were of gas warfare.
The views of most military men on gas warfare as an offensive weapon were essentially pragmatic. Was it really worthwhile? There were two schools of thought on the matter. One group held that gas was a revolutionary weapon, that its possibilities should be exploited, and that it was folly for the nation to deny itself the fullest advantage of this or any other new development of military science. The other felt that experience of the war in Europe to date indicated that gas had only limited application in modern military operations, that it was always ineffective against good defense, and that it was an adjunct to positional warfare—a type of warfare never congenial to American military thinking. But while offensive gas warfare had both its advocates and opponents, no responsible officer questioned the need for gas defense training. The question was: How little training would meet essential needs?
Chemical Warfare Training of Ground Forces
As mobilization speeded up, a fundamental change began to appear in the old relationship between the CWS and the unit commanders directly responsible for gas defense training. Originally responsibility had been channeled from the War Department, through corps areas, to units. The first change in this pattern occurred in 1935, when air tactical units came under control of the GHQ Air Force. Training of ground force units was assumed by General Headquarters, U.S. Army, when that organization was activated in July 1940. Thereafter, unit commanders were reached, on matters relating to antigas defense, through one of these headquarters.
Only a skeleton GHQ staff moved into the Army War College in the summer of 1940. No chemical officer was included in General McNair’s special staff until 1941, and GHQ continued without a formal chemical staff section until 10 January 1942.42 This reflected General McNair’s attitude on gas warfare and adversely influenced gas defense training of ground units throughout 1940 and 1941.
Although the GHQ Chief of Staff was sympathetic to limited training in defense against attack, he insisted that such training should not be extended to a point where it might interfere with his primary mission of training major elements of the field forces within the continental United States. General McNair believed that artillery was the most suitable ground arm for employing gas munitions; but he seriously questioned the advisability, from a military viewpoint, of resorting to gas warfare under any circumstances. He saw no merit in special gas troops and he declined to permit the introduction of gas situations into the large-scale maneuvers that were conducted in 1940 and 1941.43
Staff chemical officers, meanwhile as called for by existing tables of organization, were regularly provided for divisions and corps as these units were mobilized. To each of the four field armies then in existence and to each of the newly activated corps was assigned a senior CWS officer with considerable training experience. National Guard divisions took the field with their own chemical staff officers, many of whom were graduates of prewar courses at the Chemical Warfare School. The unit organizational setup for chemical warfare training of ground forces was adequate; yet training accomplishments during the period of partial mobilization were not satisfactory to the CWS. To a considerable degree this situation was the result of General McNair’s attitude on gas warfare.
GHQ was primarily concerned with unit rather than replacement training, and it regarded gas defense training as essentially the latter type. During the early stage of mobilization, training of the individual soldier was exclusively the province of the War Department under the replacement training system. RTC training included a modicum of basic training in protection against gas attack, the amount of time devoted to this subject ranging from four to ten hours according to the applicable mobilization training program. For example, MTP 6-1, 1940, for field artillery replacements, prescribed five hours of training, which was expected to develop: “An ability to mask quickly and to wear the mask while performing military duties; an ability to identify the more common chemical agents and a knowledge of the means of defense against them.”
The soldier processed through one of the twenty-one ground replacement centers thus presumably emerged with some idea of how to protect
RTC classroom training. Soldiers in their second week of training learn how to identify different types of gases.
himself under gas attack. As mobilization accelerated, however, increasing numbers of inductees had to be sent directly from reception centers to units without replacement center training. Instruction of these men in the rudiments of protection against war gases had therefore to be undertaken by unit commanders, usually with the assistance of unit gas personnel. Training of the latter, under standard operating procedure, was accomplished at special schools conducted by division and occasionally by corps chemical officers.
Anticipating that the training of regimental and battalion gas officers in such local schools would sometimes be difficult during the course of mobilization, the War Department announced a series of one-month classes at the Chemical Warfare School to provide this type of training.44 In accordance with GHQ policy that the detail of students to service schools should be discretionary with unit commanders, no quotas were set. Thirteen of these
classes conducted in 1941 graduated 686 unit gas officers, constituting a measurable contribution to the over-all gas defense program for the ground forces.
Individual training within units, as prescribed by War Department directives, was encouraged by GHQ. But, as indicated, when Army chemical officers proposed injection of gas situations into corps and army maneuvers, General McNair demurred. The formation of these large tactical units, the first in U.S. peacetime history, afforded opportunity to advance the final phase of chemical warfare training which previously had of necessity been neglected—that is, the culmination of individual and specialized gas defense instruction in field operations where large bodies of troops encountered simulated gas attacks under conditions requiring the use of gas masks. The Chemical Warfare Service felt that such a test was necessary in order to ascertain the real status of gas discipline within the field forces as well as for rounding out the entire chemical warfare training program. Yet, in the view of GHQ, this goal was considerably less important than the immediate task of developing command leadership and operating facility within corps and armies.
