Concluding Observations
Quartermaster operations during any conflict necessarily reflect the character of the combat operations they support. One of the salient new developments of World War II was the establishment of unified overseas theater commands as executive agencies of the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This delegation of command authority made it possible to exploit the recently increased mobility of combat units by a more flexible deployment of forces. Inevitably, this innovation demanded a corresponding increase in the flexibility of logistical support by all the technical services. In the war against Germany, quartermasters were called upon again and again to adjust to unexpected situations and to meet unanticipated requirements. a On the whole, however, their own command confronted them with more surprises than did the enemy, and QMC staff officers rapidly acquired the ability to turn out Quartermaster plans to support any and every type of operation—often on very short notice. The basic mission of the Quartermaster Corps was a very simple one, which has been defined as “taking care of people.” But soldiers engaged in different types of operations required different types of support, and it was seldom possible to learn accurately in advance when and where specialized supplies would be required, or for how many men.
The time element was especially critical in Quartermaster planning, the more so because, while everyone paid lip service to the principle that service troops should prepare the way for combat troops, somehow the combat troops always arrived first, and in greater numbers than expected. TORCH was an excellent example of such difficulties. In theory, a headquarters which was preparing to launch an attack on the Continent with 1,000,000 men should have been able to mount a side expedition of 60,000 men to another theater with little difficulty. But for the Quartermaster, this call in mid-September 1942 came at the worst possible time, when QMC military personnel amounted to less than 2.7 percent of U.S. troops in the United Kingdom, or about half the planned ratio. In round numbers, the OCQM was operating with less than 5,000 troops and rather more than 12,000 newly hired British civilians. In five short weeks this labor force had to select several million man-days of specific Quartermaster supplies from seventeen depots, none of them established more than sixty days, and ready all cargo for a long sea voyage. This was no more than a small-scale prologue to later difficulties, but TORCH included many of the problems quartermasters were to meet again and again during the next three years—including misinformation regarding the
climate of the proposed area of combat.
The war in North Africa and later in southern and western Europe was characterized by a steadily increasing scale of U.S. operations, from a single corps to three army groups fighting in two different theaters. Later phases of combat were not merely magnified repetitions of earlier operations. There were tactical and logistical innovations in each campaign, and a corresponding evolution in QM administrative organization, both in the combat zone and behind it. The quartermaster of an American corps within a British or Allied army had independent functions that largely disappeared when his corps became one of several within an American army. Yet it would not be entirely accurate to state that those functions had merely been transferred to an army level quartermaster. Similarly, a single army quartermaster dealing directly with a base section commander (and sometimes appealing over the latter’s head to theater headquarters) was in a very different position from one such army quartermaster among several who had to place their coordinated requirements upon a COMZ organization through an army group G-4.
Littlejohn was a firm believer in personal contacts with quartermasters both above and below his own position in the chain of command, especially with the army quartermasters. During the fighting in western Europe he attempted to maintain intimate relationships similar to those that had developed among the smaller headquarters involved in earlier Mediterranean campaigns. His memorandums to his personal staff following his frequent visits to the front are among the most valuable and interesting of his records. But this policy of intimate liaison broke down precisely when it was most urgently needed—during the period of “frantic supply” to the troops speeding across France. Littlejohn’s proposed solution—the organization of a private QM courier service—had to await the availability of jeep transportation, which did not materialize in time. But this was not a wasted effort; QM couriers were very helpful in easing the adjustment to static warfare as the pursuit slowed to a halt. A similar situation arose during the final phase of fighting in Germany, but by that time combat quartermasters were able to take the initiative. Issuing radio-equipped vehicles to mobile QM headquarters was merely the first step. The real vindication of close liaison came when supply commanders decided that prompt reports to the rear were essential, even if they had to be laboriously encoded by hand before transmission.
Tactical considerations also led to unexpected demands upon the OCQM itself, and action by the enemy contributed directly to many surprises with regard to the types and quantities of Quartermaster supplies required during specific phases of military operations. A headlong pursuit required different types of rations than for an advance against obstinate opposition, and no logistician foresaw the interaction of tactics and geography that generated a need for 19,000,000 jerricans. The hasty German retreat across France in the fall of 1944 involved the Allies in supply difficulties that had an especially hard impact on the Quartermaster. Inadequate ports and increasingly long and disorganized lines of communication were not conducive to the forwarding of balanced
assortments of articles. The soldier who had eaten the same meal three times in twenty-four hours was likely to be highly critical of Quartermaster supply. The German retreat inland, away from the warmth of the Gulf Stream, had the effect of moving the troops into a much colder climatic zone and complicated the problem of clothing supply. Generally, none of the supply problems were so serious as to be crippling, but none were solved promptly. A truly efficient supply procedure for major Quartermaster items, prompt and sensitive enough to provide precisely the required selection of articles without undue delay, had still not evolved by the end of hostilities in Europe.
