Demobilization

“ The nation does not award medals and other honors to those who restore the conditions of peace. The people themselves were satiated with war and desired nothing so much as a space in which they could forget battles and campaigns. At best, demobilization was to be a thankless job. Moreover, many of the executives, particularly those in the industrial organization, were men of large personal affairs, serving their country at a sacrifice. ”

“ In one respect only was the reëmployment campaign unsuccessful. The War Department had hoped to use the demobilization of troops as an offset to some extent to the steady drift of population from American farms to the cities. In pursuance of this ambition the Government distributed among the troops at the demobilization centers nearly 1,000,000 copies of a booklet entitled Forward to the Farm! Why Not? Yet, although most country boys in the Army were willing to return to the farms, the Government could not induce the city dwellers to take up country life. ”

“ Efficient demobilization, it follows, would permit the 7,000,000 industrial war workers to turn without a break in employment from the production of war supplies to that of peace supplies.
At the base of modern business stability lies the inviolability of contracts. He who breaches a contract must expect to pay indemnity, and the Government cannot except itself from this rule. Demobilization meant the suspension and termination of war contracts running into billions in value, many of them without a scrap of paper to show as a written instrument ”

“ In demobilizing the men of the Army, the War Department adopted a policy the diametric opposite of the British policy of discharging soldiers by trades as they were needed in industry. With our enormous and varied industry, we had everything in our favor to make a success of the industrial plan of troop demobilization; but, nevertheless, the War Department settled upon the questionable policy of discharging the troops by military units, regardless of the effect such a policy might have upon general industrial conditions. ”

“ To offset this evil the American Red Cross established a chain of soldiers’ banks at the principal demobilization centers. In these banks the discharged men could deposit their money, drawing it out by check after they reached their homes. ”

“ On November 11 the war was costing the United States about $50,000,000 a day. Every day of indecision in adopting the plan of demobilization and every day’s delay in carrying out the plan added tremendously to the burden of taxation that would rest upon the nation for generations to come.
Demobilization meant, first of all, the disbanding of the American Army. Whatever economic considerations might graduate the termination of war industry, no such considerations were to be permitted to retard the homeward progress of the troops. Four million American homes demanded their men at once ”

“ It was for the War Office to fulfil its pledges. “Justice” was the word on their lips, and it was a word which put the wind up (as soldiers say) any staff-officers and officials who had not studied the laws of justice as they concern private soldiers, and who had dealt with them after the armistice and after the peace as they had dealt with them before—as numbers, counters to be shifted here and there according to the needs of the High Command. What was this strange word “justice” on soldiers' lips?... Red tape squirmed and writhed about the business of demobilization. ”

“ Company whist drives were organized under considerable difficulty in the darkness of the recreation hut before the acetylene arrived; and in every way all ranks tried their best to fill in those rather irksome days which had to be gone through before each man left for civilian life once more. Demobilization was proceeding, in fact, faster than had been expected. Drafts departed two or three times a week, and several officers and men on leave in the United Kingdom had benefited by that unfortunate order allowing of demobilization from leave. ”

“ Since sometimes the greater part of a division of troops, or even a whole division, reached a demobilization camp practically at once, the order meant day and night work for the examiners, until they had cleared away the accumulations of men. At such times the boards raced with the finance crews, the doctors exulting if they passed men faster than the disbursing officers could make out the pay rolls, and the latter crowing when they could twiddle their thumbs and wait for men to come from the examination rooms. ”

“ As to the effect of demobilization of veterans the Report states, p. 2: 'Heavy demobilization of members of our armed forces, particularly in late 1945 and the first half of 1946, made effective an important demand for housing accommodations. In 1945 an estimated 6,279,000 veterans of World War II were returned to civilian life, in 1946 the number so returned was 5,659,000, and in 1947 to February 28 an additional 212,000 veterans were demobilized. ”

“ There were 27,000 men in the division as it reached the demobilization camp. The problem of the finance officers was simplified by the fact that practically all of the men resided in New York City, which made it easy to compute mileage. Each man received an average of $100, including the bonus, an amount which is probably a fair approximation of what was paid to the average overseas soldier upon discharge. The advantage of speed in demobilization was not all to the soldier. It cost about two dollars a day to maintain a private soldier in the Service. ”

“ It was thought that, by transporting the overseas divisions back to their original training camps in this country, each would be placed in the53 demobilization center most convenient to the respective homes of its soldiers.
The attempt to put this policy into practice quickly showed the fallacy of it. Immediately it was discovered that the composition of the divisions had radically changed during the service in France. Men had died in battle, fallen sick, been transferred to other organizations, and their places had been taken by replacement troops shipped from the United States. ”

“ And even these were purchased by the older supply bureaus under the complete supervision of the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic.
When we approach the subject of the demobilization of the war industry which produced quartermaster supplies, we confront what was, measured in tons and in dollars and cents, the greatest business undertaking of the war. These pages have been filled by the story of the spectacular contest of American industrial genius with the inanimate resources which it fabricated into airplanes, artillery, and ammunition ”