While the CWS supported as far as it could the position of chemical officers with field forces, the War Department General Staff was never inclined at this stage to question the training policies of GHQ. In retrospect, it is clear that on this issue General McNair assumed a calculated risk which was justified by subsequent events, although at the time the CWS felt that an important feature of chemical warfare training was being unduly neglected.
Army Air Forces Training
The approach to gas defense training in the Army Air Forces differed in several particulars from that developed in the ground forces. Beginning with the organization of the GHQ Air Force at Langley Field in 1935, able chemical officers were on duty with the highest air echelons.45 Early appreciation of the importance of antigas protection of air bases led in 1936 to the conduct of a special Air Forces gas defense course at the Chemical Warfare School. The twenty air officers who graduated from this four-week course provided the nucleus for development of the GHQ Air Force gas protection scheme.
Compared to the problems confronting the ground forces, gas protection of air installations was in some respects simplified. Field units had to provide for defense against gas from both ground and air; air units were concerned only with the latter. Nevertheless, the AAF gave a great deal of thought to the protection of its bases against aerial gas attack.
Attempts to immobilize American air power by the immediate bombing of advanced U.S. air bases were clearly foreseen as the opening operations of air warfare. Before the commencement of hostilities in Europe, thinking among Air officers—undoubtedly influenced by the doctrines of Giulio Douhet—inclined to the belief that the earliest employment of gas warfare would be in the attack on airdromes.46 That gas was not used for this purpose in the early stages of World War II resulted in somewhat lessened apprehension, although the Army Air Forces was never willing to dismiss entirely the threat of an enemy attempt to neutralize the growing air power of the United States through a gas attack. The AAF meant to be reasonably prepared and therefore gas defense measures were given serious and continued consideration, both under the GHQ Air Force and later, after air training became one of his functions, under the Chief of the AAF.
In individual training of Army Air Forces soldiers, the replacement training system worked out more satisfactorily than was the case with ground forces. Practically all AAF inductees passed through air replacement training centers, and therefore reached air units with some basic training in self-protection against war gases. MTP (1940) prescribed six hours of instruction in defense against chemical attack for all AAF inductees. Inevitably there were times when this training was slighted, but this was the exception rather than the rule.
Because of the tremendous pressures under which AAF training was conducted, especially in the early stages of mobilization, more advanced training in gas protection was necessarily limited. Schemes for the collective protection of airdromes were prepared and key personnel trained in operating procedures. A notable contribution to the advancement of individual and collective protection was the training of 385 air force officers in a series of seven Unit Gas Officers’ classes conducted for the AAF by the Chemical Warfare School during 1941. The role of the Chemical Warfare Service in
gas defense training within the Army Air Forces was one of advancing the program as much as possible within the limitation imposed by more urgent air training requirements.
School Training
Involvement in war between 1939 and 1941 followed a gradient so gradual that it is difficult to reconcile events as they occurred with those that had been foreseen under the protective mobilization plan. Mobilization of the initial protective force, the springboard for PMP, was actually accomplished long before hostilities began. Yet operations of the Chemical Warfare School during the period of partial mobilization were not in accord with any section of the plan; and it is not possible to indicate a point at which implementation of the plan at the school did begin.
Removal of the school from Edgewood Arsenal to a location more advantageous from a training viewpoint had been scheduled under earlier war plans although this provision was eliminated from the plan which was current when mobilization began. The Chemical Warfare School had been housed for two decades in a two-story, hollow tile structure having two classrooms on the upper floor and administration and faculty offices on the ground floor. An adjoining building of identical size was occupied by the reproduction plant and the school detachment. Nearby temporary structures, build in 1918, were used for housing and messing students and for other school needs. With the facilities available it was difficult for the school to accommodate more than one class at a time.
The school commandant proposed, soon after the President’s emergency proclamation in 1939, that steps be taken to increase the capacity of the school from fifty to one hundred students.47 The War Department was reluctant to undertake the needed construction, since it was then seriously considering closing all service schools as a means of conserving officer strength.48 Until this idea was dropped, no action was taken to relieve the school situation. However, in 1940, an enlargement program did get under way, which resulted in raising the school’s capacity to two hundred students.
Additional academic facilities were provided by erecting a well-designed permanent structure between the two original tile buildings, thus merging
them into one spacious school edifice. The more than thirty new buildings added in this period included adequate barracks for student officers, mess halls, and supply facilities. Demonstration and outdoor training areas were also improved. Although this development was somewhat belated and despite the fact that it applied principally to officer students, it did enable the school, by 1941, to take a more active part in the accelerating chemical warfare training program.
The school staff and faculty at the beginning of the emergency period in 1939 included five CWS officers plus four officers attached from other components who served as part-time instructors. A year later the staff had increased to fourteen officers. There was no substantial change in this number during 1941.49
The suspension of courses at special service schools on 1 February 1940 did not affect the Chemical Warfare School.” This suspension enabled students who were attending courses longer than those given at Edgewood to participate in maneuvers in the spring of 1940. The Chemical Warfare School was permitted to begin its regular Line and Staff Course on 4 February with a class composed principally of Reserve officers. This step proved fortunate since most of the members of this class soon were called to extended active duty.
