Part One: Administration
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Introductory
Historical Background
The Quartermaster Corps (QMC) is one of the oldest supply agencies of the War Department. Its origin can be traced to 16 June 1775, when the Continental Congress passed a resolution providing “that there be one quarter master general for the grand army, and a deputy, under him, for the separate army.”1 Known as the Quartermaster’s Department during its early existence, it suffered many tribulations, including temporary extinction on more than one occasion, but the importance of its functions compelled its re-establishment.
The mission of the Quartermaster organization has always been one of broad and varied service to combat troops. From Revolutionary days it was responsible until recent years for all transportation and most construction, as well as for the storage and issue of many types of supplies for the support of armies in the field, though at first it did not always procure its own items.
In the post-Revolutionary period, when the Quartermaster’s Department was temporarily abolished, the Secretary of War purchased supplies for the tiny peacetime army through civilian contractors. During the twenty years and more following the adoption of the Constitution, procurement of supplies was handled by a kaleidoscopic succession of quartermasters, contractors, and agents variously named, under the direction, sometimes of the Treasury, sometimes of the War Department.
The approach of war with England brought about the re-establishment of the department early in the spring of 1812.2 While the Quartermaster General was given broad procurement responsibilities, being authorized “to purchase military stores, camp equipage and other articles requisite for the troops, and generally to procure and provide means of transport for the army, its stores, artillery, and camp equipage,” at the same time Congress established a Commissary General of Purchases whose duty it was “to conduct the procuring and providing of all arms, military stores, clothing, and generally all articles of supply requisite for the military service of the United States.”
Under the stress of war the overlapping jurisdictions thus created, together with the absence of specific provision for a subsistence department, soon brought confusion forcing remedial legislation. Congress authorized the Secretary of War to define more precisely the responsibilities of the two agencies. Furthermore, when contracting failures occurred and such action was deemed expedient by the President, the Quartermaster’s Department might be authorized to procure and issue subsistence directly in the field.3
In the overhauling of the supply system that followed the War of 1812, the responsibilities of the office of the Commissary General of Purchases were further delimited and reduced. The Ordnance Department acquired the right of procurement in its own field in 1815. A separate Subsistence Department was created under its own Commissary General in 1818. Although the office of the Commissary General of
Purchases remained in existence until 1842, its remaining functions were gradually absorbed by the Quartermaster’s Department. In 1826 the Department acquired the additional responsibility of receiving from the purchasing department and distributing to the Army “all clothing and camp and garrison equipage required for the use of the troops.” By 1842, just before the Mexican War, the Quartermaster organization had taken over complete responsibility for procurement and distribution to the field forces of all noncombat supplies, except subsistence.4
The duties of the Quartermaster General were traditionally performed with the Army in the field and had been generally considered to exist only in time of war. With the appointment of Lt. Col. Thomas S. Jesup in 1818, however, it was understood that the new Quartermaster General would establish his headquarters in Washington. Under his guidance the Department emerged as a permanent supply staff agency of the Secretary of War.5
During the long administration of Quartermaster General Jesup, which lasted until the summer of 1860, central and regional organization and facilities developed slowly. Field facilities were largely improvised during the early years of the country’s history, although the importance of established depots to the movement and distribution of supplies over long distances, as during the Indian campaigns, was recognized on several occasions. In 1842, with the abolition of the office of the Commissary General of Purchases, the Quartermaster’s Department acquired its principal depot, the Schuylkill Arsenal. Under the name of the Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot, it became the cornerstone of the great system of Quartermaster depots. There, for more than a hundred years army clothing was procured and manufactured in peace and war. A system of reserve and field depots was established during the Civil War,6 and a number of these were retained at its close.