“ Demobilization is so rapidly scattering the officers and men of the Division, that the time has arrived when I must take a formal farewell of those who, during the past two years, have served me so well. ”

“ All the principal demobilization centers had their own railway terminals, from which special trains for discharged soldiers departed at intervals. The Railroad Administration set up railway ticket booths in the offices of the camp finance officers, so that each newly discharged man, as he turned away from the disbursing window with his money in his hand, faced the railway ticket booth. ”

“ Since the so-called limited-service men—soldiers suffering from physical disability at the time of their induction and accepted for military duties with the proviso that they should serve in capacities where their physical shortcomings would not impair their value to the Government—since these men also went to the demobilization centers for discharge, it is evident that, to show a true picture of the physical condition of the Army at demobilization, the limited-service troops must be subtracted from the totals. ”

“ They will be more than ever jealous, after the war, of their recovered liberties, and determined to assert them. It is probable that one result of demobilization will be an enormous accession of strength to the ranks of the Socialist and Labour parties. ”

“ After the end of a war, servicepersons who need to be demobilized shall be discharged from active service in stages and batches in accordance with demobilization orders of the State Council and the Central Military Commission, and be resettled by the people's governments at various levels. ”

“ Hard on their heels came the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who made up the combat divisions in training in the United States. These were the men last to don the uniform—men who were only partially trained, and who could be of no service to the War Department in the activities of demobilization. Their disbandment was not a difficult undertaking. They had been in the service so short a time that there were no complications of back pay and incomplete records to hinder their discharge. ”

“ Only a few men were found to be infested upon arrival in America. For these there were final delousing facilities at all our debarkation camps. When the overseas veterans took trains for home at the Atlantic ports they were completely verminless. The medical officers at the demobilization centers in this country failed to discover a single exception.
The embarkation plant at Bordeaux was known to returning soldiers as “The Mill.” Its processes were typical of those at all the embarkation camps in France. The Bordeaux mill ground swiftly, yet ground exceeding fine. ”

“ The resulting drop in morale was one difficulty which the Transportation Service faced at the outset of its labors in demobilization, but one which it met and solved successfully. Another more concrete one had to do with the operation of troopships. Early in the war the Army had turned over to the Navy the task of operating most of the troopships at sea, principally because the military authorities found themselves unable to compete with the high wages of the munitions industries in securing civilian crews for vessels. ”

“ The special troops on duty in this country lacked homogeneity in the regional origin of the members of the various units. Many of the organizations were composed entirely of men chosen because of special aptitude for special service. Single units were therefore made up of men from widely separated parts of the United States. When the time came to disperse these troops it was found impossible to send the units intact to demobilization centers and there to disband them, except at a great waste of transportation. ”

“ I gave everybody a square deal, and for the information of some half-dozen Hot-spurs who have vowed to give me the beating of my life the day we should be demobilized, I take pleasure in announcing that I will be the first man to be discharged, that there is a nice clear space between these two demobilization-shacks and the ground is not too hard, that there will be no guards to interfere, and if any man with the right to call himself 'Mister' desires to air his grievance, he can make his engagement now, and I shall be at his service at the hour stipulated. ”

“ The Government held a number of these reserves so that men whose demobilization was deferred could have an equal opportunity with those who were discharged first. Inadequate means of communication affected the disposition of immense areas of arable land, which would otherwise have been available for soldiers. ”

“ To observe and monitor movement of armed groups and redeployment of forces in the areas of UNMIS deployment in accordance with the Ceasefire Agreement;
(iv) To assist in the establishment of the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programme as called for in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, with particular attention to the special needs of women and child combatants, and its implementation through voluntary disarmament and weapons collection and destruction ”

“ Some thousands of young men who had taken the oath of allegiance that morning, and who at the approach of noon were on troop trains proceeding to military camps, found themselves back at home, civilians once more, before the embers of the celebrating bonfires had died out that night. ”

“ The original plan was for this Service to send out field units to take complete charge of the disposition of remains—burying the dead on the battle fields and elsewhere, acquiring land for cemeteries, keeping the records of burials, and maintaining the cemeteries in the future. Sentiment among the troops themselves brought about a change in this arrangement. As soon as the divisions suffered their first casualties, the comrades of the dead men could not bear to have their friends buried by strangers, even though the strangers were Americans in the American uniform. ”

“ As it was, the United States faced an economic crisis in the transition of its war industry, and to inundate the country with unemployed ex-soldiers was only to add to the difficulties of those who were trying to bring industry safely through the readjustment. ”

“ It was on foreign soil, in a land where military traffic had almost altogether superseded civilian, and the troops had little benefit of the services which ordinarily look out for civilians. The soldiers, by the nature of things, could not give personal attention to their baggage. You might multiply the troubles of the individual traveler by the two million men of the A. E. F., and still fall short of even half of the baggage problem of that organization. ”

“ When the concentration cemeteries were filled, American soldier dead lay sleeping in many American national cemeteries on foreign soil—in rugged Scotland, on the Irish coast, in peaceful English villages, in sunny Italian fields, under the snows of North Russia and of Siberia, in Germany and in Austria, and along the whole battle front in France and Belgium. ”