WORLD WAR II NCOs

The first peacetime conscription in 16, 1940, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Service Act. Tidal waves of draftees reported for active duty after Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor. The accession rate during one hectic month in 1942 exceeded 514,000, almost triple the prewar Army's enlisted strength, which totaled 187,000 in 1939. Fewer than one half of one percent were volunteers after patriotic euphoria subsided.

Competition for gifted recruits was savage. Wasteful personnel assignment policies and enlisted grade inflation squandered talent, while accelerated promotions and on-the-job training stunted the professional development of amateur NCOs. Hard-bitten warrior Lt. Gen. Ben Lear, who commanded Second Army, predicted that "we will pay for this dearly in battle." He was right.

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps initially relied on volunteers, who joined one jump ahead of the draft to avoid becoming garden-variety ground pounders. Mounting quantitative requirements made them discontinue that practice on February 1, 1943, but both services continued to skim the cream off the top, because they could reject qualitatively inferior draftees that the manpower-intensive Army reluctantly had to accept. Army personnel assignment policies, which made poor use of manpower received, magnified resultant problems. The Army's NCO corps, which lacked a staunch and vocal champion, received potential leaders after all other plates overflowed.

Initial winnowing took place at reception centers by harried personnel officers. The Army General Classification Test (AGCT), which was their principal tool, allegedly measured inherent intelligence, occupational experience and ability to learn. Results received great weight, although many administrators disputed its validity and bleary-eyed, often indifferent recruits commonly took that crucially important exam on their very first day away from home. Numerical scores occupied five categories, of which Class I (130 or higher) and Class II (110-129) contained the main source of potentially outstanding NCOs. Class III, IV and V scores were 90-100, 70-89 and 69 or lower respectively.

The AGCT was by no means infallible-savants without a grain of common sense could make high marks-but it did keep most cooks out of motor pools and most mechanics out of kitchens, despite disdainful commentaries to the contrary. Inductees early in 1942 were fairly representative. Class I included 8 percent; Class II, 29 percent.

Personnel managers professed a policy of proportionate distribution, but "after you, Gaston" manners almost immediately gave way to elbowing, butting, thumb-in-the-eye, knee-in-the-groin, Dogpatch-style donnybrooks wherein the Army Ground Force (AGF), Army Air Force (AAF) and Army Service Force (ASF) fought pitched battles for AGCT Classes I and II.

Three-fourths of all Caucasian males assigned to the Army Air Force by a War Department decree dated February 1942 came from Classes I and II, plus men who scored 100 or more in Class III. Army Ground Force NCO development programs thereupon stalled, while the AAF wallowed in waste. The War Department's G-1 waived the 75 percent rule in July 1942, after Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair, Chief of the AGF, argued that requirements for "high grade and intelligent enlisted men as combat leaders ... counter-balance needs of the Air Force for enlisted technicians." Surcease, however, barely lasted two months before AAF's commander, Gen. Henry (Hap) Arnold, appealed that decision to Gen. George C. Marshall, the Army's Chief of Staff. He won, because impending commitments of air power in Europe took precedence.

Army Air Force demands for brainy enlisted men expanded unreasonably after personnel managers reinstated preferential treatment in accord with C. Northcote Parkinson's Second Law, which asserts that "expenditure rises to meet income." The Army's Inspector General (IG), poking about air bases across the United States, discovered that more than a third of all AAF privates in AGCT Classes I and II were "messengers, warehousemen, clerks, guards, orderlies, truck drivers, firemen and assistant cooks." He recommended that the War Department crimp Army Air Force quotas immediately, but the intellectual scoreboard still looked outrageously lopsided as late as December 1943.

The foregoing figures excluded nearly a quarter of a million aviation cadets, most of whom signed "contracts" while they were civilians. Ground combat NCOs and other soldiers who met minimum physical and mental standards moreover were free to volunteer as "fly boys" throughout the mobilization period. That provision caused the 44th Infantry Division alone to lose 1,800 high-quality enlisted men, who otherwise could have become squad leaders or platoon sergeants in the summer of 1943. None returned because the Army Air Force even retained all washouts.

Army General Classification Test Classes I and II were the source of nearly 293,000 officer candidates during World War II. Regular Army warrant officers and sergeants constituted 95 percent of the first wave that reported in July 1941, but their quality often left a lot to be desired because cagey commanders kept the best and unloaded substandard noncoms. That practice continued until repeated complaints reached the War Department's infuriated G-1, who recommended disciplinary action against offenders.