Various experiments and expedients were initiated to improve supply procedures. Within his own theater, General Littlejohn was something of an innovator. Many of his ideas won the approval of G-4 and the other technical services, but senior headquarters in the zone of interior were somewhat less receptive toward new ideas from overseas theaters. His efforts to modify his methods of placing requisitions upon NYPE were at least partially successful, but both ASF and OQMG were slow to give official recognition to those methods. His simultaneous efforts to keep the OQMG informed on the status of requisitions upon NYPE were largely dependent upon personal correspondence with one man, General Feldman, and suffered a serious breakdown when that officer was transferred to the Pacific. Littlejohn’s attempts to rectify specific difficulties by informal contacts within ASF headquarters met with but varying degrees of success and often encountered much opposition and resentment. Nevertheless, he believed this to be the most effective means available to an overseas logistical commander who wished to influence policy, or to arrange for departures from established policy, in higher headquarters at home. Such methods were only possible for an officer whose judgment was respected. Littlejohn realized that his professional reputation was at stake every time he made such a personal appeal, but this was often the only way to obtain urgently needed supplies in time. Naturally, such out-of-channels action added to the administrative workload of lower echelons, which preferred to continue with their familiar procedures, but there is no evidence that senior commanders resented it. All through the war in Europe, Littlejohn maintained very cordial relationships with such men as General Maxwell in G-4 and Generals Somervell, Lutes, and Styer in the ASF, and also with The Quartermaster General, despite Little-john’s controversies with some of General Gregory’s subordinates.
Many of the problems and surprises thrust upon quartermasters during the war against Germany stemmed from subsidiary Quartermaster responsibilities for such services as salvage for all the technical services, laundries, baths, and graves registration. The provision of clean clothing and baths was an essential service that for the individual combat soldier often loomed larger than the Quartermaster’s primary supply functions. But providing such services for American combat troops was only one of the Corps’ responsibilities in an overseas theater. Far greater in size, and possibly even in ultimate importance, was responsibility for administering and safeguarding the supply operations of G-5 (civil
affairs). Since that agency dealt primarily with foreign governments and with official relief organizations, and only to a limited extent with individuals, estimates of the number of people dependent upon G-5 operations have been influenced more by considerations of national interest than by standards acceptable to statisticians. In the smaller Mediterranean theater quartermasters believed that the number exceeded five million.
Direct Quartermaster responsibilities, while smaller, were large enough. At the end of hostilities in Europe, the OCQM was feeding and otherwise supporting 7,629,600 persons, of whom only 3,059,942, or 40.1 percent, were U.S. military personnel. At the same time, the ETO Quartermaster Service was employing 195,000 non-Americans, while its military strength was 133,600, or 40.6 percent of the total QM labor force. These figures include Quartermaster troops in the combat zone, who utilized very limited numbers of non-American employees, usually on an unofficial basis since few combat commanders authorized such employment. In the Communications Zone, where the quartermaster might be called master in his own house, the proportion of non-Army labor was far greater. Here the OCQM had direct control over QM installations which employed a working force consisting of 46 percent prisoners of war, 33 percent Allied personnel of various kinds, and only 21 percent U.S. troops.1
These statistics serve to illustrate that the Quartermaster Service in the ETO was a large organization with unexpectedly large responsibilities, staffed partly
by U.S. troops but employing a majority of foreigners with no previous knowledge of the language, organization, or working methods of their employers. What such an enterprise required beyond all else was expert supervision, but precisely here lay one of the most serious deficiencies of the Quartermaster Service. The number of Regular officers in the QMC had never been large, and the calls upon this small group for logistical staff duties outside the Quartermaster Service were heavy and persistent. Many of those remaining were middle-aged, and because of the strenuous efforts demanded of them on the Continent, there was an alarming attrition for reasons of health. Of the officers transferred from the combat arms to the QMC, many lacked competence commensurate with their rank; others might be used as commanders of QM units after some indoctrination, but few were useful in the complex operation of major installations, where OCQM policies were interpreted and applied. The result was that the OCQM was forced to train overseas its own specialists, supervisors, and staff officers, a very successful expedient, but one that required time.2
The rapid increase in the numbers of nonmilitary personnel whom the Quartermaster was called upon to support was the greatest of the unexpected problems encountered during the war against Germany. Because of the unavoidable time
