Test in the Field

North of Tennessee's meandering Duck River, where rolling meadows and woods break sharply into commanding hills, 55,000 U.S. fighting men last week worked at war. A few weeks before, frank General George Marshall had said that the U.S. Army was still in the high-school stage. In Lieut. General Ben Lear's Second Army, three divisions were far enough along in their courses to be sent to the Tennessee laboratory to show what they had learned, and study further in the hard school of field maneuver.

Last week, after ten days of set exercises in the 600-mile-square area south of Nashville, they met in mimic battle--the Fifth (Regular) and 27th (New York National Guard) Divisions on one side, the 30th Division (Tennessee, Georgia, North and South Carolina) and the 153rd Infantry Regiment (Arkansas) on the other.

A warm-up for six months of maneuvers that will put up to 472,000 troops into battle at one time (during September in Louisiana), the Second Army's first fight was no more than a quiz; the final examinations will come later. Army officers were only incidentally interested in the fact that the numerically weaker Red Army (30th Division) backed up before the Blues. They were vitally interested in what signs the Second Army's troops showed of acquiring the sheen and polish of first-class fighting men.

Gibes & Gusto. Making allowances for inevitable shortages of equipment and for the fact that the maneuver season was just beginning, they saw a realistic, competent job of battle craft.

Dusty trucks, with drivers' rifles in holsters alongside the steering wheels, rumbled along rocky roads and through field and wood without traffic tie-ups. Supply functioned without a major hitch. Motorcycle dispatch riders, powdered with dust that turned their blue denim white, clattered into well-hidden command posts with battle messages that got prompt handling. In forward areas, tireless doughboys, in superb physical condition, moved forward, retired, swung down the roadsides with a minimum of stragglers.

In one 24-hour period during the week, infantry soldiers of the 2yth slogged over 25 miles of road, wood and field without showing exhaustion, were still able to gibe at less active outfits as they pulled into bivouac.

The Second Army's men made camp in afternoon showers, and by night without lights--in creek valleys, on hills, in woods. They slept on the ground, ate good food from spotless mess kits, with gusto. Every creek was a bathtub where bronzed soldiers bathed, a washtub where they laundered clothes and hung them on tree limbs to dry. In bivouac and on long halts, barbers broke out clippers and shears, went to work on soldiers' close-cropped polls. If condition, cleanliness and a kind of jeering morale were the only measures of good outfits, the Second Army needed nothing more.

Logs & Laziness. There were also plenty of deficiencies, and none knew them better than the Second Army's No. 1 soldier, burly, barrel-voiced Ben Lear. Most annoying, because unavoidable, were shortages of equipment, trucks, radio equipment, .50-caliber machine guns, mortars. None of the light-artillery outfits yet have the new 105-mm. howitzers. Throughout the maneuver area many a crew worked, deadly serious and full of ginger, around a log that represented a mortar or an anti-tank gun. Luckier were soldiers who had a 37-mm. anti-tank gun to work with, even though the 37 has proved it cannot stop a modern tank, must be replaced with a heavier piece.

As easy for good soldiers to spot as the log guns are the substandard officers. And such officers are bound to be found in almost every outfit: Reserve, Regulars or National Guard. In the fat times of peace many a National Guard officer held on, even won promotion, by the politics which are still the curse of many Guard outfits. Among Regulars, many a dullard has hung on and gone up by keeping out of trouble and taking his promotions automatically, while the fat grew ever thicker between the ears. Many an unworthy Reservist progressed by looking good in two-week summer camps, keeping up his correspondence-course work, but never having a real test with troops.

To many of these officers, the 1941 maneuvers mean the end of the road. Two weeks ago the Army's G.H.Q. Chief of Staff, Lieut. General Lesley J. McNair, told newsmen at Washington that the maneuvers would be more than a training school. For officers they will also be a test of fitness to lead troops in battle. The dull, the lazy, the careless, the generally incompetent, shown up in the field as well as by past records, will have to face the dreaded reclassification boards ("B-Boards"). Found substandard, they will get the gate. The U.S. public will have to get used to hearing the cries of Congressmen for the retention of officers tried by the Army in a national emergency and found wanting.

One who will certainly do his best to comb out incompetent officers is the Second Army's Ben Lear, who fortnight ago said, "Elimination of unfit, inefficient and incompetent leaders is of greater importance than the elimination of defective and ineffective weapons." Last week in the 35th National Guard Division (Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska) the B-Boards were hard at work, even before the 35th got into maneuvers. Two brigadier generals, a colonel and other smaller fry were up for reclassification. Army rumor had it that the boards were going to get down to lieutenants before they were through. But the 35th was no horrible example. Other outfits were going to have the same kind of house cleaning. Able National Guard and Reserve officers hoped that B-Boards would look as critically on Regulars as on citizen officers.

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