WORLD WAR II NCOs

Army, Feb 2005 by Collins, John M

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.