First Army Corps

“ It is only necessary to recall the situation of the Guard Corps and of the IIIrd Army Corps after the battles around Metz, and the condition of the German troops during the advance to Le Mans. On January 7th, 1871, there were 36 officers with the 57th Infantry, of which 16 led platoons of the 36 platoons in the first line, and 8 lieutenants commanded companies. On mobilizing, 25 lieutenants were assigned as platoon commanders and six as company commanders in the 57th Infantry. ”

“ During major conflicts of the United States prior to the twentieth century, Army leaders sought to find the best command level at which to merge infantry, cavalry, and artillery into effective, coordinated combat units. Brigades and divisions usually comprised a single arm, while the army corps was the basic combined arms unit. Within the army corps itself, little specialization existed beyond the combat arms. Usually no field units were organized for signal, medical, transportation, military police, engineers, ordnance, or other combat support services. ”

“ If hitherto less known and thus less considered than the proud record of those great corps of the Armies of the Potomac, of the Tennessee, and of the Cumberland, on whom in the fortune of war fell the heat and burthen of so many pitched battles, whose colors bear the names of so many decisive victories, yet the story of the Nineteenth Army Corps is one whose simple facts suffice for all that need to told or claimed of valor, of achievement, of sacrifice, or of patient endurance. ”

“ The Army Service Corps is one of the features of the British army which American authorities would do well to study. It is an armed and drilled commissary corps, of about 4,000 officers and men, which handles the entire work of that branch; but it is a fighting corps as well, when occasion requires. This last feature is of great value, in that it does away with the necessity of a detachment of men being drawn off as a special guard for every wagon or two. The Army Service Corps acts as its own convoy where only an ordinary one is required. ”

“ I cannot speak of the Fifteenth Army Corps without a seeming vanity, but as I am no longer its commander, I assert that there is no better body of soldiers in America than it, or who have done more or better service. ”

“ But by late 1943 the War Department decided that armored divisions could be employed properly by standard corps, and it directed that the II, III, and IV Armored Corps be redesignated as the XVIII, XIX, and XX Corps, respectively. The I Armored Corps had already been inactivated overseas and its personnel used in the organization of Seventh Army headquarters. The basic element of the Armored Force was the armored division- a complete, self-sufficient, combined arms team, whose components, strength, and equipment varied during the war. ”

“ At the same time, “Second-Line Armies” are never so well organized as those of First Line. They comprise an undue proportion of Infantry to the other Arms, and will be weak in Cavalry, guns, and Engineers; their Administrative Services will be mainly improvised; they will be officered by old regular officers, or non-professional younger ones; the men will have been some years away from the ranks, and their training will be rusty. The formation, too, of Reserve Units will generally have to be postponed until the heavy work of mobilizing and concentrating the First-Line Army is completed. ”

“ I would also suggest the organization of an invalid corps, and that the retired officers be transferred to it. Such a corps, it is thought, could be made useful in various employments for which efficient officers and troops are now detached.
An organization of the general staff of the Army would be highly conducive to the efficiency of that most important branch of the service. The plan adopted for the military establishment furnishes a model for the staff of the Provisional Army, if it be deemed advisable to retain the distinction ”

“ The divisions commanded by lieutenant-generals are completely organized bodies capable, in case of need, of independent action and requiring little supervision from the corps commander. The general commanding the army corps has to deal directly with only a few subordinates, the commanders of his infantry divisions, of his cavalry brigade or division, and of his artillery brigade, and with the heads of the corps organizations for such purposes as supply and medical service. He inspects and tests the condition of all the various units, but he does not attempt to do the work of his subordinates. ”

“ Following the Civil War the War Department disbanded the field armies, along with their army corps, divisions, and brigades. Militia units returned to their states, the volunteers left service, and most of the Regular Army troops returned to scattered posts throughout the South and West. Congress in 1869 set the peacetime Regular establishment at 25 infantry, 10 cavalry, and 5 artillery regiments, but few were ever able to assemble their far-flung companies, troops, and batteries in one place until the end of the century. ”

“ To be successful, armies in the Civil War needed more than infantry, field artillery, and cavalry. As the Regular Army had few engineer units, volunteer infantry regiments often served as engineers. In the Army of the Potomac these regiments eventually formed a brigade. Army corps in other Union armies also employed infantry as engineers. As the medical, ordnance, signal, and quartermaster department lacked units, their field tasks were performed by personnel assigned to the departments or by soldiers detailed from the line regiments or by hired civilians. ”

“ These, with medical and other units, made a total of over 28,000 men, or practically double the size of a French or German division. Each corps would normally consist of six divisions—four combat and one depot and one replacement division—and also two regiments of cavalry, and each army of from three to five corps. With four divisions fully trained, a corps could take over an American sector with two divisions in line and two in reserve, with the depot and replacement divisions prepared to fill the gaps in the ranks. ”

“ With these new ordinances, the Army departed from national and international practice, and the infantry division replaced the army corps, which had been used in the Civil War and the War with Spain, as the basic unit for combining arms. Since the mid-nineteenth century a typical European army corps had consisted of two or more divisions, a cavalry brigade, a field artillery regiment, and supporting units—about 30,000 men. Divisions usually included only infantry. Although they sometimes had artillery, cavalry, or engineer troops, they rarely included service units. ”

“ To coordinate all the activities within an army corps, supporting staffs grew at each level—corps, division, brigade, and regiment. Eventually an adjutant, commissaries of muster and subsistence, and a chief of ordnance comprised the divisional staff. The staff for the brigade included an adjutant, quartermaster, commissary of subsistence, and, when the brigade served as an independent command, an ordnance officer. In addition, general officers continued to have aides as their personal staff. ”

