Chapter 1: The Heritage and Mission of Field Quartermasters
By V-E Day, 8 May 1945, the Quartermaster Corps in the Mediterranean and European theaters was feeding, clothing, and equipping more than 3,500,000 Americans on the most elaborate scale ever attempted by any army. It was acting as supply custodian and wholesaler to the far-flung civil affairs organization, and in addition, was providing direct support, largely from military stocks, to at least 5,000,000 Allies, civilians, and prisoners of war. An operation of this magnitude, supported from a base over 3,000 miles away, inevitably developed temporary shortages and local crises, but Quartermaster operations as a whole were outstandingly successful. Paying tribute to the supply effort in which the Quartermaster Corps played a major role, a Congressional report in the immediate postwar period stated: “The supply of our armed forces in Europe has been a remarkable achievement, involving the delivery across the ocean and over beaches and through demolished ports, and then over a war-torn countryside into France and Germany of tonnages far in excess of anything previously within the conception of man.”1
The overseas Quartermaster organization of World War II was not wholly new; that of the European theater, especially, bore a striking resemblance to the organization in France during World War I.2 The earlier conflict provided a fairly complete preview, on a more modest scale, of the Quartermaster Corps mission, responsibilities, and problems in the second war against Germany. Before examining in detail the experience of World War II, it might be well therefore to note the heritage, the mission, and the tools of the Corps in the earlier war.
In August 1912, after a decade of legislative debate and delay, a rider to an Army appropriation bill provided for the establishment of the Quartermaster Corps. Military planners thought that
faulty administrative practices, evident in the Spanish-American War, would be corrected by combining three century-old supply bureaus of the War Department—the Quartermaster’s Department, the Subsistence Department, and the Paymaster General’s Department—into one corps. This new Quartermaster Corps would provide not only supply but services as well.
The newly organized Corps had in command a Quartermaster General with the rank of major general. The legislation of 1912 gave the new Corps a highly diversified mission. The old Quartermaster’s Department had furnished transportation, clothing, and equipment for the U.S. Army and had constructed and repaired quarters and transportation facilities along lines of communication. Under the reorganization plan the QMC kept these traditional functions and added the duties of feeding the Army in garrison and in the field, paying troops, and handling fiscal matters. Moreover, the Corps would continue to administer the national cemeteries in the United States, and would be the agency called upon to develop new policies for graves registration service and overseas cemeteries in time of war.
Probably the most significant aspect of the reorganization of 1912 was in the field of military personnel. The three supply bureaus had been essentially civilian agencies directed by a few high-ranking officers. From the Revolution through the war with Spain, Quartermaster field operations had been supervised by professional and volunteer Quartermaster officers and carried out either by civilian employees or by detachments of combat troops when civilians were not available. The creation of a Quartermaster Corps meant that such functions would gradually be transferred to Quartermaster officers and enlisted personnel, permanently organized into separate Quartermaster units.
Organization of the QMC was but one of many steps in the process of evolving a modern military establishment, capable of waging a major war. For Army-wide exposition, the Field Service regulations of May 1913 introduced new concepts of the organization and support of a modern field army. The regulations contemplated a theater of operations subdivided into administrative and tactical commands, each with Quartermaster staff officers and assigned or attached Quartermaster service units. Specifically, the regulations foresaw the evolution of two types of field Quartermaster officers: a communication zone, or “pipeline,” quartermaster to supervise the filling of a system of base depots with supplies, and a tactical, or “spigot,” quartermaster to draw supplies for his unit at a depot or railhead and issue them for consumption in battle. In their respective areas both officers would be concerned with providing services as well as supplies.
