Chapter 4: Supporting the Armies in Southern Europe
Quartermasters experienced certain advantages and disadvantages in the closing phases of their Mediterranean war. The last battles unfolded on the more familiar terrain of southern Europe, and two American armies, the Fifth in Italy and the Seventh in southern France, matured quickly in combat that alternated between a war of position and one of maneuver.
After Sicily fell a situation developed in the western Mediterranean permitting the Fifth and Seventh Armies to enjoy the many advantages that came from reasserting naval supremacy and air superiority over a vast inland lake. On the average, every ten days a convoy direct from the United States unloaded a ten-day level of Quartermaster supply at a large terminal port located directly behind the Mediterranean front. First from Naples, then Leghorn, and later Marseille, staged supply moved to the armies.
The formal Italian surrender on 8 September 1943 and the King’s declaration of war on Germany a month later were the first steps in the development of “co-belligerency,” a concept that ultimately gave Italy most of the duties and privileges of an Allied Power. But meanwhile an Allied Control Commission decided upon the scope and the geographical extent of Italian self-government, and defined Italian military and financial obligations to the Allies. These policy decisions were of enormous significance to the Quartermaster Corps, opening up possibilities of labor recruitment and supply procurement on a scale not previously contemplated.
Yet Quartermaster support was not destined to grow in size. The Allies chose not to add weight to their Mediterranean operations, but instead concentrated on invading northwest Europe from the United Kingdom. By mid-December 1943 bold counterstrokes in all the secondary theaters had given way to the carefully planned cross-Channel operation which was now scheduled to begin in late spring, 1944.
Even with the resources at hand after the SEXTANT Conference, it might be argued that the Allies could have attained greater strategic prizes in Italy than the limited ones represented by long-range bomber fields, and by occupying Rome, their first Axis capital. Separated by a mountain range, the American Fifth and British Eighth Armies fought their battles in a series of unrelated, piecemeal encounters, which limited the use of armor. In late January 1944 it appeared that at Anzio the Allies had failed to appreciate the advantage to be gained by giving a surprise amphibious operation the weight and reserves which such an adventure so desperately needed. For the remainder of 1944 and early 1945, the Germans fought the Allies in Italy in two great
battles of position. The first was waged along the Gustav Line that covered the Liri corridor below Rome. The second was along the transpeninsular Gothic Line guarding the approaches to the Po valley. In both battles, and also at Anzio, Quartermaster operations quickly conformed to the trends familiar in wars of attrition.
Early in 1944 the supreme command of Allied Force Headquarters passed from American to British leadership, and the boundaries of the Mediterranean theater were extended to take in part of British commands in the eastern half of the Mediterranean. To this situation the Americans of AFHQ responded with new command arrangements of their own. On 8 January 1944 General Eisenhower handed over to Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers the strictly American part of his Mediterranean responsibilities. During the next few weeks Devers further developed his command by rearranging staff functions on the American side of AFHQ and of NATOUSA and by increasing the authority of General Larkin, his administrative commander.
The most successful water-borne invasion of the Mediterranean war took place in August 1944 along the southern coast of France. This operation was planned and executed despite the necessity of making inbound shipments for Fifth Army and two U.S. Army air forces, and of giving overriding priorities to the forces already ashore in Normandy. The task force commander of Operation DRAGOON (southern France), Lt. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, recognized these handicaps and kept his quartermaster requirements to the minimum. During September enemy resistance was negligible and apart from short delays to disperse rearguard formations, logistical limitations alone impeded Seventh Army’s drive from Marseille to the foothills of the Vosges. After the link-up with Bradley’s 12th Army Group on 12 September, Seventh Army quartermasters sought additional resources from the European theater. In the winter of 1944–45 the process of consolidating the veteran pipeline quartermasters of the Mediterranean with those of the European theater proceeded by stages. General Devers’ 6th Army Group, including Patch’s Seventh Army and General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny’s 1st French Army, came under Eisenhower’s operational control on 15 September. But control over logistical support for this force was vested in a succession of transitional headquarters until 12 February 1945, when all the supply agencies supporting the spring offensive into the German heartland were consolidated into one large SOS organization, COMZ ETOUSA.
Assembly at Naples
The Quartermaster assembly at Naples began modestly enough but soon picked up speed until it was recognized as the largest gathering of QMC staff officers and operating units in one place up to this time. The first arrivals were old hands in support procedures, having learned their trade in Atlantic Base Section. Quartermasters reached Naples as part of the 6665th Base Area Group (Provisional), General Pence commanding. Under Clark, Pence also commanded the Fifth Army Base Section, an organization which Clark had planned for during the formulation of AVALANCHE. It was created because Clark had noted the shortcomings of the SOS base section
concept in the early phases of TORCH and HUSKY. With the capture of Naples on 1 October 1943 the 6665th Group entered the port city with Fifth Army and coordinated support activities until 1 November, when the group became the nucleus for a regularly constituted SOS base section. Thus, for a month pipeline quartermasters operated under army, not SOS control. From the divisions of Fifth Army came ample testimony to the adequacy of supply under this system, which was the prototype of the one used in Normandy in the late spring of 1944. The 3rd Division quartermaster found this transitional organization “immeasurably superior” to that of Seventh Army in Sicily. The 34th Division, arriving in Italy from North Africa, was gratified by Fifth Army’s prompt support in contrast to the “20% supply and long hauling of the African campaign.”1
On 4 October, two days after a reconnaissance by Colonel Sullivan, the new group quartermasters, headed by Col. Wayne M. Pickels, began to survey the shattered city of Naples. By the next evening they had commandeered a lumber yard, a canning factory, and two bakeries as temporary installations while the more permanent ones were being selected. Quite unexpectedly, on 5 October Pickels acquired a responsibility that was new to his semipipeline function —supply of POL products to Fifth Army. Hurriedly, Pickels called Maj. Charles A. Mount from the 49th Quartermaster Truck Regiment to direct the delivery of 75,000 gallons of gasoline to Fifth Army dumps within twenty-four hours. Because the petroleum administrator was not familiar with tactical POL practices, quartermasters handled POL supply for the next thirty days. During October Fifth Army Base Section absorbed Quartermaster supplies discharged at Naples and adjacent ports. On the 26th, because of a serious illness Pickels was replaced as quartermaster at Naples by Colonel Painter, who was transferred from his dwindling activities in Eastern Base Section. It was now Painter’s job to make the final supply transition from Fifth Army to SOS as smooth as possible. On 1 November Peninsular Base Section (PBS) was activated and Painter was named chief of the Quartermaster Section.
One very early function of the Peninsular Base Section was local Quartermaster procurement—in fact, the disbursement records of the Quartermaster Section date back to October 1943, before PBS was formally activated. Immediately after the HUSKY and AVALANCHE landings, Sicily and southern Italy had the status of occupied enemy territories, and quartermasters made direct purchases with invasion currency. After Italy became a cobelligerent, the system of direct purchases was retained in the combat zone, using Allied military lire to be redeemed by the Italian Treasury. In the communications zone and in self-governing “King’s Italy,” the Allies used requisitioning as the normal method of procurement, but there were repeated emergencies which required quick action. Painter maintained close liaison with the Local Resources Board, an agency of AFHQ, and was permitted to make cash payments whenever they were needed to obtain operationally essential supplies.
Such payments were held to a minimum at the request of the Italian Government, which feared inflation.2 The mechanics of procurement remained virtually the same as in North Africa. In July 1944, when AFHQ moved to Italy, the procurement functions of the General Purchasing Board and the allocation responsibilities of the Local Products Allocation Committee were merged under the Allied Forces Local Resources Section, which supervised separate regional procurement boards in Sicily, Sardinia, and Italy.3
Inasmuch as Quartermaster supply—in early November Fifth Army’s daily demands were 400 tons of rations and 550 tons of POL—was in the limelight, Painter quickly made the supply section one of the largest on his staff and obtained Colonel Poore to head it. Already Poore was familiar with the details of AVALANCHE and had only recently planned and set up supply for the elements of the French Expeditionary Corps, which was then joining Fifth Army. In Poore’s section more and more matters developed which involved operations. One of these was the creation of a remount depot and the purchase of pack animals ‘and forage —activities that could only gradually be decentralized to other Quartermaster organizations. Such support called for operating troops, and Painter struggled to find men at a time when all troop replacement pools were closed to quartermasters. The need for staff officers was equally pressing. By 1 December the new section had a total of twenty-three separate staff reports to compile, most of which were semimonthly SOS studies covering such details as lend-lease, local procurement, inventories, salvage, civilian wages, vehicular data, back-orders on clothing, and medical statistics. At the end of November 1943 Painter sought relief in the reorganization of his section.4
On paper, the War Department’s Table of Organization dated 11 August 1943 for a headquarters and headquarters company, quartermaster base depot, presented a solution to Painter’s difficulties. The need for this type of company had been manifested in the early days of each North African base section. On 14 May 1943 Middleswart had formally presented his concept of the headquarters detachment to The Quartermaster General. At the same time Littlejohn’s staff in London, while working on a revised depot and base section Quartermaster scheme for the United Kingdom, drafted a similar type of headquarters detachment. Specifically, it was the Atlantic Base Section quartermaster who had first attempted to use the new concept. As early as January 1943 Colonel Evans had decided that his own staff was too small to exercise efficient control over operating Quartermaster units and installations which were clustered around depots scattered over five different areas of Morocco. Quartermaster planners preparing for AVALANCHE recognized that this type of headquarters detachment was ideally suited to the projected base section at Naples.5
Normally, the regularly constituted company comprised 154 persons, including 34 officers, 2 warrant officers, and 118 enlisted men. While operating a single general depot with a number of sub-depots, this detachment supervised all attached Quartermaster support units within the base section. When operating at a branch depot, it supervised all attached Quartermaster troops as well as any station complement units such as a signal service platoon, postal unit, finance section, and station hospital. The new company was the War Department’s method of streamlining Quartermaster service units in the interest of greater flexibility and economy in manpower. After coordinating the personnel needs for the new company with SOS NATOUSA, Painter decided initially to assemble half the people necessary to staff it. On 26 November 1943, Peninsular Base Section activated Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 6698th Quartermaster Base Depot (Provisional). On 1 December Lt. Col. Rowland S. Brown assumed command.6
As the 6698th demonstrated that it could handle more and more operating units, Painter’s section concentrated on staff plans and policy. Because of their Allied nature, Painter initially retained three operational functions: the remount service, solid fuel yards, and operations that involved liaison with a growing number of Allied commissions, such as local procurement and civilian food relief. On 7 January 1944 the 6698th relieved Poore’s Supply Division of the job of processing and editing all Fifth Army requisitions, including those preparatory to mounting the Anzio operation. By the end of the month the lines of demarcation between Quartermaster Section, Peninsular Base Section, and the 6698th Headquarters and Headquarters Company were clearly drawn.7 When Painter was relieved in April 1944 by Col. George H. Bare, the Quartermaster Section had made considerable progress on plans for the expected drive on Rome and the projected invasion of southern France. In June the 6698th dropped its provisional status, reached full strength in manpower, and acquired the designation of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 61st Quartermaster Base Depot.8 Five months before the 61st had reached peak strength, Colonel Painter contemplated operating his Neapolitan base with some 6,000 Quartermaster troops, but he had received only 3,575 military personnel. These troops belonged to four battalions of service troops and eighteen separate Quartermaster companies. All were attached to the 6698th Headquarters and Headquarters Company which also employed a total of 5,500 civilians.9
When Bare assumed command in April at Naples, the 6698th was supervising the operations of 41 separate quartermaster installations, including 5 Class I depots and dumps, 4 separate ration distribution points, 2 cold storage plants, 3 bakeries, 3 garbage collecting points, 3 clothing and general supply warehouses, a coal and wood depot, a salvage dump, a metal scrap yard, a typewriter repair shop, a dry
cleaning plant with 8 service shops, 3 laundries, a personal effects depot, 3 cemeteries, 3 remount stations, and 2 forage yards. In addition, the 6698th and its successor, the 61st, had quartermasters working at 2 Italian Army clothing depots and at French Base Depot 901, the organization which supported the French Expeditionary Corps in Fifth Army. In terms of supply the 61st handled approximately 27 pounds of Quartermaster items per man per day for 320,000 men in Fifth Army, of which troops 45,000 were French, Moslems, or Italian cobelliger-ents, and common-use items for the Twelfth and Fifteenth Air Forces and the U.S. Navy. It also provided limited amounts of supply for five million civilians.10
During the 18 months from December 1943 to May 1945, the 61st and its predecessor, the 6698th, controlled the services of 29 Quartermaster support units attached for more than a year and of 99 units attached for periods varying from 1 to 20 months, with 8 months the length of average assignment. Considered together, these attachments present a picture of units constantly moving in and out of Colonel Brown’s command. The 61st Quartermaster Base Depot was noteworthy in that it provided direct support to a field army longer than any other similar unit in the war against Germany.
