The United States Army Medical Service Corps
WORLD WAR II: THE ADMINISTRATIVE SPECIALTIES
It was in World War II that the Medical Administrative Corps (MAC) became essential to the medical support of American military operations.1 The war was the largest task the Medical Department had ever been called upon to undertake, and in meeting its new responsibilities the MAC, `long the Cinderella of the Medical Department,` grew from 1,343 active duty officers in December 1941 to a peak of 19,867 in August 1945.2 Demand was so great for administrative officers that officer candidate schools (OCS) set up to commission MACs grew to be the third largest OCS program in the Army. Forty-five MAC officers were lost as battle deaths, and another forty-five died from nonbattle causes.3
On 7 December 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor thrust the American people into a conflict that had been raging since September 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland. By the time the war ended the United States had buried 291,557 soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen and had moved to center stage as the world`s leader.4 The war was an epic of destruction that placed enormous demands on military medicine, and the Army Medical Department expanded to over eight hundred thousand military and civilian personnel to meet the challenge.5 Estimates of the total number of people killed in the war range up to sixty million worldwide but will never be accurately determined. Military deaths totaled nearly seventeen million for all belligerents, but for the first time more civilians than military died in war. Attacks on civilian population centers required the department to be prepared for the care of refugees and others displaced and injured by the war. The Nazis also declared a racial war against all races deemed inferior, and genocide was undertaken on an unprecedented scale. In the `final solution` the Nazis exterminated five to six million Jews and up to a half million Gypsies. An additional nine to ten million Slavs were killed by execution or starvation.6
Mobilization by the United States of over sixteen million citizens for military service gave the Medical Department a large support mission. More than eleven million men and women served in the Army, which mushroomed from fewer than 265,000 personnel in 1940 to a peak of nearly 8.3 million in 1945, deployed in eleven theaters of operations. Seventy percent of the Army was in support units, including a wide variety of medical organizations.7 The Medical Department became a massive industrial organization, which required the latest in management skills. The prewar department had operated fewer than 79,000
Officer Candidate School class at Carlisle Barracks, September 1941
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CHART 2-WORLD WAR II ECHELONS OF MEDICAL SUPPORT
hospital beds, but by the end of the war it maintained nearly 750,000, of which 425,000 were overseas.8
Medical doctrine continued to be based on a chain of treatment and evacuation under complete medical control. As in World War I, the chain stretched from the company aidman to the general hospital in the United States and included both field and fixed units in an integrated system (Chart 2). Sorting of the wounded by severity of injury occurred constantly at every level, and medical units evacuated casualties back to their location from areas to their front. The three echelons of medical support in World War I were, with boundary adjustments, renamed the combat zone, communications zone, and zone of the interior. The combat zone was further divided into three echelons of medical service. The first echelon was provided by the regimental medical detachment`s company aidmen and aid stations. The second was provided by the clearing company and three collecting companies of the division medical battalion. The third echelon was provided by the evacuation hospitals of the field army. The first three echelons plus the communications zone (numbered station and general hospitals) and zone of the interior (named general hospitals in the United States, Brooke General Hospital at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas, being an example) added up to five echelons of medical service.9
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Medical Administrative Corps Expansion
Supporting a global war expanded the number of duty assignments for Medical Administrative Corps officers from fourteen to fifty-two and moved them into positions previously filled by Medical, Dental, or Veterinary Corps officers.10 The Medical Department had begun to open up positions for MACs on the eve of World War II, but the highest hospital job to which they could aspire was adjutant (see Appendix C). The department initially attempted to expand its pool of administrative specialty officers by training more physicians as administrators but, as in World War I, that program was short lived.11
The movement of MAC officers into positions formerly the domain of Army physicians resulted basically from the inability of the Medical Department to manage its great expansion competently. This was not entirely the department`s fault. In early 1942 Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall interposed a layer between himself and the surgeon general-and other key figures-through the `Marshall reorganization.` By creating super commands-air, ground, and service forces-he hoped to maintain his executive control of the Army while freeing himself to concentrate on national strategy.12 Marshall selected Lt. Gen. Brehon B. Somervell, described as `dynamite in a Tiffany box,` to command the service forces. Somervell became a powerful force and his `catchall command,` the Services of Supply (later renamed the Army Service Forces), controlled the Army`s support establishment, including the Medical Department. The surgeon general, Maj. Gen. James C. Magee, was subordinated to a headquarters that reported to the Army Staff, losing the direct access to the chief of staff his predecessors had enjoyed. Marshall was already unhappy with the surgeon general, and Somervell agreed that change was necessary. Magee soon found out his new boss was not going to wait for the department to move at its own pace.13
Somervell appointed a panel to investigate charges of mismanagement; the Committee To Study the Medical Department began its deliberations on 25 September. Called the Wadhams Committee for its chairman, Col. Sanford H. Wadhams, MC, USA, Ret., it reviewed the entire scope of the department`s operations. Its investigation brought into sharp relief the necessity to modernize, and it opened the way for greatly expanded use of the MAC.14 The Wadhams Committee met daily for two months, and its report, while not as corrosive as anticipated, took the Medical Department sharply to task. Irrespective of that outcome, the chief of staff`s loss of confidence in the surgeon general was permanent. Marshall said he was `determinedly opposed` to Magee`s retention beyond his first term, and he replaced Magee with Maj. Gen. Norman T. Kirk in 1943, even though the war was far from over.15
A major finding of the committee was that the surgeon general had lost control over medical logistics. This the Wadhams Committee blamed on a lack of executive talent caused in part by placing physicians in nonclinical duties while failing to use officers commissioned and trained for medical administrative specialties.16 Physician misutilization was a principal issue. The committee recommended the use of trained hospital administrators, the substitution of Medical Corps officers with MAC officers in administrative roles, and the immediate
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expansion of the MAC. For example, the committee learned that there were thirty-four physicians working in the Surgeon General`s Office alone. Governor Paul V. McNutt, chairman of the War Manpower Commission and a member of the committee, was appalled. `The complaint of doctors not doing medical work is one we hear most frequently. My desk has been flooded with such complaints."17 The conclusion was unequivocal. `The Committee recommends that the practice of assigning medical officers, even temporarily, to any type of work that could be performed by non-professional personnel be discontinued promptly.`18 The surgeon general attempted to reject that recommendation-along with many others-but was ordered by Somervell to comply.19 The resulting Army policy directed that physician shortages would be resolved by utilizing MAC officers `wherever practicable.`20
Closely related to actions of the Wadhams Committee was political pressure from community leaders across the country who were angered when local physicians were drafted but not used to practice medicine. Those political stirrings found a powerful voice in the Procurement and Assignment Service, a federal coordinating agency formed in October 1941 at the urging of the American Medical Association. The AMA desired to control the department`s procurement of physicians in order `to prevent medical personnel from being put into positions where their special qualifications were not utilized."21 Efforts by the surgeon general to turn off that pressure were to no avail.22