In a sense, the modern development of the Quartermaster organization began during the Civil War, with the problems incident to this first experience of mobilization and war that absorbed a large part of the energy of the nation. To supervise and handle the expanding procurement and distribution operations, among other activities, and to direct the efforts of the many newly established field installations, a commodity-type organization was eventually established in the Quartermaster General’s office wherein designated branches handled the purchase and distribution of one or more specific types of supplies provided for the troops.7 All functions expanded enormously in the course of the war, and new facilities and programs of lasting importance were set up in many fields. In 1862, for example, responsibility was assumed for the management of national cemeteries and the interment of the bodies of war dead in these permanent locations.8
In the thirty years following the Civil War there were no large-scale operations to provide incentive for maintaining an alert, progressive agency and the Quartermaster’s Department merely drifted. With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, however, the Department was suddenly called upon to clothe and equip more than a quarter of a million men in contrast to the peacetime force of only 26,000. Under the strain of mobilization, supply broke down. Troops were sent to the tropics in winter uniforms, and congestion of men and supplies at Port Tampa, the port of embarkation for
operations in Cuba, defied description. The Subsistence Department, responsible for feeding the Army, was equally unprepared for the task confronting it.
The investigations and recommendations that followed the war resulted in the enactment in 1912 of legislation9 consolidating the Army Subsistence, Pay, and Quartermaster’s Departments. Prior to 1912 the Quartermaster’s Department had acquired responsibility for the supply of clothing, camp and garrison equipment, individual equipment, and general supplies for the Army, the transportation of the Army, the handling of construction and real estate activities, the operation of utilities at camps and stations, and certain miscellaneous activities, including the administration of national cemeteries. As a result of the merger of the three supply organizations, the newly designated Quartermaster Corps also acquired responsibility for feeding and paying the Army. The period from the summer of 1912 to early 1917 probably was the high-water mark in the history of the Corps with respect to the mere number of important supply and service functions for which it had general responsibility throughout the War Department.
Impact of World War I
When World War I began, the Office of the Quartermaster General (OQMG) was still organized on a commodity basis. The office consisted of five divisions—Administrative, Finance and Accounting, Construction and Repair, Transportation, and Supplies—whose functions were largely administrative and supervisory. The operations of procurement and distribution were decentralized to the field. The actual distribution of supplies was accomplished by the post and camp quartermasters who submitted requisitions to the quartermasters of the territorial departments into which the country was divided for administrative purposes. They, in turn, approved and forwarded the requisitions to the depot quartermasters who procured, stored, and issued supplies on the basis of these requisitions. There were seven general depots and certain other specialized depots designated as points of supply. The procurement of certain classes of supplies was centralized in specific depots, as, for example, clothing at the Philadelphia Depot and wagons and harness at the Jeffersonville Depot. Thus a degree of “centralized decentralization” prevailed in this supply system. Most of the depots acted independently of each other because of the policy of decentralization. The purchase of subsistence was even more decentralized since it was carried on “as near to the points of consumption as was consistent with advantage to the Government.”10
There was nothing wrong with this organization itself, but decentralization of purchase could not continue under the economic strain of manufacturing for the Allies, for the government, and for the civilian population. Furthermore, in the absence of effective coordination, the QMC, as well as every other supply bureau, sought to accomplish its task independently of all other agencies. In the ensuing competition occasioned by shortages of materials, facilities, and transportation, supply difficulties increased and the need for a centralized control to direct the war effort became evident.
Moreover, as the Army grew in size, the tendency was to multiply the number of separate bureaus to carry out expanded functions. Responsibility for construction was transferred from the Corps to a new and separate Cantonment Division. Similarly, the duties of water transportation were taken over by the Embarkation Service.
In an effort to secure greater efficiency and coordination, the War Department reorganized
the supply bureaus. These agencies, including the QMC, were temporarily absorbed by the General Staff in special divisions that were organized along functional lines. At the end of the war, the QMC was a part of the Purchase, Storage and Traffic Division.
