"Yesterday, December 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."
With these few words, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced to Congress and a stunned nation what had happened at Pearl Harbor the day before and asked for a formal declaration of war. From his tone it was clear the road ahead would not be easy. Much sacrifice was called for. But he had no doubts as to the final outcome. "With confidence in our armed forces -- with the unbounded determination of our people," he assured his listeners, "we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God." Congress responded by unanimously approving a formal declaration of war against Japan that same afternoon. Three days later a similar resolution placed us at war with Germany.
Fortunately the country had not been caught completely flat-footed. A state of emergency had existed for over a year, a new Selective Service Act was in effect, and the whole process of mobilization was well underway long before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The first months of actual war saw not only the expansion of military forces, but also significant reorganization. In March 1942, the Army was reorganized into three main branches: the Army Ground Forces (AGF), the Army Air Forces (AAF), and the Army Service Forces (ASF). The Quartermaster Corps was placed in Services of Supply (SOS), and Transportation was set up as a separate department.
Although construction and transportation were essentially removed from the Corps' mission, Quartermaster activities continued to embrace food, clothing, equipage, general supplies, horses and mules, laundries, printing, salvage, graves registration, and kindred field services. Most important, the Quartermaster Corps did not change its primary focus, which was (and still is) to support the individual combat soldier. Now, though, with the country immersed in war -- our first total war -- there were many, many more soldiers to support than ever before in our nation's history. Instead of the initial one million, the number soon increased to upwards of four million, and ultimately eight million men and women in the U.S. Army alone, all requiring Quartermaster support on a daily basis.
The keynote of the Quartermaster effort in World War II was sounded by The Quartermaster General himself, then-Major General Edmund B. Gregory. Like FDR, he was both committed and confident, yet eager to assure his countrymen with the following pledge:
"Let me make this simple promise to the American people. The Quartermaster Corps will never fail your boys! We will deliver the goods. Wherever they go -- to whatever point American fighting men penetrate -- Quartermasters will be by their side to 'Keep 'em Rolling to Victory!'"
The Corps' main objective, in other words, was to see that the soldiers being sent to the far corners of the globe to meet the forces of aggression head-on, were indeed "the best fed, best clothed, best equipped, and best cared for" the world has ever seen. Nothing less would do.
The November 1942 issue of The National Geographic Magazine ran a feature article on the Quartermaster's contribution thus far toward the war effort. Most amazing to the author was the wide scope and unprecedented scale of activities allotted to the QM General -- "husky, hardworking 'Pope' Gregory" -- whom he described as "the world's biggest, busiest business man."
"He's the world's biggest purchasing agent, exporter, and delivery boy. His colossal depot warehouses make the big mail-order houses look like crossroads country stores. He's the world's biggest coat-and-suit man, chain-store operator, tobacco salesman, truck and transfer man; biggest tailor, tentmaker, laundryman, musician, radio- and shoe-repairman; biggest cook and baker -- he can turn out 3,000,000 loaves of bread a day!"
DEPOTS. The enormous quantity of goods purchased and stored by Quartermasters stateside, then shipped overseas, is staggering. Almost overnight the scope of distribution activities had to be expanded a hundredfold. At the heart of this phenomenon was the Quartermaster depot system. There were only a handful of uniformed personnel and little over 7,000 civilian employees at QM depots nationwide in June 1940. By war's end the depots were employing on average more than 75,000 civilian employees from coast to coast, notably in such places as San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Atlanta, Columbus and Philadelphia. Each of these facilities had become remarkably efficient at "pushing supplies," owing to the introduction of motorized forklifts, new hydraulic lifts, and roller-conveyor systems.
Quartermaster depots shipped or received on average over a million tons of supplies each month during the height of the war. In May 1945, they set a record when QM representatives attained 1,700,000 tons of supplies, worth more than a billion dollars. What sort of space was needed to store these goods? The Army figured it needed about 300,000,000 square feet of space in the United States alone to house all its military supplies, equipment, weapons and vehicles. Of that amount, nearly 60,000,000 square feet were reserved solely for Quartermaster use. That figure represented about one-third of the total available space in the private warehouses of the U.S. at the time.