lag in supply, actual Quartermaster responsibilities in May 1945 had to be met with the supplies requisitioned in January, when estimates of future requirements had been much more modest. The estimate for prisoners of war, for example, had been a maximum of 842,000 by June 1945, whereas the actual peak of nearly 3,000,000, was reached in May. The miscalculation was not in the numbers that would require support; the OCQM had underestimated the speed of military operations in the occupation of Germany and had overestimated the ability of Allied nations to feed and support their own nationals and the prisoners captured by their armies. The real mistake, in the Chief Quartermasters’ opinion, was the failure to reach policy decisions on supply responsibility early enough at the highest command levels. Littlejohn’s attempt to force such a decision at the COMZ level in February 1945 failed. But whoever was at fault, the actual result was that on 8 May the theater ration level had dropped to an ominous 17.3 days of supply.3
The examples cited demonstrate that the Quartermaster Service received something less than perfect cooperation from higher staff levels in its attempts to anticipate and meet requirements during the war against Germany. Nevertheless a technical service exists to serve the combat forces, and if those forces are slow in making tactical decisions and policy determinations vital to supply planning, the technical service itself must at least attempt to remedy these deficiencies, and then meet the estimated requirements. The extent to which requirements upon the Quartermaster were normal and predictable, and the extent to which the OCQM was successful in meeting all requirements, including the abnormal and unpredictable ones, is something that each reader must decide for himself. The process includes an evaluation of the performance of G-4 and some of the other technical services, and involves a critical appraisal of both planning and operations in the separate and sometimes conflicting fields of tactics and logistics.
In the planning phases of World War II, logisticians tended to talk about and think in terms of “limiting factors” and “the iron laws of logistics.” Equally, tactical planners tended to ignore those laws and factors, or even regard them as meaningless professional shop talk. In large operations the workings of cause and effect are usually obscured by a considerable time lag, during which extraneous factors can enter the equation and becloud the final result. Moreover, a good tactician is an optimistic pragmatist who will argue that no factor is extraneous if it contributes to victory. According to this argument every newly conceived expedient, and every happy windfall of local procurement or captured supplies is a legitimate part of the final equation and tends to prove that the “limiting factors” are somewhat elastic, and the “iron laws” can sometimes be bent. But this line of thought influences the tactician to demand the impossible—or what the logistics expert considers impossible—as a matter of habit,
and sooner or later those demands run counter to real limitations, as distinguished from the theoretical ones used in logistical planning. Thus ETO quartermasters could claim with complete sincerity that they had accomplished far more than they themselves had believed possible, although they failed, in some minor respects, to meet the requirements of the combat troops. Moreover, it sometimes happened that after performing miracles, seemingly in stride, the Quartermaster Service failed to meet comparatively modest demands. The explanation, of course, is that miracle working only looks easy. It is actually an expensive process that uses up assets which, in a large theater, will only be missed after a period of time.
The record of European experience during World War II demonstrates the reality of limiting factors in Quartermaster operations, even though they proved to be somewhat less constricting than originally believed. Ignoring matters outside the quartermaster’s sphere of activity, the main limiting factors that became evident were time and manpower, the two being intimately related. Every Quartermaster activity was somehow related to a corresponding activity of the combat troops, and in every case the quartermaster’s share of the job took longer: to plan, to organize, and to execute. And since Quartermaster planning could not begin until tactical planning was well advanced, Quartermaster staffs often had to plan and operate at the same time. This, of course, applied also to G-4 and all the technical services, and suggested a separation of functions under separate headquarters, an expedient that never received a fair trial in the ETO.
The Forward Echelon, Communications Zone, originated as a planning staff in the United Kingdom, and was actually operational on the Continent only for a short time in July 1944. The reasons for its demise were complex, but one cause was the fact that operations appeared to be progressing according to plan and further planning was expected to be a matter of minor adjustments. The shortage of logistical staff officers in the theater was so pressing that a standby headquarters was an intolerable extravagance. Even before Forward Echelon was absorbed by Headquarters, Communications Zone, early in August, Littlejohn had been forced to transfer the Quartermaster element of the former staff to bolster ADSEC. Within a matter of days thereafter, the armies decided to pursue across the Seine without pausing, and existing logistical plans had to be scrapped.
The new tactical situation demanded stopgap support measures, and insofar as Quartermaster activities were concerned, there was no staff agency and no available personnel to formulate new long-range plans. Even the reinforced Quartermaster element of ADSEC was barely able to give direct support to the armies rushing across France, and the division chiefs of the OCQM were personally processing ADSEC requisitions and controlling the flow of supplies. Hand-to-mouth supply from the beaches to the armies continued for over three months after D-day. Meanwhile intermediate QM depots developed haphazardly, and did not prepare themselves adequately to assume the expanded responsibilities that were ultimately assigned to them. Apparently the other technical service staffs became equally immersed in
day-to-day operations, and also neglected their wider responsibilities.
