Throughout history the course of wars has been largely determined by adequate transportation or the lack of it. The brilliantly successful campaigns of Hannibal and Genghis Khan, of Prussia in the Seven Weeks' War and FrancoPrussian War, and of Nazi Germany in the Blitzkrieg of 1940-and on the other side, the failure of Napoleon in his Russian campaign of 1812, and of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I are among hundreds of instances of the vital role of transportation in warfare, and of the disastrous effects of a breakdown in an army's lines of communication.

Military transportation has taken an added importance in modern times for several reasons. First, armies have grown steadily larger. Second, thanks to mechanical transport, they can-and therefore must-move faster and farther than in the past. Third, modern weapons and other equipment are complex and heavy, and make enormous demands for ammunition, liquid fuel, and repair parts. Finally, the recent de

THE PERIOD

Military transport problems arose early in our history. In both the Revolution and the War of 1812 the supply of our armies was severely hampered by bad roads and by British blockade of the sea lanes. Wagons and animals were in critically short supply, and the Quartermaster General, who was responsible inter alia for transportation, had great difficulty in procuring more.

With the outbreak of the Mexican War there was another transportation crisis. There had been little advance planning for equipment requirements,

velopment of "mass destruction" atomic weapons points to a future need for still greater mobility and dispersion of troops, and to a correspondingly increased workload on transportation agencies.

Until recently the United States has never systematically attacked the problem of military transportation. We have accomplished some remarkable feats in this field, but at a heavy cost in money and initial delay. Here, as in other fields, due to Congressional and public neglect of the Army in the past, each successive emergency found us unprepared and forced us to resort at the outset to improvisation and costly expedients. Most of our wars have been fought with the odds on our side, so that we won in spite of our initial unpreparedness. But it has become abundantly clear that next time this may not be the case. With that in mind, a permanent agency, the Transportation Corps, has been established to direct and coordinate the Army's transportation activities. BEFORE 1861

and an immediate shortage of wagons, animals, and shallow-draft steamboats developed. The QMG had to buy animals and equipment from all available markets and at exorbitant prices.

A forward step taken at this time was to replace civilian teamsters with enlisted drivers. The war also marked the first important use of railroads as part of our Army's supply line; a regiment of Pennsylvania militia was moved by rail from its home station to New Orleans to join General Scott's expedition into Mexico.

By 1861 our railroad system had so expanded that it was in a position to play a vital part in the mass transportation of men and materiel. The North early saw the value of harnessing this new resource in the prosecution of its war effort. On 4 February 1862 Congress passed an act authorizing the President to take possession of any or all railroads, if and when in his judgment the public safety required it. One week later, Daniel C. McCallum, an experienced railway executive, was appointed military director and superintendent of railroads in the United States. Given the rank of brigadier general, McCallum was empowered to take possession of and use all railroads and equipment that might be required for the transport of troops, arms, ammunition, and military supplies. Other prominent civilian experts, including Herman Haupt, the chief engineer of the Pennsylvania Railroad, were also brought into the Army, and a military railway service was established.

From the outset, emphasis was laid on securing the cooperation of the railroads in the loyal States, interfering or assisting only where the carrier was unwilling or unable to meet military needs. Such cooperation was promptly secured. Military railway operations were conducted primarily within the limits of the Confederacy and in direct support of the armies. At its maximum strength the military railway service had almost 25,000 officers and men operating in Virginia, North Carolina, and the military divisions of the Mississippi.

The importance of the railroads in concentrating and supplying the Northern armies can scarcely be overemphasized. By the beginning of 1863 they had moved more than a million men to the various fronts and had delivered a vast quantity of equipment and supplies. It was General Sherman's opinion that his successful Atlanta campaign would have been impossible without the logistic support given by the railroads.

By contrast, the South failed to develop its railroads as an effective instrument of war. They were inferior to those of the North to begin with, and extensive improvement in wartime was impracticable. In addition, however, the Confederate leaders were too slow in imposing adequate wartime controls. The final breakdown of the system was a material factor in the Southern defeat.