The Quartermaster Corps had had little opportunity to test the efficiency of these doctrines in the clash along the Mexican border in 1916. Until the United States entered World War I, the QMC functioned more as a procuring agency than as a field supply service. When war came, there were only four types of Quartermaster field units: bakery, truck, pack, and wagon companies. Now untried officers armed with sets of untested precepts had to adapt the Quartermaster mission to a war that was continental in scope, sluggish in movement, and shallow in front. In the summer of
1917 the Corps sent Col. Harry L. Rogers to France, where he soon became a brigadier general and Chief Quartermaster, American Expeditionary Forces. Once in the field his staff was initiated into the new dimensions in warfare brought about by such technical innovations as the internal combustion engine, track-laying vehicles, military aircraft, chemicals, and barbed wire entanglements.
World War I made several distinct contributions to the future mission and organization of the Quartermaster Corps. First, General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), used a separate administrative command, called the Services of Supply (SOS), to support his field armies. Under this command and staff arrangement, the Chief Quartermaster, SOS AEF, worked along a lengthy line of communications with chiefs of other overseas technical services such as the Engineers, Ordnance, and the new Transportation Corps. Pershing’s General Headquarters and SOS Headquarters each had a staff section headed by an assistant chief of staff, G-4, an officer who planned, coordinated, and supervised functions pertaining to supply, services, evacuation, hospitalization, and transportation. Before the organization of the U.S. Army General Staff in 1903, the Quartermaster General had been in effect a G-4 staff officer, handling logistical planning and providing transportation for troops and supplies. Now for the first time in the field a chief quartermaster, as both planner and executive, came under this type of general staff supervision. Thus World War I introduced the Quartermaster Corps to an entirely new command and staff framework.
Another contribution to Quarter master Corps organization during World War I was a system of echeloning territorial SOS commands along Pershing’s lines of communications. Base, intermediate, and advance sections of SOS, each controlled a number of rear area installations, including one or more Quartermaster depots. These provided reserves from which supplies consumed by the troops in battle could readily be replaced. Theoretically, the new system of administration gave SOS section commanders control over all activities within their respective areas and gave chiefs of technical services supervisory functions over branch depots, their own personnel and units, and training activities. In reality, so pronounced was the overlapping of command versus staff responsibilities, and functional versus geographical chains of command, that many problems of coordination developed, and these very problems were to vex quartermasters in World War II.
In the field of local procurement, the lessons of World War I seemed particularly valuable, and supply authorities followed precedents then established very closely during the succeeding conflict. A General Purchasing Board (GPB) was established under the chairmanship of Brig. Gen. Charles G. Dawes, a wartime volunteer officer with extensive purchasing experience. All the technical services were represented on this board, which existed primarily to eliminate competition for materials and supplies, both among services and among the various Allied nations. The GPB was a coordinating agency which located supplies, assisted the technical services in making purchases, and handled financial arrangements. It did not attempt to control either quantities or quality of
supplies purchased. The GPB became a very large organization, with offices in all Allied and neutral countries, and its purchases contributed more than half of the supplies consumed by the AEF, or some ten million ship tons out of a total of eighteen million. More than half of these locally purchased goods were Quartermaster supplies. In both conflicts, the original impetus for local procurement was a severe shipping shortage, aggravated by enemy submarine warfare. In both cases procurement continued unabated after shipping shortages had been overcome, because the needs of combat could not wait for the elimination of production bottlenecks in the United States.