CLOTHING. The investment in military clothing was no less significant. Every one of Uncle Sam's nephews, who stepped forward and was sworn in, received 66 separate items of clothing: everything from cotton shorts and wool socks, to dog tags and a "steel pot" helmet -- at an overall cost to the government of approximately $165. It is estimated that it took about 200 pounds of wool, or fleeces from 26 sheep (!) for each new soldier's uniform.
Most of the World War II uniforms were designed, developed, procured and stored in the Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot. With nearly a hundred acres of storage space and stocks of about 500 million articles of clothing and equipment on hand, it was indeed the world's largest clothing store. There, from the earliest days of the war, one could find the enormous piles of military shoes, coats, socks, gloves, belts, etc. There were enough belts alone in the Philadelphia warehouses that, if laid end to end, they would almost reach from coast to coast.
And shoes. The old vets used to say the Army only had two sizes -- "too big, and too small." Now they came in nearly 250 different sizes and shapes, ranging from size 4 1/2 to 16. The Army issued approximately 2,000,000 pairs of shoes and other footwear a month. Some 300,000 of them were "rebuilds," rescued from the salvage pile with much savings to the American taxpayer. QM repairmen were also mending about 1,500,000 pairs monthly.
All told, the Quartermaster Corps procured some 500 different items of clothing, with a total of 6,500 sizes. For instance, there were 42 sizes of women's blouses, 40 sizes of trousers, and 25 sizes of overcoats. Quartermaster-employed researchers developed synthetic materials; lightweight, water-, shrink- and abrasion-resistant apparel; and more efficient and effective combat uniforms and equipment for use in every theater. Toward the end of the war, special emphasis was placed on garments that would keep our soldiers warm and dry in the wet-cold climate of the northwest Pacific. Interestingly enough, the basic field uniform of 1945 contained no item that was in use in January 1942.
Combat service boots (pairs) ....................... 28,700,000
Cotton khaki shirts ..................................................... 69,300,000
Cotton khaki trousers ................................................. 67,900,000
Flannel shirts ............................................................. 73,700,000
Lightweight ponchos ................................................... 5,110,000
Raincoats ................................................................... 28,300,000
Shoes -- service (pairs) ................................................ 79,900,000
Shoe-pacs (pairs) ........................................................ 4,350,000
Tents ......................................................................... 30,500,000
Blankets ..................................................................... 57,000,000
Sleeping bags .............................................................. 10,000,000
Field jackets ................................................................ 49,000,000
Field trousers ............................................................... 68,000,000
Socks ......................................................................... 505,000,000
Subsistence
Canned and fresh meat (lbs.) ................................... 12,900,000,000
Canned, dehydrated and fresh vegetables (lbs.)........ 17,100,000,000
Fruit juices (lbs.) .................................................. 1,700,000,000
Flour (lbs.) .......................................................... 7,840,000,000
Coffee (lbs.) ........................................................ 1,440,000,000
Granulated sugar (lbs.) ......................................... 2,420,000,000
FOOD. Soldiers must eat every day. Wholesale statistics tell us that the story of Quartermaster subsistence was one of the biggest stories of World War II. By the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945, the Corps was buying, storing and issuing some 41,000,000 pounds of foodstuffs a day -- approximately 15,000,000,000 pounds a year -- for the Army alone. Additional purchases were being made for the other military and war services. About one-fourth of the foodstuffs being procured was meat. Dressed and canned chicken purchased for the Army, Navy and others totaled around 613,000,000 pounds annually.
The Army by itself was getting 165,000,000 pounds of dehydrated vegetables a year, 200,000,000 pounds of dehydrated milk, and 70,000,000 pounds of dehydrated eggs, figured on a per annum basis. Armed and war services -- most of them served by the QMC -- were accounting for yearly totals of 32 percent of the nation's canned fruits and vegetables, 17 percent of its sugar, 21 percent of its butter, 13 percent of its eggs, and 23 percent of its meats.