Other pressures also forced the department to fill administrative positions with MACs and to use physicians, dentists, and veterinarians in positions requiring their special training. The sheer number of clinicians needed for patient care was one. The department estimated that there were 176,000 physicians in the United States in 1942. The military had initially planned to tap about one-third for the Army and Navy, but the political fallout forced a reappraisal. The Army lowered its requirement to 45,000, a figure that closely approximated the number actually placed on active duty during the war, but even the higher estimate could be accommodated only through greatly expanded substitution of administrative officers for clinicians.23
Common sense and the desires of physicians were other pressures. `The younger AUS doctors were very angry at being used as company commanders, mess officers and sanitation officers and were insistent that what they wanted was to practice their profession.`24 Brig. Gen. Raymond W. Bliss, MC, a physician who served as the surgeon general`s chief of operations, thought this was such an important point that he kept in his notebook file an extract of an interview with a Medical Corps major who had served for three and a half years as a regimental surgeon in the Pacific. The Army physician was angered by the deterioration of his clinical skills. `Fully half of the medical officers in the field are wasted and few have the opportunity to do more than glorified first aid work.`25
The Wadhams Committee findings were later echoed in the report of the Kenner Board, an internal Medical Department panel established in 1943 by General Kirk, Magee`s successor as surgeon general. It was headed by Brig. Gen. Albert W. Kenner, MC, who had been surgeon of the Western Task Force during the North African invasion. General Kirk asked the board to develop plans for the
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more efficient use of all medical personnel, but his principal emphasis was upon the utilization of physicians. Although the department had predicted a shortage of nearly fifty-five hundred Medical Corps officers, the Kenner Board found that there were still nearly four hundred physicians serving as executive officers, detachment commanders, registrars, mess officers, supply officers, adjutants, and hospital inspectors. The board recommended assigning MAC officers to those duties. It also identified additional positions in medical logistics, Air Forces organizations, the surgeon general`s staff, field medical units, and Army schools. Altogether the Kenner Board identified 5,289 Medical Corps officers who could be replaced with MAC officers.26
Demands to fill positions with MAC officers encountered resistance. Lt. Gen. Leonard Heaton, surgeon general from 1959 to 1969, later observed that it had been `repugnant to many officers steeped in the traditions of the prewar Medical Department. . . some urging was necessary.`27 Some of the resistance was from physicians unsuited for clinical duties either through incompetence, failure to remain current, or both. For others more competent, their careers as they advanced in rank were by necessity a succession of administrative jobs. The rank and experience of the small number of Regular Army physicians made their wartime service in staff and command positions inevitable, and the problem of Army physicians remaining current with American medicine continued.28
The effort to admit nonphysicians to some positions was strongly resisted, especially the posts of hospital executive officer, registrar, and inspector. The conclusions of various official Army assessments after the war were not complimentary on that score. The Army Service Forces concluded that, although the ASF kept the pressure on the surgeon general to economize in the use of physicians and other medical specialties, their efficient and full-time use was never fully achieved.29 The Army`s account of its stateside hospitals faulted the department`s recalcitrance. `Problems of hospital commanders would have been fewer and the possibility of adverse effects upon professional care less if changes eventually made had been initiated early in the war by the Medical Department itself.`30
But wholesale substitutions did occur, to the benefit of the Army and the Medical Department. Maj. Gen. John F. Bohlender, MC, commander of Fitzsimons General Hospital, said MAC officers `rapidly proved their worth.`31 The postwar report of the European Theater of Operations applauded the expanded use of MAC officers. `Good Medical Administrative Corps officers have performed their duties in a manner far superior to anything that had been anticipated.`32
Substitution yielded expanded opportunity for MAC officers to serve in a diversity of duties that exceeded those of World War I. They served as hospital administrators, statisticians, physical training directors, medical equipment maintenance officers, historians, morale officers, litter officers, training officers, and public relations officers, to name a few.33 Improvement in position opportunity was accompanied by improvement in promotion opportunity in 1942, when the War Department, acting upon a Wadhams Committee recommendation, provided for advancement of MAC officers beyond the grade of captain. In previous years young officer candidates had accurately sized up the situation: `If we go into
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the infantry we can wear four stars, but if we go into the Medical Administrative Corps, we wear two bars. That is as high as we can get.`34 But now there was opportunity for promotion to any rank, including the potential for general officer.
Officer Candidate Schools
Substitution was initially constrained by the limited availability of Medical Administrative Corps replacements, and some shortages persisted.35 The department was compelled to rapidly expand the MAC to meet the demand, so it established an MAC officer candidate school (OCS) in July 1941 at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, that a War Department inspector later called the best OCS in the Army. Increasing use of MAC officers and the activation of new medical units produced a demand that outstripped Carlisle`s capacity. Consequently, in May 1942 the department opened a second OCS at Camp Barkeley, a post located eleven miles southwest of Abilene, Texas.36 Between them, Carlisle and Barkeley commissioned 17,094 officers in the third largest of the eighteen Army OCS programs. Another 200 were commissioned through special OCS programs in England, New Caledonia, Hawaii, and Australia-the last near Brisbane, which, its director lamented, was `on the deserted side as far as the Yanks go.`37
Throughout the war the vicissitudes of class sizes and the closing and reopening of the schools were creatures of imperfect projections of MAC requirements. That imprecision arose from changes in force requirements as well as in policy. Rapidly expanding opportunities for MAC officers produced burgeoning OCS classes by the fall of 1942. However, projected requirements had overstated the positions actually available, and the department began placing graduates into replacement pools pending reassignment.
As a result of the changing requirements, Carlisle suspended operations at the end of February 1943 and reopened in May 1944. Barkeley had no classes in February, March, and April 1944. In July 1943 the Army predicted a surplus of over twenty-eight hundred Medical Administrative Corps officers by the end of the year, and nearly fifteen hundred officers were in replacement pools that fall. At that point the Army decided to replace the second physician in maneuver battalions-the assistant battalion surgeon-with an MAC officer. In addition, increasing casualty loads created staffing problems at the stateside hospitals. Those changes created a resurgence of demand, which required the schools to resume full operation until the United States accepted the surrender of Japan.
Carlisle and Barkeley shared a common curriculum divided into six basic subjects: tactics, administration, logistics, training, sanitation, and chemical warfare. Tactics consisted of map reading, Army and Medical Department organization, military operations, employment of medical units, and a field training exercise. Administration included general and company-level administration and military law. Logistics embraced vehicle maintenance, troop movements, and logistics in the field. The training portion prepared candidates to be instructors and, in addition, encompassed drill and ceremonies, first aid, and inspections. Sanitation included preventive medicine and field sanitation. Chemical warfare classes trained candidates for duties as medical unit gas officers.
