Carroll H. Dunn
division to form other new units. When I joined the battalion in November
there
were just over 100 people in the battalion, with many vacancies in all grades because
of those assigned to other cadres. The division had now been designated to be filled up,
relieved of any further cadre requirements, and placed on a very heavy program of
training.
It was at this time that a change in battalion commanders was made, and I came in as
a major to command the battalion. From just over 100 people when I arrived, in less
than a month we had 1,000 in the battalion. We started training the battalion from
individual through squad, platoon, company, and battalion training beginning 1
December 1942 and ending with maneuvers in Tennessee in November 1943. This
provided about one year of very intensive training before movement of the division
overseas. The decision that this unit would be trained as a division was very helpful in
providing protection from calls to move people out to other units. The movement
overseas finally took place in February 1944, when the unit went to England to be a
part of the forces to go into Europe in June of 1944.
I want to backtrack a little bit to Fort Leonard Wood because there's been some
indication in histories of the period that there were complaints from the European and
Pacific theaters about the inexperience of officers and troops that were coming out of
the replacement training centers. Did this all have to do with the rapidity of the
mobilization and the type of training? The admissions requirements were changing; the
amount of course work that was required was changing. But one of the areas that was
mentioned was that people didn't have enough training in operations and maintenance
of construction equipment. This fact is mentioned in one of the Army's World War II
of Engineers: Troops
Equipment. The volume states that the
histories,
engineers came to a point where they realized that a lot of training was going to have
to come through experience after they left because there just wasn't time to do this.
A
My answer is that it is probably true. My own experience doesn't exactly cover that.
The training center at Leonard Wood had a very specific mission. It did not include
specifically the training of officers other than those assigned there, and, by getting
involved in the training activity, they would get on-the-job experience. It in no way
served as an officer candidate school, which was held at Belvoir.
Second, there also was a very limited activity in training as far as equipment was
concerned. We did train draftees, as a part of their course, to be operators of certain
engineer equipment. We were not prepared to train mechanics. Leonard Wood's
mission really didn't cover the things that you've indicated here; there simply wasn't
time. My memory is that we had 9 to 11 weeks to train draftees before they went out
to new units, and it was anticipated that the specialist training would come later. There
certainly was no opportunity for anything other than performing the fundamentals of
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