General Somervell and the Control Division, interested in integrating ASF headquarters on functional lines, tried first to group these agencies under a loose Administrative Services Division. But they had so little in common with one another that this solution was abandoned in November 1943. Some were assigned to The Adjutant General's Office as essentially personnel functions; others became specialized staff agencies within ASF headquarters. Congressional pressure made the National Guard Bureau a separate staff agency, and in May 1945 it became once more a War Department Special Staff division. The Executive for Reserve and ROTC Affairs remained under the Directorate of Personnel until May 1945, when it, too, became a special staff division. Congressional pressure also led to the removal of the Budget Division together with the Budget Advisory Committee from the Chief of Finance's Office and its establishment as a special staff agency in July 1943.66

The status of the newly organized Women's Army Auxiliary Corps was the center of a running feud between its determined director, Col. Oveta Culp Hobby, and General Somervell's staff. At first placed under the Director of Personnel in November 1943, the Office of the Director of the Women's Army Corps became a special staff agency of ASF attached to General Somervell's office. His staff continued to veto Colonel Hobby's proposals for improving the status of women in the Army, and in February 1944 General Marshall agreed to remove the Office of the Director of the Women's Army Corps from ASF and place it under the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-1, whose chief, Maj. Gen. Miller G. White, proved to be more hospitable. Such was the opposition to the WAC among conservative Army officers that General Marshall personally had to intervene repeatedly to ensure that his directives aimed at improving the status of the WAC were carried out.67

Personnel functions within the Army were divided by the reorganization between G-1, as the policy planning agency, and ASF, which through the Directorate of Personnel and The Adjutant General's Office was responsible for personnel operations. In fact, responsibility for personnel was divided among

(1) Ibid., pp. 148-55. (2) Dorr Memorandum, pp. 46-53.

67 Mattie E. Treadwell, The Women's Army Corps, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1954), pp. xiv, 31-32, 259-63, 269-77.

a great many agencies throughout the Army. The growing manpower shortage which emerged at the end of 1942 led to the creation of several more personnel agencies at the War Department Special Staff level, further diffusing responsibility for this function. ASF shared responsibility for one major supply function, the research and development of new matériel, with AGF and other agencies, both civilian and military. Postwar planning was another function initially assigned to General Somervell's headquarters but made a special staff agency when it began operations. The work of the Judge Advocate General and the Chief of Chaplains was so professional in nature that they conducted their operations largely independent of control by ASF. They were attached to General Somervell's office for administrative purposes only.

68

For reasons over which it on the whole had little control, ASF was less effective in supervising and directing these various administrative agencies than in performing its essential functions of supplying and equipping the Army. One major reason was the haste with which these functions were assigned to ASF without considering the inadvisability of assigning them to an agency concerned primarily with supply and distribution all over the world. Additionally, there were some functions like the National Guard Bureau and the Budget Division whose political implications were such that the Secretary or the Chief of Staff had to assume responsibility for them whether they wanted to or not. Finally, in some instances, the division of responsibility among numerous agencies of the department, particularly in the case of personnel operations, necessarily weakened ASF's control over these functions.

The Service Commands

Army Service Forces responsibilities for administering the Army extended to the old corps areas, which were reorganized into eight, later nine, service commands plus the Military District of Washington (MDW). They became the Army's housekeepers. The theory behind the housekeeping concept was functional. The new service commands were to free the Army Air Forces and Army Ground Forces from such chores to concentrate on training the Army. Under this concept all Army

See pages 115-120 below, and Chapter IV, pages 131-37, for ASF postwar planning activities.

installations within the United States were divided into four classes. Class I stations, directly under the commanding generals of the service commands, included a wide variety of organizations from induction stations to general hospitals and prisoner of war camps not assigned to the AGF, AAF, or the technical services. Class II installations housed AGF troops and Class III AAF units. Class IV stations were those that traditionally had been under the command of the chiefs of the technical and administrative services.

The housekeeping functions the service commands performed at Class II, III, and IV installations were standard community services such as construction of buildings and their maintenance and the provision of public utilities, post exchanges, and recreation facilities.69 The friction between ASF “landlords" and their "tenants" developed because ASF, acting through the service commands and post commanders, determined the allocation of men, money, and matériel for these functions. AGF and AAF commanders might request facilities, but it was the post commander or his superiors who determined what money was to be spent where. In one instance a division. commander requested construction of a .22-caliber range. The post commander disapproved, and the dispute went all the way up through channels to General Marshall personally for decision.70

Because it sought complete independence from the Army the AAF naturally wanted control over its own housekeeping functions, including control over the allocation of funds. This dispute involved the technical services as well because AAF wished also to set up its own independent technical air services. A temporary compromise, reached in 1944, designated the chiefs of the technical services rather than ASF as "agents of the War Department General Staff" in supervising their respective activities at AAF installations. The technical services to this degree regained their status as special staff agencies reporting to the Chief of Staff rather than General Somervell.71

PP. 1-58.

(1) Millett, Army Service Forces, pp. 312-37. (2) Millett, ASF Org Hist, ch. V. 70 (1) General Patch's comments in interview with General Gerow and others. p. 4, and with General Lutes, p. 18. Patch-Simpson Board files. (2) Nelson, National Security and the General Staff, pp. 393-94.

71

(1) Millett, ASF Org Hist, ch. VIII, pp. 12–48. (2) Millett, Army Service Forces, pp. 129-37. (3) Craven and Cate, Men and Planes, pp. 374-75. (4) Millett, "The War Department in World War II," pp. 886-97.

Combat arms officers as well as those from the technical services wanted to abolish the service command idea because it violated the sacred principle of unity of command. If they were to be responsible for training troops then they also wanted the authority to control everything needed to do the job, including housekeeping functions.72

72 Comments of General Patch in interview with General Gerow. Patch-Simpson Board files, p. 4.

CHAPTER III

Changes in the Marshall Organization

The War Department General Staff

The Marshall reorganization deliberately bypassed the General Staff in favor of expediting the conduct of the war through the Operations Division and the three major commands. Although technically still part of the General Staff, OPD had become a super general staff, the GHQ which War Department planners envisaged after World War I. General Marshall and Lt. Gen. Joseph T. McNarney were determined to remove the General Staff from operations entirely because it took too long to get decisions from its members. The most effective means of accomplishing this was to reduce their staffs so drastically that they could not operate for lack of personnel.1 In this reduction G-1 and G-3 lost 75 percent and G-4 over 90 percent of their personnel. Maj. Gen. Raymond G. Moses, who succeeded General Somervell as G-4 on 9 March 1942, recalled that he had inherited a lot of empty filing cabinets and some typewriters, but no one who could type.

The Operations Division as General Marshall's operating command post expanded 250 percent, while G-2 remained an operating agency in fact because it successfully opposed separating its operating arm, the Military Intelligence Service, from headquarters. The nature of its work also made it difficult to assign G-2 operations logically to any of the three major commands.3

Accompanying the cutback in the General Staff was the assignment of all but two special staff agencies, the Legislative and Liaison Division and the Office of the Inspector General, to the Army Service Forces.

1 See Chapter II, above, pages 68-69.

2 Interview, Hewes with General Moses, 16 Oct 68.

(1) Nelson, National Security and the General Staff, pp. 394-98. (2) McNarney Interview, pp. 14-17. Patch-Simpson Board files.