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Lessons learned in the war influenced curriculum changes. For example, the department`s medical logistics problems caused modification of the supply portions, and reports of deficiencies in land navigation led to increased emphasis on map reading. Academic progress was measured with tests and quizzes. A passing grade of 75 was required in all subjects, and failure in two or more subjects required review of the candidate by a board of officers.
The candidates` day began at 0545 with first call and ended at 1700 with retreat, followed by two hours of supervised study from 1800-2000. Classes were scheduled based on eight fifty-minute periods with ten-minute breaks. Classroom instruction was interspersed with outdoor problems and demonstrations, drill, and road marches. Physical activity included daily calisthenics, obstacle courses, and interplatoon sports. Free time for social activities normally occurred on Saturday afternoon.
Basic prerequisites for MAC OCS were the same as for any Army OCS. Applicants were required to have scores greater than 100 on the Army General Classification Test and a minimum of three months` enlisted service, although that could be waived for education, experience, or prior service. In any case, the applicant was required to have completed basic training.38 The background of Peter A. Luppen, a member of the second class, was typical of the early candidates. As a soldier in the 7th Division, Luppen had learned `how to wash a horse`s rear end, front end and underneath` before he went to OCS.39
Each Army branch identified additional prerequisites it desired, and MAC OCS applicants were also expected to meet at least one of the following additional requirements: (a.) successful completion of one year of college; (b.) practical experience in management, for example as head of a business department, an athletic coach, or a noncommissioned officer; (c.) one year of experience in a business specialty, for example as an accountant, records supervisor, or sales manager; or, (d.) practical experience in hospital management, medical records management, medical supply, mess management in large institutions, or pharmacy.40
The Carlisle and Barkeley schools graduated 17,094 of 24,929 candidates for an overall pass rate of 68.6 percent. Carlisle`s pass rate of 79 percent was significantly better than Barkeley`s 65.3 percent. In fact, of seventeen Barkeley classes from January 1943 through June 1944, thirteen had more candidates failing than passing, and the `unlucky` Class Number 13 had only a 43.5 percent pass rate. Barkeley set up a special four-week Command School in 1943 in an attempt to salvage some of the candidates who appeared promising. Selected candidates were withdrawn from the regular OCS course in groups of eight to nine students to undergo extensive training in drill and command, calisthenics, public speaking, and practice teaching. Sixty-seven of the eighty-four candidates placed in this program successfully completed OCS.
The Barkeley attrition rate became so high that the Army Service Forces headquarters asked for an explanation. The school faulted poor selection methods, which sent students to OCS who had no chance of success, had inadequate prior military training, and were held to the exacting standards of their platoon leaders. The poor living conditions at Barkeley added to the rigors of the training environment. Some students decided it was all a mistake and took advantage of the privilege of voluntary withdrawals.
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The surgeon general`s director of training saw it differently and argued that the difference in attrition between the two schools was due to a difference in philosophy. The idea at Carlisle was `to help as many through as possible,` but at Barkeley the approach was to `see how many candidates can be kept from becoming officers.` OCS candidates witnessed many of their classmates fail.41 One who watched was Joseph P. Peters, later a nationally prominent health care administration consultant. Peter`s barracks was half empty by the time he graduated from Barkeley.42
Most candidates who failed did so for leadership deficiencies. Peters said that most of those who washed out at Barkeley lacked `command presence.` Candidates had to learn to bark out orders, and a good set of lungs helped.43 Carlisle counted 311 of the 441 failures in its first thirteen classes as leadership deficiencies.44 Barkeley had 5,348 failures in its first thirty-one classes. Of those, 2,942 were voluntary resignations, an option not available at Carlisle. The next highest category encompassed the 1,149 candidates dropped for leadership deficiencies, followed by 614 separated for academic problems. College graduates had the lowest attrition rates.
An Officer Candidate Preparatory School was established at Barkeley in April 1942 to help reduce the failure rate. The four-week course was designed by 1st Lt. Edward Marks, MAC, assisted by 1st Lt. Robert L. Parker, MAC, and
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Marks served as its first commandant. It had a cadre of five MAC officers and six enlisted personnel, and classes ranged from 150 to 400 students. Similar schools were established at all medical replacement training centers. Not surprisingly, OCS candidates who had completed that course did better than those who had not.45
Carlisle Barracks
The Medical Field Service School at Carlisle Barracks expanded its staff of 108 by another 40 officers, 87 enlisted personnel, and 4 civilian typists to operate the OCS. The instructors were mainly Medical Corps officers at first, but that changed as instructors and key staff officers were replaced with OCS graduates. Capt. Louis F. Williams, MAC, was the school secretary for the first class, and four other MAC officers were on the staff. Students were organized into a battalion, and platoon leaders and assistant platoon leaders also served as instructors. The commandant of the Medical Field Service School acted as the OCS commandant, with day-to-day operations vested in the assistant commandant (Chart 3). The Carlisle OCS was able to take advantage of the established facilities at Carlisle Barracks, and its candidates enjoyed better billets, classrooms, and recreation facilities than their peers in the more Spartan surroundings at Barkeley. The OCS used thirty-one buildings, a number that included seventeen barracks, three 300-seat auditoriums, and five 250-seat classrooms.46
The inaugural class of 100 officer candidates began on 1 July 1941, and enrollment increased to 250 students by the third class. With the fourth class the school shifted to staggered rather than consecutive scheduling and began enrolling a new class of 250 candidates every thirty days for a capacity of 750 candidates at any given time. The course initially totaled 561 hours of instruction conducted over twelve weeks. It increased to 576 hours by 1942, and by July 1943 was a seventeen-week program of 808 hours.47
Carlisle operated without interruption until 27 February 1943, when declining requirements for MAC officers caused its suspension. It reopened on 25 May 1944 and enrolled a class of 250 students in each of the ensuing twelve months. The thirteenth class, of only thirty-four candidates, continued after the war had ended, and when that class graduated on 17 October 1945, Carlisle OCS ceased operation permanently. It had commissioned 4,688 officers during its existence, and its graduates played important roles in the Army and in the Medical Department. One, John E. Haggerty, was promoted to brigadier general and appointed chief of the Medical Service Corps in 1973. Another, Leo Benade, later transferred to the Adjutant General`s Corps and retired as a lieutenant general.48
There was also some opportunity for black Americans. Army OCS in World War II was integrated, and the Medical Administrative Corps OCS graduated 387 black officers. By September 1945 there were 213 black MAC officers as well as 8 black Sanitary Corps officers serving in a variety of staff and command positions in black field medical units and fixed facilities stateside and overseas. One was the 93d Infantry Division at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Others were the 268th, 335th, and 383d Station Hospitals in Burma and the Philippines. Stateside assignments included the hospitals at Tuskegee, Alabama, and Fort Huachuca,
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Capt. Louis F. Williams lectures at the Medical Field Service School, Carlisle Barracks, June 1941