Water transportation was also important during the war. The Potomac, Tennessee, Ohio, Cumberland, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers were extensively used by one or both of the combatants to move men and supplies, and to operate light-draft gunboats. In the Peninsular Campaign of 1862, McClellan's 120,000 men were delivered to the lower Chesapeake area by water, and evacuated by the same means after the failure of the campaign. There were many other instances of the water movement and supply of troops.

Military land transport, other than by rail, of course depended on animal power; principally horse- or muledrawn vehicles or weapons, and pack animals.

This short war was marked by almost ludicrous transportation difficulties and shortcomings, which might have ended in disaster except for our opponent's extreme military and naval weakness. The Santiago expedition highlighted the deficiencies in our system. The plan was to use Tampa as a port of embarkation, shipping men and materials thereto by rail and thence to

Cuba by water. Early in the war hurriedly procured supplies were sent there and to other destinations, by rail, without bills of lading. Arrived at Tampa they had to be searched, identified, and segregated, a laborious and timeconsuming process. Loading and unloading facilities at Tampa were inadequate, and supervisory personnel were inexperienced. The result was a state

of congestion on the rail lines that extended as far back as Charleston. Meantime there was the problem of getting ships for the Tampa-Cuba run. At the outbreak of the war we did not possess a single troopship. The QMG, after canvassing all available vessels, managed to charter thirty-eight. Then there was more delay while they were being refitted. When water movement started, both the unloading and the landing operations were poorly managed. Units, equipment, and supplies were split up among ships; and the debarkations, although unopposed, were chaotic.

Fortunately the transport for the later expeditions to Puerto Rico and the Philippines was better organized.

One good result of this transportation fiasco was the establishment, in November of 1898, of the Army Transport Service (ATS)1, with ports of embarkation at San Francisco and New ocean York. It operated a fleet of vessels, which after the war were used primarily to garrison and supply our oversea possessions. At one time there were 20 vessels in the fleet, but by 1905 the number had been reduced to 7.

Our entrance into the war, in April of 1917, again found us unprepared as regards military transport. We faced the task of mobilizing, equipping, and training an Army of 4,000,000 men or more, sending some 2,000,000 of them across 3,000 miles of ocean, and supplying them by the same route. In oversea theaters of operation, lines of communication had to be established and existing transportation facilities adapted or supplemented. Finally, after the fighting was over, our forces would have to be shipped home. All this posed transportation problems of the first magnitude.

ORGANIZATION OF MILITARY TRANSPORT IN THE UNITED STATES. At the outbreak of war, military transportation was primarily the responsibility of the QMG. Among the functions coming under his supervision were: transportation by common carrier between posts, camps, and stations within the United States; shipments overseas by commercial vessels; the operation and maintenance of the Army Transport Service, which included the Army's ports of embarkation and a small fleet of seven transports; and the procurement of animals and animal-drawn vehicles. However, the actual operation of the system, including shipments by inland carrier, oversea shipments, and the operation of Army transports and port facilities, was highly decentralized. Motor vehicles were procured by a

number of agencies. The Chief of Engineers was responsible for military railways.

It soon became evident that peacetime machinery and methods would be inadequate to handle the wartime transportation problems. To meet the need for a stronger organization, the War Department General Staff increasingly moved into the operational sphere and eventually absorbed the entire transportation organization of the Quartermaster General. To cope with the vast and unregulated flow of men and supplies to the ports an Embarkation Service was established as an independent War Department bureau in August 1917. Subsequently brought under a Storage and Traffic Division (later expanded into a Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Division) of the General Staff, the Embarkation Service was given responsibility for regulating oversea movements and for the supervision of operations of the ports of embarkation and the Army Transport Service. To enforce the Embarkation Service's system of releasing traffic to the ports, and to exercise jurisdiction over other matters relating to the inland routing and transportation of troops and supplies, a Division of Inland Transportation (later Inland Traffic Service) was established in January 1918. Working closely together as coordinate subdivisions of the Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Division, the Embarkation and

Inland Traffic Services did much to dissipate earlier rail and port congestion in the Zone of Interior, and to assure the orderly flow of traffic from points of origin to oversea destinations.

