ASF's mission, the Control Division argued, was "to integrate in an economical manner all the supply, administrative, and service functions of the Army." The continued existence in law of the technical and administrative services as semiautonomous agencies was inconsistent with this principle, and the National Defense Act should be amended accordingly. The law ought only to provide for the principal officers of the department: the Secretary, Under Secretary, and assistant secretaries, the Chief of Staff and the General Staff, and the three major commands. The detailed subordinate organization of the department should be left "for administrative determination" by the Secretary of War. Similarly the commissioning of officers in the separate arms and services was inconsistent with the organization of the Army into three major commands. The law should provide for commissioning and assigning all officers only in the "Army of the United States," and branch insignia should be abolished.

The report again recommended abolishing the distinction between Class I and Class IV installations and the adoption of a single organizational pattern along functional lines under the service commands for all field activities within the zone of interior.

The chiefs of the technical and administrative services would continue to exist in this plan, unlike the previous one, but they would serve simply as a functional staff and command no field agencies. Under this scheme, the Office of the Chief of Ordnance, organized internally along commodity lines, would be the staff agency responsible for procurement and production, including research and development and maintenance and repair. (Chart 13) The Quartermaster General's Office, also organized on a commodity basis, would be responsible for storage, distribution, and issuance of all supplies and equipment. The Office of the Chief of Engineers would be responsible for all construction, real property (including national cemeteries), mapping, and its traditional "civil functions," the Office of the Surgeon General for all medical activities, the Office of the Chief of Transportation for all types of transportation and the Army postal system, and the Office of the Chief Signal Officer for signal communications and for photographic

and motion picture services. The only office abolished would be the Chief Chemical Officer.

The Judge Advocate General would be responsible for all legal activities currently performed in the technical services. The Office of the Provost Marshal General would be assigned responsibility for civil defense in addition to its other duties. All fiscal activities of the technical services would be transferred to the Office of the Chief of Finance, and The Adjutant General's Office would be responsible for all personnel functions, publications and records, personnel services, and labor relations. The National Guard Bureau and the Office of the Executive for Reserve and ROTC Affairs would be abolished and their functions assigned to the ASF Chief of Military Training and to The Adjutant General.

The Control Division advocated organizing the supply and administrative services of overseas theaters and commands on the same pattern as the ASF and the service commands. All supply and service troops not organic to a subordinate tactical unit would be placed under a single service of supply whose commander would bear the same relation to the theater commander as General Somervell did to General Marshall. Within tactical units from armies down to regiments a single service troop commander would replace the special staff, G-1 and G-4.

The Control Division concluded its report with a recommendation that in any proposed single department of the armed services there should be a separate Service Forces agency for common administration, supply, and service activities.

These "reforms" were so radical and comprehensive that they affected nearly every agency in the Army, the Navy, and the Air Forces. To the extent that they were known throughout the Army they added fuel to the existing animosity toward the ASF. Under Secretary Patterson vetoed the plan, saying that roles and missions of the technical services and the service commands should be left unchanged. Consequently the proposal was not submitted to the Special Planning Division, but General Robinson presented a copy of it to the Patch Board a year later as part of his testimony. 19

19

1 (1) Control Division History, vol. II, Report No. 92, 1944. (2) Millett, Army Service Forces, pp. 422-24. (3) Organization of Army Service Forces in the Post War World, Hq., ASF, 15 Jul 44. ASF-Somervell Post-War Organization files, OCMH.

The final proposals developed in the Control Division for inclusion as Chapter 16 of General Somervell's final report retained the same basic organization proposed earlier with the following exceptions. The Chief of Ordnance and the Quartermaster General would administer and control major field activities including arsenals, large procurement and storage depots, and major maintenance and repair facilities. The plan developed in some detail the procedures by which the Army's supply system would operate under this pattern of organization. Second, it proposed separate seacoast commands to control ports of embarkation, holding and reconsignment points, distribution depots, staging areas, and personnel replacement centers. Finally the report offered a detailed war mobilization organization plan for the federal government in which an Allocations Board would ration scarce resources, production facilities, labor, and transportation among government agencies in a manner similar to the Controlled Materials Plan of World War II.

These proposals, submitted to General Somervell in November 1945, were deleted from his final report, which was published in 1948 as "Logistics in World War II: The Final Report of the Commanding General, Army Service Forces,' because the War Department reorganization of May 1946 and the National Security Act of 1947 had overtaken them.20

The Patch-Simpson Board

The Army staff's opposition to continuing Army Service Forces after the war stemmed from animosity engendered by General Brehon B. Somervell's aggressiveness and the huge size of his headquarters as well as from opposition to his various reorganization proposals. The opportunity to abolish ASF came with General Marshall's retirement as Chief of Staff and his replacement by General Eisenhower after the war. The latter's impending appointment was common knowledge, at least in the higher echelons of the department, in the summer of 1945.

In August 1945 Brig. Gen. Henry I. Hodes, Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff, asked Maj. Gen. Ray E. Porter, Director of the Special Planning Division, to recommend an appropri

20 (1) Control Division History, vol. II, Report No. 186, 1945. (2) Draft Chapter 16, Logistics Organization.

ate course of action on reorganizing the department. General Porter replied by suggesting the appointment of an ad hoc board of high-ranking officers representing the General Staff and the three major commands to assist the Special Planning Division in developing a proper organization for the department and the Army in the immediate postwar period.

Consequently General Thomas T. Handy, the Deputy Chief of Staff on 30 August created a Board of Officers on the Reorganization of the War Department, headed first by General Patch, and, after his death in November, by Lt. Gen. William H. Simpson. Handy made the board itself rather than SPD responsible for recommending a suitable organization, and appointed representatives from the technical services instead of the three major commands, flatly rejecting a personal request from General Somervell to appoint General Robinson. The board included one representative each from OPD and SPD, the Chief Signal Officer, and a veteran Ordnance organization and management expert, Maj. Gen. Charles T. Harris, Jr. As head of a blue-ribbon Committee on the Post-War Organization of the Ordnance Department Harris had recommended continuing the department's division along commodity lines with responsibility "from design to obsolescence" assigned on this basis, a concept directly contrary to General Somervell's functional approach. Of all the members of the Patch-Simpson Board General Harris was the only one with much experience in organizational planning. General Patch himself, a blunt combat veteran with no General Staff experience at all, was frankly baffled by the complex organization, procedures, and vernacular of the department and relied heavily upon the judgment of his colleagues. The end result was a committee deliberately weighted against the Army Service Forces.21

21

The Patch Board based its recommendations on approxi

(1) Interview, Hewes with Dr. Forrest C. Pogue, 6 May 69. (2) Memo, Asst Dep Cofs for Dir, SPD, 19 Aug 45, sub: War Department Reorganization; Memo, General Porter for Asst Dep CofS, 25 Aug 45, same subject; WDCSA 020 (30 Aug 45), Memo, Dep CofS for Lt. Gen. Alexander Patch and others, 30 Aug 45, sub: Reorganization of the War Department; Memo, Asst Dep CofS for General Patch and others, 11 Sep 45, same subject. All in WDSSP 334 Reorganization of the War Department (Patch Board) Simpson Board, 19 Aug 45, NARS, Washington, D.C. This was the Special Planning Division's file on the Patch-Simpson Board [hereafter cited as SPD Patch-Simpson Board file.] (3) Millett. Army Service Forces, pp. 421-22. (4) Thomson and Mayo, Procurement and Supply, pp. 472-476. (5) On General Patch's bewilderment, see Patch Board Interviews.