Battalion: An Organizational Study of the United States Infantry
The National Defense Act of 1916
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:
For all its newfound power, the United States Army in 1914 was still far behind its European contemporaries. It fell even further behind after the European armies went to war with one another, dramatically increasing their own numbers and firepower and honing their tactical doctrines and techniques with actual combat experience. The Army’s most senior officer, Major General Leonard Wood, together with former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, warned that it would not be possible for the United States to remain aloof from this conflict indefinitely and urged redoubled efforts to prepare the United States for war. Assisted by the sinking of the Lusitania and the onset of unrestricted submarine warfare, Wood, Roosevelt, and others were able to attract a considerable following that strongly supported American military preparedness.
However, powerful anti-preparedness forces opposed them. These included pacifists, isolationists, and populist romantics like William Jennings Bryan. Bryan, while certainly no pacifist, regarded any war preparation as unnecessary. According to Bryan, Americans were born soldiers and needed no training or organization. If war should be declared then the President had only to call for volunteers and they would all appear, ready to fight, within one day. Most anti-militarists, however, were more rational than that. As in 1898, many feared an overly powerful Federal Army. Others questioned the wisdom of involving the United States in what was really a purely European dispute. Southern whites opposed the arming of blacks. National Guardsmen were especially wary of new plots by Regular Army Uptonians to upstage them.
The Guardsmen’s fears, at least, were entirely justified. They soon discovered that the Regulars were cooking up yet another Federal reserve force to supersede the National Guard. They intended to call it the Continental Army. To insure that their new force would have enough men, the Regulars wanted conscription. However, National Guard supporters fought the Continental Army as strongly as they had opposed the Hull Bill in 1898. This led to a last minute compromise that produced the National Defense Act of 1916. Passed in June of that year, it provided for a five-year expansion of the Regular Army from its then current strength of 100,000 to 175,000 (288,000 at war strength). It killed the Continental Army and affirmed that the National Guard (this term by now covered all state militia units that were receiving Federal money) would remain as the nation’s first reserve.
The Guard would increase in size from 100,000 to 425,000. The regulations covering its discipline and supply would be the same as those for the Regular Army. The Federal Government would pay it for 48 armory drills and 15 days of field training per year. Guard officers would have to meet Regular Army training and selection standards, and all Guard members would have to respond to Federal calls for service anywhere. There would be no more US Volunteers.[1] All able-bodied male citizens (or those declaring an intent to become citizens) between the ages of 18 and 45 who were not already in the National Guard or Naval Militia would constitute the Unorganized Militia. Soon to be dubbed the National Army, the latter was a “wartime only” force to be raised by conscription.
Although the Regulars had gotten much of what they wanted they considered the Act to be an unconscionable pork barrel for the National Guard. The Regular Army was to raise 35 new infantry regiments, but only the first seven of these became active prior to the United States’ declaration of War on Germany in April 1917. The Act also authorized each infantry regiment to have (for the first time) permanent headquarters, supply, and machinegun companies. A regiment would no longer have to deplete the strength of its rifle companies in order to improvise provisional headquarters, machinegun and supply units.[2]
In July 1917, the War Department instituted a new and very Uptonian system of identifying, through numeric designations, all active and reserve component organizations called into national service. With certain exceptions this system is still in use. It set aside the numbers 1 through 25 for Regular Army infantry divisions (only numbers 1 through 20 were used in 1917-18). For National Guard divisions it allocated numbers 26 through 50 (of which only 26 through 42 became active in 1917-18). It set aside numbers 51 through 75 for special units and gave numbers 76 and higher to National Army divisions. Regular Army infantry regiments would carry numbers between 1 and 100 (although numbers 67 and higher were “war only” formations). National Guard regiments would carry numbers 101 to 299 (though only 101 through 168 were actually used); and numbers 301 and higher were for the National Army.
The new system profoundly affected the National Guard. State unit identifications, titles, and traditions were swept away. Regiments able to trace their histories back to before the Revolutionary War were broken up or combined with other units, their distinctiveness submerged in a sea of uniformity. With the abandonment of local recruiting, most units also lost their regional character as they were filled up with men drafted from all over the country.[3]
The War Department issued new tables of organization in May 1917 (see Appendix 2.1) that implemented the changes authorized by Congress in the National Defense Act of 1916. Although the new tables did not greatly change the maximum strength of an infantry regiment, they prescribed much higher minimum strength levels and significantly increased the proportion of non-commissioned officers. Corporals commanded all squads and an extra corporal per company served as clerk. (These company clerks would survive until the early 1980s.) Each company also got a mess sergeant to supervise its cooks and its quota of privates first class (PFC) was also specified for the first time. The company’s artificers were now called “mechanics” and its musicians became “buglers.” In addition, newly designated supply officers and sergeants replaced the old quartermaster and commissary officers and sergeants and thus eliminated some unnecessary duplication (see Appendix 2.1).[4]
Besides the battalion commander himself (a major) each battalion headquarters now had its own adjutant but the sergeant major and mounted orderlies were still just permanent attachments from the regimental headquarters company. This was because the Army’s system of personnel administration required that all enlisted men be members of companies or equivalent organizations. Since a battalion headquarters was too small to act as a company the regimental headquarters company provided its company-level administration. The supply company supported each battalion with a section of five or seven wagons under a regimental supply sergeant (in lieu of a supply officer) but as before, these “battalion sections” normally operated under supply company control.
The now permanent regimental machinegun company had become appreciably larger and included four full-time officers, including a reconnaissance officer. Since the reconnaissance officer was mainly concerned with range finding (to support long-range and indirect fire) and with position selection he may be seen as a throwback to the Nineteenth Century “machineguns as artillery” idea.
The regimental supply company operated separate supply sections for the machinegun company and each infantry battalion. Ammunition allowances per weapon were the same as in 1914 except that the machinegun company would get two combat wagons rather than one. The supply company headquarters itself provided vehicles for the regimental headquarters, headquarters company, and medical personnel.
The regimental adjutant also continued to serve as headquarters company commander. The company itself still furnished the regimental band and the sergeants major and mounted orderlies for regimental and battalion headquarters. However it no longer sent men to brigade headquarters since these were now self-supporting. The medical detachment of a maximum strength regiment could attach two aid men to each rifle company and set up a small aid station at each battalion and at the regimental headquarters.[5]
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] General Pershing and President Wilson later quashed a scheme hatched by Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt to raise a US Volunteer division (an enlarged version of “the Rough Riders”) for France. See A.A. Nofi, The Spanish American War, 1898 op cit p. 149.
[2] Weigley pp. 341-350; Urwin p. 153; John K. Mahon pp. 34-39; and US War Department, Order of Battle of the United States Land Forces in the World War Vol 3 part 2 (Washington DC Center for Military History 1988, first pub 1949) pp. 1238-39, 1270-72, 1329-30, 1372-84. See also John Garry Clifford The Citizen Soldiers, The Plattsburgh Training Camp Movement, 1913-1920 (Lexington Kentucky, The University Press of Kentucky 1972) for the pro- and anti- preparedness politics.
[3] See Order of Battle of the United States Land Forces in the World War op cit Vols 1 to 3.
[4] US War Department, The United States Army in the World War Vol 1, Organization (Washington DC, Center of Military History 1988, first printed 1948) War Dept Document No 571, May 3 1917, Tables 2 and 3; pp. 162-163.
[5] Ibid.