The appearance of twenty-six types of Quartermaster service units in France was another significant development of World War I. As trench and tank warfare increased the scope of combat support, Quartermaster units were organized, many of them locally in the theater, to perform additional supply and service functions for the fighting troops. Some of these innovations were inspired by the example of similar Allied units, while others were prompted by a desire to provide troops in the field, so far as possible, with some of the comforts and amenities of American life. Compiling formal tables of organization for these units and obtaining official sanction for their inclusion in the troop list were long-drawn-out administrative processes, carried on piecemeal and still incomplete at the end of hostilities. Nevertheless, the Army in the zone of interior displayed considerable flexibility and speed in activating and training these new units, and in deploying them overseas. Of 706 Quartermaster units in France on 15 December 1918, 444 or 63 percent had been organized in the United States. Among the more important new units were depot, supply, refrigeration, laundry, sterilization and bath, gasoline supply, graves registration, salvage, remount, and various types of repair units, each supplied with specialized types of equipment. On Armistice Day, 11 November 1918, Quartermaster Service, AEF, had 100,731 troops within an over-all total of 1,925,000, or 5.2 percent.3
Between the two world wars, Quartermaster Corps field doctrine remained relatively static. The whole Army shrank in size and did not institute any tactical innovations that required new types of support. Existing regulations provided for an adequate, combat-tested Quartermaster field organization, to operate in accordance with proved doctrine. A wide variety of QMC service units, also combat-tested, could be activated whenever they were needed and funds became available. Although it was generally agreed that Quartermaster organization and doctrine were sound, planners also recognized that they were neither simple nor easily understood. The Corps therefore devoted its major effort in those years to an intensive indoctrination of its young officers. Academic instruction and peacetime maneuvers are no satisfactory substitutes for war experience, but all the possibilities of such training methods were systematically exploited at QM schools. Classroom instructors taught over and over again the maxims that
supply is a function of command and that the impetus of supply is from rear to front; the implications of those maxims were illustrated in a wide variety of tactical situations. Fledgling quartermasters practiced requisitioning supplies and providing supplies and services. Property accountability, inventory procedures, and business management were stressed. Lectures emphasized that services and supply are only the broad foundation of logistical organization and administration in time of war and that detailed Quartermaster doctrine and procedures would have to evolve under actual battle conditions.
This schooling proved to be enormously valuable, largely because of a broad, rather than excessively specialized, approach to the whole field of logistics. The small group of graduates had a surprising influence upon the whole American logistical effort in World War II, especially during the emergency period, when the first classes of young Reserve officers were receiving their technical training. In addition to the QMC officers lost by transfer to the Transportation Corps, to Ordnance, and to the Engineers, there was a tremendous demand for these trained, experienced officers by logistical staffs at all levels, and especially by the G-4 staffs of senior headquarters. The result was that too few of these officers were retained by the Quartermaster Corps. It was severely handicapped in its operations in the early phases of World War II and, for want of instructors, never achieved a completely satisfactory standard of wartime officer training.
In general, the policy and concepts which Pershing brought home from France provided the foundation for the staff principles and procedures to guide a future theater level quartermaster in the field. It was clear from AEF experience that this officer would be both a planner and an administrator, and the staff duties required of a theater chief quartermaster determined the structure of his personal office, the Office of the Chief Quartermaster (OCQM). Basically, the staff functions of OCQM were subdivided into three major elements—a planning and training section, a section to deal with both expendable and nonexpendable classes of supply, and a section to supervise a variety of required services.
By 1942 QMC doctrine provided that, as a special staff officer, a chief quartermaster performed six basic missions for his commander. First, he advised the theater commander and his general and special staffs on the Quartermaster mission. He determined requirements for and procured, stored, issued, and “documented,” or accounted for, QMC supplies. He recommended the procurement and the employment of Quartermaster units and their allocation to commands. He supervised the operations of all Quartermaster units not assigned or attached to commands. Throughout the theater he also supervised Quartermaster troop training. Lastly, the chief quartermaster planned for and supervised service to the line, providing troops with such services as bakeries, shoe repair, graves registration, gasoline supply, and baths.4
By the end of 1942 the Quartermaster Corps had lost several important functions to other technical services. Construction activities and administration of Army-controlled real estate had been transferred to the Engineers, automotive procurement and maintenance to
the Ordnance Department, and transportation service to the newly revived Transportation Corps. A movement to create a general depot service to handle all Army storage gained some momentum but finally failed. OCQM, which had lost some of its storage functions, regained this Army-wide responsibility, but what was more important, recovered the experienced, Quartermaster-trained personnel who operated the warehouses. In general, the loss of functions to other services caused the QMC far less concern than the accompanying losses of personnel; there was still plenty to be done, and all too few trained officers to do it.