An important port and commercial city the size of Naples might have been expected, to offer as many facilities for storage and other quartermaster services as Colonels Pickels, Painter, Bare, and Brown could have possibly used. Instead, when the first quartermasters entered the city on 3 October 1943 and checked on preinvasion map sites, they were quickly disenchanted. Confronting Pickels was an awesome example of demolition. The Germans had scuttled ships in the port area and spread destruction across the suburbs at key communication centers. Allied bombers had added to the devastation. Property in general was demolished, unsuitable, or earmarked by military government staffs for the rehabilitation of the devastated region. The best of available locations either had been reduced to rubble or lacked water, gas, or electricity. Nowhere had quartermasters before encountered such destruction.
But they had to make the best of the situation, and by the end of October 1943 Quartermaster installations were being established around Naples. On the 13th, the Quartermaster Section opened a cemetery near the 95th Evacuation Hospital; it later became the Allied cemetery. Because water could not be obtained from city mains, mobile bakeries and sterilization units were set up on the Italian Fair Grounds, where water could be drawn from several large ponds, which hitherto had served to beautify the landscape. The Naples City Market housed a subsistence dump, but only briefly as the space had to be vacated for a British works. Accessibility to a good highway and rail net encouraged the selection of a new Class I site in Aversa, on the outskirts of Naples, and rations accumulated here before the engineers completed their improvements. But as if some malevolent spirit was afoot, the rainy season started and the stacks of food at Aversa slowly sank into the mud. Thirty thousand tons of rations disappeared, enough for 10,000,000 men for a day.
The second and third tries for Class I sites were considerably better. One was situated near Garibaldi Station in Naples, and the other in Marcianise, about twenty-five miles to the north. Once engineers had cleared and apportioned the areas, both were comparatively capacious. Equipping the dumps with more than six miles of roller conveyors permitted the mass handling, sorting, and stocking of rations without the use of trucks or other warehousing vehicles. In November 1943 more than a dozen Class I points opened in and around Naples. The Campi Flegri railway yards stored wholesale supplies; an athletic stadium provided an open storage area where sheds were constructed to contain sacked goods and fast-moving items; and existing commercial ovens were repaired and added to military baking equipment to produce as much as 75,000 pounds of bread each day. As the 61st expanded its operations, a baking company was taken over at Bag-noli on the north side of the bay, where a large replacement depot and staging area was located. Two ice plants and a cold storage plant were occupied. A three-story stone building and an adjacent sports field housed a retail distribution point popularly called the “delicatessen.” Outside this building, three cold storage boxes, special tents for fresh fruits and vegetables, and a complete bakery permitted truckside delivery for SOS units to draw rations.
Twelve miles north of Naples at Gricignano-Teverola station, the 61st opened its main wholesale clothing and equipage depot. Here all Class II and IV stocks were assembled except sales, salvage, and certain inactive goods. Because existing warehouses lacked space for everything, the construction of sheds and Nissen huts and the early improvement of open areas were mandatory. Although a compact suburban depot offered such theoretical advantages as the ability to conduct its operations with fewer supervisory personnel, more orderly record keeping, and less competitive traffic, this installation had its share of difficulties. Hardly had the site been taken over from Fifth Army before the rapid influx of supplies, delivered to service troops who were too few and inexperienced, resulted in a mountain of unsorted clothing and equipment. Colonel Painter was unable to remedy this situation for several months, and the depot supply company operating the station was “talked about, fussed at, and skinned by all who saw the situation.”11
An inspection of the Gricignano-Teverola depot as late as April 1944 by Major Wyer’s stock control team from Middleswart’s office disclosed the spectacle of disorderly stacks and broken, unmarked containers. Wyer reported that shelter halves were scattered about, that individual items were in mixed sizes, and that his team had no way of knowing what the depot contained. The rapid turnover of stocks, limited storage space, and the arrival of supplies at the depot in broken or poorly crated packages largely explained this discouraging situation. But even so Wyer reported to Middleswart that there was no excuse for the visible evidence of loafing by warehousemen.12
In the autumn of 1943 the terrain over
which Fifth Army was advancing presented to Painter another supply problem: the small unit under fire in a position to which it was nearly impossible to move supplies. Infantrymen held positions inaccessible to every form of ground transportation, including pack animals. Delivery by air was the only solution, and an air resupply depot was established at Capocichino Airfield in the outskirts of Naples. The depot stored rations, water, medical supplies, POL, and ammunition for both the British and American troops. U.S. packaged rations were used exclusively because of their smaller bulk and better packing. By attaching an element of the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion to the base section, experienced personnel were obtained to further the work of airdropping. The basic method taught to quartermasters of the 61st prescribed the use of standard containers from C-47 airplanes. But an improvised method was developed whereby supplies were secured with wire and salvaged blankets in belly tanks and dropped from A-36 aircraft.13
As the complex of captured airfields in the Bari-Foggia region and on the island bases of Corsica and Sardinia were put into operation, pipeline quartermasters were attached to them, the first to operate solely under United States Army Air Forces control. By the end of 1943, the Twelfth Tactical and the Fifteenth Strategic Air Forces required major quantities of Quartermaster items common to both ground and air force troops. Heretofore SOS base sections had furnished these items, principally rations and clothing. But now the accident of geography separated the air bases from established SOS support sections. This applied particularly to the Adriatic area, within the British administrative zone. Tentatively, planners considered activating two new SOS base sections, but soon dropped the idea. Already the movement of air groups from North Africa, the development of a network of Italian airfields, and the establishment of 35,000 troops around the Foggia airfield complex had consumed some 300,000 tons of precious shipping. This build-up came at a time when Fifth Army faced a critical situation, and quartermasters in Naples were momentarily in competition with their AAF colleagues.
SOS NATOUSA had no resources to pour into two new special-type base sections. It was therefore decided that items of common supply would be furnished through a general depot. For Quartermaster troops, SOS NATOUSA again turned to the declining Atlantic Base Section and organized two detachments of the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2665th Quartermaster Base Depot (Provisional), each consisting of twelve officers and twenty-six enlisted men. These detachments were attached to the XII Air Force Service Command (AFSC), which in turn grouped all its SOS quartermaster service units under the supervision of the 2665th. One detachment went to the Adriatic Depot with headquarters at Bari, Italy, and the other to Cagliari, Sardinia, to operate the Tyrrhenian Depot.14
Adriatic Depot—serving an area
reaching from the Italian heel northward to San Severo and inland along the coast to a depth of forty miles—expanded rapidly after November 1943, and the 2665th Company began to operate under unique conditions as a small SOS within a larger USAAF command. In the interest of speedier delivery of rations, clothing, and general supplies, the 2665th was authorized to deal directly with SOS NATO-USA if it first confirmed all strength reports with the XII AFSC. Requisitions provided that common supply was to be shipped directly from NYPE to Bari or Cagliari along with other AAF cargo. On paper the arrangement appeared simple; in practice it proved complex. The 2665th in effect had one direct master and another hidden away in the form of SOS NATOUSA.15 Another difficulty was the large number of ship diversions to both Bari and Cagliari, causing ground force supplies to become hopelessly tangled with SOS supplies for the XII AFSC. Later, when the French Army mounted on Corsica for DRAGOON and the small ports of Ajaccio and Bastia were unable to berth Liberty ships with supplies specifically earmarked for French use, the cargoes had to be assigned to Cagliari. The 2665th detachment in Sardinia soon had to cope with colossal stocks awaiting reassignment to the French Army while at the same time receiving and issuing AAF supplies.16
At Bari the 2665th arrived on the scene late and found that the cargo of four Liberty ships had arrived long before. Quartermaster supplies had been hauled to Villa Stepelli, a walled-in compound which had formerly been used as an Italian Army depot. Thousands of tons of mixed AAF and SOS supplies—rations, heavy engineer equipment, valuable signal instruments, and lubricating oils—had been dumped indiscriminately over many acres. The first troops to arrive were, moreover, unskilled in the administration of such a large depot. Their transportation means hardly met minimum needs, and contacts with the railheads which served the growing number of airfields at Foggia were unsatisfactory. On 7 November 1943 the arrival of the 246th Quartermaster Depot Company and the 86th Railhead Company brought welcome reinforcements, and the storage and distribution system slowly began to function. By February 1944 the single depot at Bari could no longer serve the overgrown railhead points at Foggia. This situation led to the redesignation of the railhead as Adriatic Depot 2. Because the Bari depot forwarded the daily train to Foggia and the 2665th continued to maintain the records for the newer depot, Adriatic Depot 2 in effect operated as a subdepot of Bari.
During the summer of 1944 as the Air Forces expanded their shuttle operations among bases in the United Kingdom, Italy, and Russia, and followed the ground advance beyond Rome, a third depot was opened at Ancona, two hundred miles north of Foggia. From Bari, supplies came by water and were trucked from Ancona to Jesi, where they were fanned out to nearby air installations. Along the length of Italy’s eastern seaboard air operations ultimately involved some 200,000 troops and the 2665th controlled sixteen separate
Quartermaster support units within the XII Air Force Service Command. The 2665th’s support extended beyond the boundaries of Italy. At Athens, Air Transport Command planes visited regularly to deliver post exchange items. Supply of the partisans in Yugoslavia was largely a Royal Air Force responsibility, but several U.S. units, especially the 60th Troop Carrier Group, made important contributions. Most supplies were airdropped, but on occasion the C-47 transports of the 60th landed and delivered all types of supplies, even including mules.17
One significant factor was common to the operations of these two depots—neither installation was responsible for the support of any ground combat troops. In the Adriatic area, the British Army provided security for AAF bases, and on Corsica and Sardinia the French and Italian forces, respectively, had the same mission. These troops received little American support, and none through the two AAF depots. Nevertheless, considering their very modest size, Adriatic and Tyrrhenian Depots provided very adequate and satisfactory support to the Twelfth and Fifteenth Air Forces.
The Slow Advance on Rome
From somewhere along the lines of the Garigliano and Sangro Rivers, 75 miles south of Rome, Sullivan dispatched an undated requisition to his colleagues at Naples. Only partly in jest it read: “The Army is starving and freezing to death. We need about 50,000,000 of everything. In fact send all you have. P.S. Also send what comes in next week.” The message implied that spigot and pipeline quartermasters were experiencing their first real war of attrition. Actually, the strain on supply started in mid-November 1943 when Fifth Army’s drive, which had been continuous since Salerno Bay, came to a temporary halt along the Volturno. Winter rains, flooded rivers, mud, the expensive daily train by truck instead of rail, and a determined enemy in fixed positions demanded the tightest kind of unity among quartermasters. Nowhere had Fifth Army seriously considered abandoning the offensive. By 24 November Clark had deployed his two American and one British corps in anticipation of a drive into the Liri valley. After nearly two months of desperate resistance on the Winter Line, the Germans retired to their Gustav Line, which started at the Tyrrhenian Sea, followed the Garigliano, Gari, and Rapido Rivers, and ended in the hills beyond Cassino.18 During this period Sullivan, Painter, Middleswart, and Ramsey more clearly than before saw the intimate relationship between tactics and their wholesale mission of supply.
