Prelude to Battle

(See Cover)

This week some 5,000,000 Americans in the Army of the United States will have Christmas dinner on the house. Not all will eat on the same day: more than 1,000,000 are outside of the U.S., and many are on the other side of the international date line. They will eat in at least 65 different countries or islands. For many there will be no turkey, no snow, no bells (see p. 38). For others in Alaska, in Greenland, in Iceland, there may be turkey and even bells, and there certainly will be snow. It will be a Christmas unique in the Army's history, for on no other Christmas have so many men in U.S. uniforms been scattered so far over the earth.

Some 3,000,000 will in a sense have dinner on a brisk, sandy-haired little man: Lieut. General Lesley James McNair, Chief of the Army Ground Forces. It is he who is training the new Army's doughboys, anti-aircraftsmen, field artillerymen, tankers, cavalrymen--all except the airmen and the Services of Supply--for the toughest war any U.S. army ever had to fight.

Lust for Battle. "I found many things wrong but I am never satisfied anyway," said General McNair, at the Tennessee maneuvers 18 months ago.

A lot of things have changed for Lieut. General Lesley James McNair since he expressed that dissatisfaction. Then he was charged with supervising the peacetime maneuvers of 27 infantry divisions. Then his artillery was mostly wooden sticks. There were two armored divisions in possible running order with some obsolete light tanks. Such devices as air-bome, mountain and amphibious troops were futuristic experiments. About 1,000,000 soldiers had been inducted into the U.S. Army. Some of them seemed to like playing soldier, but many others were writing to Senator Burt Wheeler to complain about their morale.

A year and a half of kaleidoscopic transition failed to change General McNair's dissatisfaction. A soft-spoken man with light blue eyes, he is perhaps the 20-minute hardboiled realist of the U.S. high command. When others were gasping at the growing might of the U.S. Army in October 1941 (around 1,600,000), McNair said only: "Our great potentialities must not lull us into complacency." Earlier (in Louisiana) he got to the verge of unbridled praise: "If the troops' equipment were completed, they would give a better account of themselves today than American troops did in the World War." Then he added: "Which is not saying too much."

Today General McNair sees vast qualitative as well as quantitative improvements in the Army of 1942 over the Army of 1941. But when others boast about planes and plane production, McNair observes: "We haven't got enough for proper air-ground training." The spirit of the soldiers--the persisting tendency to seek an easy war--troubles him. In a nationwide broadcast last month to the troops in his home command, he said: "There is no doubt that Americans can and will fight; when aroused they are brave in battle. You are going to get killing mad eventually; why not now, while you have time to learn thoroughly the art of killing. Soldiers learn quickly and well in battle . . . but the method is costly to both you and the nation."

One reason for General McNair's concern: "A recent group of voluntary enlistments--totaling 30,000--reveals but 5% for the infantry and Armored Forces both. These two arms are preeminently those of close combat. Does this figure mean that our soldiers prefer the more genteel forms of warfare? If so, the sooner we change such preferences, the better for our country.

"Our soldiers must have the fighting spirit. If you call that hating our enemies, then we must hate with every fiber of our being. We must lust for battle; our object in life must be to kill. . . . Since killing is the object of our efforts, the sooner we get in the killing mood, the better and more skillful we shall be when the real test comes. The struggle is for survival--kill or be killed."

War is not Easy. In the two and one-half years since he left the academic surroundings of Fort Leavenworth's Command and General Staff School, the Army's No. 1 teacher has been faced with the Army's No. 1 human dilemma: how to bring the hard, cruel facts of war to a generation raised on the premise that there would never be another war.

In World War I battle deaths among Germany's enemies were about 65% higher than her own. Lower casualties are the result of superior training and leadership. The job of Lesley James McNair is to provide the best training and leadership possible in an Army which now has only 40 Regular Army officers per division and will have half that many within a few months. There were soldiers in November's North African invasion who had been civilians only three months before.

Battle Experience. Most American troops will have had at least a year's hard training before they meet an enemy in 1943 (for 1944 and the years beyond: no guarantees). Almost the only worthwhile experience for new forms of combat like the Air Forces is battle experience. But for the ground troops, McNair's pupils, there is less that is new. Killing with rifle, bayonet and field gun has changed only by a few refinements since 1918. Hence McNair's objective: train soldiers as thoroughly as possible short of actual combat.

Though it is 55 weeks since Pearl Harbor, U.S. ground troops have seen little action, especially action that would provide lessons for training. The men on Bataan never had a chance. Army troops on Guadalcanal did not arrive until the Marines had the situation three-quarters in hand. In Tunisia only a few U.S. troops are yet in battle with British Lieut. General Anderson's First Army. Only in the Battle for Buna (see p. 20) are McNair's pupils involved to the hilt. There is little new in that primitive battle except that trench warfare has given way to tree snipers' warfare. As for the murderous jungle terrain in New Guinea, it simply cannot be duplicated--the kind of fact which makes General McNair (and General Douglas MacArthur) doubt the value of over-specialized training which may actually unfit the trainees for any form of warfare except their own specialty.

"The Professor." Lesley McNair wanted to be a naval officer. Back home in Minnesota he had an alternate appointment to Annapolis, but he tired of waiting and got into West Point by competitive examination. His West Point colleagues remember him only as the sort of mathematical shark that makes promising material for the field artillery. At the Point he acquired the nickname "Whitey," and met Clare Huster, whom he married three years later.

As a member of the training section of Pershing's G.H.Q. he became the second youngest brigadier general in France at 35, won the D.S.M. for his coordination of artillery fire and infantry combat. That was one of the first of his many teaching jobs. ("The peacetime Army did nothing but teach," he says.)