The 23rd Line and Staff Officers class and the 13th Field Officers class conducted in 1940 were the last of these two series given at the Chemical Warfare School.50 Their termination by the War Department was in line with staff policy curtailing school attendance of Regular Army officers during the period of limited emergency. This marked the end of an era. Hereafter officer training at the Chemical Warfare School would concentrate on the preparation of emergency officers for war duty.
Instruction of Reserve Officers
On 27 August 1940 Congress authorized the calling of Reserve officers to active duty for periods of twelve consecutive months.51 This in practice suspended the fourteen-day active duty arrangement which for years had been the mainspring of Reserve officer training. Had it been possible to foresee at the time that most of the Reservists who were called up under this authority would continue on duty through a major war, more adequate
provision for their initial training could have been made. But the Army was then thinking in terms of limited mobilization and was concentrating on the immediate task of training the large numbers of enlisted men who were about to enter military service under the Selective Service System. The training of officers was not at this time given major consideration.
Among the first Reserve officers called for extended active duty were members of the corps area assignment group needed for special staff duty with the ground and air units to be mobilized during the limited emergency period. These men were products of the peacetime Reserve officers’ training program and many of them had military experience extending back to World War I. Although they were comparatively well advanced in training when called up, the CWS would nevertheless have profited by their attendance at a school course according to the plan generally followed in the training of other special staff officers assigned to the divisions that were activated in 1940 and 1941.52
The mobilization of so many corps area assignment group officers to meet air and ground force T/O requirements for unit chemical officers had a retarding effect on the activation of branch assignment Reservists, for whom need soon developed under the rapidly expanding chemical warfare procurement program. The ceiling which the War Department set on the number of CWS Reserve officers that could be placed on extended active duty was taken to apply to both branches of the Reserve; the CWS felt bound to meet all requests for unit chemical troops, so that branch requirements were satisfied much more slowly than was desirable.53 This situation directly affected the training of branch assignment personnel. By the time these officers were finally called to active duty, their services were so urgently needed that they could not be spared to attend basic or refresher courses prior to undertaking mobilization assignments.
Lack of an attempt at systematic school training of CWS nonregular officers in preparation for mobilization duty marked not only the period of partial mobilization, but in fact extended throughout the entire war period. There were on active duty with the CWS, on 31 December 1940, 270 non-regular officers. Not more than half of these officers had ever attended any school course. Except for OCS training, the ratio of nongraduates to all officers on duty increased instead of declined in succeeding years. This situation apparently resulted from want of a clear CWS policy on the
schooling of officers initiated and firmly maintained from the outset of the national emergency.
The CWS protective mobilization plan contemplated that training of other components at the Chemical Warfare School would be discontinued upon mobilization, when the school would reorganize for its primary mission of training CWS troops. Two types of courses were specified in the new setup: successive thirty-day refresher classes of seventy-five officers, and a series of classes for enlisted specialists (meteorologists).54 This program would have proven inadequate, even had it been followed. Yet there was no evident inclination in 1940 to extend the school training of CWS officers. In recommending to the War Department the courses to be conducted at the school between 1 July 1940 and 30 June 1941, the CWS proposed only six courses, none of them specifically for preparation of Chemical Warfare Service officers for active duty.55
The negligible utilization of the Chemical Warfare School during the period of limited emergency in training CWS personnel for war duty is apparent from an analysis of courses conducted at the school during the calendar years 1940 and 1941. The only notable departure in 1940 from the normal prewar program of the school was the inclusion of a four-week refresher course for the training of eighteen newly commissioned Thomason Act Reserve officers. During 1941, aside from the schooling of replacement center troops already described, no training of officers in performance of CWS branch functions was undertaken; yet in this year more than 600 additional emergency officers were called to duty.
Since so few of the incoming officers were receiving formal training, the chemical warfare school in 1941 was not being utilized to full capacity. This was to some extent a result of the hiatus into which the chemical warfare program of the Army had drifted—a situation which was to be remedied soon after Pearl Harbor. The unused capacity of the school was employed meanwhile principally in furthering the training of the Army in gas protection by means of a series of Unit Gas Officers’ classes. Although CWS officers were occasionally assigned to these classes, they were set up for and principally attended by line officers, ground and air.
Progress toward rearming in the period of 1939-41 has been described as “halting and confused.”56 These adjectives also describe chemical war-
fare training as it was carried forward during this period. A major factor was the passive attitude of the War Department General Staff toward this training, prior to the regeneration that followed the events of Pearl Harbor. At the same time the Chemical Warfare Service was nervously seeking more realistic antigas training. Often it was the unit commander who finally decided how far this training should be extended in his organization. In view of the conflicting attitudes on chemical warfare, it is remarkable that training in this field had advanced as well and as far as it had by 7 December 1941.