Arizona, but black officers had difficulty finding suitable housing and they were not assigned unless segregated quarters were available. The limited opportunities in the Medical Department resulted in a few officers` being sent for training at the Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia. Sixteen black MAC officers were detailed to the infantry by mid-1945.49
The Army formed sanitary companies specifically for staffing by black soldiers and officers. The companies initially had a nonspecific mission and were assigned to hospitals when requested by hospital commanders; the first two were established at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and at Camp Livingston, Louisiana, where the hospitals had all-black wards. Col. William A. Hardenbergh, SnC, chief of the Surgeon General`s Sanitary Engineering Division, recommended the company`s use in insect and mosquito control, and the Army formed 87 medical sanitary companies of 3 officers and 112 enlisted soldiers. The company was organized in two platoons to drain swampy land or lowlands, perform sanitary surveys, and provide insect and rodent control.50
The presence of black candidates in the first classes was a milestone. When Col. Elliotte J. Williams, MSC, entered Carlisle in March 1942, he was 1 of only 6 black candidates in a class of 300; the class just before his had only 1 black candidate. Four of his black classmates were eliminated by the end of the first month, and he began to suspect that discrimination was at work because two of the four were college graduates and the other two had more enlisted experience than he did. However, Williams and his remaining black classmate were assured
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2d Lt. Elliotte J. Williams (second from left) greets incoming OCS students, May 1942
that race was not a factor in the fate of the others. They had simply been unable to meet the standards expected of an Army officer. `Thus advised, we relaxed, worked together on our study assignments, and enjoyed the meager spare time that was available.`51
Williams described the program that provided so many with the gold bars of a second lieutenant:
We made friends of fellow candidates and attacked with new vigor our program in military sanitation, field medicine and surgery, administration, training management, logistics, and military art. We learned how to build and maintain a compost heap for the cavalry, the principles of battlefield triage of the wounded, execution of motor marches, and the development and conduct of training programs. We learned how to conduct a sanitary inspection, manage a mess hall or motor pool, the principles of medical supply, and personnel administration. We were to be the generalists in medical administration, prepared to assume any medical administrative duty in a hospital or field unit.52
Williams and his friend graduated in May 1942 and were posted to the 93d Infantry Division, where Williams was assigned as executive officer for the division surgeon. There he found the post facilities were completely segregated, including the tables in the officers` mess. Later he requested transfer to the Army hospital at Tuskegee, Alabama, where he served as the enlisted detachment commander. Lieutenant Williams and his wife and baby daughter encountered the humiliations that awaited a black family traveling in the South when they moved
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OCS candidates march to class at Camp Barkeley, Texas
to their new assignment. They negotiated restroom privileges at service stations and prayed that their car would not break down on the road.
Camp Barkeley
Take off those stripes, wipe off that grin
Cut off that hair, shave off that chin
Polish those shoes, shine that brass
Get on the stick and show some class.
Now double time with all your power,
Then stand in line for half an hour.53
The first Camp Barkeley OCS class of 253 candidates began on 11 May 1942. The cadre consisted of twelve MAC officers transferred from the Carlisle staff who arrived in Texas just four days ahead of the students. Another fourteen officers arrived from Carlisle two weeks after the school opened, and later additions to the cadre came from Barkeley graduating classes. Initially department heads trained new instructors. Later, the school established a fourteen-hour faculty development course that included graded practice presentations. Barkeley adopted the staggered scheduling used by Carlisle and enrolled an additional class of 250 students each month until a capacity of 750 candidates at one time was reached. The capacity increased in June 1942 to 1,000 students, and by the end of September 1942 Barkeley was enrolling a new class of 500 students every two weeks.54
In July 1943, as the student census reached 2,969, the school had a staff of 564, with 173 officers, 376 enlisted, and 15 civilians (Chart 4). Barkeley reached
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its peak of 3,011 candidates in attendance in July 1943. Class size then dropped monthly until January 1944 when the class numbered 106 candidates, the smallest. Barkeley enrolled no more classes after that until May 1944 when it again enrolled 250 students. In June 1944, as Carlisle reopened, Barkeley expanded to classes of 500 students. Barkeley graduated its fortieth and final class on 15 March 1945, having commissioned 12,406 officers since May 1942. The highest course average in the school`s history, 90.22, was posted by 2d Lt. Thomas P. Glassmayer, MAC, Class 40.55
The OCS occupied stark, treeless terrain in an area formerly belonging to the 120th Medical Regiment of the 45th Division. It used ninety-three buildings, temporary structures of the wood construction typical of Army camps. Those included 58 fifteen-man `hutments,` 12 five-man hutments, and 9 mess halls in areas nicknamed Kings Row, the Black Outs, and Tortilla Flats (also called Pneumonia Flats). Hutments were tarpaper-covered wood-frame structures with no amenities and `were cold as tombs` in winter.56 Training followed the typical OCS regimen of copious harassment, drill, and ceremonies. Sometimes the ceremonies went poorly; when a British Royal Army Medical Corps colonel visited in
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July 1942, a canopy erected to shield the colonel from the Texas sun fell down, nearly smothering him.57
Morale was reported as exceptionally high. Entertainment included facilities for all seasonal sports, and dances were held with the cooperation of the YMCA, the USO, and nearby colleges. The highlight was a class graduation dance held in the school`s gymnasium the night before graduation.58 However, high attrition rates colored some candidates` perceptions. There were rumors of a snitch in the barracks and a belief that `the walls had ears.` While there is no evidence that a system of informers existed, the suspicion that it did reflected the stressful environment. A peer review system that required each candidate to rate fellow candidates on personal characteristics added to the pressure.59
By April 1945, 158 black candidates had completed Barkeley OCS, with a completion success rate the same as white candidates. Life was not easy for those pioneering officers. Abilene, Texas, was rigidly segregated, and most recreational facilities were denied to blacks. The effect upon their morale was such that the surgeon general requested special authority to transfer black candidates to Carlisle. That did not occur, however, because the Carlisle facilities were overcrowded.60
Training exhibits at Barkeley included two elaborate outdoor displays. One was a sanitation exhibit with sections demonstrating disposal of human, kitchen, and animal wastes; sanitation of field messes; delousing; and mosquito control. The other was a miniature battlefield measuring 60 by 349 feet that illustrated the three zones of medical support, with models of the medical installations in each zone. The portion for the communications zone and the zone of the interior was 212 feet long and incorporated an artificial pond, representing the oceans that separated them.
One of the field exercises was a four-hour class on evacuation techniques in which candidates alternated duties as collecting company commander, clearing company commander, litter bearer platoon leader, and ambulance platoon leader. Candidates were graded on their knowledge of emergency medical treatment and their ability to evacuate simulated casualties. A six-day bivouac included a series of training exercises in a field setting.