CLASS III. Churchill said at the end of World War I that the Allies had floated to victory "on a sea of oil." His French counterpart, Georges Clemenceau, likewise declared petroleum was "as necessary as blood" for defeating the Germans in 1918. The French even coined a phrase which colorfully and aptly described the importance of gasoline on the modern, mechanized battlefield. They called it "le sang rouge de guerre" (the red blood of war). In World War II, American GIs called it simply Class III or "POL," short for petroleum, oil and lubricants. Its supply too was a Quartermaster mission.
The flow of petroleum products to various theaters was enormous. Even the relatively small North African campaign, code-named Operation TORCH, required no less than 10,000,000 gallons of gasoline. About 50 percent of all the storage space in ships going overseas was reserved for POL. A medium tank used over a gallon and a half of gasoline for each mile it was driven. An armored division required 1,000 gallons to move the same distance. On the eve of D-Day, logistical planners figured the typical Army used well over 5,000,000 gallons (or about 18,000 tons) of gasoline each month.
In Europe the real test came nearly two months after the Normandy landing. It was late July before Allied troops managed to completely free themselves of the hedgerows and penetrate German defenses around the town of St. Lo. The next six weeks saw the 12th Army Group conducting a spectacular maneuver campaign eastward, with General Patton's Third Army leading the way. That is until his tanks began running out of gas. By the last week of August, both the First and Third Armies were in rapid pursuit, using upwards of 800,000 gallons per day. On August 24, the First Army alone used up 782,000 gallons of motor fuel.
With nearly 400 miles separating the armored divisions at the front from the POL storage facilities still back at the coast, the situation grew bleaker by the day. The logistical crisis threatened to halt the Allies where the enemy could not. On August 31, Patton's daily allotment of gasoline dropped off sharply from 400,000 to 31,000 gallons, which placed a virtual stranglehold on the fiery commander. "My men can eat their belts," he was overheard telling Ike at a meeting on September 2, "but my tanks gotta have gas."
Fortunately, the crisis was short-lived. Aided by the famed "Red Ball Express," millions of five-gallon "jerricans" filled with gasoline were hurried nonstop to places they were most needed. By the end of the first week in September, forward area truck heads were issuing POL as soon as it arrived, and consumption rates were once again hitting the 800,000 gallons-a-day mark. The worst of Patton's gasoline woes ended about as quickly as they had begun -- thanks in large part to Quartermasters.
If indeed POL constitutes the lifeblood of the modern Army, Quartermasters in World War II saw to it that the "blood" supplies were constantly replenished. One billion gallons of gasoline, 75,000,000 gallons of lubricating oil, and 45,000,000 pounds of grease kept our planes, tanks, trucks, jeeps, and other vehicles moving on the road to victory.
OTHER SERVICES. In addition to providing more than 70,000 separate items of supply to soldiers around the world, the Quartermaster Corps maintained 70 different kinds of services to keep them in good condition. The QMC ran the biggest laundry operation ever. In 1945 alone, with over 300 laundries working at home and abroad, Quartermasters washed and ironed almost two billion pieces of laundry -- enough that if hung on a single clothesline, it would have to run to more than 500,000 miles long.
Repair services of all kinds were always close to the troops during the war. QM shops repaired shoes, tools, tents, typewriters, field ranges, clothing and cots, among other things. All of this resulted in great savings to the U.S. Government. Quartermaster salvage units in the European Theater of Operations, for instance, "recycled" 43,000 tons of war material, at an estimated savings to the American taxpayer of $163,000,000.
Not surprisingly, a lot of things get lost in the heat of battle. Quartermasters in World War II had the added task of running the world's largest lost-and-found department. One such receiving depot in France accumulated over 100,000 lost items. Lost items ranged from small things such as toothbrushes and wallets, photos and family mementos, and nearly two million dollars in cash and money orders, to bigger or less personal things such as live mines and booby traps, a piano, and even a 600-pound engraved bronze slab. Those that qualified as personal effects were routinely sent to a special depot set up for that purpose in Kansas City.