Before encountering the Gustav Line late in December 1943, Allied planners had been considering an amphibious assault to outflank the German transpeninsular position. Delicately, the plan hinged on the availability of fourteen
LSTs. By 31 December a third version of Operation SHINGLE against the Anzio-Nettuno beaches was finally approved and scheduled to take place in late January 1944 regardless of the southern position of Fifth Army. The VI Corps, composed of the 3rd Infantry Division and the British 1st Division, was to make the assault on 22 January 1944.
On 8 January radio traffic among Quartermaster sections suddenly increased and the train of events then set in motion indicated the course to be taken. That same day quartermasters at Naples received instructions to begin filling Sullivan’s phased QM requisitions for SHINGLE. Concurrently, the Quartermaster Section of VI Corps was informed that it would no longer be part of the requisitioning system. The step acknowledged acceptance of the War Department’s doctrine, announced in October 1943, eliminating all corps headquarters from supply responsibilities. Accordingly, VI Corps announced a surplus of Quartermaster officers whose services were sorely needed by the Quartermaster Section, Peninsular Base Section. Optimistically, Painter selected Poore to plan for the establishment of a Quartermaster base at Rome. For resources Poore called on Middleswart. The day of 8 January was an opportune time for this appeal. After sharing divided authority and responsibility with NATOUSA for a year, the Quartermaster Section, SOS NATO USA, was on the verge of benefiting from a theater reorganization, including a realignment of functions between Middleswart and Ramsey.19
Also on 8 January, as already described, NATOUSA came under the command of General Devers, who immediately began furthering the development of a separate Communications Zone, NATOUSA. By 20 February 1944 the process was complete. Thereafter Devers agreed not to engage in any operating functions which the new Communications Zone commander, General Larkin, could reasonably handle himself. Specifically, all base sections now came completely under Larkin’s control, rather than partly as before. On paper and physically, Devers transferred several theater staff sections to Larkin’s headquarters at Oran. With a clear-cut mission Larkin organized his Headquarters, SOS NATOUSA—he decided to retain this familiar name for his new command—along the familiar lines of an orthodox general and special staff. SOS moved to Italy in July 1944.
In the process of these changes, Middleswart acquired a broader area of responsibility. First, he controlled all Quartermaster units and personnel assignments within the Communications Zone. Second, he issued items in excess of authorized Tables of Organization and Equipment. Third, under NATO-USA policies, Middleswart had charge of supervising Quartermaster training throughout the command. Fourth, he handled allocations and issue of supplies which were needed by the U.S. Navy, the merchant marine, and the War Shipping Administration. And lastly, he controlled supply to be released for Allied or cobelligerent forces as outlined in NATOUSA policies. In all this he still had no authority over POL and solid fuels. With that exception, he was by February 1944 the senior
quartermaster in the Communications Zone of NATOUSA, and in effect the theater quartermaster.20
At AFHQ level, on the other hand, Ramsey became involved more and more in two specific missions as the war spread in Italy. First, his AFHQ Quartermaster Section was the channel of communication for captured enemy matériel. It is significant that the Fifth Army had few items of this nature to report, indicating that the enemy was highly disciplined in a war of attrition. Second, through a deputy at Naples—Ramsey had moved to Caserta with AFHQ in July 1944—he controlled the allocation of imported coal for the Allied stockpile, except requisitions by the Royal Navy and the British Ministry of Transport.21
Actually the realignment of Quartermaster functions, which began early in January and ranged from corps level to the highest Allied headquarters, was a return to prewar U.S. doctrines. The organization was tightened and the various staffs, by now veterans of a year’s labor, obtained no increase in manpower. Standing operating procedures governed supply, and planning on the scale of SHINGLE and ANVIL was no longer dreaded. Achievement of communications zone status and a strengthening of Quartermaster organization at army level drew pipeline and spigot quartermasters closer together than before. They intensified their efforts in such new fields as development of a remount service, organization of repair and spare parts teams, correction of theater stock inventory procedures, collection of replacement factors, prevention of trench foot, development of services of supply within such groups as the French Expeditionary Corps, Italian co-belligerent units, and prisoners of war, and preparation of supplies for delivery by air.22
Sullivan was the first quartermaster to benefit from these developments. Plans had already provided that the second and fourth convoys for SHINGLE were to consist of Liberty ships, to be loaded in North Africa. Consequently they had to sail earlier than the first and third convoys, which comprised LST’s and sailed from Naples. By 8 January 1944 Sullivan had submitted his requisitions to Middleswart for all four convoys. They were designated A BULL to D BULL, inclusive, BULL being the shipping code designation for Anzio. They covered the QM requirements of the initial landing force-45,000 men and 4,200 vehicles. Based on newly acquired information of what assault troops actually needed, the BULL requisitions represented a major advance in logistical planning.23
For the Anzio landings, an ingenious system of preloaded trucks to be
carried on LSTs was set up. At Naples a waterproofed 2½-ton truck was loaded to twice its designated capacity with one class of supply. Along with thirty-four other vehicles, the truck was rolled on to one of the fourteen LSTs which were to carry the assault reserve of supplies. The idea of spread-loading each LST with trucks carrying rations, clothing, POL, and ammunition was sound. The loss of one vessel would not seriously reduce the loss in any one class of supply. The roll-on-roll-off truck—LST system had other advantages. A truck stopped at one dump in Naples; it had a single destination at Anzio. For the return trip quartermasters could evacuate salvage. If the beachhead were expanded more rapidly than anticipated, it was possible that the trucks would remain at Anzio as a mobile reserve.24
Of the total of 500 trucks bearing the beachhead reserve of 3 days’ supply for 45,000 troops, Sullivan was allotted 275 2½-ton trucks. Basically, the proportion was ideal, for it reflected past amphibious experience and indicated future trends. Of the 275 trucks, Sullivan earmarked 102 (about 7 per LST) for rations, both combat and hospital, water, and water-purifying chemicals; 9 for critical clothing items (43,480 pounds) and intrenching tools (10,050 pounds) ; and the remaining 164 for POI,.
In terms of pounds per man per day, Sullivan’s food and clothing and general supplies corresponded with HUSKY and TORCH plans. For SHINGLE, he still used factors to allow each type of vehicle to move 25 miles per day. As yet he considered his new experience table, begun after AVALANCHE and based on pounds of PO L per man per day, too sketchy. Immediately after D-day he shifted to his new POL factor largely because he was unable to obtain an accurate census of vehicles by type at Anzio on any definite day. In retrospect, the provision of factors for each class of Quartermaster supply furnished for SHINGLE marks the end of the search for a formula applicable to Quartermaster operations in the Mediterranean theater. Subsequent experience merely justified the use of such factors.25
The final version of A BULL Class II requisitions did not reflect Sullivan’s efforts to define anew what clothing the individual soldier would wear or carry into combat. He had attempted to convince the Army G-4 that the popular armored force combat suit should be worn in lieu of the regular wool olive drab uniform and Parsons field jacket. Likewise he wanted to reduce the contents of the assault pack as used in AVALANCHE, but shortages of some items again forced the use of this pack. The C BULL requisitions, eliminating all clothing and general supplies, covered the first turnaround delivery of the LST-truck shuttle system. This convoy provided three days of Class I and III supply for all troops ashore. Sullivan’s B BULL requisitions called for the greatest amount of resupply—ten days. Because
of the time necessary to prepare shipments and because of the type of ships to be loaded—some in North Africa—the B BULL serials were the first to be presented to Painter and Middleswart. The second convoy of Liberty ships, carrying the D BULL requisitions, brought an additional ten days of supply, including the all-important components of the B ration.26
The VI Corps assault on 22 January at Anzio completely surprised the Germans. Their counteroffensive equally surprised Fifth Army. By 1 February the attack out of the beachhead had stalled and Clark ordered VI Corps to prepare for the defense. The attritional advance on Rome now continued on two fronts, and Sullivan’s BULL requisitions progressed deeper into the alphabet. The events of late January hastened Sullivan’s efforts to consolidate planning and control of operations in his office, a process which had been under way since 21 September 1943.27 Early in February 1944, when VI Corps relinquished control of supply and a semblance of centralized control of the beachhead had been inaugurated, Fifth Army established an advance command post at Anzio to administer the port and dump area.
Sullivan rapidly moved his office into the picture. Though physically separated, three corps—the II and VI Corps and the French Expeditionary Corps, which took the place of VI Corps along the Gustav Line—now adhered to the McNair doctrine of 16 October 1943, which asserted that a corps functioning as part of a field army had no administrative control over supply.28 For the first time Sullivan was practicing what had been a cherished dream in the U.S. Army. At field army level the Office of the Quartermaster (OQM), whether on a system of automatic supply or requisition, was obligated to deliver or evacuate all Quartermaster resources to and from railheads located as close as possible to the combat divisions, regiments, separate battalions, or smaller units. While the corps quartermaster was expected to devote his activities to the tactical aspects of supply and to recommend appropriate levels, he was no longer to wield authority over army installations lying within corps boundaries.
In mid-March 1944 the major Allied forces regrouped, splitting the shank of Italy in two. The Fifth Army assumed control of the west side bordering on the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the British Eighth continued in control of the Adriatic side. Regroupment necessitated considerable movement of supplies, troops, and headquarters at a time when the situation at Cassino and Anzio demanded increased Quartermaster planning and reconnaissance, and closer coordination of supply activities. On 23 March 1944 Sullivan moved from Caserta to Sparanise along with Fifth Army headquarters. The office of the army quartermaster was now completely organized along the lines projected by Sullivan in Oujda, Morocco, in 1943. During 1944, Quartermaster troops assigned
to Sullivan comprised some so to 35 companies, assembled under the command of from 5 to 7 separate headquarters and headquarters detachments of Quartermaster battalions.29 Fifth Army’s narrow front made it preferable for the OQM to retain this command system. The only use made of the Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, Quartermaster Group, was to have it administer the several Italian service battalions attached to Sullivan’s office.
The seven Quartermaster battalions assigned to Fifth Army in March 1944 included the 62nd, with salvage, laundry, and sterilization companies (controlled by the army salvage officer) ; the 204th, with four gasoline supply companies, two attached truck companies, and a single attached French petrol company (controlled by the OQM Class III officer) ; the 94th, 242nd, 259th, and 263rd, with service, railhead, bakery, depot supply, truck, and graves registration companies (directly under the control of the OQM Class I, Class II, and Class IV, or graves registration officers) ; and the 249th with a representative selection of 11 Quartermaster companies. The Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 249th Quartermaster Battalion, was controlled by Lt. Col. Cornelius C. Holcomb, who headed the office of the advance army quartermaster at Anzio.30
Hoping to establish an intermediate system of supervisory, rather than directional, control over his field installations, Sullivan outlined an arrangement whereby each area quartermaster served as his field representative. Such a deputy, who was actually the senior quartermaster in a given area, possessed no independent authority over operations.31 This officer could neither issue orders conflicting with established procedures or policies nor change production orders or supply levels. His only independent responsibilities pertained to sanitation, supply discipline, and security camouflage. Used at Anzio in the form of an advance headquarters, Sullivan’s system did not work as intended because the appointed area quartermaster established his own routine and created a procedure of dual control. Because of this awkward development, Sullivan eliminated the job at Anzio several weeks before the main Fifth Army force absorbed the beachhead, and the system was shelved until it could be adapted to a mobile or rapidly moving tactical situation.