In 1940, a month after the fall of France, Whitey McNair got his biggest job of teaching: to organize and supervise the wartime education of the millions who were about to be called to the colors. It was only slightly less of a hodgepodge Army than the one assembled in 1917 and 1918. Reserve officers were mostly college R.O.T.C. graduates. The National Guard often had politicians or politicians' friends as its commanders and average adolescents as its soldiers.

But Whitey McNair sailed into the job. He did the best he could with the sticks and stones he used for arms and ammunition. He hammered on the necessity of adequate leadership. ("Young officers are the broad foundation on which our war army must be built.") He weeded out incompetents. He lectured on the fundamentals of warfare, knowing that he had to get as many men as nearly ready as he could. And he acquired a smart, towering, young lieutenant colonel as his deputy, Mark Wayne Clark, who was to pave the way for the African invasion.

Officer Candidates. Most successful of the innovations of World War II are the Officers' Candidate Schools. Looking back now, General McNair believes these schools which take enlisted men from the ranks may prove the U.S. Army's salvation. Currently they are turning out many thousand officers each month for the Ground Forces alone. More than half the officers of the most democratic of armies are now men up from the ranks, chosen solely for ability and leadership.

Best of these officers came in the first nine months of the program (July 1941-March 1942). The first classes were capable enlisted men who had come into the Army before the draft, mostly young sergeants with demonstrated qualities of leadership. At one typical school, only 12% of the first class were college graduates. With the entrance of draftees, the percentage rose to more than 80%. Now the percentage is below 20% again.

Still the cry is for more capable officers. Some observers believe the barrel is being scraped. The physical appearance of the newest crop is undersized. Their average grades are lower, and their age is dropping. When the tide of teen-age draftees begins flowing the average age will fall still more. "I would rather have 25-year-old officers." says General McNair, "but we'll take them at 19 if they are good."

More Divisions Faster. The U.S. Army today includes 70-odd divisions (against Germany's 300), of which a good-sized number are already overseas. Since practically all the 70-odd are earmarked for overseas duty, the Army will have to create many more before next Christmas. The system: split off 1,300-man cadres from older divisions, then add 12,000 green recruits from reception centers.

General McNair would like to cut down the training period for divisions, but has thus far been unable to pull it under one year. Reason: lack of trained officers. He looks enviously at the German system which poured out divisions in six months --largely because the Germans had been preparing skilled wartime officers for many years, and German enlisted men had been through compulsory military training.

After this war, says professorial General McNair, the U.S. must face peacetime selective service. He does not believe universal military training is necessary or practical in the U.S. He does believe a fair percentage of well-selected young men must be made to train as potential war leaders.

Biggest Command. More than half the troops now in the U.S. Army are McNair-trained. With the stepped-up growth of airpower, the percentage will fall off slightly until he has not quite as many under his wing as the combined forces of his two high-command counterparts, Lieut. Generals Arnold of the Air Forces and Somervell of S.O.S.

The McNair university is divided into ten colleges:

> The Second Army (headquarters Memphis) commanded by tough-as-leather Lieut. General Ben Lear, to whom divisions and corps are sent for maneuvers.

> The Third Army (headquarters San Antonio) under brilliant, German-born Lieut. General Walter Krueger, also a prime supervisor of maneuvers.

> Lieut. General Jacob Devers' Armored Forces (headquarters Fort Knox, Ky.) which includes 14 divisions (Germany probably has 25).

> The Air-Borne Command, established last March, under Brigadier General Elbridge G. Chapman Jr., 47.

> The Tank Destroyer Command-at Killeen, Tex., under Major General Andrew D. Bruce, 48.

> The Amphibious Training Center, established last spring, commanded by Brigadier General Frank A. Keating, 47.

> The Desert Training Command in California (where Major General George S. Patton trained his tankers before taking them to Africa), headed by Major General Fred L. Walker, 55.

> The Replacement and School Command (officers' schools, enlisted pools) under Major General Harold R. Bull, 49.

> The Mountain Training Command in Colorado under a 47-year-old West Pointer, Brigadier General Onslow S. Rolfe.

> The Anti-Aircraft Command (headquarters Camp Davis, N.C.) under 61-year-old Major General Joseph A. Green.

After School? An Army's schooling never ends, and General McNair's biggest task soon will be to apply the lessons of combat as they come in from more & more U.S. fronts. That process includes changes in training techniques, in organization, in weapons--a stage which is just beginning, but is already having marked effects on the whole U.S. war machine.

General Somervell naturally does not like to interrupt production schedules to change specifications as quickly and often as General McNair might like; many a key plant, forced to change anyway, has had to halt or slow its output in midstream. Keying General McNair's Army school and the production machine behind it to the demands of global war will require all the skill, tact and integration that General McNair, General Somervell, and civilian officials can supply.

In these labors General McNair has the warm support of his chief, General George Catlett Marshall, who is also his best friend. Many in the Army still think that General Marshall yearns to be one of the Pershings on World War II's active fronts (although his staff denies it). If so, and the Army has to look for a new Chief of Staff, the word may be to watch 1) Lieut. General Somervell, 2) Lesley James McNair.

* The Tank Destroyer Command lies closest to Artilleryman McNair's heart. The tank destroyer, or mobile anti-tank gun, is his child. Last week's news from Africa indicated that General McNair's tank destroyer had been vindicated. The General's only son is tall, redheaded Lieut. Colonel Douglas McNair, 35, a tank destroyer officer.

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