ANIMALS TOO. Not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American Kennel Association and a new group calling itself "Dogs For Defense" mobilized dog owners across the country to donate quality animals to the Quartermaster Corps. From 1942 on, Quartermasters ran the Army's so-called "K-9 Corps" and undertook to change these new recruits into good fighting "soldiers." In all, nearly 20,000 dogs were procured between 1942 and 1945. They were handled by the QM Remount Branch, which had had nearly a century dealing with animals. When the war began, there were already three remount depots located around the country in Front Royal, Virginia, Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and Fort Reno, Nevada. A fourth was established at Pomona, California, in 1943, to get animals acclimated to a hot, semi-tropical climate not unlike the southwest Pacific theater.
In March 1944, the War Department authorized the creation of QM War Dog Platoons and issued special TO&Es (tables of organization) for that purpose. Fifteen platoons were activated in World War II. Seven saw service in Europe and eight in the Pacific. They served as sentries, pack and sled dogs, mine detectors, and messenger carriers. Demand for infantry scout dogs in particular was growing during the closing days of the war. They were especially useful in the Pacific where they "led point" in the dense, semi-dark jungles, and helped patrolling infantrymen avoid enemy ambushes.
World War II has been described as the first "truly gasoline-combustion engine war," but neither side could dispense with the age-old use of horses and mules. In 1941, the U.S. Army had 28,023 horses and 2,125 mules on hand. The number of horses steadily went down as Cavalry units were "de-horsed" during the war. But there was still a pressing need at times for the old Army mule. The Quartermaster Remount Service provided pack mules to help transport supplies in Tunisia during the winter of 1942-43, and later in the rugged mountains of Italy. QM pack outfits were also used extensively along the Burma Trail and in parts of south-central China.
IN APPRECIATION. For most of America's past wars the role of logistics in general, and of the Quartermaster Corps in particular, received scant attention and very little praise. World War II changed all that. From Bataan on, "Fighting Quartermasters" were in the news. Newspapers, journals, magazines, even radio programs lauded the Quartermaster Corps' wartime achievements. Most observers appeared to recognize the difficulties involved in supporting such a huge force, engaged in several theaters at once, in an open-ended conflict. They usually wound up praising the Army's ability to care for its own in combat: to get fresh turkeys to the men at the front on Thanksgiving, to come up with new items like K- and C-Rations, to provide laundry and bath service in the most unlikely spots, to handle the dead with such reverence and respect, and just to supply the fighting forces with the sheer volume of goods needed to successfully prosecute the world's largest war ever.
Quartermasters played a big role, an indispensable role in the overall war effort, and the public was well aware of the contribution for a change. Appreciation was shown in many ways. For example, on March 3, 1944, New Hampshire Senator Styles Bridges gave a stirring speech to his U.S. Senate colleagues, in praise of the Quartermaster Corps. He began his remarks as follows:
"Daily we read in the headlines of our victories, of spectacular bombing raids, of heroic landings on far-away shores, of desperate land engagements. These outstanding phases of this war we fully appre- ciate, and to these heroic men we pay full honor. "Today I wish to tell the Senate and, through the vehicle of the Senate, the people of the Nation, a very vital and colorful story, a story of one of the least publicized branches of our armed forces, the Quarter- master Corps. "One of the several supply services of our Army, the Quartermaster Corps, is the one closest to the soldier, the one closest to your boy. The food he eats, the clothing he wears, the shoes in which he covers the terrain he is taking from the enemy every day are but a few of the contribu- tions of the Quartermaster Corps to our ultimate victory."
Senator Bridges delivered his remarks a full three months before D-Day, knowing that the story was far from over, and that many dark days lay ahead. Yet he felt an urgent need to pay tribute where tribute was due. At length, he concluded by saying: "That is the story of the Quartermaster Corps, a fine, capable fighting organization whose imperishable record of achievement in this global war is one in which virtually every American has shared, and one of which every American can be proud."
No truer words were ever spoken.