Holcomb’s organization at Nettuno was exclusively a branch field office. Staff officers in charge of sections in Holcomb’s office were also the commanding officers of units assigned or attached to the Headquarters, 249th Quartermaster Battalion, Lt. Col. John C. Strickland
commanding.32 Subsistence was handled by the 94th Railhead Company, POL by the 3853rd Gasoline Supply Company, and Class II and IV supply by a detachment of the 85th Depot Supply Company. Salvage matters were supervised by a lieutenant in Holcomb’s office, but the evacuation work was carried out by three Quartermaster service companies, plus an Italian labor battalion. Graves registration remained a VI Corps responsibility; one platoon of the 47th Graves Registration Company and two platoons of the 48th Company handled this mission. Forced to disperse because the entire area was under frequent fire, the 249th scattered its installations within the beachhead. The main ration dump was near Nettuno, where damage was small in spite of recurrent shellings. The largest single loss resulted from an air raid when an antipersonnel bomb ignited a stack of tobacco kits. During another bombardment nineteen artillery shells fell in the dump area, but destroyed only seven cases of K rations. The 3853rd operated two POI, dumps, one of which was just north of Anzio city and the other three miles east of Nettuno. To isolate fires and explosions, POL was segregated into 5,000-gallon lots with each stack of 1,000 cans partially buried in a pit. Of the nine million gallons of POL shipped to the beachhead, the 3853rd held losses to 1 percent.
Holcomb’s main clothing and equipage depot was approximately six miles from the enemy. Operating there, the 85th Depot Company occupied a former Italian barracks near Nettuno and handled large quantities of supplies under blackout conditions. A bomb destroyed one of the sheds but for the most part the depot suffered little damage. The 85th received only a few calls it could not fill.33 Shortages appeared in raincoats, underwear, shoes in wide widths, field jackets, and candles, but never in critical proportions. During the first fifteen days, Class II and IV items were shipped automatically on the basis of replacement factors. Later a requisition basis was used because Sullivan had definite evidence that his replacement factors did not reflect adequately supply needs in this war of attrition. With the arrival of spring weather, stocks at Anzio increased steadily.34
Since early March food and packaged POL at Anzio had a priority second only to ammunition. The former had been placed on semiautomatic supply—supply against specially prepared status reports. Conditions at Anzio after mid-February had been comparable to the quiet periods of. World War I trench warfare. The troops who had been living on combat rations began to receive one hot meal a day in their foxholes. Three hot meals were served in the rear areas, occasionally supplemented by fresh eggs and meat either procured locally from the few remaining Italian farmers or requisitioned by raiding parties in search of chickens and livestock. These forays were as carefully planned as patrols against a tactical objective.
Finally, in May the Fifth Army started
its spring offensive against the Gustav Line and the troops at Anzio could at last look forward to an end of the monotony that had characterized the recent weeks. But if Anzio was quickly left behind, it could not be quickly forgotten. Logistically—because of more efficient supply procedures and continuous deliveries by preloaded trucks, sustained operations under blackout conditions, and effective use of the DUKW to mention only a few improvements—An-zio was a landmark in Quartermaster operations. But it was memorable for another reason. During the 125 days on the beachhead the falling bombs, artillery shells, and flak failed to distinguish between service and combat troops. Here, along with men on the line, 10 percent of the troops under control of the 249th Quartermaster Battalion were killed or wounded.35
For the 1944 spring offensive, Allied regroupment along the Gustav Line had begun in mid-March 1944, and Sullivan relocated his installations on the north side of the Volturno River. While this involved a move of less than fifteen miles, the Quartermaster Section required seven weeks to transfer the large tonnages out of the permanent buildings in the Aversa-Capua-Caserta triangle, into the general area of Sparanise. The Class II and IV depot moved to a site adjacent to the Sparanise rail yards, containing Nissen huts and numerous concrete platforms. The salvage collection dump was less fortunate. Sullivan called upon engineers to construct a completely new installation with gravel roads, gravel tent flooring, slit trenches, fences, and an unprecedented number of tents. Shifting ration and gasoline dumps was considerably more difficult than moving clothing stocks and salvage yards, because these dumps were obliged to remain open until all the Fifth Army troops had moved out. Not a single Class III dump suspended operations until ten days after the sixth gasoline dump had opened in the forward area. While attempting to straighten out his trans-Volturno supply lines, Sullivan found that he had left behind one completely unsolved matter. The burial of Moslem troops of the French Expeditionary Corps created an unforeseen problem of cemetery design. Deceased Moslems had to face Mecca. A simple solution appeared to be for all grave markers to face in an eastward direction. But this was not always possible when such matters as adequate drainage and easy access to graves were considered. Sullivan solved the problem by dividing Fifth Army’s future layouts into three separate sections. One contained American and Allied dead, another enemy remains, and the third Moslem bodies.36
Basic to the orderly flow of Quartermaster supplies from Naples to Fifth Army was the daily telegram, which served as the essential requisitioning document.37 According to accepted doctrine the daily telegram originated with division and corps reports, which gave the strength of their commands in men and animals.38 Army then consolidated these figures and dispatched a consolidated telegram to the base section.
Since clothing and equipment were consumed at irregular rates, they were not included in the daily telegram.
Early in the campaign Sullivan had learned that it was almost impossible to follow this basic doctrine. He observed that “the daily telegram is ... not entirely workable because the tactical situation changes so rapidly.”39 Even along the narrow Volturno front, with daily train service and Naples only some twenty-five miles away,40 Sullivan had difficulty in receiving front-line reports.
With units moving from one sector to another on less than 24-hour notice, with squads and platoons deployed in isolated places, deliveries of food and gasoline on the basis of the telegram more than a day old were likely not to be made in the right place. For that reason the daily telegram was modified in the direction of automatic supply by Fifth Army. A unit could draw quartermaster supply at a railhead simply by submitting a telegram which only indicated the quantities and types of rations desired without anticipating its requirements several days in advance. At the end of the day so-called consolidated telegrams reporting total issues for that period were prepared by each Fifth Army railhead and forwarded by courier to Sullivan’s office. After consolidating this information with the daily requirements of each truckhead and balances on hand Sullivan’s Class I officer requested replenishment from Peninsular Base Section three days hence.41
A prerequisite to the full success of this procedure was the existence of reserve stocks in an army base dump. Availability of such reserves permitted faster replenishment of railheads and narrowed the time lag between the date of requisition and the date of consumption. While there was never serious doubt as to the need of such reserves, G-4 staffs, the spigot quartermaster, and the pipeline quartermaster disagreed as to their size. Sullivan and Painter crossed swords on this point after 1 January 1944, when the daily train ran regularly to Caserta and when Peninsular Base Section had a much better insight into the condition of its stocks. Alert to the difficulties in allocating transportation means equitably among all the technical services, Tate preferred that Sullivan limit his base dumps to a two-day supply of B rations and fractional days of supply of combat rations. Sullivan contended that such low levels jeopardized both the maintenance of balanced rations and prompt delivery to units. He pressed for a ten-day level at base
dumps, including seven days of B rations. For close support during mountain fighting this was not excessive. But Tate was more optimistic than Sullivan regarding the possibility of a breakthrough, and repeatedly pointed out that Fifth Army reserves were too large to be moved readily. During the accelerated advance late in May, Clark stepped in and settled the debate in favor of Tate.42
To improve the handling of Class II and IV supplies, the Fifth Army quartermaster instituted an effective “backorder system” that eliminated much duplication of effort. Any item that could not be furnished upon call was extracted from the requisition and recorded in a special file. As the item was received from the base section—and all back orders were filled first—the Class II and IV Section advised the waiting unit that the item was available. Once the troop units became confident that the army quartermaster was vigilantly trying to make the system work effectively, the depots suffered less harassment from duplication of requisitions and repetition of inquiries.43
Early in the Italian campaign, Sullivan introduced several other organizational or procedural innovations designed to maintain the flow of supplies or provide better services. Since rugged mountains and muddy, inadequate roads limited use of tanks, trucks, and tractors, the Class II and IV Section found “an orphan on its doorstep” in the responsibility for animal pack units.44 The first phase in carrying out this task was a loose one whereby animals and equipment were purchased locally and issued directly to divisions. Moving toward greater centralization, Fifth Army assumed control of the pack mule companies (largely recruited from Italian personnel), organized several more from elements of the inactivated 2d Cavalry Division, and established remount depots in corps areas. Near the end of hostilities more than 4,500 mules and 150 horses were operating under the Fifth Army delivering supplies to troops in otherwise inaccessible areas. Other special projects included the establishment of mobile bath and clothing exchanges, which enabled combat troops to obtain both a shower and a complete change of clothing at the same location, and the maintenance of emergency stocks of essential clothing at ration railheads. Together, these two projects helped reduce the discomforts of living and fighting for month after month in dirt and mud, rain and snow.
As anticipated, the office of the army quartermaster had to ignore the McNair theory of delivering supplies directly to the regiments. At Salerno, Sullivan believed Quartermaster supply might be better controlled by the use of the consolidated requisition and a divisional distribution point.45 The 36th Division
quartermaster wanted to set up additional supply points even further forward for the convenience of his regiments, battalions, and companies. Though reported a year later, the typical army railhead and divisional distribution point system adopted in Italy was that of the gist Infantry Division:
We had checkers along with the trucks so they could count the items drawn at the Army Class I distribution point. These men also break down the supplies drawn when they return to their own Division Class I distribution point in Monghidere. The trucks rolled along without any noticeable delay when drawing rations from the various stacks of rations at the Army distribution point. The Army Class I distribution point on Route 65 and a little north of Traversa is so arranged that trucks move in a counterclockwise manner loading strongly cased items first with bread and meats loaded last. The complete circle required approximately one hour that day, then the convoy of trucks were off for the Division Class I distribution point. The division’s DP is nothing more than placing [sic] the loaded rations trucks in a single column along the right side of a road through the town so that trucks of the various regiments and drawing organizations can back their trucks against the Division trucks and load the various items of issue authorized for the day. By noon the distribution was completed with nothing on the road to indicate that a DP existed there.46
In June 1944, a procedure had been tested whereby the army delivered rations directly to the 34th Division’s distribution point, but the results were generally unsatisfactory and the experiment was short-lived. In one instance the division distribution area became so congested with unit vehicles that schedules were upset and unit trains were late in returning to make their own issues. On several other occasions trucks were lost from the army convoy and rations arrived without bread or canned goods. When the division quartermaster could not assure safe delivery by furnishing guides for the army train and maintaining liaison with the army Class I dump, the preferred system of permitting Quartermaster organic vehicles to haul the division’s rations was restored.47
Inevitably, this use of organic QM transportation for purposes not contemplated by the AGF planners meant that other Quartermaster functions would suffer. To be sure the divisional QM companies, with their fifty-one 2½-ton trucks, could haul all the supplies normally required by a division. But the transportation function amounted to considerably more than hauling the supplies forward. The trucks had to be loaded and unloaded, and the supplies broken down and distributed to the using units. Although the War Department had restored the service platoon to the divisional Quartermaster company in July 1943, it still proved necessary to call on the combat units of the division for assistance.
With the service platoon restored, Quartermaster companies found that the varied tasks they had to perform still taxed their existing structure. Salvage and captured enemy matériel were evacuated to army ration points by divisional Quartermaster companies. Service personnel often worked long hours with attached graves registration teams.
Complaining that in its first year in Africa, Sicily, and Italy his division had never been afforded bathing or washing facilities of any kind—except such “individually devised ones as tin cans, helmets, and other makeshift installations”—General Truscott, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, called for a mobile shower and laundry unit as a permanent attachment. Concerned with the same problem, the 34th Division, after seventy days in combat, instituted a system of bath and clothing exchange units which made for better supply and maintenance of individual clothing while serving as a booster of morale.48 The facilities offered by such a unit consisted of shower, clean towel, complete change of under and outer clothing, field jacket, and occasionally shoes and leggings. Permitting the elimination of barracks bags by all except motorized elements, this service relieved the strain on transportation facilities. Such economies took on added importance in the spring of 1944, as the long months of position warfare came to an end, and the troops began to move again.
Pursuit to the Arno
The long-awaited offensive on the Gustav Line got under way on 11-12 May 1944. By 18 May the British had captured Cassino, the objective of more than six months of grueling mountain warfare. A week later the main body of Fifth Army relieved the Anzio force, and on 5 June American troops crossed the Tiber and moved through Rome. The Eternal City was of more political than logistical importance, and few Quartermaster troops lingered there. The day after Rome fell, Clark ordered Fifth Army to capture Leghorn and Pisa, and Quartermaster operations continued to be caught up in a war of movement.
