A New Citizen Army (1919-1920)
Battalion: An Organizational Study of United States Infantry
The estate of the late John Sayen has graciously given the Tactical Notebook permission to serialize his study of the organizational evolution of American infantry battalions. The author’s preface and the previous section of this book may be found via the following links:
Scarcely had the First World War ended when the United States began a demobilization that, in terms of its speed and thoroughness, dwarfed even that of the Civil War. From a peak strength of 3.7 million in November 1918, the Army plunged to an active strength of 200,000 as of 1 January 1920. The military buildup that had begun in 1898 was definitely at an end.
For the post-war Army, Congress rejected the Army General Staff’s Uptonian plan for an expansible force of 500,000 men organized in 20 half-strength divisions. Instead, it favored an alternative put forward by Colonel John McAuley Palmer. Palmer, a Pershing protégé, offered Pershing’s view that the AEF had won the war for the Allies despite the bumbling Uptonians at the War Department and those ungrateful and back-stabbing British and French.
The mere fact that the war had been won at all (however unexpectedly) seemed to justify in the mind of Colonel Palmer and many others the enormous human cost of sending untrained men under incompetent officers into battle, even against an already spent and demoralized enemy. The winning of wars by such means, despite the availability of more efficient and humane alternatives, was what Emory Upton had found so unconscionable when he witnessed it during the American Civil War.
Nevertheless, in his concern about the danger of allowing professional soldiers to become dominant in American military and foreign policy, Palmer had scored an important point. Such men could constitute a special interest group that might encourage foreign adventures to insure their continued employment. They might also press for a larger (and freedom threatening) Federal government that could float heavy military expenditures, justified or not.
As a privileged class, professional soldiers might even use their positions to foist upon an unsuspecting public substantial expenditure on unnecessary policy or procurement “boondoggles.” They might not even feel much pressure to acquire and maintain the military skills that were the “bread and butter” of their existence. In peacetime, such skills can easily become soft and evaporate. Their absence might be hard to detect, especially by a public that seldom participated in military affairs. Any wartime disasters that might result could easily be blamed on not enough money or public support.
Palmer wanted to be certain that the nation would not go to war without genuine popular support (as opposed to mere acquiescence). A Swiss style citizen army subject to universal military training should do most of the fighting, according to Palmer. The Regular Army should confine itself to the supervision of peacetime training and the conduct of small and short-term contingency operations not requiring a mass mobilization. The Regulars would share the key leadership positions in a wartime army with members of the citizen force. Palmer’s principal difficulty, however, lay in finding a means to synthesize the skills of the professional with the patriotism and disinterestedness of the citizen soldier.[1]
Congress adopted most of Palmer’s ideas when it passed the National Defense Act of 4 June 1920. However, it would not agree to universal military training. Instead, it authorized a Regular Army of 280,000 and a National Guard expanded (on paper) to 435,000. The National Army was renamed the “Organized Reserve.” The Guard and the Organized Reserve would provide Palmer’s citizen soldiers who would fight the nation’s major wars. Citizen officers, including some in the highest ranks, would command them.
The Regular Army itself would have three armies and nine army corps, all organized on a territorial basis. These would replace the old territorial departments. Each army corps would get one Regular Army, two National Guard, and three Organized Reserve infantry divisions. Three additional Regular Army divisions (raising the total to 12) would be permanently stationed overseas. Congress would cease to dictate the composition of tactical units and would no longer limit infantry regiments to 15 companies each.
In addition, Congress introduced a new pay system for enlisted men that would have seven grades. Grade 1 (master sergeant) was the highest, followed by Grades 2 (technical sergeant), 3 (staff sergeant), 4 (sergeant), 5 (corporal), 6 (private first class, or PFC), and 7 (private). Congress also specified how many enlisted men could occupy each of these grades. This tended to constrain the Army’s organizational structures since Congress did not allow enough men in the higher grades to fill all the positions that the Army wanted. To reward skilled technicians who lacked leadership responsibilities, the Army designated them as specialists and allowed them to occupy higher pay grades while still ranking as privates or privates first class. Sergeant major and first sergeant ceased to be permanent ranks and instead became positions that were usually (but not always) filled by master sergeants.[2]
Finally, Congress also established an office of the Chief of Infantry, headed by a major general. Like the chiefs of the Army’s other branches such as the artillery or engineers, the Chief of Infantry would supervise training; develop weapons and doctrine; represent the infantry’s bureaucratic interests, and give it a professional image.
Editor’s Note: The format of the many appendices to this work fit poorly with Substack. For that reason, I have placed them on a PDF file that can be found at Military Learning Library, a website that I maintain.
[1] Trask, op cit p 1; Weigley op cit pp. 395-97 and 599.
[2] Weigley op cit pp. 397-398; Major A. W. Lane “Tables of Organization” Infantry Journal, May 1921 (Washington DC, US Infantry Association) pp. 486-487.