During World War II the Quartermaster Corps was one of seven technical services, each of which designed, procured, and issued various items of supplies and equipment.5 Thus a complete general depot would have seven technical branches or sections, besides an administrative or operating section. In time of war, other technical services performed certain functions for, or in close cooperation with, the QMC. Briefly, the Chemical Warfare Service provided chemicals in which clothing was dipped to give protection against vesicant gases. Chemical Warfare field units, organized to decontaminate clothing and personnel in the event of gas warfare, actually supplemented the laundry and bath services of the Quartermaster Corps. Gasoline pipelines and bulk storage plants were built and operated by the Engineers, as were cold storage facilities and ice plants. Fire fighting and fire safety, of vital importance at Quartermaster gasoline dumps, were Engineer responsibilities at all Army installations. The Medical Department advised the QMC on the adequacy of clothing, footgear, and rations. Its veterinary officers inspected all food, especially meat. The QMC provided hospitals with special laundry facilities and a special hospital ration. Beginning in August 1943, the Transportation Corps assumed technical supervision over all motor transport units, although for more than a year many of them continued to bear the Quartermaster designation. These functions are merely those of particular significance to the QMC.
In addition to the technical services, some of the administrative services also performed functions vital to Quartermaster operations. The Provost Marshal administered all prisoner of war (POW) camps, and reported requirements for POW rations to the QMC. The QMC provided a special ration for POW’s, and furnished them with clothing and equipment. Beginning in December 1944, the Provost Marshal in the ETO organized the Military Labor Service, which thereafter administered and disciplined POW labor units employed by all the technical services.
The Adjutant General’s Department supplied publications to the entire Army.6 All requisitioning and issue of all types of supplies were based upon authorizations of various types that were
contained in “publications”—a catchall designation for Army regulations, tables, orders, circulars, and other authoritative papers of the Army. The Adjutant General issued, printed, and distributed such publications to all units and offices that required the information. Thus he was the agent who transmitted vital information from the zone of interior to theater level chiefs of technical services. An additional function of The Adjutant General was maintenance of a command-wide personnel statistics reporting system, completely independent of the strength-for-rations reports received by the Quartermaster Service and therefore immensely valuable for comparison and confirmation purposes.
The Army’s logistical system was considered basic in the Mediterranean and European theaters; it supplied all common items to the Army Air Forces and the Navy. Both these services maintained their own requisitioning channels and depot systems, but requisitioned their supplies of common items from Army sources within the theater. The only major exceptions were vehicle fuels and lubricants, common items procured in accordance with joint specifications, but administered on the combined (Allied) level along with characteristic Air Forces and Navy types of petroleum products.
Army supplies were classified under an elaborate system of categories, and subcategories. All items were segregated, first of all, according to the technical service responsible for their procurement. By 1942 War Department manuals listed over 70,000 separate Quartermaster items. In one respect this statistic may be somewhat misleading; the list included each separate spare part for each major piece of equipment, and each size of each type of clothing was also a separate item. Such an elaborate system of nomenclature was essential for accurate stock control, and gives an idea of the scope of the documentation problem.
A second system of supply categories, designated by five Roman numerals, was also Army-wide. In this system, all Class I items were Quartermaster, and there were no QM Class V items. The intermediate numbers were common to all the technical services. A short discussion of this system will reveal many of the problems and procedures of field quartermasters.
Class I supplies were articles supplied automatically without requisition at the troop level, since in theory they were consumed daily and universally at a steady rate. They were known collectively as subsistence, which embraced food and forage, and the unit of measurement was the ration, defined as the allowance of food for one day for one man or one animal. The two main categories were field and operational rations. Field rations were prepared in unit kitchens; they consisted of the A ration, including perishable foods, and the B ration, comprising nonperishable foods only. Under favorable conditions, kitchen-prepared food could be brought forward to troops actually in combat, so that such troops often received the B ration and sometimes the A ration. Troops heavily engaged in combat, on remote posts, or moving rapidly, as in a beach assault or in pursuit, normally ate operational rations. All of these could be eaten cold in an emergency.7 In addition the QMC
provided hospital, convalescent, and various types of travel rations.