Elliot Richardson completed the Barkeley OCS in 1943. He later held some of the highest positions in the United States government, including secretary of defense. Richardson began his military career after surmounting several difficulties. His repeated efforts to volunteer had been defeated by poor eyesight; he was drafted in December 1942, and although he had memorized the eye chart, his glasses gave him away. He was classified as a noncombatant and ordered to enlisted medical training at Camp Pickett, Virginia. There he completed OCS prep school, then went to Barkeley. `I`ve been a candidate for elective office,` he later recalled, `and I`ve been elected to various things, but I think my proudest moment in any election was being elected platoon leader of my OCS platoon.` He thought Barkeley was `a very tough school."61
Another distinguished alumnus was Col. Vernon McKenzie, MSC, who retired in 1984 as the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, a position he held with some intermissions for nearly ten years during the period following his retirement from the Army in 1967. McKenzie was drafted in
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1941 and after basic training was stationed in Brisbane, Australia. There he applied for OCS. `I went to a miserable place called Camp Barkeley, Texas, and decided shortly thereafter that I could withstand any form of psychological warfare that the Army could wish to apply to me for three months.`62 His company commander was Capt. John Haggerty, MAC, later brigadier general and chief of the Medical Service Corps. Col. Knute Tofte-Nielsen, MSC, had a different experience. Tofte-Nielsen came to Barkeley after service as an enlisted medic with the 76th Division at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. He found Barkeley `very pleasant, basically,` an experience in which his enlisted background helped immeasurably.63
OCS candidates stood regular inspections. During one, the inspecting officer asked a candidate to turn over his brass belt buckle. It turned out to be very dirty `That`s brass, too, isn`t it?` challenged the inspector. Without hesitation the candidate lifted one foot and pointed to the bottom of his shoe. `That`s leather, too, but I don`t polish it.` The candidate was hauled before a cadre board, which decided he should be retained in the program. The Army needed an officer who could think on his feet.64
Administrative Specialty Officers
By the end of the war administrative specialty officers routinely filled all hospital administrative positions except those of commander and executive officer.65 By 1944 the number of Medical Corps officers in a 1,000-bed general hospital in the zone of the interior decreased from thirty-seven to thirty-two while the number of MAC officers increased from seven to ten. The same was true in the Army Air Forces, where most administrative positions in dispensaries and station hospitals were filled by MAC officers who also served with the early air evacuation units.66
As medical registrars, MACs contributed advances in medical records management at a time when progressive measures of any sort were welcome in a system faced with enormous demands. The addressograph, a `seemingly small` advance, eliminated the need to type orders and rosters. This was no minor assistance for a facility such as Stark General Hospital, Charleston, South Carolina, which admitted over 44,000 patients in the first nine months of 1945. MAC officers were responsible for all levels of the system. Capt. Stephen Tucker, MAC, served as chief of the Medical Records Division for the European Theater of Operations (ETO). In Washington, Maj. Harold F. Dorn, MAC, received the Legion of Merit for his service as chief of the Surgeon General`s Medical Statistics Section. Major Dorn, a Sanitary Corps officer in World War I and later a Public Health Service statistician, revamped the department`s methods for statistical compilations.67
Some officers served in personnel management duties. One was Capt. Burt Langhenry, MAC, a personnel officer in the Surgeon General`s Office who handled the assignment of MAC officers worldwide. In Europe, Lt. Col. James T. Richards, MAC, was assigned to the Surgeon`s Division of the European Theater of Operations as chief of readjustment and redeployment. `If you asked me `what was the biggest job you ever did, or the most responsible job,` I`d have to say that was it,` he later declared. Richards` section had the responsibility of computing adjusted service rating scores for 70,000 Medical Department officers and 254,000
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Staff of the Station Hospital at Fort Pepperrell, Newfoundland, September 1943
enlisted personnel in order to determine who would return to the United States. A card-sort mechanism failed, and his staff had to resort to the use of index cards. He communicated movement orders directly to the units by telephone, irritating some commanders in the process.68
Other MAC officers served as regulating officers in the theaters of operations and the zone of the interior. They were `medical traffic cops` who controlled patient movement by matching a patient`s disease or injury with the availability of beds in the hospitals. Stateside they were stationed at embarkation ports and the Surgeon General`s Medical Regulating Office where they controlled movement of patients to the military hospitals nearest their homes that were equipped to handle their problems. The processing of large numbers of patients was a matter of keen interest to congressmen and was performed almost exclusively as an MAC function. The success of the system was called `one of the great achievements` of the war.69
The financial management field also opened. Maj. Nepthune Fogelberg, SnC, who had received a Master of Business Administration from Harvard in 1929, was commissioned as a Sanitary Corps officer in 1942. He established a nine-state regional fiscal office in Chicago and in 1943 moved to the Office of the Surgeon General where in 1945 he became chief of the Fiscal Division. Fogelberg stayed on in the same capacity as a civilian employee following his release from active duty and was one of the key officials in the Office of the Surgeon General for years afterward.70
The use of trained hospital administrators accelerated during the war. General Armstrong described most Army hospital administrators before the war as physicians who were `out of the mainstream` of medicine,71 a situation that did not
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meet wartime needs. The department thus established a program in 1942 to commission civilian hospital administrators. Appointment grade was related to a civilian`s rank in the American College of Hospital Administrators. A college nominee rated appointment as a second lieutenant, a member as first lieutenant, and a fellow as captain. The program had produced 250 MAC officers by the summer of 1943, when it ended.72
Effective utilization of MAC hospital administrators depended upon opening up the key positions. The job of hospital commander remained closed to MACs, but wartime needs gradually forced the executive officer (XO) position open. That was an important change, because the XOs were in effect the hospitals` chief operating officers. One of those early nonphysician XOs was Maj. Raymond H. Tolbertt, MAC, appointed in August 1943 as the XO of Borden General Hospital, Chickasha, Oklahoma. Tolbertt, who had risen from private to staff sergeant in Regular Army service from 1931 to 1940, was respected by the enlisted soldiers as an officer who had come up through the ranks.73 In 1944 the War Department mandated the use of MACs as the XOs of all stateside hospitals. The surgeon general vigorously protested, and the following month the War Department partly reversed itself. It allowed continued use of physicians as XOs of the general hospitals, especially stateside, but it permitted the use of carefully selected MAC officers as executive officers of station hospitals.74
