cadre level. In 1937 Secretary of War Harry W. Woodring held the opinion that the dearth of enlisted men kept the Organized Reserves from contributing much to mobilization. Under these conditions effective unit training was impossible.[1]
More Realistic Mobilization Plans
Mobilization underpinned the maintenance of divisions, but the Army's preparedness program lacked substance. Undermanned divisions had no higher command headquarters despite ambitious plans to group all 54 infantry divisions in the United States into 18 Organized Reserve army corps and these corps into 6 Organized Reserve armies with each army also having 2 cavalry divisions. In 1927 the General Staff began to shift toward more realistic war plans. When division and corps area commanders met in Washington to discuss Army programs that year, one of the topics they examined was the status of Regular Army divisions and brigades. The senior officers believed that reinforced brigades serving as nuclei of divisions were impractical. Chief of Staff Summerall argued that to mobilize a skeletal division (a reinforced brigade) would take the same amount of time as organizing a completely new division since both would have to be filled with recruits.[2]
In August 1927 the staff released new war plans for the Regular Army that reassigned the active brigades of the 8th, 9th, and 7th Divisions to the 4th, 5th, and 6th Divisions, respectively, and the inactive brigades of the last three divisions to the first three. These were paper transactions only. In an emergency, however, the Regular Army would now be able to field the 1st through the 6th Divisions. For the 4th, 5th, and 6th, it needed only to activate divisional headquarters and support units. But with no station changes, the Army leadership lost further sight of an important World War I lesson: the need to have divisions concentrated for combined arms training.[3]
Also in 1927, for echelons above divisions in the Regular Army, the adjutant general constituted one army, one cavalry corps, and three army corps headquarters. In addition, the 3d Cavalry Division, a new Regular Army unit, was added to the rolls to complete the cavalry corps. No army corps, cavalry corps, or army headquarters was organized at that time, but moving these units in the mobilization plans from the Organized Reserve to the Regular Army theoretically made it easier to organize the units in an emergency. The Organized Reserve units, after all, were to be used to expand the Army following the mobilization of Regular Army and National Guard units.[4]
With increased tensions in the Far East and the rearmament of European nations, Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur scrapped existing plans for echelons above divisions and created an army group in 1932. He established General Headquarters (GHQ), United States Army, with himself as commander, and ordered the activation of four army headquarters, one each for the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the Mexican and Canadian borders (Map 2). To the four
- ↑ "Progress of Assignments of Infantry Reserve Officers to Infantry Division of the Organized Reserves," U.S. Army Recruiting News 5 (May 1922): no pagination; Comptroller's Records, US Army Divisions—Infantry and Cavalry Strength, 30 Jun 1928–1931, Reference Paper Files, Army Reserve 1916–1939, DAMH-HSO; Rpt of the Sec of War, 1937, p. 6.
- ↑ War Department Mobilization Plans, 1923, 1924, and 1926, Miscellaneous files, DAMH-HSO; Proceedings of Conference of Corps Area and Division Commanders held at Washington, D.C., June 1927, p. 140, AWC course material 1927, MHI.
- ↑ Ltr, TAG to Chiefs of all War Department Branches and other addresses, 15 Aug 27, sub: Constitution, Reconstitution, or Redesignation of Certain Units of the Regular Army and the Reorganization of Regular Army Divisions, AG Reference files. 320.2 (6-5-27) Misc (Ret), DAMH-HSO.
- ↑ Ibid.
