General Bellwere made up of both Regular Army and National Guard elements, Bell designated them as "National" regiments. The supply and ammunition trains, manned by civilians, were to be formed after mobilization.[1]
Within a few months the new Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood, reported to Secretary of War Jacob M. Dickinson that the First Field Army existed in name only. Noting that the Army lacked the required units and equipment to field the organization, he nevertheless believed that the War Department had taken the first step in organizing the Regular Army and the National Guard for modern war.[2]
Not everyone in the War Department agreed with the concept of the First Field Army. The Chief of the Division of Militia Affairs, Brig. Gen. Robert K. Evans, recommended that General Wood revoke the orders establishing the organization for two reasons. First, the field army did not fit any plan for the national defense, and, second, he believed that Regular and Guard units did not belong in the same formation. He further contended that the orders implied the existence of a field army. Events along the Mexican border soon caused the Army to abandon the organization, and eventually the secretary of war rescinded the orders.[3]
Concentration on the Mexican Border in 1911
In March 1911, during disorders resulting from the Mexican Revolution, the War Department deployed many Regular Army units of the First Field Army to the southern border. Units assembled at San Antonio, Texas, constituted the Maneuver Division and the Independent Cavalry Brigade, while others, concentrated at Galveston, Texas, and San Diego, California, made up separate infantry brigades. The division, following the Field Service Regulations outline, consisted of three infantry brigades, a field artillery brigade, an engineer battalion, and medical and signal units, but no trains. Thirty-six companies from the Coast Artillery Corps, organized as three provisional infantry regiments, comprised the brigade at Galveston. The brigade at San Diego had two infantry regiments and
- ↑ WD GO 35, 1910.
- ↑ Rpt of the Chief of Staff, ARWD, 1910, p. 128.
- ↑ Memo, Chief, Div. of Militia Affairs, to CofS, sub: Revocation of General Orders No. 35, WD 1910, 8 Jul 11, AGO file 6106–3, RG 168, NARA; Report on Mobilization of the Organized Militia and National Guard of the United States (Washington: D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916), p. 48; WD GO 6, 1914.