There were more openings at the lower levels of the hospital organization. Newly commissioned physicians were not familiar with Army procedures, and some MAC officers proved invaluable as administrative assistants for the medical, surgical, and physical medicine departments of the larger hospitals. Their duties included property and supply management, reports, and, in some cases, preparation of medical histories on new patients.75
Movement into administrative positions in fixed facilities was mirrored by the assignment of over fifteen thousand MAC officers to field medical units and headquarters staffs. Assignments ranged from instructors of enlisted recruits to staff officers for the surgeon general, and MACs were key figures in management of the evacuation and treatment chain at all points from the battlefield to the stateside hospitals. MAC officers, like their forbears in the Civil War, were recognized for heroism under fire, and 1st Lt. Lester Dannenburg, of the U.S. Army Forces in the Far East, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1945. Some served as historians of the epic military medical events of World War II. One, Capt. James H. Stone, MAC, edited a compellingly candid account of medical support by men and women of the medical team who labored at the end of the line in the China-Burma-India Theater. Over fifty years later, Crisis Fleeting remains an essential source for those charged with medical plans and operations for Asian countries or the tropics.76
Enlisted medical soldiers were almost exclusively trained by MAC and Sanitary Corps officers during World War II. MAC officers performed principal command and staff duties of the seven medical replacement training centers where the Medical Department enlisted recruits received their basic training, which for the first time included weapons training. The average training center had 350 MAC officers assigned. MAC officers were also assigned as instructors
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and key staff officers for the nine Medical Department enlisted technician schools where soldiers received their advanced training. Thus the school at Fitzsimons General Hospital, Denver, Colorado, had forty MAC and four Sanitary Corps officers.77
MAC officers led litter bearer and ambulance platoons and served in the administrative positions of medical collecting companies, clearing companies, and ambulance companies. Third Army ambulance platoon leaders kept their ambulances `as close to the front lines as possible` as they moved through France and Belgium into Germany.78 Basil V. Everin, MAC, a first lieutenant, was an ambulance platoon leader in the 585th Ambulance Company. Everin was evacuated back to the States after he was shot in the mouth in action near Mayen, Germany, in March 1945. His platoon sergeant remembered him as an officer `whose example of bravery and leadership based upon integrity and fairness was a source of constant encouragement to us all.`79
In India, 1st Lt. William R. Odahl, MAC, was executive officer of Company B, 151st Medical Battalion, headquartered in Ledo. Odahl`s duty as pay officer made him the company`s link with the small medical teams at aid stations dispersed throughout the inhospitable terrain in which engineer units were laboriously building the Ledo Road. A legendary rapid walker, 1st Lt. Kenneth D. Harris, MAC, of the 896th Clearing Company (Seagrave`s Hospital), was the
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Lt. David D. Norman, historian and public relations officer, Brisbane, Australia, August 1944
`walking link` between his company`s detachments in Burma and India. Patients delivered to evacuation and field hospitals were moved in the field ambulances of separate medical detachments and companies commanded by Medical Administrative Corps officers, who also staffed the medical battalions and groups that served as the parent units. Capt. John Lada, MAC, the S-3 (operations officer) of the 33d Medical Ambulance Battalion located at Weymouth, England, handled the operational planning for his battalion`s support of the Normandy invasion. The 33d moved casualties from the landing ships to the general hospitals in England. It evacuated 823 casualties during one 24-hour period.80
Elliot Richardson, who had attended Barkeley, was commissioned as a second lieutenant, MAC, and served as a litter bearer platoon leader in the 4th Infantry Division from its D-day landing on Utah Beach through V-E Day. His platoon was part of a medical collecting company that supported the 12th Infantry Regiment, a unit authorized about three thousand soldiers that sustained nine thousand casualties in its eleven months of combat operations. The casualty rate translated into a 500 percent turnover of personnel in some rifle companies.81
Richardson quickly learned that there was no role for litter bearers to the rear of battalion aid stations because field ambulances handled evacuation from that level of the evacuation chain. Therefore, he employed his squads as relief teams for the litter bearers of the maneuver battalions. He used his jeep as a field ambulance, and his record was eighteen casualties carried in and upon the vehicle at one time. Richardson experienced the exhilaration of danger, but at the same time he learned the satisfaction of service for its own sake during experiences that remained vivid the rest of his life. Twice wounded and twice recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross, he was intensely proud of his contribution as a MAC officer. `I will never do anything that I feel better about,` he told an interviewer.82
MAC officers served in a variety of positions in the general, evacuation, convalescent, station, and field hospitals.83 MAC registrars handled responsibilities that required some of the most able officers assigned to a hospital. Capt. Charles D. Witenbower, MAC, registrar of the 21st General Hospital, which served in Italy and France, attributed his section`s success to hard-working and conscientious soldiers.84 MAC officers supervised hospital mess operations assisted by the
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hospital dietitian. MAC officers were responsible for medical and general supply functions, and MAC adjutants handled the administrative procedures expected of Army units. Philip U. Farley, MAC, a second lieutenant, had the dual responsibilities of adjutant and hospital inspector for the 48th Evacuation Hospital at Hellsgate, a 750-bed semimobile unit on the Ledo Road in India.85
In the Philippines, Capt. Jack E Lemire, MAC, was adjutant of General Hospital Number 1. The hospital was captured by the Japanese in the fall of Bataan and relocated to Camp O`Donnell in northern Luzon, a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp just north of Clark Air Force Base at the terminus of the Bataan death march. There, Lemire`s hospital supported a population that at its peak numbered over 45,000 in a prison camp designed for 9,000. The Filipino and American POWs faced starvation, disease, and ill-treatment in the `Andersonville of the Pacific.` Lemire was later moved to the large American POW camp at Cabanatuan, east of Camp O`Donnell, where Capts. Henry Siegrist and Rex Axton, MAC, were members of the prison hospital staff. Lemire, accused of being a spy, was placed in the camp brig where he was kept on a starvation diet and beaten regularly. Lemire later died aboard an unmarked Japanese `hell ship` transporting POWs to Japan under bestial conditions.86
Some officers were assigned as enlisted and patient detachment commanders. They served as ward administrators and transportation and utilities officers in the larger hospitals, and as company commanders and training officers for hospital rehabilitation units established to ensure that convalescing soldiers returned to full duty. For example, the 5th General Hospital at Toul, France, was collocated with a replacement depot through which convalescent troops passed on their return to the front. The hospital represented the last chance for those soldiers to escape combat, and it became inundated with `surly, hostile and defiant` patients.87 Establishment of a rehabilitation unit led by MAC officers turned around a bad situation.