Gen. Marshall dispatched a scathing letter to the field that, loosely paraphrased, said, "Blue chips only in the pot." Officer Candidate School (OCS) consequently siphoned seasoned and aspiring NCOs from troop units at a rapid clip until June 1942, when quality began to sag badly. Army Ground Force policy makers at that point directed infantry, armor and artillery schools to "produce good administrators from those who lack combat leadership qualities," whereas all previous graduates had become platoon commanders. Scrapings from the bottom of buckets thereafter caused failures at Fort Benning, Ga., to soar from 1.9 to more than 17 percent, a trend that was woefully evident elsewhere.

The Army Specialized Training Program simultaneously sheltered 150,000 men with AGCT scores of 115 or more, five points higher than marks that officer candidate schools demanded. Members of that elite group deferred active duty while they studied math, physics, chemistry, medicine, engineering, linguistics and other subjects at civilian colleges. Army Ground Forces furnished nearly half of them from combat-bound units while beating the bushes for enough prospective noncoms to stock four or five new divisions every month.

Specification serial numbers and AGCT scores strongly influenced the initial distribution of enlisted men during World War II. That system categorized every occupational specialty from 001 to 999. Numbers below 500 conformed in some way to civilian skills, while those above 500 had no recognizable parallel.

Army Service Forces thereby gained great advantage. The Corps of Engineers, for example, identified more than 90 specialties that included ferryboat crewmen, steeple-jacks, cats-skinners and rivet-catchers (seven out of every 10 recruits). Combat arms, in contrast, got more than their fair share of artless inductees because snipers, tank gunners, bazookamen, artillery forward observers and the like had no civilian corollaries. The Adjutant General's chief psychologist warned that plumbers with enough savvy to become successful rifle squad leaders or platoon sergeants should not spend the war unplugging urinals, but personnel policy makers ignored his advice.

Inflated NCO requirements, blurred distinctions between noncoms and specialists, premature promotions and incompetent training further diminished the number of competent enlisted troop leaders. Unhappy subordinates paid a high price.

The ratio of noncoms to privates ballooned a whopping 25 percent at the very moment adjutants were shaking trees to meet their most modest needs. The chief of infantry, for example, beefed up rifle squads from eight men to 12, although extensive field tests concluded that a corporal could not control that many men under battlefield conditions. Squad leaders became buck sergeants in compensation, with a corporal as second in command. That seemingly innocuous act doubled noncom requirements in more than 25,000 rifle squads that belonged to 288 infantry regiments and 70-some separate combat battalions before World War II ended.

War Department personnel policy makers began to award enlisted men stripes as well as pay for selected skills when technicians T-3, T-4 and T-5 replaced pre-World War II specialist ratings on June 30, 1942. Not only were the chevrons that technicians thereafter wore indistinguishable from those of legitimate NCOs, except for an unobtrusive "T," but the relevant Army regulation declared that "command authority [applied] to technicians in the same manner as to other noncommissioned officers."

Enlisted grade inflation spiraled upward until 1945, by which time every infantry rifle company NCO had sewed on another chevron. E-7 top kicks reached the top rung on the enlisted promotion ladder, previously reserved for a handful of master sergeants at much higher echelons. E-6 technical sergeants presided over platoons. Rifle squad leaders and weapon platoon section heads donned staff sergeant stripes. Buck sergeants, rather than corporals, served as their subordinates.

The bloat in combat support and combat service support units was mind-boggling. Genuine and pseudo NCOs, for example, comprised 60 percent of every infantry division signal company in 1945, compared with 18 percent in 1940, while privates and PFCs shrank from nearly half to fewer than one-fourth.

War Department policy makers imprudently released the brakes on enlisted promotions to keep pace with ballooning demands. Competitive examinations and minimum time-in-grade requirements evaporated. The resultant game, called "instant leaders," produced a slew of noncommissioned duds like slovenly saloon keeper Alvin Tork, who parlayed a high school typing course, a gullible company commander and an uncommon gift for gab into first sergeant's chevrons between February and June 1942. Speedier misfits shot to the top on a single special order.