Once again the shortcomings revealed by war, and particularly the failure to plan in advance for mobilization, led to the enactment of remedial legislation. Under one of the provisions of the National Defense Act of 1920, the QMC was re-established as a separate supply service, and the functions of transportation and construction were restored to the Corps. On the other hand, the pay function of the Corps was transferred permanently to a separate jurisdiction.11
Administrative Developments, 1920–39
When the National Defense Act of 1920 abolished the Purchase, Storage and Traffic Division and restored the functions of procurement, storage, and issue to the supply arms and services, the OQMG was again organized along commodity lines.12 The major units of its organization were variously known as “services” or as “divisions” during the next few years. As the office gradually consolidated its many activities for peacetime operation, four divisions emerged to handle most Quartermaster activities. These were the Administrative Division, under which, in general, functions of a staff character were combined; the Supply Division composed of several commodity branches, such as the Subsistence Branch, the Clothing and Equipage Branch, and the General Supplies Branch, among others; and the self-contained Construction and Transportation Divisions.13 The functions of construction and transportation were lodged in divisions, each of which was established as an integrated agency with plenary operating powers, for it was intended that the organization set up in the OQMG should be potentially adaptable to the exigencies of a national emergency. A ready framework was to exist for adaptation and expansion.
World War I experience with the Purchase, Storage and Traffic Division, which had combined staff and operating functions in the same agency, had emphasized the desirability of separating staff agencies, which developed plans and policies and specified procedures for their execution, from operating units, which carried them out. As a consequence, the OQMG in 1920 sought to place all staff or planning activities pertaining to supply in a Control Service. Operating activities lay within the province of the Supply Division. The Control Service exercised general administrative, procedural, and functional supervision. It was charged with formulating war plans, controlling all fiscal matters, preparing statistical data, consolidating requirements, and maintaining liaison with higher authority on these matters. Incidentally, during the twenties and thirties the OQMG set up planning and staff controls as directed by higher authority, but the staff units were often skeleton or mere paper organizations.
While the OQMG organization attempted to separate staff and operating functions, the lesson of World War I was neglected more often than not. There was a steady tendency for current operations to absorb staff functions. Within a comparatively short time the majority of the control functions were delegated to the operating branches.14 This change resulted from the developing self-sufficiency of the operating agencies and the dwindling of supervisory duties and personnel in the OQMG. As a consequence, it proved more feasible to lodge staff functions in operating branches during a peacetime period
when the scope of Quartermaster activities was sharply reduced.
Congress had been highly critical of the lack of planning revealed by World War I, and in legislating for national defense in 1920 it had created the position of Assistant Secretary of War, making him responsible for procurement planning and the supervision of the procurement of all military supplies. Hence The Quartermaster General was under the supervision of the Assistant Secretary of War in all these matters, while directly responsible to the General Staff on all others. During this period the OQMG established units with varying names to carry on its war-planning functions. For example, it created the War Plans and Training Division in the Administrative Service in 1926 directly as a result of the need for meeting the emphasis of the Assistant Secretary of War on planning activities.15 But the inevitable tendency was to divorce planning for a distant emergency from the organization for current peacetime operations. This was to have important repercussions in World War II.
The OQMG organization during these years was not disturbed by the participation of the QMC in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and other New Deal activities of the thirties. The impact was felt primarily at the field installations. If it had no important effect on headquarters organization, participation in government relief and other emergency economic activities of the period proved an experience of tremendous significance in other ways.16 By contributing to the improvement and crystallization of operating methods, it undoubtedly smoothed the way for the intensification of purely military preparations.
Status of QMC in 1939
In September 1939, when war began in Europe, the QMC was a small supply agency of the War Department which had potentialities for expansion, in case of an emergency, into a large organization. It consisted of less than 12,000 military personnel and approximately 37,000 civilians,17 who trained Quartermaster personnel and provided supplies and services for an Army of not far from 200,000 men stationed at posts, camps, and stations in the United States and at such outposts as Alaska, Hawaii, and the Panama Canal Zone. These activities were accomplished through a Washington headquarters, organized on a commodity basis as it had been since Civil War days, through field installations, such as depots, engaged in procuring and distributing supplies, and through certain schools operated by the Corps—the Quartermaster School and the Motor Transport School—which trained the military personnel needed by the QMC. For the most part, the depots were located in the eastern half of the United States, a significant fact in view of the necessity of mounting a war in the Pacific.