While FECZ was probably too extravagant a solution of the planning problem, some solution was urgently needed for many months before General Somervell finally installed his own ASF planning specialist, General Robinson, in COMZ as Deputy Chief of Staff for Planning. Unfortunately, by that time a false economy in the use of staff officers by COMZ had resulted in a most unfortunate reaction by various headquarters in the combat zone. The practice of sending field-grade officers to hand-carry requisitions to the rear and insure prompt deliveries was a glaring example of the manpower wasted when combat units lost confidence in the organization that supported them. Such confidence was more easily lost than rekindled, and even the outspoken disapproval of General Somervell failed to put an end to the practice.
Similar shortages of time and trained manpower became evident when Quartermaster units were sent straight to France and required to begin operating immediately without a period of orientation and on-the-job training in the United Kingdom. The few units that had the benefit of such training were too busy to disseminate what they had learned, and the newcomers had to learn by making mistakes. One reason for the inadequate training of the newly arrived units was that they were recently activated, and activations had been delayed because of lack of training facilities in the United States. Meanwhile the Quartermaster Service in the United Kingdom was severely hampered by a shortage of manpower. It had accepted inadequately trained units from the zone of interior and trained them while they performed essential duties, but only on a small scale. Any enlargement of this program would, of course, have required a critical evaluation of what had already been accomplished, but such an evaluation was almost an impossibility.
Quite apart from methods of training, the proper functions and practical capabilities of QM units under field conditions were not firmly established. Mediterranean experience had confirmed that many older types of units required modification, but had not provided time for testing the revised versions. Some types of QM units had been authorized so recently that information on their organization, purpose, and functions was seriously inadequate even among the officers assigned to the new units, and entirely lacking among logistical planners. The OCQM was forced to assemble information on this subject and publish manuals in the United Kingdom. The situation might have been corrected by staff officers who understood the significance of time and manpower, and who were also expert in Quartermaster unit training. But still left unanswered was the question of where such staff officers were to be developed.
The training of QM units in the zone of interior was a bone of contention among the AGF, AAF, and ASF, with the OQMG playing a minor role in the controversy. The notion that every major element of the Army could train its own QM units satisfactorily with a minimum of specialized technical guidance implied a very limited recognition of the specialized techniques and acquired skills of the Quartermaster Service. None of these senior headquarters appeared to be promising training grounds
for the type of QM staff officer required. Probably in this, as in so many other essential matters, there was no substitute for combat experience.
Whatever the reasons, the fact remains that many of the Quartermaster troop units actually sent to the Continent were inadequately trained, and the natural reaction of their commanders was to demand more and better trained service troops. As long as the First Army quartermaster could meet each QM unit commander personally every few days and state precisely what supplies he wanted and when, where, and how many, he received reasonably satisfactory service. After the original beachhead area was expanded and two armies required support, lack of training and above all lack of trained leadership became painfully evident. And yet, by the end of 1944 those same Quartermaster units had overcome their lack of training in the hard school of combat experience and were giving very satisfactory support indeed. They had even overcome their early inadequacy in numbers, and only to a small extent by reinforcements from the zone of interior. They accomplished this primarily by employing a foreign labor force that exceeded their own numbers in the Communications Zone by a ratio of nearly four to one. That feat should dispel any doubts about the adequacy of their training, for the efficient use of foreign labor is a difficult technique, by no means easily acquired. Moreover, the program derived very little benefit from advance planning, for the intention had been to hire French civilians, whereas nearly half of the labor actually in use consisted of prisoners of war.
Delay in formulating a realistic policy on the utilization of POW’s, and still further delay in the organization of the Military Labor Service were serious oversights in staff planning. Earlier decisions on these matters would have solved many problems for all the technical services. For the Quartermaster, the introduction of regularly organized prisoner of war units under the Military Labor Service was a somewhat mixed blessing. It could certainly use 400 units trained in specific Quartermaster skills, but was hard pressed to find the 3,600 American officers and enlisted men required for supervision.
While a general evaluation of Quartermaster operations in the war against Germany must be a matter for individual judgment, it does appear that manpower and time are among the most important factors in determining success or failure. As in all military operations, every major Quartermaster problem involved manpower, solving manpower problems involved training, and training took time. Training efficient logistical staff officers took the most time of all, clearly indicating that their proper training was the most important peacetime responsibility of the Quartermaster Corps.