Toward the end of the war, also, a Motor Transport Corps was organized in the United States, based on experience overseas (see below).

SHIPPING. Ocean shipping was critically short at the outset. Various emergency steps were taken on the national level, with Army and Navy cooperation, including a huge construction program3, seizure of interned German ships, chartering of American merchant ships, acquisitions from neutrals. loans from our allies, and more efficient utilization of shipping and port facilities. By November of 1918 the Army's trans-Atlantic fleet had grown from 7 vessels to 512, with a deadweight of 3,251,000 tons. In addition there was a cross-Channel fleet of 104 vessels with a total of 460,000 deadweight tons.

PORT OPERATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES. Primary ports of embarkation were established at New York and Newport News (Hampton Roads). New York was the principal port for troop shipment and the largest single mover of cargo. Hampton Roads handled mostly freight, troop property, and animals. Philadelphia, Baltimore, and ports on the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes were also used. Total outloadings to France, by the end of 1918, were over 2,000,000 passengers and 6,270,000 short tons of cargo.

INLAND TRANSPORTATION IN THE UNITED STATES. Almost the entire burden of the Army's inland traffic requirements fell on our railroads. At first, the railroads were unable to meet demands for movements of freight and passengers. Efforts by the rail carriers to coordinate traffic on a voluntary basis, through a Railway Board composed of their own representatives, met with some success, but failed to keep pace with the increasing requirements for transportation. Traffic, concentrated largely in the East, quickly became snarled. A shortage of motive power, rolling stock, and skilled labor

developed. Moreover, various civilian and military government agencies issued numerous and often conflicting priority orders to secure preference for shipments of their freight, regardless of the ability of the consignees to receive it or of shipping to lift it from the ports. As a result, by late 1917 there was a serious tieup of rail equipment at the ports, shipyards, industrial centers, and other key points on the Atlantic seaboard.

On 28 December 1917 President Wilson seized the nation's railroads and placed them under a Director General (William G. McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury). A new Railroad Administration was formed, taking over the personnel of the Railway War Board. Through such measures as the abolition of priorities, the placing of embargoes on congested points, and traffic diversions, the Railroad Administration made rapid headway in eliminating the rail tieup.

Further relief of the rail and port congestion was afforded through the inauguration of a War Department "release system." Under this system, supply bureaus desiring to make shipments of supplies destined for overseas were first required to obtain a release from the Embarkation Service. This release would be presented to the Inland Transportation Division for a transportation order, without which the shipment could not move from the point of origin. The system, rigidly enforced through cooperation with the Railroad Administration, proved successful in maintaining an orderly flow of portbound movement consistent with the capability of the railroads, the ports, and available shipping.

In the end the railroads rose to the challenge. Between May of 1917 and the Armistice they carried 8,714,582 Army passengers, an average of 502,764 per month. Peak rail traffic was handled in July 1918, when 1,197,013 men were moved. Passenger traffic continued important into the post-Armistice period, bringing the total number of men transported by rail to 13,999,588 by 30 June 1919. Freight movements were correspondingly heavy, totalling around 40,000,000 tons in fiscal year 1919 alone.

e First 11 days only.

Administration, 103,136 tons,

ORGANIZATION OF MILITARY TRANSPORT IN THE AEF. As in the United States, transportation in the American Expeditionary Forces was hampered by the lack of advance planning. Transportation organization and procedure went through a variety of changes. At the outset, responsibility was divided between the Chief Quartermaster, AEF, and the Chief Engineer,

AEF. Later there was a tendency toward greater consolidation of transportation functions, though this was never carried to its logical conclusion. A Transportation Service was created, and on the day after the Armistice became the Transportation Corps. It took over ATC functions and a large part of military railway responsibilities. All railway construction, and all responsi