Effect of World War II
The outbreak of war in Europe was felt at once in the United States Army. The presidential proclamation of limited emergency increased the size of the Army to 227,000 men from the 210,000 provided by earlier legislative action on the Army appropriation bill. The QMC and other supply services took this limited increase in the military establishment more or less in stride. The fall of France in June 1940, however, brought a more dramatic enlargement of the Army. Congressional action added to the size of the Regular Army, the National Guard was inducted into the Federal service, and Congress
passed the Selective Service Act in September providing for an Army of 1,400,000 men.18 Because of its broad and varied supply responsibilities, the QMC was greatly and immediately affected by this tremendous expansion.
More than any other supply service, the Corps had to anticipate the needs of the Army that was to be mobilized by having in readiness housing for the troops and the increased amounts of supplies needed to clothe, equip, and feed them. Such supply was carried out through the familiar system of depots which procured and distributed supplies requisitioned by quartermasters at posts, camps, and stations.
Purchase responsibility for the basic classes of items became even more concentrated than heretofore at designated key depots: for example, footwear at the Boston Quartermaster Depot, clothing still at the Philadelphia Depot, and tentage at the Jeffersonville Depot. This centralized purchase of specialty items by the depots was a fundamental feature of the field purchasing system that had been developing even before World War I. However, coordination was not neglected as it had been at the beginning of World War I, for the Supply Division and later the Procurement Division guided and directed these centralized purchase operations and acted as the procurement control agency of the OQMG.
Supply of the troops was the primary mission of the Corps, and this included the procurement of horses and mules and the purchase of automotive equipment. But the Corps had other functions to perform. It operated remount depots where horses were conditioned and trained, and it repaired automotive equipment at its motor-transport bases and depots. It built camps, hospitals, and other facilities to accommodate the expanding Army; it transported troops; and it provided and operated laundries for them. By the end of the emergency period it was also operating .repair shops for shoes, clothing, and equipment. Furthermore, it continued to be responsible for the maintenance of national cemeteries and the care of the dead.
To accomplish these tasks and to meet new responsibilities imposed on the Corps during the war, the QMC expanded its personnel and its organization in the field and in Washington. It enlarged its headquarters organization from four to thirteen divisions before the war ended. Its military personnel increased from less than 12,000 to more than 500,000. In sharp contrast to the continued rise in military personnel during the war, civilian personnel tended to become stabilized at about 75,000, after construction and transportation functions and the personnel connected with the execution of these responsibilities had been transferred from the Corps to other agencies early in the war.
The commodity organization was simply expanded during the emergency period to handle the increased Quartermaster burden. After Pearl Harbor, however, more fundamental changes occurred. The organization of the OQMG was radically shifted from a commodity to a functional basis. Instead of commodity branches responsible for the procurement and distribution of specific items of supply, single divisions were established which were responsible solely for the procurement of most Quartermaster supplies or for the storage and distribution of them. This was a change that occurred in the midst of war as a part of the drastic and fundamental reorganization of the War Department in March 1942. As might be expected, it posed many problems and entailed numerous adjustments.
The field organization of the Corps was also expanded and altered. During the emergency and early war years, the depot system was greatly expanded and new facilities were established in the south and in the western part of the United States to back up the war in the Pacific. The use
of dogs in war resulted in the establishment of centers for their training. The necessity to coordinate the military procurement of subsistence led to the creation of a nationwide market center system by the QMC. Other new facilities, such as repair subdepots and a great expansion of Quartermaster repair shops followed from the urgent need to conserve materials and decrease the burden placed upon industry for the production of new goods.
Of tremendous significance was the development of Quartermaster laboratories, for in World War II as never before an increasing emphasis was placed on exploiting and applying scientific knowledge and technological skills to the problems posed by military supplies. For the first time in Quartermaster history, a large and integrated research program was directed by the OQMG, and results were so impressive that it seems unlikely to be omitted from any future operations. Instead, the importance of a continuous program of research in peace as well as in war has been underscored.
Finally the war not only brought far-reaching administrative changes and expansion in personnel, but it modified supply procedures by streamlining procurement methods as well as those for storage and distribution. This was a war of mechanization and motorization not only in the combat areas but in the zone of interior as well. The use of IBM machines and teletypes speeded supply operations at depots and in the OQMG, while the use of fork-lift trucks and other mechanical equipment enabled the Corps to handle the tremendous volume of tonnage required for a global war.
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