Class I supply also involved some purely administrative problems. Soap and cigarettes sold in post exchanges were PX items, but the same items packed with operational rations and issued gratis to the troops were regarded as Class I, and so was anything else issued on the same basis. Decisions as to what units would receive gratis issues were usually made on the army group level and fluctuated according to the intensity of combat.
Class II Quartermaster items consisted of clothing and individual equipment, organizational equipment, expendable materials for cleaning and preserving, office equipment and supplies, special purpose vehicles, and spare and maintenance parts. British “accommodation stores,” such as cots, furniture, and barracks items provided by the British for American troops arriving in the United Kingdom, saved shipping space and replaced the Class II post, camp, and station allowances familiar to U.S. troops. War Department tables, known as Tables of Equipment (T/E’s), established the authorized quantities of Class II supplies. These tables, listing thousands of separate items, changed periodically, but the circulars announcing the modifications rarely reached the field in time to affect the Chief Quartermaster’s supply situation. It should be borne in mind that Class II included most items of Army supply. The trucks driven by the soldiers of a QM truck company were Class II Ordnance items, and the gas mask each man carried was a Class II Chemical Warfare item. Likewise, the field ranges in the mess of any unit were Class II QMC items. In a somewhat different category were mobile bakeries, mobile laundries, and heavy sewing machines used to repair tents—each a Class II QMC item issued only to a special Quartermaster unit.
Class III items included solid and liquid fuels, the latter commonly referred to during World War II as POL (petrol, oil, and lubricants—a British designation). Strategic reserves of both solid and liquid fuels were controlled during World War II by combined committees representing the British and American Armies, Navies, Air services, and civilian agencies, and American administration was through an Area Petroleum Board. This applied to both Mediterranean and European theaters. The Quartermaster Corps controlled solid fuel destined for the U.S. Army. Aviation gasoline and aircraft lubricants (designated Class IIIA) were controlled by the Army Air Forces, but normally were stored in Quartermaster POL depots. Since the transportation, storage, and distribution of vehicle gasoline involved several technical services, requirements and allocations were controlled by G-4’s at lower levels, culminating in the POL Division of Supreme Headquarters. The Transportation Corps was responsible for the Army aspects of POL movement by ocean tankers, and controlled the barges, railroad tank cars, and tanker trucks which moved bulk gasoline in overseas theaters. The Engineers were responsible for bulk storage and movement by pipeline, and gasoline normally came under Quartermaster Corps control at decanting points, where it was poured into drums or jerricans or released in bulk to gasoline supply companies and stored in POL depots. The QMC was charged with computing Army requirements for Class III supplies (except Class MA) . Beginning late in 1942 Area Petroleum Offices extended their control over many of these
activities, ultimately organizing an Area Petroleum Service in each theater—in effect an eighth technical service. But the QMC continued to compute Army Class III requirements and to deliver packaged POL to the troop units.
Class IV items were, in general, those for which no fixed quantity of issue was established. Thus, Class II items of clothing and equipment were reclassified Class IV when sold for cash to officers, Red Cross workers, or others entitled to buy them. ‘Warehouse equipment, medals and decorations, and certain combat items, such as waterproof weapon covers, issued for a specific operation, were also in this category. Post exchange supplies were originally placed in Class IV, but events soon demonstrated the need for a separate category, although this was not sanctioned by Army regulations.8 The distinction between Class II and Class IV Quartermaster items was never completely clarified, and they were normally grouped together and handled by one subsection of the Quartermaster organization.
