UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II
The Technical Services
THE ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT:
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-60000
First Printed 1968-CMH Pub 10-11
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II
Stetson Conn, General Editor
Office of the Chief of Military History
. . . to Those Who Served
For the fighting man in time of war, the crucible that proves or disproves his training and his theories is combat with the enemy. So it is too with those whose milieu is not the drill field but the drawing board, not the staff college but the proving ground, those who design, develop, and maintain the weapons, munitions, and vehicles of war. The crucible for the Ordnance Department, like the individual fighting man, is the battlefield.
In previous volumes in the Ordnance Department subseries of The Technical Services in the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II, historians have told the preliminary stories, the complex, often frustrating saga of planning munitions for war and of procuring and getting them to the troops who use them. This, the third and final volume in the subseries, tells the climax of the Ordnance role in World War II, the story of how the vast armory and its administrators fared in combat.
In presenting this story of Ordnance in the overseas theaters, Mrs. Mayo has concentrated logically on Ordnance at the level of the army headquarters, for from this level munitions and fighting equipment flowed directly to the user. While giving some attention to all theaters involved in the global story of Ordnance administration, she has concentrated on the three main theaters as representative of the problems, the improvisations, the shortcomings, the achievements worldwide. From the dispatch of the first American observers to embattled Britain in 1941 to the last gunshots on Pacific islands in 1945, it is an exciting story as befits the vital contribution of the tools of war to success or failure in battle.
Lida Mayo, a graduate of Randolph-Macon Woman's College, served as historian with the Military Air Transport Service from 1946 to 1950, when she joined the Ordnance Historical Branch, becoming its chief in June 1959. In 1962, when Ordnance historical activities were transferred to the Office of the Chief of Military History, she became a senior historian on its staff. She contributed substantially to The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for War (1955), first of the three Ordnance volumes published in this series, and was coauthor of the second, The Ordnance Department: Procurement and Supply (1960). Other published works to her credit are Henry Clay (New York, 1943, and London, 1944) and Rustics in Rebellion (Chapel Hill, 1950). Her articles have appeared in American Heritage, Virginia Quarterly Review, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and numerous professional journals. Mrs. Mayo is presently at work on another volume in the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II: The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Germany.
On a July evening in 1942 in the wilds of New Guinea, a sixteen-year-old native Papuan houseboy named Gibson Duluvina proffered to Australian war correspondent Osmar White some penetrating remarks on the writing of history. They illustrate the author's dilemma in planning On Beachhead and Battlefront, the third and last volume in the Ordnance series.
White, who was Gibson's taubada (master), took the boy along when he went from Port Moresby far into the interior to cover guerrilla operations against the Japanese from the wrecked gold mining town of Wau. One evening in an abandoned cottage overshadowed by a mountain on whose slopes birds of paradise were feeding, White began to question Gibson about the history of his tribe. He got nowhere. Gibson remembered an old woman in his village who had been a girl when the first white man's ship came to Port Moresby, but he did not think her tales very interesting. Beyond that he knew no history.
"Taubada," he said suddenly, "white people say that they know just what happened a thousand years ago. Is it true?" White explained that it was all written down; that history had been written for thousands of years. Gibson was silent in deep thought. Then he said, "Taubada, I can write." "Yes, Gibson, I know." He wrote a beautiful copperplate hand taught him in a mission school. "You write very well."
"Taubada, when I write, it is too hard very much to write the truth. To write the words is hard, but I could never write all the words to tell all the truth. To write at all I must make all the things seem easy. Then, when it is written, it is not all the truth...."1
To write all the words to tell all the truth about Ordnance overseas operations in World War II has been impossible, at least in the confines of one volume. Therefore I have concentrated on the Mediterranean, European, and Southwest Pacific theaters, covering the Central Pacific only as background for Okinawa and omitting entirely, except for passing references, the South Pacific and China-Burma-India theaters. Nor have I attempted coverage of Ordnance operations in Alaska or the Caribbean and Atlantic bases, except for a brief section on early planning for Iceland. If I had been able to include all overseas theaters and commands, this might have been a better book; on the other hand, it might have been a worse one, certainly bulky and probably repetitious, since most of the Ordnance problems are exemplified in the areas I have covered.
In those areas, the story has been centered in the main around the Ordnance officer at army level. After corps was relieved of administrative responsibilities early in the war, support to the combat forces flowed from army. Only from the point of view of the Ordnance officers of the various armies have I described Communications Zone Ordnance operations. For more detail on such operations in the European theater, the reader is referred to Roland G. Ruppenthal's two-volume Logistical Support of the Armies in UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II.
On Beachhead and Battlefront was begun under contract by the Ordnance Corps with the Bureau of Social Science Research of The American University. Two years later the Ordnance Corps terminated the contract and transferred the project to the Historical Branch, Office of the Chief of Ordnance. In the summer of 1962 when the Office, Chief of Ordnance was abolished, the Office, Chief of Military History took over project and author. Under all these auspices, I have been assisted by a number of able people: in the contract phase by Dr. Stanley L. Falk as junior historian on the project and Dr. Morris R. Short as administrative assistant; in the Ordnance phase by Mrs. Irene House as research historian and Mrs. Feril Cummings as administrative assistant; in the OCMH phase by members of the General Reference Branch, particularly Miss Hannah Zeidlik. Throughout all phases the exploration of the vast resources of the World War II Reference Branch, National Archives and Records Service, Alexandria, Virginia, has been made both profitable and pleasant by the efforts of Mrs. Caroline Moore, Mrs. Hazel Ward, and above all, Mrs. Lois C. Aldridge, who has not only been a discerning guide through the maze of records but a valued adviser and friend. At the Military Records Branch, Federal Records Center, Mrs. Virginia Nestor has been invariably helpful.
The book was completed under the direction of Brig. Gen. Hal C. Pattison, Chief of Military History, and Dr. Stetson Conn, Chief Historian, to both of whom I owe a great deal for wise counsel and unfailing support. Others in OCMH to whom much is due for careful review of the entire manuscript and detailed criticisms that have saved the author from many errors of fact and style are the late Dr. John Miller, jr., Col. Albert W. Jones, Mr. Charles B. MacDonald, and Miss Mary Ann Bacon. The illustrations were selected by Miss Ruth A. Phillips; the maps prepared by Mr. Billy C. Mossman; and the volume was shepherded through the editorial process by Mrs. Loretto C. Stevens and Mrs. Frances R. Burdette. Mrs. Muriel Southwick prepared the index.
Among "Those Who Served" I am grateful to many who read and commented upon all or parts of the manuscript including the wartime Chief of Ordnance, Lt. Gen. Levin H. Campbell, Jr., the Ordnance officers of First, Third, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Fifteenth Armies, and the chief Ordnance officers of the European and Southwest Pacific theaters. Numerous other participants, both within and outside Ordnance, gave generously of their time in interviews and made personal papers available.
To Maj. Gen. John B. Medaris I am particularly indebted for a statement that illustrates how vital was Ordnance support on beachhead and battlefront: "An army can fight on short rations and with ragged clothes, but when an army is without ammunition and guns it is no longer an army."
For interpretations made and conclusions drawn, as well as for any errors of omission or commission, the author alone is responsible.
**National Geographic Society Maps not included in online version**
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