Army Special Regulation 10-5-1 settled, presumably for good, was the question of the "command" of the Army. According to existing law and the Constitution the President was Commander in Chief of the Army, a function he normally exercised through the Secretary of War. The Chief of Staff acted under the direction of the Secretary of War and, after 1947, the Secretary of the Army, except as otherwise directed by the President. Congress had abolished the Office of Commanding General to eliminate the friction between that office and the War Department under the Secretary. Unfortunately Secretary Baker ignored this and resurrected the problem by making General Pershing commander of the American Expeditionary Forces independent of the War Department General Staff. The subsequent antagonism between General March and General Pershing was almost inevitable.71 The Pershing reorganization tried to eliminate this friction by providing that the Chief of Staff in the event of war would command the "field forces," leaving the Deputy Chief of Staff behind and subordinate to him as Acting Chief of Staff. Army Regulation 10-5 of 18 August 1936 went further, stating that the Chief of Staff was also "in peace, by direction of the President, the Commanding General of the Field Forces." 72 President Roosevelt at the outset of World War II chose to exercise his role as Commander in Chief actively by dealing directly with General Marshall on strategy and military operations, bypassing the Secretary of War. He repeated his intention to deal directly with Marshall in his executive order of 28 February 1942, approving the Marshall reorganization. As a result General Marshall in reality did command the Army throughout the war under the President's direction.73 War Department Circular 138 of 14 May 1946 actually had gone much further than previous regulations in stating that the Chief of Staff "had command of all components of the Army" within the continental United States and overseas. There was no legal or constitutional basis for such a statement. This was the conclusion of a study undertaken by the Management Division of the Comptroller's Office as part of its 71 See Chapter I, above, page 24. 72 Ibid., page 53. 73 See Chapter II, above, pages 58-59 and 74. over-all investigation of the organization of the Department of the Army. Lt. Col. Archibald King, ASC, submitted to the Management Division a memorandum on the Command of the Army, accompanied by a short legal history of the relationships among the Presidents, Secretaries of War, Commanding Generals, and Chiefs of Staff. Both documents were widely distributed throughout the Army as part of the recommendations on Army reorganization prepared by the Management Division and Cresap, McCormick and Paget.74 As a consequence of these criticisms the Army Organization Act of 1950 and the parallel Army regulations eliminated all references to the Chief of Staff's "command" role. The Army Organization Act clearly stated that the Chief of Staff should supervise the operations of the Department of the Army and the Army, preside over the Army staff, and, in general, “perform his duties under the direction of the Secretary of the Army," except when otherwise directed by the President or the Secretary of Defense. Army regulations stated: Command of the Army and all components thereof is exercised by the President through the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Army, who directly represent him; and, as the personal representatives of the President, their acts are the President's acts, and their directions and orders are the President's directions and orders. The language followed historical precedent as far back as Secretary of War John C. Calhoun. In these regulations the Chief of Staff was the "principal adviser" to the Secretary of the Army, responsible to him for planning, developing, and executing Army policies. He supervised the activities and operations of the department and the Army, performing these duties and others prescribed by law or assigned him by the President and the Secretary of the Army. Unless directed otherwise, the Chief of Staff normally performed his duties "under the direction of the Secretary of the Army." The principal exceptions to this rule were the statutory functions assigned him under the National Security Act of 1947 as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Finally, 74 (1) King, Memorandum With Respect to the Command of the Army by the Chief of Staff. (2) Col Archibald King, The Command of the Army: A Legal and Historical Study of the Relations of the Presidents, the Secretaries of War, National Defense, the Army, the General of the Army, and the Chief of Staff With One Another, c. 30 Mar 49. See also a much larger study on the same subject submitted in draft by Colonel King in 1950. Copies of both studies in OCMH files. he presided over the Army staff, forwarding their plans and recommendations along with his own to the Secretary and acted as the Secretary's agent in carrying out plans and policies approved by the latter. The key phrases in the law and regulations are "advise,” "supervise," "preside," and "perform" his duties under the direction of the Secretary of the Army. The word "command" and similar words such as "direct" and "control" are absent. Whether the Chief of Staff would ever "command" the Army in a practical sense depended on whether the President or Secretary of Defense chose to act as President Roosevelt did in dealing with General Marshall. Since World War II, Presidents have not done so, dealing with Army Chiefs of Staff through the Secretaries of Defense and Army or as members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In any case, after 1947 the Chief of Staff occupied a dual role as the executive manager of the Department of the Army for the Secretary and as one of the several military advisers to the Secretary of Defense and the President as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Army staff served him in both these capacities. CHAPTER VI The Post-Korean Army The Army Organization Act of 1950 became law with President Truman's signature on 28 June 1950. Three days earlier, at dawn on 25 June, North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and invaded the Republic of South Korea. President Truman almost immediately ordered troops of the Eighth Army in Japan under General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to support the small and ill-equipped South Korean Army. Thus began a war lasting three years until an armistice was negotiated in July 1953. The Korean War was a test of the effectiveness of the Department of the Army created by the Army Organization Act of 1950. The Army expanded in three years from 600,000 in June 1950 to 1,500,000 in June 1953, while the Army's appropriations tripled during the same period from $6 to $17 billion without requiring a major reorganization. The limited nature of the Korean War was one cause, although the Army was required at the same time to provide troops to support the recently negotiated North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). There was no major reorganization of the Army because it was not necessary to raise, train, and equip a mass army almost from scratch, a major reason for reorganizing the Army in World War I and World War II. The reduction in the size of the Army and its budgets after the Korean War was also more moderate than after the earlier global conflicts. During the 1950s the Army did not drop much below 900,000 men, while its budgets fluctuated between $9 and $10 billion, considerably higher than after World War II. The Army continued to be deployed all over the world, in Europe to support NATO and in the Far East to support South Korea, the Nationalist Chinese regime on Formosa, and Japan. Additionally it provided small and large military advisory groups to help train the armies of anti-Communist governments in Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. The principal internal adjustments within the Department of the Army during this period involved the perennial issue of effective control of the Army's supply system, particularly the still autonomous technical services. To solve this problem a series of reorganizations of the Army staff was put through between 1955 and 1956. Two other serious logistical problems were the research and development of new weapons systems and the development of new combat doctrines for their battlefield deployment. The revolution in science and technology and the increasing complexity and costs of new weapons in a period of financial austerity focused attention on these problems. A determined drive by scientists to remove research and development from the control of agencies primarily concerned with procurement and supply led to creation of a new General Staff division, the Office of the Chief of Research and Development, in 1955. The war in Korea, fought mainly with the same weapons and doctrines as World War II, demonstrated a need for development of new weapons and tactical doctrine. Consequently, in 1952 a combat developments program was initiated under the Army Field Forces which, among other things, employed modern scientific operations research techniques developed since World War II. Shortage of funds for the operation of Army installations throughout the continental United States aggravated the continuing dispute between the continental armies and the technical services over responsibility for housekeeping functions at Class II (technical service) installations. This dispute was solved in 1955 by assigning financial responsibility for such functions to the technical services involved. At the same time the Office of the Chief of Army Field Forces was reorganized as the United States Continental Army Command (USCONARC) and, following the pattern of the Army Ground Forces in World War II, placed in command of the continental armies and the Military District of Washington. The Palmer Reorganizations of the Army Staff, 1954–1956 |