At no time during the advance was it possible to conduct extensive ground reconnaissance for dump sites, installations, adequate road nets, and protective facilities. The office of the army quartermaster selected sites from maps at night and hoped the morning reconnaissance would justify the selection. Rapidity of movement demanded that support units spread out more thinly than before. One railhead company had to disperse its personnel among six widely located dumps simultaneously, while the sterilization and bath troops more than once advanced to designated points, only to find that the troops they were to serve had departed. To determine supply needs, Sullivan placed his officers on wheels, particularly his Class I and III staffs, and they toured all receiving dumps each day, returning at night to order out issues for the next day. The system worked and in one case supplies moved into a location while the engineers were still clearing the area of mines and before the battlefield had been cleared of the dead.49
One activity was centralized during the period of the rapid advance. Late in June all bakery companies were assigned to the Headquarters, 94th Quartermaster
Battalion. The 94th also assumed responsibility for the operation and administration of the Field Range Inspection Group and the Typewriter Repair Unit. One of its officers, a trained refrigeration engineer, made all the necessary reconnaissance and preparations for taking over cold storage facilities. To expedite the delivery of bakery products, the 94th used mattress covers to deliver bread, operating the system on the principle used by milk companies in exchanging bottles through a common clearing house.50 Each mattress cover was marked with the numerical designation of the bakery company to which it belonged. In strict compliance with the “no container, no bread” principle an empty mattress cover was exchanged for a full one at the various railheads, and each day the soiled covers were delivered to a central exchange. They were then sent to laundries which gave 24-hour cleaning service for both covers and baker’s uniforms.
Fortunately, the sea was at Sullivan’s side for his administrative march. Six days after advancing troops crossed the Tiber, Civitavecchia, a small port forty miles northwest of the Italian capital, was already secure and a convoy of LSTs entered the badly damaged harbor. Once restored, Civitavecchia received daily 3,000 tons of supply. On 17 June Piombino fell and engineers soon restored the city sufficiently to convert it into a base dump. The speedy exploitation of these two anchorages, as well as San Stefano midway between them, made it possible for the office of the army quartermaster to spot rations and fuel directly behind the Fifth Army’s advance, which was never more than twenty-five miles inland. One half of the Piombino dump was allocated to the storage of rations, and by September 1944, when it was transferred to Peninsular Base Section, Piombino contained 25,000 tons of B rations and 12,000 tons of combat rations, or what has been described as one-fifth of all Class I supply in Italy at that time.51
Supported by tanker ships and favored by the narrow front, the army quartermaster assumed normal base section POL responsibilities from the time the Civitavecchia port was operative until long after the Arno River was reached. Because railroads and pipelines could not keep pace with the advance, the 204th Quartermaster Gasoline Supply Battalion momentarily controlled all can-filling activities and all distribution of packaged fuel to Fifth Army and to base section troops operating within the army area. Believing this imposed no hardships on the 204th, Sullivan recommended to both Clark and petroleum officers in Naples that the system be continued as Fifth Army advanced into the northern Apennines.52 Thus, until early November, the 204th handled the dual mission, not turning the job over to Peninsular Base Section until the pipeline was extended within the army’s boundary from Leghorn.
Fifth Army reached the Arno in six weeks, and on 19 July Leghorn, Italy’s fourth major port, fell to its tired, dwindling troops. Its assigned strength had dropped from 248,989 to 153,233 troops.
QM depot at Leghorn, August 1945.
Over a period of seven weeks seven veteran Allied divisions had been contributed to Seventh Army for ANVIL. Sullivan was fortunate in keeping his quartermaster organization intact. By 23 July, Fifth Army had cleared thirty-five miles of the south shore of the Arno from the Ligurian Sea to the Elsa River. Twenty miles to the east of the Elsa, the British occupied Florence on 4 August. Cultural considerations now contributed to a decision not to cross the Arno immediately above Leghorn. Such a crossing might have made good progress across the open Pisa plain, but would have inevitably involved stubborn street fighting within the city itself, where the Leaning Tower was only the most famous of many historical monuments. Further inland, reconnaissance indicated that the Ger mans had organized their defenses along the northern slopes of the Arno valley with their usual thoroughness. Forcing such positions would require deliberate preparations by strong and well-equipped troops. Accordingly, during the remainder of August, Fifth Army confined its activity to aggressive patrolling and artillery exchanges. Troops were in need of rest, equipment required replacement or repair. Salvage problems mounted. Meantime, Sullivan himself was at work on Quartermaster plans for Clark’s next objective, and behind the Fifth Army, pipeline quartermasters were advancing by sea to establish a new base in Leghorn.53
Within a week after that city’s fall, an advance party from the 61st Quartermaster Base Depot reconnoitered the port area and decided that the wholesale depot would remain outside the urban limits. A few fixed installations such as the cold storage and ice plant, bakeries, dry cleaning and laundry plants, and the salvage and solid fuel yards would be located in Leghorn itself. As a depot site the 61st selected a sandy, well-drained, partially wooded area a few miles north of Leghorn and almost in range of enemy artillery. It had ample access to railroads and roads, including the national system of express highways (autostradi). Here was a challenge to carry out Quartermaster theories of depot arrangement and management which suburban Naples never offered. Engineers accepted the layout plan and began to transform an open field into a centralized depot extending three and a half linear miles.
Confident that the Germans would be unable to send their few remaining bombers against the depot, the 61st quickly brought its facilities into operation. It was not too soon. Despite its exposed position, the port of Leghorn was in full operation by mid-September, discharging from 8,000 to 10,000 tons daily. As the new depot expanded, pipeline quartermasters of Peninsular Base Section made their final organizational adjustment. During October the policy makers of Quartermaster Section, Peninsular Base Section, were consolidated with the operators of the 61st QM Base Depot. On 1 November 1944 COMZONE NATOUSA (SOS NATOUSA) became COMZONE MTOUSA, when the name of the theater changed. For the next twenty days General Middleswart as Quartermaster, COMZONE MTOUSA, was supporting both Fifth and Seventh Armies.54
Close Support in the Gothic Line
Conditions in Italy were such in early September 1944 that the Allies decided to resume the offensive. Fifth Army’s objective was Bologna, but first it had to pierce the Gothic Line, an elaborate transpeninsular defense belt high in the Apennines. Running from Leghorn and Pisa on the Ligurian Sea to Rimini on the Adriatic, a series of defensive lines stood as the German shield against a land advance from the south into the Po valley, Italy’s only major industrial area. To breach the lines, Clark’s mission was to assault the barrier frontally above Florence on the road to Bologna while the British attacked northwestward from Rimini. A simulated attack was called for in the Pisa sector. During daylight smoke pots, vehicular maneuvers, and camouflaged dummy installations deceived the enemy. By night Fifth Army sideslipped secretly toward Florence and the difficult problem of shifting quartermaster resources laterally from an established axis of advance had to be dealt with. For concealment, most supplies were trucked to the Florence area from Piombino, which remained a Fifth Army base.
From his supply base at Piombino, Sullivan’s move toward Florence cut across the grain of rough country.55
Quartermaster companies and their equipment followed in the immediate wake of, or even preceded, the combat troops. Deployment of mobile laundries and bakeries required the use of many trucks, and their movements had to be coordinated closely with the Highway Transportation Section. Secrecy and cultural considerations denied Sullivan the use of Florence itself as a supply base. South of the city the army Class I dump, built to contain a million rations, opened in an olive grove. The trees afforded natural camouflage. By stringing nets over the food stacks, quartermasters turned the whole dump into a model of concealment. A few miles down the road a typical vineyard of the countryside offered a 100-acre site for the POL dump. Before the attack, a million gallons of gasoline lay in containers concealed among the twisted 12-foot-high grapevines. Back in Castelfiorentino, a sub-depot of the Class II and IV depot held clothing reserves. Until the lid of silence on tactical plans was lifted, the bath, salvage, and graves registration support units remained around rest areas. For his first ten days in a rest area, each man received a 10 percent increase in B rations. Refrigeration vans brought fresh meats, butter, and eggs to the rest areas. Clothing was replaced, repaired, or salvaged. In August, laundries handled 2,110,697 pounds of wash. A salvage repair company joined Fifth Army and together with Italian seamstresses, tailors, and dry cleaners, relieved the Quartermaster office of the task of taking clothing to Leghorn for repair.56
After veteran French and Moslem troops left Fifth Army for France late in July, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force arrived to take their place. The new allies needed support. Their menu varied only slightly from the American B ration, but additional sugar for the extra coffee the Brazilians drank, plus lard, salt, mustard, and black pepper were immediate requirements. Sullivan predicted that the Brazilians’ cotton clothing would afford inadequate protection in Apennine altitudes, and so he included American woolens in his clothing requisitions for the South Americans.57
The weather was ideal on 10 September, when the Fifth Army launched its attack. The immediate plan called for the clearing of Highway 65 through Futa Pass whose dominating heights the Germans held. Under pressure of a three-pronged attack the Germans withdrew from the pass on 21 September. Over the next month the front widened and four U.S. infantry divisions, the 85th, the 88th, the gist, and g2nd (Negro), plus a Brazilian combat team and the 6th South African Division engaged in a bitter fight for dishearteningly small gains.58 Apparently the Gothic Line defenders were under orders to die at their mountain posts rather than yield. Terrain obstacles became extremely difficult to cross. Incessant rains changed the pitifully few roads into seas of mud. In mid-October snow fell impartially on friend and foe, blanketing the front. Quartermaster support suffered. When, on 26 October, Sullivan, to his surprise, learned that two divisions were to be pulled out of the line and “put under canvas,” he
feared the worst.59 On 2 November, when Fifth Army was within ten miles of Bologna, Clark halted the offensive. Wire was strung, mine fields were laid, and combat troops began rotating out of the line for much needed rest and refitting.
In the autumn battles quartermasters learned the supply implications of fighting conducted largely by individual soldiers from gun emplacements and foxholes. There were no spectacular armored charges, no vast sweeps and wheels by large formations, and no far-reaching military decisions. Quartermasters coped with unusual supply problems by exploiting local resources, by filling a system of base dumps and depots with over a week’s supply, and by keeping a two-day level at all railheads. Unprecedented demands for Class II, especially the new M1943 items, came from the front lines. Even though the new wet-cold weather clothing had been ordered as early as May 1944, none reached Sullivans’ shelves until mid-October. Late shipment from NYPE, the slow editing of requisitions, and the movement through Leghorn hobbled efforts to clothe the troops. Estimates based on low maintenance factors resulted in a shortage of wool socks. To correct this situation, Sullivan resorted to action through command channels. Shortages in stoves became critical during this period. Hospital priorities for space heaters could be barely met. For relief a Florentine industrialist made 8,000 stoves complete with pipes, spark arrestors, and tent baffle plates.60
To deliver supplies directly to gun emplacements, foxholes, and outposts, additional Italian pack companies were rushed into use. Mule casualties ran high. When the fighting stopped, 1,000 mules had been replaced. Demand for Class II and IV pack equipment also far exceeded expectations. Hemp rope became a prime casualty of the battle. To keep the mule and his telltale load from tarrying near outpost positions, soldiers cut the lash ropes. They seem never to have heard of untying knots.
The arrival of fresh German troops, giving the enemy numerical superiority, had been one of the major reasons for calling off Fifth Army’s fight.61 In December, Fifth Army’s new commander, Lt. Gen. Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., expressed some fear that the Germans intended to roll up his left flank and crash into Leghorn. At the same time as Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt’s Christmas Holiday offensive in the Ardennes, Kesselring’s forces also pushed southward out of the Gothic Line. By 1 January 1945 Truscott’s front had been restored, but the shift of U.S. strength from Florence to the left of the line had weakened the attack along the Bologna road. The Fifth Army consequently required reinforcements. The 92nd Division was brought up to full strength, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force fielded a full division, and the first contingent of a major new unit, the 86th Mountain Infantry Regiment, Toth Mountain Division, arrived at the front. Allied instructions early in January 1945 directed Truscott to regroup Fifth Army in order to resume the offensive in April. Until then limited objectives were
selected to confuse the Germans and to obtain favorable positions for the spring attack.
