which supported the Infantry School, was inactivated at Fort Benning to provide personnel for expanding the Army in Vietnam. In a personnel-saving action, the Combat Developments Command’s 194th Armored Brigade at Fort Ord was replaced by a battalion-size combat team and reorganized at Fort Knox to support the Armor School in place of the 16th Armor Group. Under the new configuration the brigade included one mechanized infantry and two armored battalions. The 171st and 172d Infantry Brigades in Alaska each lost their aviation company, and in the 193d Infantry Brigade in the Canal Zone, the airborne battalion was replaced with a standard infantry battalion, (Table 29 shows the composition of divisions and brigades outside Vietnam in 1969.)[1]
In 1968 Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford decided to reduce forces in the continental United States to four divisions because the budget did not permit filling and maintaining five divisions. He directed the inactivation of the 6th Infantry Division, the activation of a brigade to replace the 82d's 3d Brigade in Vietnam, and higher manning levels for the 69th Infantry Brigade attached to the 5th Infantry Division at Fort Carson and the 29th Infantry Brigade at Schofield Barracks. The 6th Division was inactivated on 25 July 1968, and the rest of Clifford's proposals were accomplished by early 1969.[2]
Four weeks after the 6th Infantry Division was inactivated, the Vice Chief of Staff, General Bruce Palmer, Jr., considered reactivating the division in response to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies. Lacking men to organize the unit, the staff considered the division's reactivation a "show the flag" action. The plan was eventually dropped because it was an empty gesture. Thus, the strategic reserve forces in the United States stood at four divisions in September 1968 and remained at that level until the close of the Vietnam era.[3]
During the 1960s the Department of Defense continued to scrutinize the reserve forces and to question the number of divisions and brigades as well as the redundancy of maintaining two reserve components, the National Guard and the Army Reserve. In 1967 Secretary of Defense McNamara decided that 15 combat divisions in the Army National Guard were unnecessary and cut the number to 8 divisions (1 mechanized infantry, 2 armored, and 5 infantry), but increased the number of brigades from 7 to 18 (1 airborne, 1 armored, 2 mechanized infantry, and 14 infantry). The loss of the divisions did not set well with the states. Their objections included the inadequate maneuver element mix for those that remained and the end to the practice of rotating divisional commands among the states that supported them. Under the proposal, the remaining division commanders were to reside in the state of the division base. No reduction, however, in total Army National Guard strength was to take place, which convinced the governors to accept the plan.[4]
The states reorganized their forces accordingly between 1 December 1967 and 1 May 1968. All remaining divisions were shared by two or more states (Table 30). Divisional brigades located in states without the division base consist-
- ↑ Ltr, TAG to CG, Third U.S. Army, 23 May 66, sub: Inactivation of the 2d Battalion, 29th Infantry, AGSD-C (M) (3 May 66), 197th Inf Bde file, DAMH-HSO; Telephone or Verbal Conversation Record, Mrs Stubbs and Lt Col Derhay, 11 Jun 67, sub: An Armored Brigade for Ft Knox, and Ltr, TAG to CG, U.S. Army Combat Developments Command, 24 Jan 68, sub: Reorganization of Unit, AGSD-C (M) ACSFOR, both 194th Armd Bde file, Ltr, TAG to CG, US Army, Alaska, 10 Jul 67, ADSD-C (M) (3 Jul 67) ACSFOR, 171st Inf Bde file, and GO 70, U.S. Forces Southern Command, 1968, 3d Bn, 5th Inf file, all DAMH-HSO.
- ↑ Msg. OCINFO DA to CG, CONARC, and CinC, USARPAC 870873, 3 Jul 68, sub: Decision by the Secretary of Defense not to Activate the 6th Infantry Division, and Ltr, TAG to CG, CONARC, and CinC, USARPAC, 18 Noy 68, sub: Change in Status of Units, AGSD-C (M) (31 Jul 68) ACSFOR, both 6th Inf Div file, DAMH-HSO; Ltr, TAG to CG, CONARC, 7 Noy 68, sub: Change in Status of Units, AGSD-C (M) (10 Oct 68) ACSFOR, 4th Bde, 82d Abn Div, file, and Ed Gerhardt, Unit History of the 69th Infantry Brigade (Mechanized) 1963–1978, 15 Feb 79, Ms, pp. 10–21, 69th Bde, 35th Inf Div, file.
- ↑ Memo for Record, See of the General Staff, sub: Meeting with VCSA on Re-examination of Reduction of Forces in Europe and Reconstitution of the 6th Division (2 Brigades), 23 Aug 68, and OPS Form 28, ACSFOR to CofS, 30 Sep 67, sub: Activation of Division Headquarters and a Brigade size Force of the 6th Infantry Division (Show the Flag Concept), FOR PP FP, 6th Inf Div file, DAMH-HSO.
- ↑ Chief of Information, DA, Why Merge (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1965), Ltr, TAG to CinC, USAREUR, and other addresses, 14 Jun 67, sub: Reserve Component Reorganization, AGAM-P (M) (13 Jun 67) ORC-OPT-OP, Ltr, TAG to CinC, USAREUR, and other addresses, 20 Jul 67, same subject, AGAM-P (M) (20 Jul 67) ORC-OPT-OP, and News Release, 27 Nov 67, Army Reserve Components Will Commence Reorganization, all Army Reserve file, DAMH-HSO; "The President Reports to the 89th General Conference," National Guardsman, 21 (Oct 1967): inside front cover and pp. 36–39; "Division Command Rotation Plan Set Aside," National Guardsman, 22 (Mar 1968): 16; James F. Cantwell, "A Salute to the 'Lost' Divisions," National Guardsman, 22 (Feb 1968): inside front cover. The Guard wanted the maneuver element mix for mechanized infantry and armored divisions to be the same as the prototype divisions under the 1966 tables of organization, but for infantry divisions it desired eight infantry, two mechanized infantry, and two armor battalions; thus the infantry division would have been larger than Regular Army divisions.