Most noncommissioned instructors were draftees fresh from civilian life when fireworks hit the fan on December 7, 1941. OCS and the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) soon absorbed the cream of that embryonic crop, while compatriots cadred 21 basic training camps, 55 new divisions plus corps and field army forces, or served as overhead in 29 reception centers. One division lost 800 noncoms and a passel of junior officers in the spring of 1942. Enlisted misfits thereafter led "several of the companies and most of the platoons."

A typical commander bemoaned the absence of proficient noncommissioned instructors for tactical training, because competing demands captured "everyone higher than a moron." National Guard divisions, federalized at less than 60 percent personnel strength, contained many NCOs who not only lacked adequate civilian and military education, but swilled beer with subordinate buddies from their home towns-they were nice guys, but not militarily useful, even in rear echelon units never destined to hear shots fired in anger.

Service schools stood ready and willing to bridge the gap, but received no orders to do so because Gen. McNair firmly believed that enlisted leaders could develop properly only if they exercised responsibilities in active units under realistic, challenging conditions. Personnel managers accordingly dumped aspiring NCOs into the deep end of the manpower pool and left them there to sink or swim. Those who drowned commonly towed junior teammates to the bottom with them. Army Ground Force spokesmen in 1943 stubbornly said, "No change in the present policy ... is contemplated," when the infantry school offered to turn officer candidate rejects into platoon sergeants. "Education and development of leadership in enlisted men remains the responsibility of officers with troop units." War Department interest in noncommissioned schooling modeled on OCS met the same rebuke a year later.

Inept personnel management and incompetent training took a terrible toll on the Army's NCO corps for the first two years after the United States entered World War II. Stateside inspection reports reproached "hesitant, uncertain leadership by platoon and squad leaders." A young lieutenant general named Eisenhower deplored the effectiveness of junior leaders earmarked to invade North Africa. Commanders in Italy and the South Pacific noted similar shortcomings until February 1944, when Gen. Marshall told Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that "the outstanding deficiency currently noted in our divisions is the number of noncommissioned officers who are below standards of intelligence and qualities of leadership."

Major policy reappraisals that belatedly revitalized the NCO corps created and maintained a sharp cutting edge soon thereafter. Thank God they finally saw the light, because the invasion of Fortress Europe lay just ahead.

Axes hit the Army Specialized Training Program first, after Gen. Marshall threatened to deactivate 10 divisions, three tank battalions and 26 antiaircraft battalions if ASTP deferments remained intact. The Secretary of War, on April Fools' Day 1944, accordingly lopped off nearly 80 percent, which returned 120,000 student-soldiers to active duty. Survivors were mainly would-be doctors and dentists destined for the short-handed Medical Corps. Approximately 30,000 surplus aviation cadets forsook the wild blue yonder for foxholes; 40,000 high-quality Army Air Force enlisted men followed.

Most reshuffles proceeded smoothly, but unforeseen side effects temporarily accompanied the transfer of 25,000 chevron-wearing 3rd-, 4th- and 5th-class technicians from Army service forces to ground-gaining arms. Their arrival clogged promotion lists until regulations recognized that "occasions will arise when noncommissioned officers must be reduced in grade [to suit] assignments commensurate with their ability." Unit commanders thereafter stripped stripes from incompetent contenders so all concerned could compete on an even footing for positions that corresponded to their ratings.

No one knows how many fathers, brothers, husbands and sons rest eternally in military cemeteries because U.S. Army policies, programs and procedures produced inept noncoms during the early stages of World War II but, by inference, the number is great. Fortunately, a seasoned, tough, professionally superlative noncommissioned officer corps emerged after 44 months in the crucible and 34 battle streamers on the Army flag. Global strategists set the stage for ultimate victory, but squad leaders traced schemes of maneuver with sticks in mud, gave bone-chilling orders to storm hills that bristled with enemy weapons, then led the way when their men fanned out as skirmishers. Noncommissioned officers in noncombat units furnished essential support.

Army policy makers and planners who provide the current crop of NCOs with superlative preparation-before the shooting starts-clearly learned hard lessons from their World War II predecessors.

By Col. John M. Collins

U.S. Army retired

COL. JOHN M. COLLINS, USA Ret., joined the Army as a private in 1942 and retired as a colonel in 1972 after wartime service in Europe, Korea and Vietnam. He was senior specialist in national defense at the Congressional Research Service from 1972 until 1996 and has been a distinguished visiting research fellow at National Defense University since 1996. He has written 12 books about military matters.

Copyright Association of the United States Army Feb 2005
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