Fearful trials of terrain and temperature threatened to upset Truscott’s time-table.62 Between 2 November 1944 and the advent of spring, snow, ice, rain, mud, and floods tested routine Quartermaster operations to the utmost. Normally, the quartermaster office could have handled the job in a relatively short time with a small number of support troops. But here along the Gothic Line every activity became a major engineering feat. Behind the lines the quartermaster workload increased as a large number of troops rotated in and out of the front lines, and as more and more Italian soldiers and civilians took over support duties. Rest hotels, camps, and rest areas were opened in Florence, in Montecatini, and within each corps area. Also, the older established center in Rome continued to operate. During the period B ration issues increased 7 percent over the normal troop strength. To break the monotony of eating bread, Sullivan in vain asked for more lard, baking powder, and yeast to permit field baking of pastries. In an effort to keep the men clean, bath and clothing exchange units processed almost 1,000 more men a day than had been served previously. Laundries handled over three million pounds of wash each month in addition to their current hospital and salvage mission. Clothing, tentage, and camp stoves were requisitioned in increasing quantities. Solid fuel demands increased as thermometers dropped toward zero on the Fahrenheit scale.
In mid-January 1945 Peninsular Base Section established a rail transfer point at Montecatini and Quartermaster distribution problems were eased considerably. At Florence the ration reserve was reduced from a 15-day to a to-day level. Each day 280 tons of packaged POL arrived in the army Class III base dump, and there was a surplus to cache away for an armored spearhead in the spring offensive. Back orders of clothing and equipment declined sharply from a high of 1,880 requests in November 1944 to 603 by 31 March 1945. With staged supply working better than ever before through Leghorn and Montecatini, Sullivan completed the initial issue of all standard items of winter clothing and equipment to the units in the line by the end of December. About the same time special wet-cold weather clothing, allocated by the G-4, Colonel Tate, was distributed along the front.
In this period of static warfare remount service expanded greatly and graves registration activities contracted. During the winter five new Italian pack companies joined the ten already at the front. Beginning in January 1945, the first troops of the 10th Mountain Division began to arrive in Leghorn, bringing with them most of their own pack equipment. Sullivan had understood that the 10th also planned to carry its own pack animals overseas. Some did arrive in Italy, but most did not see service in the high Apennines. By 1 April, the Fifth Army quartermaster was responsible for a total of 4,692 mules and 168 horses. But as Fifth Army began the descent into the Po valley, armor and its mechanized trains re-entered the battle, and pack trains became surplus.
During the winter of 1944–45 only one cemetery—Mount Beni—was opened
along the Gothic Line. The site was far from ideal. Not only was Mount Beni located out of line in relation to the deployment of troops but a rocky subsoil added materially to cemeterial work. Yet in spite of the distances involved in the evacuation work of the graves registration teams most bodies were carried to the cemetery within thirty-six hours. In March 1945 another cemetery at Granagliano was laid out near Highway 64, and at the same time the cemetery at Castelfiorentino far to the rear of the army was turned over to Peninsular Base Section.
At mid-April Fifth Army debouched into the Po valley, and a war of movement began. Modena replaced Florence as Fifth Army’s base area on 29 April 1945. In following the advance, Peninsular Base Section closed out the Montecatini rail transfer point and shifted its operations to Florence. With the breakthrough Sullivan’s Class I and III staffs fanned out behind the troops. On 2 May Quartermaster railheads were serving an area that embraced 38,000 square miles, a figure based on the 190 miles between Modena and the Brenner Pass and a lateral distance of 200 miles. Near the center of this area, Mirandola became the site of Fifth Army’s final cemetery. Now that the better communication system of the Po valley spread below the Fifth Army, the fifteen Italian pack companies rested behind the lines. Yet on the day Germany surrendered, the 10th Mountain Division, after beginning its ascent into the Italian Alps, hurriedly placed a call for two pack companies.
The last two weeks of the Po Valley Campaign introduced spigot quartermasters to new problems of support. The first involved captured and abandoned enemy resources. The speed with which Fifth Army advanced and fanned out left its quartermasters not only with a tremendous salvage problem but a touchy one in the face of fratricidal warfare. Pro-Allied Italians considered their fascist fellow-countrymen simply traitors to be shot or lynched on sight, rather than prisoners of war, so U.S. personnel had to replace ISU’s at Italian prisoner of war camps. The army quartermaster was greatly handicapped by the lack of security measures to protect captured food stocks. Feeding and supplying some 300,000 German prisoners of war required immediate attention until the Germans could institute their own system under Allied control. After 8 May 1945 Sullivan turned to redeployment and postwar problems, and having found time to review his work, he wrote in his diary: “At no time was the Army ever held up for the lack of any Quartermaster supplies throughout the entire Italian Campaign.”63
Supporting Seventh Army’s Landing and Push Northward
Fifth’s Army’s advance from the Tiber to the Arno and in the northern Apennines had been greatly handicapped by lack of sustained communications zone Quartermaster support. At the ports of Civitavecchia, Piombino, and Leghorn, spigot quartermasters initially controlled much of their own wholesale supply support. Nevertheless, this was not by design of SOS NATOUSA. From 9 June 1944 until mid-November 1944 pipeline quartermasters throughout the
Mediterranean area were extended to the limit in meeting strategic changes. The strategy which had created this situation had been roughly shaped by the great Allied conclaves of 1943. At Cairo the SEXTANT Conference of November—December 1943 finally drew the threads of Operation OVERLORD together, and charted an invasion of southern France (Operation ANVIL) to occur simultaneously with the landings on the beaches of Normandy. Early in January 1944 the outline of ANVIL was brought to the attention of Quartermaster Section, SOS NATOUSA, and within a few weeks Middleswart’s planners had joined with a new team of spigot quartermasters of Headquarters, Task Force 163, in hammering out a detailed set of requirements for ANVIL.64
If planning steps alone could have assured Quartermaster readiness to support the last large-scale amphibious operation against the Germans, ANVIL (later known as DRAGOON) would have been a logistical triumph. Yet planning is always subject to military developments, and between 8 January and 15 August 1944, Quartermaster Section, SOS NATOUSA, experienced several false starts in its preparations for the forthcoming operation. Over the same period Quartermaster planning machinery benefited greatly from major administrative changes in both SOS NATOUSA and theater organization. After 20 February 1944, Middleswart’s position was improved by having a G-4 Section, SOS NATOUSA, on hand through which Quartermaster plans could be coordinated with higher and adjacent staffs. The new G-4 staff soon became a clearing house for logistical information and carefully integrated all the sound Quartermaster data and precepts which had been accumulated and successfully applied to past Mediterranean operations. The Quartermaster Section, SOS NATOUSA, was thus in a much better position to work out the requirements and phased requisitions of the Office of the Quartermaster, Task Force 163 (to be known as Seventh Army after March 1944).
In beginning its work the Planning Branch, Quartermaster Section, was particularly interested in the number of troops involved in ANVIL, their vehicles, and their animal strength. As yet Quartermaster requirements could be figured only in general terms. There was no need to tie supply to a firm tactical plan, but the troop basis of 450,000 men was an essential planning figure. Broken down, this total included 175,000 U.S. troops and 150,000 French and Moslem troops who were then fighting in Italy, and 125,000 French and Moslem troops in North Africa. Middleswart’s planners assumed that U.S. troops coming out of the line in Italy would require a 75 percent replacement of all items of clothing, and a 50 percent replacement of all allowances of individual and organizational equipment. Recent replacement factors, applied to the troop basis, would easily round out requirements of subsistence, clothing, and general supplies. At this time calculation of packaged POL needs was not a Quartermaster responsibility. Momentarily, Planning Branch prepared the list of materials-handling equipment to be
used by each of the other technical services but on 1 May this responsibility was handed over to Ordnance Corps planners.
On 1 March 1944 the skeletonized Headquarters, Seventh Army, with General Patch commanding, moved from Sicily to Mostaganem, Algeria, and the army quartermaster, Colonel Massey, assumed the responsibility for preparing requisitions covering the first sixty days of the operation. Subsequent supply was the responsibility of Quartermaster Section, SOS NATOUSA. Specifically, Massey coordinated his job with a small staff under Maj. Daniel L. Lane of the Planning Branch. Once agreement was reached, Lane turned the details of requisitioning over to the various commodity branches in the Quartermaster Section. Here it was determined what items were in the theater and how much supply should be ordered from NYPE. Middleswart issued instructions to freeze immediately items available in the base sections. In requisitions on NYPE, Quartermaster Section requested a 15 percent increase for all items in order to compensate for losses from enemy action or the hazards of shipping. After consulting the War Department, NYPE approved the increase for the period from D-day to D plus 30.
On 12 April, amidst the coordination of phased requisitions and the preparation of requirements for the period from D plus 31 to D plus 60, word came from the War Department that special loading of cargo ships for the operation had been suspended, and that all requests for direct quartermaster shipments were canceled. On 31 May SOS NATOUSA notified the base sections that those reserves set aside for a special operation could be made part of the section’s general inventory once again. The development reflected the unsettled circumstances surrounding ANVIL. The operation had originally been planned to take place simultaneously with OVERLORD, but revisions had expanded the latter until it required all available Allied landing craft, even including a number earmarked for Southeast Asia. Once it was clear that ANVIL would have to be postponed until after the OVERLORD landings, Montgomery and Churchill proposed to cancel the whole operation. The Prime Minister, in particular, questioned the usefulness of a landing in the south of France and favored using the Seventh Army in the Balkans. But Eisenhower felt very strongly that an undefended right flank would slow down his advance across France, and in the end his views prevailed. All this was hidden from Mediterranean quartermasters. Suddenly on 9 June they learned that ANVIL—in the meantime rechristened DRAGOON—had been reinstated.65
The reconstituted Seventh Army—like the Fifth in Italy—was a polyglot aggregation, including three veteran U.S. divisions, the 3rd, 36th, and 45th, Headquarters, VI Corps, an airborne task force, some Polish units, and French Army B. Once the tactical units were nominated, Quartermaster Section, SOS NATOUSA, revitalized its earlier planning and prepared supply requisitions. No serious shortages of Quartermaster items were disclosed except for special
waterproof bags and waterproof covers for small arms. Massey insisted that a divisional reserve of some 36 items, ranging from 1½ rolls of toilet tissue per 100 men in the assault force to 1 handkerchief per individual, be approved. Agreement was reached, but with the understanding that the reserve of Class II and IV items was to be deducted from requisitions subsequent to D plus 30.
Army and theater quartermasters developed a strong ration reserve for Seventh Army.66 It had two sound features. First, before embarking, each division quartermaster was told to load a to-day level of balanced B rations onto all available organic transportation. Second, and extremely important, was the floating depot reserve of B rations stowed away on cargo ships in the form of “flatting.”67 Realizing that it would be necessary to use cargo vessels for shuttle service after the original invasion cargoes were discharged, the Transportation Section, SOS NATOUSA, asked the Quartermaster Section to make available quantities of supplies not immediately needed in the invasion. Middleswart set up a 45-day reserve and a 10-day operational level of Class I, II, and IV as flatting, the major item being 21,000 tons of subsistence. Transportation Service allocated 600 tons (dead-weight) in each of the 135 cargo ships that would participate in the D to D plus 30 intratheater convoys for Quartermaster use as flatting. Thus long before D-day Quartermaster supplies were being flatted on ships at ports in the United States. Most Quartermaster flatting arrived in good condition except for bagged subsistence, which was spoiled by rodents, oil drippings, and penetrating fumes. This reserve of rations was over and above the estimated requirements for the operation.