“ Where formerly 15,000 men to the mile of front had been considered ample for the occupation of a position or the execution of an attack, double that number now often proved insufficient, and their front was broken before reinforcements could arrive. Much had been done to create an efficient staff, but though the idea of the army corps command was now no new thing, the senior generals entrusted with these commands were far from having acquired the independence and initiative of their French opponents. ”

“ The general commanding deems it proper at this time to inform the officers and men of the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Twentieth Corps, that he has organized them into an army for a special purpose, well known to the War Department and to General Grant. It is sufficient for you to know that it involves a departure from our present base, and a long and difficult march to a new one. All the chances of war have been considered and provided for, as far as human sagacity can. ”

“ Civilians were to man ammunition and supply columns. Because mounted troops were likely to be employed in small detachments, the cavalry division had no prescribed staff. [10]
Above the division level, the regulations only sketched corps and armies. Two or three infantry divisions made up an army corps, and several army corps, along with one or more cavalry divisions, formed an army. ”

“ The fighting troops of the Division necessarily occupy the chief place in the narrative, but it must be remembered throughout that the achievements of these troops would have been impossible without the co-operation of the Royal Army Service Corps, Army Ordnance Corps and Army Veterinary Corps units, and the good work of the Field Ambulances and stretcher-bearers. ”

“ As mobilization finally results in army corps, and is designed to fit into a frame, the component parts of an army corps may be set forth to show the way in which all the various units have to be drawn together to their places on a battle front. A complete army corps of the German scheme consists of 56,000 combatants and 12,000 men in the supply train. Of this, 63.81 per cent are infantry, 11.56 per cent cavalry, 10.99 field artillery, 4.21 per cent light artillery, 4.21 engineer corps, etc., hospital corps 1.04, and miscellaneous 2.02 per cent. ”

“ When regiments are combined into brigades, brigades into divisions, and divisions into army corps, cavalry, artillery, and certain other auxiliary troops, such as engineers, signal corps, aeroplane corps, etc., are joined with them in such proportions as has been found necessary. Every unit, from the company up, has its own supply and ammunition wagons, field hospitals, etc. ”

“ Also in 1927, for echelons above divisions in the Regular Army, the adjutant general constituted one army, one cavalry corps, and three army corps headquarters. In addition, the 3d Cavalry Division, a new Regular Army unit, was added to the rolls to complete the cavalry corps. No army corps, cavalry corps, or army headquarters was organized at that time, but moving these units in the mobilization plans from the Organized Reserve to the Regular Army theoretically made it easier to organize the units in an emergency. ”

“ In addition to this, in March, 1864, upon the reorganization of the army, the grand old 3d corps, to which you belonged, was broken up; a corps with a name and a record as brilliant as any organization in the army, a corps that had furnished a galaxy of names second to none in brilliancy; such names as Heintzelman, Hamilton and Sickles, Kearny and Hooker, and Birney and Berry. You must lose your identity, and were ordered to lay off the badge which you had honored, the old diamond which you loved ”

“ In view of the circumstances under which this Corps was raised and filled, the peculiar claims of its individual members upon the justice and fair dealing of the prejudiced, and the regularity of the troops which deserve those equal rights that have been hitherto denied the majority, the Commanding General has been induced to adopt the Square as the distinctive badge of the Twenty-Fifth Army Corps.
Wherever danger has been found and glory to be won, the heroes who have fought for immortality have been distinguished by some emblem to which every victory added a new lustre. ”

“ At last I was advised that in the work of reorganization the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps had been consolidated under the name of the Twentieth Corps, that the Twentieth Corps was to be commanded by General Hooker, and that I was assigned to the command of a so-called Corps of Instruction near Nashville, in which a number of newly levied regiments were to be made fit for active duty, and then, presumptively, to form part of the Army of the Cumberland, under General Thomas. ”

“ There exists in the breasts of most of those who have served, or are serving, in the Army, an Esprit de Corps—an attachment to everything belonging to their Regiment; to such persons a narrative of the services of their own Corps cannot fail to prove interesting. Authentic accounts of the actions of the great, the valiant, the loyal, have always been of paramount interest with a brave and civilized people. ”

“ Between 6 April 1917, when the nation declared war, and 12 June, when the first troops left the United States for France, the War College Division of the Army General Staff' revised the structure of the infantry division extensively. British and French officers spurred the changes when they visited Washington, D.C., to discuss the nation's participation in the war. They believed the American division lacked firepower and presented command and control problems because of its many small units. ”

“ There never was a corps better organized than was the quartermaster's corps with the Army of the Potomac in 1864. With a wagon-train that would have extended from the Rapidan to Richmond, stretched along in single file and separated as the teams necessarily would be when moving, we could still carry only three days' forage and about ten to twelve days' rations, besides a supply of ammunition. To overcome all difficulties, the chief quartermaster, General Rufus Ingalls, had marked on each wagon the corps badge with the division color and the number of the brigade. ”

“ To make the Army more attractive to enlisted men, it is absolutely essential to create a service corps, such as exists in nearly every modern army in the world, to do the skilled and unskilled labor, inseparably connected with military administration, which is now exacted, without just compensation, of enlisted men who voluntarily entered the Army to do service of an altogether different kind. There are a number of other laws necessary to so organize the Army as to promote its efficiency and facilitate its rapid expansion in time of war ”