MAC officers were the `Jacks of all trades` in the field hospitals of the communications zone. When the hospital broke into three separate hospital units (platoons), an MAC officer assumed administrative responsibilities for each 100-bed component. Dorothy S. Davis, a second lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps (ANC), served with the 57th Field Hospital south of Strasbourg, France, in the winter of 1945, where it received casualties from the Battle of the Bulge. Capt. William V. Davis, MAC, whom she later married, was the adjutant. Dorothy Davis said the MAC officers were greatly respected. They ran the ambulance support and `were right up in front with the infantry officers.`88
One of the MAC hospital executive officers was Maj. Gilbert A. Bishop of the 59th Evacuation Hospital. Bishop had been the hospital`s adjutant as it deployed in North Africa in support of Operation TORCH. There, the executive officer, a physician, was killed, and Bishop was promoted to major and placed in the slot, continuing in that position in North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany.89 Another MAC executive officer was Capt. William D. Schaefer, who entered politics after the war and was elected governor of Maryland in 1986 after fifteen years as mayor of Baltimore. Schaefer said that his tour as a hospital executive officer in England taught him the principles of management. `I learned then that if you
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want to get things done you can do it two ways, ordering people around or asking them to work.`90
Medical units above division level were organized into medical groups whose principal staff (other than the commander and executive officer) were MAC officers. Maj. Thomas S. Prideaux, a Carlisle OCS graduate, was S-3 of the 1st Medical Group, which supported Ninth Army from the crossing of the Roer River to the fall of Germany. Prideaux provided the operational planning and execution for eight months of combat support, relocating the group headquarters nine times (including five times in one two-week period). At one point the group was responsible for the hospitalization of nearly forty thousand civilians and German and Allied POWs in areas occupied by the advancing American units. Maj. Bernard Aabel, MAC, served as the S-2 (Intelligence) and liaison officer of the 68th Medical Group, which had 2,500 personnel in four medical battalions and five field hospitals supporting First Army. From June 1944 to May 1945 the group`s ambulances traveled over 2.6 million miles transporting 207,060 patients. It put eight million miles on its vehicles during the European campaign.91
MAC assignments within the evacuation chain included hospital trains. Other patients moved by sea, and beginning in 1943 some MACs served on twenty-eight hospital ships, whose crews included one Sanitary Corps and three to five MAC officers, depending on the ship`s size. Some MACs served as beach-masters during amphibious operations. They coordinated evacuation of casualties to the hospital ships and received medical materiel ashore and won praise for keeping the blood distribution system running at night on the beachheads.92
MACs contributed to the development of the Air Force Medical Service and its establishment of intertheater, long-range air evacuation using large aircraft. MAC officers in the Army Air Forces served as administrative assistants and executive officers for base and section surgeons and in administrative positions in medical air evacuation squadrons which were formed to provide the medical and nursing staffs for air evacuation flights. An example is 1st Lt. Clement J. Quarantiello, MAC, who served as the adjutant, supply officer, and personnel officer for a medical air evacuation squadron assigned to the Fifth Air Force in New Guinea. His unit provided medical staffing for C-47s which evacuated patients from six locations in New Guinea to Doboduru and Port Moresby in Papua. The evacuation squadrons were organized into six flights, each headed by a Medical Corps flight surgeon. A Twelfth Air Force report recommended replacing the physicians with MACs, since their principal function was to maintain liaison between the airfields and the hospitals, a task that did not require a physician.93
MACs also contributed to the development of forward air evacuation of casualties with small Army aircraft. In 1945 1st Lt. Ernest C. Townsend, MAC, was instrumental in setting up an air evacuation system in Luzon for the Sixth Army surgeon during the Philippines campaign, adopting techniques developed in the China-Burma-India Theater where a squadron of light aircraft had evacuated 700 wounded in northern Burma during a one-month period in 1944. An air commando group provided squadrons of Stinson L-5s, Cub-like planes that could carry one patient either sitting up or on a litter. Up to thirty planes oper?
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ating daily in a one-month period evacuated over three thousand patients from a network of forty landing strips, while also delivering medical supplies to the forward positions.94
Other developments included using Piper Cub L-4s and -5s in the European Theater, the Pacific, and Burma for the movement of medical supplies and blood plasma. The use of air ambulances in forward evacuation was fairly common in some areas, even though there was no widespread development of doctrine and organization to make it a systematic practice. Further development of the helicopter was needed to make it fully possible. The two-seat Sikorsky R-4 helicopter was used in northern Burma in 1943 for patient evacuation, but a proposal that year to organize helicopter air ambulance units foundered on the question of whether patients should be carried internally or externally.95
Battalion Surgeon`s Assistant
The decision in November 1943 to substitute a MAC officer for the assistant battalion surgeon was controversial. The idea of the battalion surgeon`s assistant (BSA) had surfaced as a recommendation of the Kenner Board, a dramatic departure from previous practice that was necessitated by a shortage of physicians. The use of Army Nurse Corps officers was not contemplated since there was no provision for commissioning male nurses in that corps and the Army did not permit the employment of female nurses that far forward. The BSAs worked out well,96 and their success presaged the establishment of the warrant officer physician assistants in the post-Vietnam era.
The primary role of BSAs was to ensure the rapid evacuation of wounded soldiers and the quick return to duty of those with minor wounds or illness. BSAs took over the administrative responsibilities of the battalion surgeon, including operation of the field ambulances as well as some clinical duties. On occasion the clinical duties-principally routine treatment of minor illnesses-would predominate. This was especially true for BSAs assigned as surgeons aboard the smaller troop transports, where they conducted sick call. In combat their medical treatment duties centered on emergency treatment: arresting hemorrhage, fixing fractures, preventing shock by the infusion of blood expanders, administering pain-killing drugs, and preparing casualties for further evacuation. In some cases the BSA was the only officer in an aid station during battle. While MAC officers were not primarily intended to perform medical treatment, they were expected to be able to render emergency medical care and were trained accordingly in field medicine and surgery.97
Not all physicians were happy with this development. Maj. Gen. Morrison C. Stayer, MC, chief surgeon of the North African Theater of Operations, was sufficiently distressed to write Surgeon General Kirk that it could be a `real source of danger` if BSAs were tempted to provide clinical care beyond their capability.98 Kirk responded that he found it difficult to get agreement by medical officers on any issue, and this one was no different. The primary purpose for the BSA was not patient care. `He is put in there to do the administrative work of the detachment, command the litter bearers, and assist the battalion surgeon as he does in hospitals. We have no trouble with MAC officers trying to do
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surgery or write diagnoses on patients in hospitals. Why should we with assistant battalion surgeons?`99