During the summer of 1944 the assault forces were assembled, mounted, and launched in the face of inbound shipments for Allied forces in Italy and against the overriding priority of the cross-Channel invasion. General Patch kept his Quartermaster supply needs to the absolute minimum. He also attempted to create a support command for Seventh Army, but one serious gap developed in its organization.68 The French element of Seventh Army insisted that the Americans perform the quartermaster function until French Base Section 901 was operating in southern France. The French wanted to shoot Germans and emphasized combat duty at the expense of logistics. In addition, the French pointed out that they had not specifically trained any spigot quartermasters among the warlike tribesmen from Morocco or Algeria. In this delicate situation, Patch delegated full authority to Larkin to cntcr Seventh Army and to organize, train, and equip quartermaster service units and further the development of supply procedures along U.S. Army lines. As the weeks wore on, this was a difficult task. In Italy the French troops were moving out of the line toward Naples and had to
share the crowded Neapolitan staging area with the Americans. Having received enough rations and maintenance equipment at Naples to see them through the assault phase of DRAGOON, the French divisions assembled at the British-operated ports of Brindisi and Taranto. Here they were far removed from SOS NATOUSA, and efforts to create a French Army SOS were shelved. On Corsica, Larkin had little time left before D-day to create a miniature SOS for the French elements there. His effort to have the French Army help itself by organizing a quartermaster support command before D-day failed. This had to wait until a base section was in operation in France.
Procurement plans for southern France were strikingly similar to current procedures in Italy, despite differences in the tactical situation and in the political status of the two areas. Procurement and allocation responsibilities for DRAGOON were delegated to the G-5 Section, Seventh Army, and since that army included a very large French component the hope was that a really effective civil affairs liaison structure could be organized. That hope was only partially realized, for the senior liaison officers were supplied by the French Committee of National Liberation (CFLN), and they were only made available after a political dispute about the future status of the CFLN in liberated France had been settled, a matter of days before the landing. Since the area would ultimately come under SHAEF command, that headquarters issued all basic policy directives, and also provided nearly half of the necessary civil affairs personnel. For quartermasters, the only significant innovation was that they would be responsible for civil affairs relief supplies, which had previously been handled by civil affairs personnel in the Mediterranean theater. Invasion currency was made available as in previous campaigns, and the fact that its status as legal tender had not yet been clarified was of minor consequence to purchasing and contracting officers. Since French law provided for requisitioning through either local government offices or the national administration, procurement operated without major difficulties. On 23 October 1944 the Allied Powers recognized the CFLN as the provisional government of France, and the same day General Charles de Gaulle signed a decree establishing a French zone of the interior. Thereafter, except in the combat zone, all Allied requisitions were handled through one French office in Paris. On 20 November, SHAEF relieved AFHQ of all remaining responsibilities for procurement or allocation of supplies in southern France.69
One of the essentials of sustaining the water-borne invasion was a good port. Patch and Larkin planned to use Toulon and establish there a first-class base section. For personnel, SOS NATO-USA turned once more to the shrinking North African bases as a source of staff officers and operating units.
Originally drawn from the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 21st Port, at Oran, Coastal Base Section began to assemble in Naples early in July. On the 21st Col. James L. Whelchel arrived in that city from the United States and was named quartermaster of
the new support group behind Seventh Army.70 He immediately contacted Massey and learned that Seventh Army itself would handle its Quartermaster mission between D-day and D plus so. On D plus 31, Coastal Base Section’s quartermaster and the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 10th Quartermaster Base Depot, which was being formed at Civitavecchia and assigned to Whelchel, would assume Massey’s supply support. This was normal procedure, but Whelchel noted that phasing plans did not provide for the arrival of the first half of the 10th until D plus 45, with the remainder arriving by D plus 60. Similarly Quartermaster troops attached to the 10th Base Depot had been phased to arrive at a late date in France. Whelchel set about revising the schedule so as to call for the arrival of half the 10th on D plus 20 and the remainder by D plus 30. The arrival of Quartermaster service units was correspondingly speeded up.
Before leaving Naples, Quartermaster Section, Coastal Base Section, attempted to solve two administrative problems. One concerned the work of coordinating quartermaster support with French Base 901 for French Army B. The language barrier was far less serious than the lack of understanding of how the French handled their quartermaster services of supply. Under the French system, the army commander directly controlled his pipeline quartermasters. Moreover, four distinct services within the French Army performed the work of the Quartermaster Corps in the U.S. Army. These were as follows: Service d’Intendance (supply), Service d’Essence (POL), Service Vétérinaire (remount), and Service de Santé (laundry and bath) . Whelchel foresaw that his organization would have difficulty in working with Army B unless French officers were constantly on hand to explain their supply situation. The second problem was the future location of Quartermaster installations in southern France. The trend of thinking in Headquarters, Coastal Base Section, envisaged the creation of major facilities in the Toulon area. Each technical service was allocated area sectors around Toulon within which major depots were to be established. Whelchel felt that the Toulon area had no promise. Accordingly, he selected a number of alternate sites in the vicinity of Marseille, a port of entry which had achieved considerable importance for American quartermasters in World War I.
In mid-August 1944 the assault phase of DRAGOON was successfully carried out along an extensive lodgment area of the Cote d’Azur. Apart from some harassing POL shortages, Massey and the division quartermasters adequately supported the beachhead operations. Supply over the beaches at Saint-Raphael, Sainte-Maxime, and Saint-Tropez—about halfway between Nice and Marseille—continued for several weeks during which the Beach Control Group was assisted by more than thirty-five officers and men from the Coastal Base Section. Seventh Army paused long enough to seize Marseille before striking up the Rhone valley. On the afternoon of 26 August Whelchel moved into that city and spent the remainder of the month in locating and requisitioning sites he had previously selected from maps in Naples. By mid-September Seventh
Army had swept northward, swinging around the Swiss border toward Belfort Gap between the Vosges and Jura Mountains. Other elements pushed toward the Italian frontier and toward Bordeaux, creating additional problems of supply and transportation on both wings. On ii September Dijon fell. On 12 September contact was made with Allied forces racing across France from Normandy, and Seventh Army now took its place on the southern end of the Allied line, ready for the coming battle of Germany.71
On 15 September AFHQ transferred the operational control of DRAGOON to Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) at Versailles. Four days later French Army B was redesignated 1st French Army and passed to the control of 6th Army Group, General Devers commanding. Momentarily, Seventh Army was reduced to a single corps of three divisions. But it soon received more corps as 1st French Army
shifted from left of Seventh Army to the extreme right of the Allied line. Upon reaching the forest-clad defiles of the high Vosges, the Seventh Army slowed down considerably, and support commands found themselves no longer supporting a war of movement.
By D plus 30 DRAGOON’s tactical advance had developed to the stage anticipated by D plus 120. Inevitably, logistical support lagged behind with respect to distances and transportation. At the beaches the Seventh Army quartermaster on 14 September relinquished his support mission to Col. William E. Barrott of the 70th Quartermaster Base Depot.72 Meantime, subunits of the 70th had moved into Marseille and began operating Quartermaster facilities within Coastal Base Section, shortly renamed Continental Base Section (CONBASE). Initially the 70th had only one service battalion to spread among the various
installations on the beaches and at ports. A few French Senegalese troops assisted the Quartermaster battalion, and some civilians were hired as laborers. The arrangements for the local French authorities to pay salaries under lend-lease procedures were unsatisfactory. Delays in payment were frequent, and laborers failed to stay on their jobs. Slowly the great port of Marseille began to recover and Quartermaster supplies arrived. Yet the ever-widening gap between Patch’s advance and his base section support had to be filled. To remedy the situation, the stay of Continental Base Section on the coast had to be cut short. By the end of September SOS NATOUSA had transformed CONBASE into an Advance Section (CONAD), and moved it up behind the newly designated 6th Army Group. On 30 September Colonel Whelchel arrived in the CONAD headquarters city of Dijon, 275 miles above Marseille. The next day the newly designated Delta Base Section assumed control of the coastal area.
During operations around Dijon, the Quartermaster Section, CONAD, was confronted with several organizational problems not encountered by the coastal base or the theater quartermasters.73 Because the First French Army was simultaneously drawing supply from both Delta Base Section and Seventh Army, it was difficult to compute issues and to determine whether the quantities drawn were within the prescribed allowances. To solve the problem, and to impress the French with the need to improve their stock accounting practices, CONAD brought several French officers into the Quartermaster Section. Thus, the Quartermaster, French Base 961, became the deputy to the Quartermaster, CONAD, and similarly, the French Class I officer became the assistant to his opposite number in CONAD. At first many vexing problems arose, and Whelchel, after the war, recalled:74
These problems had to be solved diplomatically and as quickly as possible to avoid any interruption of the How of adequate supplies to the French Army. On the other hand, we soon discovered that the French were not the slightest embarrassed by asking for more supplies than were required. Regardless of all supplies furnished the French at this time, we were unable to satisfy their demand, so it became necessary to investigate the complete supply system of the French Army. It soon developed that where their requisitions indicated no supply of an item on hand, that did not mean that there was actually none of that item available.
The basic peculiarity of the French system was that once supplies were earmarked for a specific unit they were no longer considered depot assets. In fairness to the French supply officers, it must be pointed out that they were being called upon to supply considerably more than the official troop basis of First French Army. The French divisions were greeted with enthusiasm in their homeland, and speedily recruited their units to more than T/O strength. Whole volunteer battalions joined the French forces, although SHAEF refused to include them in the official troop basis, or
to provide them any logistical support. On 30 September CON BASE was authorized to clothe and equip 12,000 locally recruited replacements for the French First Army, but this was less than a quarter of the numbers actually involved. Efforts to equip the others from French civilian sources were not very successful. Under the circumstances, the tendency of French regular units to share supplies and equipment with their volunteer comrades was understandable, even if not authorized.75
Another question which arose shortly after CONAD’s arrival in Dijon was whether POL supply should be a Quartermaster responsibility.76 The problem was not entirely new in the Mediterranean area for base section quartermasters. Even at this comparatively late date there was no definite decision as to whether the mission was performed better by a separate POL section on CONAD’s special staff or by a POL branch in the Quartermaster Section, CONAD. The original support plan for DRAGOON assembled all QM gasoline supply companies, Engineer pipeline companies, and certain QM service companies under a separate section, composed of experienced Quartermaster Corps and Engineer Corps officers. When SOS came to Marseille, the POL section began operations and placed storage facilities in the port area. Arrangements were made for the receipt and storage of pipeline materials, and barges were obtained to transport gasoline as far as Lyon. When CONAD was constituted, the POL personnel remained with Delta Base and the CONAD quartermaster assumed the supply responsibility of all Class III products. Whelchel handled POL for two months; by the middle of December 1944 the Engineer-operated pipelines had reached St. Jean de Losne, and as a natural consequence a separate POL Section was organized within CONAD. Supply of solid fuels remained with the Quartermaster Section.77
The concept of an advance section was new to Mediterranean quartermasters, and working relationships between CONAD and Delta Base Section had to be developed through trial and error. Quartermaster units in the area were allocated on the logical basis of assigning all mobile repair, sterilization and bath, laundry, and salvage units to CONAD, while units operating fixed installations remained with Delta Base. Agreement on supply operations was more difficult to achieve. CONAD contended that it had very limited facilities for storing and distributing supplies, and operated principally by reconsigning loaded freight cars to specific combat units. One observer from Middleswart’s office criticized this arrangement as placing too heavy a burden on Delta Base, but in October 1944 CONAD was too short of supply personnel to operate any other
way. When applied to salvage repair, the policy of keeping fixed units in the rear proved impractical, since it involved excessive back-hauling. Once the period of swift pursuit was over, it was possible to solve such problems by shifting units or redefining responsibilities.78
The Quartermaster Section of CONAD was in the unique position of handling support which emanated from two different parts of France.79 It received operating units from northwestern French ports as well as Marseille. The 71st Quartermaster Base Depot came to Dijon from England, arriving on 26 November. When the 59th Quartermaster Base Depot was transferred southward to Delta Base Section the 71st established itself at Vesoul, a mid-point between Dijon and Nancy, and served as the only Quartermaster base depot in CONAD until mid-February 1945. By this time SOLOC had been absorbed by ETOUSA, and the consolidation of the continental communications zone was complete.80
When Delta Base Section arrived from Corsica on 1 October 1944 to replace CONBASE, the 70th QM Base Depot was already carrying out the full complement of quartermaster activities. By late September the 10th was operating twenty-two separate installations in and around Marseille, a number greater than the combined total of facilities being supervised by all the other technical services. Most of this activity was retail support. But the 10th had made one wholesale shipment of woolen clothing and packaged POL by air direct to Seventh Army dumps beyond Besancon. These supplies were unloaded from shipside at Marseille and flown nearly 400 miles to the north without any opportunity for correct documentation and issue procedures. A number of bales of clothing had been processed by Italian prisoners of war in North Africa and marked as Class X (suitable only for issue to POW’s).81 Upon delivery, Massey reacted quite strongly against the unserviceable items, but closer examination revealed that the bales had not been properly marked.
