The Final Test
Fort Leavenworth's Officer Training Course was very comprehensive, going far beyond actual military responsibilities.
Field ammunition supply lectures went right back to making contracts with the manufacturers and the methods of ensuring priority for their requirements of scarce raw materials. From that stage the lecture went as follows, "Once a regular factory supply of ammunition begins it is essential there be a regular rail schedule to the ports because the factories have no storage facilities for dangerous goods. The ports are always congested so there must be a regular schedule of ships sailing to theaters of operations and loading must be prompt. On arrival at the war-zone port there will again be no storage space so consignments must be sent immediately to the forward troops by any transport available. Once the 'pipeline' is full there is no means of stopping it anywhere. The forward troops must shoot the ammunition off as it arrives or they may build up enormous quantities and if the enemy counter-attack they may capture the lot." Edgar Whitehead formed a picture of a juggernaut constantly threatening to crush forward troops under a heavy weight of ammunition.
Impressed at their miracles of organization, the star turn was the dispatch of all vehicles of an armored division from one railway station in a few hours. Complete trains were composed entirely of flat rail-cars and convoys driven up a ramp onto the rearmost car and along the train until the whole convoy was rail borne. Wedges were then driven in to hold each vehicle in place, the ramps were removed and the train steamed off. Each train could be loaded in a quarter of an hour and with several sets of tracks the whole operation was completed in an unbelievably short space of time.
An ambitious road move did not work out so well in practice. The 'march tables' were worked out by logarithmic graphs and they all walked round with log tables and slide rules. The object was to move one division laterally behind two divisions engaged with the enemy, without interrupting supplies coming up from the rear. This involved a complicated system of allotting particular roads to particular units. It ended in a shambles with some of the most inextricable traffic jams Edgar was ever to see.
Many snap examinations were given to the Officers. The chief British Instructor warned them that the highest marks were given to those who reproduced the Instructor's exact words. The next highest to those who conveyed the exact sense of what had been taught. Anyone who suggested from his own experience that the school solution was wrong would indubitably be failed, however logical his views. On more than one occasion an Instructor said to Edgar, "You guys who've actually done the job are nothing but a damn nuisance here."
A great deal of attention was paid to Officers able to express themselves clearly not only in writing but verbally and to this end syndicates were nominated to put on brief dramatic performances on subjects such as a Staff Officer inspecting a small unit. Edgar's syndicate was not popular with the authorities as it include the Yank regimental humorist acting as a Subaltern in charge of a detachment. To every question Edgar asked him in his role as Inspecting Officer he answered, "Gee, I'll just have to ask my Top Sergeant about that."
The final exercise was the culmination of the Course, when all branches of the Service were involved over a forty-eight hour period. Each hour represented a day and each section of the Staff was responsible for writing out the orders and reports necessary to fulfill their part of the task, in the light of the orders received from higher authority and the information from Intelligence.
The exercise posed for Edgar's unit was a supposed landing on the west coast of France on either side of where the Loire River enters the Atlantic. Excellent maps were supplied to every Officer and hourly Intelligence Situation Reports gave the progress of the operation. The initial landings were successful and the enemy fortress troops holding the coast were quickly overrun and many thousands of prisoners taken. Despite the demolition of all rail and road bridges for forty miles inland and the withdrawal of all rolling stock, the invading Army progressed seventy miles inland within a few days against light opposition.
Edgar was put in the Q, or in American terms, the G-4 section of the Lines of Communication Staff between the beaches and the forward troops. As the hours went by they had a wonderful picture of impending doom. Intelligence reports based on aerial reconnaissance kept reaching the unit of enemy reinforcements moving up to the front, while their front line got shorter and shorter of Petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL) and Ammunition. The few 'second echelon' vehicles landed, were quite incapable of moving the tonnages required over seventy miles of damaged roads and makeshift bridges. The crisis came at about one in the morning of their second night, obviously done by design to see which Staff Officers were capable of thinking quickly and writing clear orders when desperately tired and sleepy.
Shortly after one o'clock the Brigadier in charge of the exercise and the Chief Umpire came into Edgar's G-4 office by which time Edgar was chuckling over the completeness of the impending 'debacle'. The Brigadier said to Edgar, "You seem to think the US Army had got itself into a bit of a mess and find it amusing."
Edgar said, "Well, Sir, if you say so I won't deny it."
"Very well, take over and get them out of it."
Edgar was given as his second-in-command a Mexican called Hastaba, a US citizen from New Mexico, who was very intelligent, but one of the laziest men Edgar ever met. The remainder of the Staff got really interested when Edgar outlined his plan and set them all to writing orders to implement it. The Brigadier and the Chief Umpire visited again at 0300 finding everyone writing like mad except Hastaba who was resting. The Brigadier asked him, "How are you getting along under British Command?"
Hastaba replied, "Well, Sir, we're sure getting the job done but I've never been so bullied in my life."
The Chief Umpire came over to Edgar and whispered in his ear, "Don't worry too much, Whitehead, the problem is completely insolvable and was meant to be so."
Edgar said, "Excuse me, Sir, I've solved it and we shall be out of the mess in another hour."
The Chief Umpire returned at 0400 to study their solution. Edgar had found a good river port on the Loire ten miles beyond the demolitions, had got beach parties to reload the land craft with priority stores and arranged for them to proceed upriver, leaving on the beaches everything a British Officer would regard as non-essential such as mobile laundries.
The Brigadier's interrogation of Edgar on the plan went as follows. "That river's full of sandbanks, how do the landing craft navigate them?"
Edgar showed him the written order to the Field Security Police to round up the French civilian river pilots.
"All right, I'll pass that. Where have you found the labor to unload the landing craft at your river port, there are no beach parties there?"
Edgar showed him the order to the Commander of the POW 'cage' nearby to employ prisoners.
"That's contrary to the Geneva Convention."
"I know, Sir."
"That's alright, I'll pass that too."
His next question was, "I admit you got all the essentials ashore, how do you get them to the front line troops?"
"All forward troops are now on the defensive, they will have to send unit transport back for their requirements till I have sufficient 'second echelon' transport landed to take over duty." By 0500 Edgar had convinced the Umpire that all necessities would arrive before the enemy counter-attacked.
The next morning General Truesdell gave everyone an appreciation of the exercise. When he got to the L of C part he said, "Yesterday we set an insoluble problem deliberately, but as always happens in war it was solved. My only regret is that it was not solved by a US Officer but one of our Allies."
This exercise ended the Course proper, though they stayed on for another fortnight.
The historical novel Whitewashed Jacarandas and its sequel Full of Possibilities are both available on Amazon as paperbacks and eBooks.
These books are inspired by Diana's family's experiences in small town Southern Rhodesia after WWII.
Dr. Sunny Rubenstein and his Gentile wife, Mavourneen, along with various town characters lay bare the racial arrogance of the times, paternalistic idealism, Zionist fervor and anti-Semitism, the proper place of a wife, modernization versus hard-won ways of doing things, and treatment of endemic disease versus investment in public health. It's a roller coaster read.
References:
- Sir Edgar Whitehead's Unpublished Memoirs, Rhodes House, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, by permission.
- Photo Credit:
Railway Supply. Industry publication for railway transport specialists, by H. Roger Grant.
OLEKSANDR BATRAK