logistics. Designed for the first level of officer training within the Army's educational system, the regulations covered such subjects as orders, combat, services of information and security (intelligence), subsistence, transportation, and organization. Under the guidance of Chaffee and other staff officers Dickman's organizational section directed the formation of provisional brigades and divisions during field exercises so that smaller permanent units could train for war.[1]
With these new ordinances, the Army departed from national and international practice, and the infantry division replaced the army corps, which had been used in the Civil War and the War with Spain, as the basic unit for combining arms. Since the mid-nineteenth century a typical European army corps had consisted of two or more divisions, a cavalry brigade, a field artillery regiment, and supporting units—about 30,000 men. Divisions usually included only infantry. Although they sometimes had artillery, cavalry, or engineer troops, they rarely included service units.[2]
In march formation (infantry in fours, cavalry in twos, guns and caissons in single file), a European army corps covered approximately fifteen miles of road, a day's march. To participate in a battle involving the vanguard, the corps' rear elements might have a day's march before engaging the enemy. Any greater distance meant that all corps elements could not work as a unit. In the continental United States an army corps actually required about thirty-five miles of road space because of the broken terrain and poor roads. Within a moving army corps, however, a division occupied only eleven miles.[3]
By replacing the army corps with the division, Dickman's regulation sought an organizational framework appropriate to the mission and the expected terrain. In 1905 the staff did not identify specific adversaries, but the planners believed that if war broke out a divisional organization was more appropriate for use in North America. Their assumption was that the nation would not be involved in a war overseas.[4]
For training, the regulations outlined a division that included three infantry brigades (two or more infantry regiments each), a cavalry regiment, an engineer battalion to facilitate movement, a signal company for communications, and four field hospitals. Nine field artillery batteries, organized as a provisional regiment, served both the division and other commands such as corps artillery. To attain a self-sufficient division, the planners added an ammunition column, a supply column, and a pack train, all to be manned by civilians. The regulations did not fix the strength of the organization, but in march formation it was estimated to use fourteen miles of road space. That distance represented a day's march, paralleling the length of a contemporary European army corps.[5]
In the field, divisions were both tactical and administrative units. Matters relating to courts martial, supply, money, property accountability, and administration, all normally vested in a territorial commander during peace, passed to the division commander during war. To carry out these duties, the division was to have a chief of staff, an adjutant general, an inspector general, a provost marshal,
- ↑ Ltr. Capt Joseph. T. Dickman to Brig Gen J. Franklin Bell, 16 Sep 1904, no subject, and Ltr. Brig Gen J. Franklin Bell to Capt J. T. Dickman, 11 Nov 04, no subject, AGO file 1168, RG 393, NARA; Field Service Regulations, United States Army, 1905, see table of contents.
- ↑ Field Service Regulations, 1905 pp. 11–13; Arthur Wagner, Organization and Tactics, 7th ed. (Kansas City: Hudson-Kimberly Publishing Co., 1906), pp. 11–12; Paul Bronsart Van Schellendorff, The Duties of the General Staff, 4th ed. (London: Harrison and Sons, 1905), pp. 223–26, 235–38; William Balck, Taktik [Tactics], vol. 3, Kriegsgliederung, Nachrichten, Befehle, Marschdienst (Military Organization, Communications, Orders, and Marches), 4th ed. (Berlin: R. Eisenschmidt, 1903–07), pp. 16–17, 28–33.
- ↑ Field Service Regulations, 1905, p. 44; Memo Rpt, War Plans Division to the C of S, 5 May 1905, sub: A Proper Proportion of field artillery for the mobile army of the U.S. AGO file, Journal, Reports and Related Paper of the Third Division, 1903–1910, RG 165, NARA.
- ↑ N. F. McClure, "The Infantry Division and Its Composition," Journal of the Military Service Institution 50 (Jan–Feb 1912): 5–9.
- ↑ Field Service Regulations 1905, p. 12, 87–88. Infantry and cavalry regiments were the largest permanent units in the peacetime Army. In 1901 Congress abolished artillery regiments (coast and field). Field artillery regiments were reestablished in 1907.
