Engineer
were draftees. I brought them into the office to be the actual legal reviewers for me.
That was just one of my special functions in my job as assistant adjutant.
I was also involved in issuing daily orders and things of that sort, as well as the more
routine administrative activities. General Grant was very strong on being in the field,
seeing what was going on in training. This he did in addition to traveling around the
state of Missouri and neighboring states as a part of community activities.
Q ..
Did you continue that relationship with him?
A ..
Yes, we continued contact even
his retirement, until he died here in Washington
a number of years later.
he left the training center (in fact, I left the training center
before he did for my next assignment), he came to Washington and was active as head
of civil defense in the Washington area.
Q ..
At Fort Leonard Wood officers were coming from a variety of sources because of the
mobilization and the shortages of getting them from traditional sources like ROTC.
Where were they coming from?
A ..
Mostly from some type of Reserve or National Guard appointment. The officer
candidate training had not started at the time. It came along a little later.
Q ..
Do you recall any specific problems?
A
There was a relatively small cadre of Regular officers in addition to the commanding
general and deputy commander. There was a training group of more senior Regular
officers in charge of developing each particular phase of training. The senior
commanders down to battalion commanders were all experienced Regular officers. The
officers coming in, primarily from call-up of Reserves and National Guard, became the
company commanders, the platoon leaders, the battalion staffs and, gradually, as they
trained on the job, began to take over more and more of the senior positions. My
memory is that the system worked fairly well.
They were organized into two groups, and each group had a number of battalions. In
those days there was separation of the races; one group was black and one was white.
The white group, being the larger group, had more battalions than did the black group,
but the training and the activities were the same. As to the source of officer
I have no strong memory of any major
commission-at least in my
problem as people came in and were absorbed into the activity. There was a fairly heavy
turnover, and before a year was over a larger number of the Regular officers had been
sent out to other assignments and activities. Many who came in as captains had gone
out as majors to command new battalions that were being formed around the country.
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