While Delta Base Section’s primary mission was wholesale support, the rapid expansion of its territory from the Swiss and Italian borders to the Bay of Biscay, and to Spain and the Mediterranean on the south, created many internal supply problems. Base Section troops grew in numbers until 190,000 men were scattered over 110,000 square miles. On 19 October Col. John P. Neu was appointed Quartermaster, Delta Base Section, and his first job was to establish three major distribution centers to carry out his primary and secondary missions. The first was at Lyon, where a rail center demolished by the Germans had become a bottleneck in forwarding supplies to CONAD. Neu’s second center was established at Nice, where the U.S. Riviera Recreational Area had undertaken one of the biggest projects of its kind for
American soldiers.82 By May 1945 this rest area was serving the entire European theater, and had under requisition hotels with accommodations for 16,163 troops. In general, front-line soldiers visiting Nice and Cannes had to be completely reclothed. The normal leave period was ten days, and the project constituted a problem of feeding and outfitting the soldiers, both en route to and while on the Riviera. Swimming trunks, ladies bathing suits, bath towels, soap, and recreational supply constituted a retail mission of the utmost emergency. Neu was expected to fill the order overnight. Biarritz on the southwest coast of France developed into a similar leave center; its capacity was about 5,000 troops.83
Marseille and vicinity became the largest of the supply points.84 Neu inherited the Gare du Prado as a Class I wholesale dump and the Gare Arenc as a ration retail point. For fast moving operations Gare du Prado was unsuitably located. It was in a rail yard in the center of the city, surrounded by narrow, crooked streets which hobbled military traffic. In light of the huge ration reserve shipped as flatting and now coming ashore, Neu abandoned the Gare du Prado and transferred his wholesale operations to a new dump at Rognac, a village with an excellent classification yard for rail lines reaching to all parts of France. Beside a large olive orchard the 240th Quartermaster Service Battalion, with Lt. Col. Edward R. Samuels commanding, quickly organized the Rognac dump. The 619th Depot Supply Company, the 3091st Refrigeration Company, and the 4134th Quartermaster Service Battalion arrived in Rognac and the ration reserve began to grow. Two trains a day arrived from the port and at the same time daily trains outloaded for 6th Army Group. Rognac was also located on the Etang de Berre, a lake directly connected to Marseille by the Rhone Canal. Soon barge traffic relieved the pressure on delivery via rail.
From the start Rognac was a round-the-clock operation. Approximately 2,500 U.S. service troops were employed daily, plus a battalion of French SOS troops who assisted in loading and checking of French Class I supplies. More than 3,000 Italian service troops worked at the Rognac dump until they were replaced by 6,000 German prisoners as the supply problem mounted. Using roller-type conveyors, the prisoners could unload twelve freight cars at one time, routing the cases over the feeder conveyors to a main artery that traversed the center of the dump. Branch conveyors then fed off the main system to the mounting stacks of foodstuffs. Perishables began to arrive in great amounts and the engineers constructed three enormous warehouses. The polyglot 6th Army Group received many different African and Asiatic ration components from Rognac, and also bread from the large bakery operated there by prisoners of war.
With an excellent port complex behind him and with the Rognac works in operation, Neu next organized a Class II and IV depot at Miramas. Located forty miles northwest of Marseille and
originally built by the French in World War I as a munitions depot, Miramas (designated as Depot Q-188—B) made an ideal storage site. Its excellence had not been ignored by the German supply corps. Its tile and concrete warehouses required renovation, but its trackage facilities and rolling acres of space captivated a depot manager’s imagination. The 622nd Railhead Company arrived on 17 November and was joined nine days later by the 240th Depot Supply Company. Though the depot’s mission was primarily wholesale support, its retail operations were by no means confined to one class of supply. By rail, truck, and barge, a steady flow of Quartermaster items moved into Miramas. Daily trains left for the north, and frequently on a moment’s notice the 240th prepared shipments of clothing for air delivery to Seventh Army. Hard labor was compounded by misery from another quarter. Miramas and Rognac stand in the direct path of the violent mistral—the cold, dry, sixty-mile-an-hour wind that whips down from the Alps and sweeps toward the low pressure areas of the Sahara. The mistral persisted for three-, six-, and even nine-day blows, playing havoc with canvas and cord and penetrating layers of wool and sateen. Idle freight cars, unless thoroughly blocked on the rails, moved as runaways before the wind. With an infrequent snow, the steady mistral’s intensity rolled the flakes into pellets of ice that stung like hail against the men’s faces. In spring the mistral died down, and the watershed of the Rhone then yielded a bountiful variety of fresh produce for procuring quartermasters.
Purchasing and contracting agents of the 10th QM Base Depot contacted the local markets and merchants for food and end-items. During the last quarter of 1944 local procurement resulted in saving an estimated 9,634 ship tons. As in Naples and Leghorn, Marseille itself fostered quartermaster services to the line. Using commercial facilities, the 167th Bakery Company was producing and distributing its products as early as 2 September. With the help of the engineers, the 814th Sterilization and Bath Company, together with the 7071st and 7171st Laundry Companies brought a large plant covering fourteen buildings into operation by 6 October. Meanwhile the 223rd Salvage Collecting Company opened a scrap metal yard at Fréjus, and, with the help of the 3068th Salvage Repair Company, supervised a reclamation program which used prisoner of war labor exclusively. Beyond Marseille, the 10th Base Depot Company through its registrars of graves assumed control of cemeteries as Seventh Army fought to the Moselle River. Cemetery quartermasters relocated two burial grounds, left the one at Montelimar undisturbed, and effected a beautification project at all cemeteries.
With every passing day and each advancing mile Seventh Army moved beyond the range of effective support by the Mediterranean theater and closer to that of the European. Organizationally, spigot and pipeline quartermasters, veterans of Mediterranean warfare, approached the day when they would make their final staff adjustments within a framework of command that embraced two army groups, several field armies, and a theater support command replete with regulating stations, advance sections, intermediate sections, base sections, and depots. In November 1944,
General Devers relinquished command of MTOUSA to devote full time to 6th Army Group. Behind the 6th, Larkin moved his headquarters to Dijon and constituted SOLOC (Southern Line of Communications) to superintend the logistical system of southern France and to arrange for its own subsequent merger with COMZ ETOUSA, the northern theater support command. One immediate effect of activating SOLOC was to narrow the authority of MTOUSA to Italy, the islands, and North African base sections which were being rapidly closed out. AFHQ and Peninsular Base Section divided between themselves the supply mission of the old COMZONE MTO-USA, the successor of SOS NATOUSA. Before leaving Caserta for Dijon, Middleswart and Ramsey, the latter remaining as the new Quartermaster of MTOUSA, discussed the division of their respective staffs and reviewed the nature and the problems of supply action for Fifth Army and Peninsular Base Section. On 20 November 1944 General Middleswart became SOLOC quartermaster, bringing with him his deputy, Colonel Brunson, all of his branch chiefs, and key staff officers.85 The integrity of the team Middleswart had built in Oran after February 1943 is indicated by the fact that ninety-five Quartermaster members of the SOLOC roster had served in SOS NATOUSA.
Because 6th Army Group and SOLOC had been anticipated long before each headquarters was organized, Middleswart had attached one of his staff officers, Capt. John Lapperre, and two enlisted men to serve in liaison to the SOS advance group at Lyon. Thus Lapperre was present with members of the skeleton staff of 6th Army Group in its formative period. As an observer, Lapperre provided Middleswart with information that smoothed the way for SOLOC’s assumption of 6th Army Group’s support. In Dijon Middleswart organized his SOLOC staff on the pattern of Quartermaster Section, SOS NATOUSA. There were two exceptions. First, graves registration functions were transferred to COMZ ETOUSA, and secondly, a Local Resources Branch was added to handle local procurement of coal and special merchandise.
Once at work, the new staff encountered a new administrative practice that was contrary to its Mediterranean training.86 SOLOC quartermasters found themselves without control of supplies for which they were responsible. CONAD—actually a large regulating station directly behind Seventh Army—forwarded Quartermaster requisitions from army direct to Delta Base Section without considering what was expected on the basis of previous requisitions. Middleswart objected to this lack of coordination through SOLOC. Reviewing the unbalanced stocks that resulted, the Quartermaster Section, SOLOC, noted that CONAD was proposing to perform a coordination mission “for which it had neither the experience nor personnel.” This judgment was less a commentary on the competence of the personnel than on CONAD’s eagerness
to make deliveries to Seventh Army dumps regardless of the effect on reserve supplies. On Middleswart’s recommendation, Larkin decided that CONAD should continue as the direct support command, but that Quartermaster Section, SOLOC, should control CONAD’s stock level and relay CONAD’s requisitions to the coastal support section after they had been appropriately reviewed. COMZ ETOUSA was entirely in agreement with this procedure, since that headquarters demanded a similar exact accounting in SOLOC’s requisitions on NYPE. Beginning in November 1944, General Littlejohn, the ETO quartermaster, reviewed Middleswart’s requisitions before passing them on to the zone of interior. Littlejohn had a serious difference of opinion with Larkin and Middleswart regarding exact statements of amounts “on hand and due in,” which by ETO regulations had to be noted on the face of each requisition. SOLOC practice had only required a monthly balance sheet, which Littlejohn judged to be insufficient and also based on inaccurate statistics. Middleswart protested that his office overhead did not provide personnel for such elaborate bookkeeping, but ultimately the ETO view prevailed, and Colonel Rosaler, Littlejohn’s specialist in inspecting and indoctrinating field installations, installed the new accounting system.87
Difficulty in reaching the desired 60-day stock level as well as in balancing the stocks on hand troubled Quartermaster Section, SOLOC.88 Reaching that level by 1 December 1944 was virtually impossible because more and more troops were transferred to the right of the Allied line in southern France. This the DRAGOON planners had never envisaged. As October waned, a French armored division and two American infantry divisions, lacking much of their authorized equipment, were shifted from COMZ ETOUSA support to the SOLOC zone. Three more divisions originally destined for OVERLORD were enrolled on the DRAGOON roster in November, and an additional three arrived in December. With nine new divisions present, SOLOC’s level of supply fell sharply. Quartermaster service troops strained to support a troop basis three times the size of their capability. To assist in handling the workload, COMZ ETOUSA diverted a substantial number of service units and relief was also accorded when SOLOC authorized a 50 percent personnel increase in Middleswart’s office. As a further measure to bolster the lengthening supply line from Marseille, COMZ provided an additional base section staff. On 9 February the former headquarters of the Brittany Base Section activated Burgundy District at Dijon as a subordinate unit of CONAD. This was, in effect, an intermediate section, brought in so that CONAD could move forward to a new location at Nancy.89 Three days later,
SOLOC headquarters, also at Dijon, was dissolved and its responsibilities divided between CONAD and COMZ ETOUSA. On 12 February 1945 Middleswart was named deputy to the Chief Quartermaster, COMZ ETOUSA, returning to a vastly enlarged version of the assignment he had held in the summer of 1942.90