Class V, munitions and chemicals, did not include any Quartermaster items. Nevertheless, Quartermaster officers had to keep requirements for these items constantly in mind. In combat, they normally had overriding priorities. For example, a ship with a mixed cargo including ammunition would normally be routed to the point where the ammunition was needed and other cargo would also be unloaded at that point, whether or not this was convenient for the responsible technical service. Delivery of ammunition to units in combat presented a somewhat similar problem: the unit’s organic vehicles were available to deliver Quartermaster supplies only after the daily ammunition requirement had been met.
The basic unit for all supply planning was the day of supply, normally subdivided by technical service and class of supplies. One day of QM Class I supply for a given unit would be one ration for each man of that unit. The reserves of various categories maintained for a unit in the depots, expressed in days of supply, were commonly referred to as the level of supply. This was a simple and convenient method of referring to the large and complicated assortments of supplies and equipment required to support and maintain a major command. Levels of supply for overseas theaters were established by the War Department. The day-of-supply concept emphasized that reserves of various items should be assembled in the correct proportions, or at least in proportions believed to be correct in the light of all available information. Since this was a form of forecasting—a process always subject to error—rates of consumption and maintenance requirements for supplies and equipment always differed somewhat from anticipated figures. Stocks were then considered “out of balance,” a condition to be corrected by changing the proportions in subsequent requisitions.
Theater level requirements based on actual experience, especially combat experience, were always of great interest to zone of interior planning agencies, which were attempting to forecast long-range national requirements for the entire war effort. From the zone of interior point
of view, everything shipped to a theater, including cargoes lost at sea, was a factor in that theater’s rate of consumption. Planners normally authorized a large basic reserve for a new theater, 90 days of supply or more, to offset the unknown supply factors. For a mature theater, in which rates of consumption had become known, they sometimes reduced basic reserves to 30 days or less. An operating reserve, which might be compared to a revolving fund, was authorized in addition to the basic reserve. It was provided to compensate for fluctuations in the actual arrival of requisitions. In the European theater a normal requisition covered a 30-day period, and the operating reserve was also 30 days of supply. Therefore the basic reserve would remain intact even if the requisitioned items arrived on the last day of the requisition period. The basic reserve plus the operating reserve constituted the maximum level of supply. Officials in the zone of interior carefully examined theater requisitions to ensure that they did not exceed the maximum authorized levels. One important variable deserves special mention: fluctuations in the manpower of a theater changed the rate of consumption, and therefore the levels of supply, even though the tonnage of supplies on hand remained constant. Thus a rapidly expanding theater might exhibit the apparent paradox of more and more supplies constituting a lower and lower level of supply.
The level of supply was a convenient planning concept, but could not be used directly in actual Quartermaster operations. Storage and distribution activities required definite data on each specific item, as did requisitions at all levels. Tables for converting days of supply into tons or cubic feet of various items were officially designated as Quartermaster Supply Reference Data, and unofficially known as the “bible” of the Quartermaster Corps. They were widely distributed and constantly revised, and qualified QMC officers were expected to understand them.9
To get his days of supply into the hands of the troops in the right amount at the proper place and time, the Chief Quartermaster had to do far more than simply fill out an order blank. Only by careful planning could he foresee varying requirements for each of 70,000 items. He had to check his inventories against tactical requirements and expected strength fluctuations, and he had to take into account anticipated rather than actual deliveries. For smooth functioning of storage and distribution no detail of weights or cubages could be overlooked. Storage and distribution techniques demanded a mass of detailed information which he had to refine continuously and disseminate throughout the command. He had to know what local products were available, and how local goods compared with those purchased at home. How salvage could increase his inventories was another factor in determining his requisitions. Above all, a sound education in business management was an essential.
