701st Military Police Battalion

Military Police, Oct, 2004 by David A. Kaufman

Before World War II, military policing was not a defined branch of service. During World War I, there was no formalized training or tactics for military police, who were usually chosen for their size and quickness with batons. After the war, military police duty consisted of small units that directed traffic on and around military posts, plus a little crime prevention patrol. Selection to units was at the whim of the unit commander. There were some political attempts to formalize the training, but these all failed. With the Selective Service Act of 1940, the Army grew dramatically in size and the need to professionally police itself became a reality. It was a difficult undertaking since there were no manuals, no equipment, and no officers trained as military police.

The 701st Military Police Battalion, one of the first such battalions in the US Army, was activated at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, on 1 February 1941, with a cadre from the 1st and 20th Infantry Regiments. (1) Filled with draftees, the battalion was assigned to VII Corps to serve as internal security and zone of interior troops, thus releasing combat troops from that duty. As quickly as draftees were trained, they were sent out to train newly activated military police battalions. The troops had no outside civilian instructors, except for New York Police Department physical training instructors who demonstrated various restraint holds. (2)

Detachments from the 701st were sent to guard railroad stations in St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri, and to guard radio stations. Many German spies and sympathizers were operating on ham radios so the government ordered all ham radios to shut down. Ham radio transmissions were monitored from a radio-monitoring site in Nebraska. In January 1942, Bravo Company was temporarily detached to guard prisoners of war at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. In the summer of 1942, the remainder of the unit was sent to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, to serve as a demonstration battalion for the Provost Marshal General's School. This was the first military police school for training officers and enlisted men. By demonstrating the "how-tos" of military policing to newly activated units, the Military Police Branch benefited, and the battalion itself became more professional.

From its newly assigned post at Fort Shelling, the 701st provided security and protection for the war industries around Minneapolis-St. Paul. Battalion soldiers guarded factories, ordnance shipments, radio stations, and airports against subversion and trained civilians to take over these duties. The battalion also provided firing parties for military funerals.

One of the battalion's more unusual duties was its participation in experiments at the University of Minnesota. In one experiment that led to the development of K-rations, the men existed on food pellets for long periods of time.

Fort Snelling was mainly a reception center, near the farming belt for Minneapolis-St. Paul. The military police and a few quartermaster troops were the only units assigned to the base. The US government purchased much of the surrounding farmland, but didn't harvest or distribute the vegetables grown there. The public complained, and a congressional delegation arrived to investigate. So the government harvested the produce, but took the vegetables to the reserve officers' blockhouses for storage. Military police were assigned to assist the quartermaster in distributing the food, but when they opened one of the doors of the blockhouse, liquefied cabbage poured out. (3)

In November 1942, the school and the battalion were transferred to Fort Custer, Michigan, and assigned to the 6th Service Command. In March 1943, electrical workers in Michigan threatened to strike, which would have crippled the war industry in the region. The workers said they would walk off their jobs at a certain hour if their demands weren't met, so all four companies of the battalion were dispatched to Saginaw and Grand Rapids. A couple of hours before "zero hour," the strike was called off, due in no small part to the arrival of the armed soldiers.

The night of 21 June 1943 brought the toughest test yet for the 701st. The day before, a race riot had broken out in Detroit, Michigan, and quickly overwhelmed the Detroit Police Department, which was depleted because of the draft. More than 40 people were killed and more than 800 were injured before the battalion arrived. Within two days, the military police controlled the city and brought calm. Only sporadic outbreaks of violence were reported during the remainder of the summer.

After the 701st returned from Detroit, Bravo Company was included in a training film on riot control that was shown to other military police battalions. Soon after, the 701st received orders to drop personnel not fit for overseas duty and to secure as replacements those who were fit. Personnel prepared as if they were finally going overseas. However, Alpha Company was directed to report to Fort Wayne Ordnance Depot, Indiana. For a short time, the company's soldiers worked in factories because of a draft-generated shortage of defense industry workers.