The reference data tables already mentioned were indispensable tools for breaking down the Chief Quartermaster’s theater-wide mission into accurate portions of manageable size, so that each
could be delegated to a Quartermaster unit capable of accomplishing it. For example, it might seem logical to charge a major depot with the support of a specific field army and of the air force and service troops in the area immediately behind it. Actually, the strength of an army fluctuated and the military population of a rear area was even more variable, so that a mission stated in such terms would be very vague and success in accomplishing it correspondingly difficult. By contrast, a mission of 15 days’ wholesale support for 350,000 men, plus 30 days’ retail support for 40,000 men, would also be only an approximation of the support actually required for the same troops, but it represented a definite and achievable objective. Using the reference data, the Chief Quartermaster’s inspectors could tell very quickly whether such an objective was being met, and if not what remedial action was necessary. Meanwhile the Chief Quartermaster was personally responsible that the sum of all the depot missions was adequate to meet the variable support requirements of the theater as a whole.
A major element, causing variations in the strength of the theater or of the field armies, was the movement of divisions. Since each division required both tactical and logistical support, such a movement usually involved considerably more personnel than the Table of Organization (T /0) strength of the division itself. The term division slice expresses the relationship between the total theater strength (minus air forces) and the number of divisions supported, and represents the total number of men involved in maintaining a division in the field. The normal European theater division slice of 40,000 men was made up as follows: 15,000 men in the division itself, 15,000 corps and army troops, and 10,000 communications zone troops. Quartermaster supply planning was usually based upon the requirements for a division slice, rather than merely on requirements for the division itself.10
Possibly this discussion of the requirements, duties, and procedures of overseas quartermasters has overemphasized administrative detail. Familiarity with administration was by no means enough for a quartermaster to bring to his job. A knowledge of combat organization and tactics, and particularly the logistical implications of changes in tactics, was also required, especially at higher levels. This was something that could hardly be inculcated by Quartermaster schooling alone. A good quartermaster was also a soldier, for no one else could have the insight necessary to provide satisfactory support for soldiers in combat. The operations he was called upon to support were military operations, and despite some resemblances to procedures employed in the world of business, their nature and purpose were quite different.
A trained Quartermaster officer, contemplating the growing trend toward mechanizaton in warfare between 1932 and 1942, as exemplified in Japanese successes against China, Italy’s adventures in Africa, and Germany’s domination of Europe, could see that the new mobile
warfare brought with it a whole new category of support problems. Moreover, it appeared that thus far the new weapons had won victories principally against opponents of inferior strength, technology, or organization. All the evidence indicated that the basic problems of support for mobile forces in protracted operations had been evaded rather than solved. Nevertheless, the U.S. Army joined the parade, shifting from a horse-drawn square division to a motorized triangular one, developing its own version of armored and mechanized cavalry units, and organizing new support units capable, at least in theory, of keeping up with the new tempo of warfare. Even before the United States was plunged into the war, the new organization was designed to conquer the German Army—or at least a force of strikingly similar strength, mobility, and fire power. There was every indication that the contest would be a long one, and the American commanders plainly stated their intention of waging it unrelentingly, without those protracted pauses that had marked earlier wars, and had also occurred repeatedly since 1939. The quartermasters who were called upon to support campaigns of this type realized that they were entering largely uncharted territory.
Basically, mechanization for continental warfare resulted in increased depth of deployment, accompanied by much greater mobility within the zone of deployment. For quartermasters, mechanization meant that depots must be kept full on longer lines of communication, while the need for POL would increase until it became more than half of all QM supply. These conditions demanded greater flexibility in command and staff arrangements, particularly within administrative commands, than had those which had applied to the shallow fronts of World War I. Larger tactical groupings for mechanized warfare complicated the command lines and technical channels between pipeline and spigot quartermasters. With time a precious commodity, resources often could not be used as planned.
Mechanization also placed unprecedented demands on the wise use of skilled manpower, and to meet these demands merchants and tradesmen were mustered for Quartermaster duty, in addition to the traditional truck drivers and stevedores, as were young executives of large business corporations, who were rightly considered promising officer material. Because the new conditions of modern warfare had to be experienced before they could he fully met, a common theme developed for Quartermaster planners and administrators in their formative period in the United Kingdom and in North Africa: orientation and improvisation.