Some BSAs were medical sergeants who received battlefield commissions in the MAC. An example in the ETO was S. Sgt. Samuel G. Calhoon, the non?commissioned officer of a battalion medical section in the 398th Infantry Regiment of the 100th Division. When Calhoon received his new rank his soldiers applauded this recognition of `his wonderful work on the battlefield.`100 Most BSAs were MAC officers who completed the BSA course, a six-week school begun in January 1944 as an affiliate of the Barkeley OCS. It graduated its first class of 250 students in March, and in all trained 1,974 officers in seven classes ending in January 1945, two months before Barkeley closed. About half of the instruction was in field medicine and surgery, with the balance in tactical employment of battalion aid stations, administration, and field sanitation. When planning for the invasion of Japan created a requirement for another 500 BSAs, the course had to be reinstituted at Carlisle Barracks; it reopened there on 7 July 1945 and had graduated another 102 officers by the time Japan surrendered.101 Lt. Richardson was delighted when the 4th Infantry Division received its first BSAs as it fought through France, because that gave him counterparts in each battalion to assist in rotating the litter bearer teams and in getting the jeeps as far forward as possible, a task he had been doing alone up to that point.102
Capt. Klaus H. Huebner, MC, a battalion surgeon in the 88th Infantry Division in Italy, welcomed the arrival of an MAC lieutenant as `an innovation` who relieved him of administrative duties.103 In the South Pacific, Sgt. Czar Hertzell received a battlefield commission as an MAC second lieutenant in the 6th Infantry Division and was twice decorated for valor. His battalion surgeon, faced with `overwhelming` paperwork and unit administration, said Lieutenant Hertzell was a `big help and timesaver` as the BSA, especially with his coordination of evacuation and medical supply during combat.104
Col. Jimmie Kanaya, MSC, a BSA in World War II, believed the use of MAC officers in this role was a sensible improvement in the utilization of Army physicians. Kanaya was the medical detachment sergeant for a regimental combat team attached to the 34th Infantry Division in Italy. He received a battlefield commission and was appointed the BSA in September 1944 when the assistant battalion surgeon was wounded and evacuated. Kanaya received the Silver Star for his actions in Italy and was redeployed with his regiment to southeastern France where it was attached to the 36th Infantry Division. He was captured in the Vosges mountains and remained a prisoner of war until his liberation in April 1945. Initially held by the Germans in Schubin, Poland, Kanaya, along with another MAC officer, 1st Lt. Les Brown, was force-marched 360 miles to Nuernberg, Germany, in the winter of 1945. Kanaya, the only non-Caucasian of 1,400 POWs, kept a prohibited diary in which he described liberation by a task force from Patton`s Third Army. Kanaya worked in the POW dispensary and at one point escaped execution by a ruse. `Attempt was made by the Germans to move out all American officers during this period. Feigned illness in the dispensary bed with actual temperature (fever) so the Germans let me stay.`105
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Medical Logistics
The Medical Department`s World War II history characterized its logistical performance as marked by `numerous shortcomings, tragedies, handicaps and errors.`106 The lack of an adequate capability at the beginning of the war was hard to overcome, a matter of `too little and not early enough.`107 That the department recovered was to the credit of MAC officers serving in medical logistics duties, a number that reached about five thousand by the end of 1943. Administrative specialty officers held key positions at all levels of the medical logistics system.
These officers commanded virtually all the overseas depots and filled the positions in the Army Air Forces, which created its own medical logistics system in 1942. They served as medical supply officers of hospitals of every size, enabling those units to meet the demands of combat support. An example was the 23d General Hospital, which used 90 miles of gauze, 12,000 pounds of plaster of paris, 3,600 cans of ether, and over 2,000 liters of normal saline in 1944. Inevitably, some of the officers encountered resistance to their assumption of duties formerly performed by physicians. Capt. Claude C. Britell, MAC, commander of the 30th Medical Depot, took his unit to Fort Lewis for predeployment training. The post surgeon adamantly believed that only physicians should command medical units, and only the intercession of higher headquarters prevented him from relieving Britell of his command.108
The importance of officers competent in medical logistics was again underscored. General Kirk spoke to a meeting of medical logisticians shortly after his appointment as surgeon general, and he recalled for the group just how frustrating the early logistical failures had been. In some areas there had been no suction equipment for surgery and the medics would have to hook up a hose to a truck`s windshield wiper vacuum line. Scissors would not cut and the fluoroscopic glass in every x-ray machine had broken during shipping. There were no intestinal sutures, no washing machines to do the hospital laundry, sterilizers without gauges, and `warehouses full of junk left from the last war.`109
Assessments after the war cited a number of reasons for the early failures,110 but the vital ingredient in turning the situation around was Medical Administrative Corps officers. Col. Louis F. Williams, MSC, one of the officers who contributed to the effort, recalled that: `No one was trained for anything, and we made all the mistakes that are possible to make. How we got through, I don`t know, except probably we were able to produce so much.`111 New techniques were introduced, such as the wooden pallet, which in combination with the forklift truck reduced manual operations to a minimum. But most important, MAC officers succeeded in meeting unbending demands. `The old phrase `ain`t got any` was `out.`"112
Initially, the procurement of medical materiel was the sole domain of Sanitary Corps officers who were recruited in the interwar program of commissioning officers from industry. MAC officers concentrated on warehousing, storage, and issue of medical items. But the distinction between MAC and Sanitary Corps officers in procurement duties disappeared when it became evident that the department could not meet all its requirements with the Sanitary Corps pro?
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gram.113 One officer who specialized in procurement was Maj. C. W. Torbet, SnC, deputy director of the Surgeon General`s Procurement Division. He reported in June 1943 that the classified drug `penicillum` was being procured for experimental use by the Army. With the exception of the atomic bomb project, the penicillin program had the highest priority of any military item during the war. The Army`s requirement went from slightly more than half of the monthly U.S. production of 50,000 vials in June to 1.5 million vials in December 1943. Other procurement actions ranged from an order for 364,125 gross of prophylactics (this required the intervention of the Office of the Rubber Director) to contracts for 1,000 glass eyes per month.114
Medical administrative specialty officers operated at all levels of a vastly expanding medical logistics operation. The growth of the Surgeon General`s Supply Service reflected this movement. In September 1939, as the Finance and Supply Division, it numbered 4 officers and 27 civilians. By June 1943 it totaled 73 officers and 522 civilians. Fifty-three officers were MAC and Sanitary Corps officers; only 7 were physicians. By then the Medical Department had 800 officers and 15,000 civilians handling its stateside medical logistics operations.115
Changes in the depot system reflected the assumption of responsibilities by MACs. In February 1942 Capt. Eugene G. Cooper, MAC, was assigned to the Richmond General Depot as the first MAC officer to activate the medical section of a general depot. The St. Louis Medical Depot had 4 Medical Corps and 25 MAC or Sanitary Corps officers in March 1942. Three years later it had 2 MC and 87 MAC officers.116
Medical administrative specialty officers also ran the medical portion of the United States Lend-Lease program, which began in 1941 as a small section in the Surgeon General`s Office headed by Capt. Burwell B. Smythe, MAC. Renamed the International Division (dubbed the `International Gift Society`) and headed by Lt. Col. Francis C. Little, MAC, it directed the shipment of $150 million of medical materiel during the war, 23 percent of which went to the Soviet Union, the largest single recipient.117
MACs provided medical supply support around the world. Capt. Orion V. Kempf, MAC, commander of the medical supply depot in the Philippines, was captured by the Japanese in the fall of the Philippines. He died on 9 January 1945 aboard the unmarked Japanese vessel Enoura Maru, which was transporting POWs to Japan and was attacked by Allied aircraft in Takao Harbor, Formosa.118 In the China-Burma-India Theater, Lts. George J. DeBroeck and Philip U. Farley, MAC, served as medical supply officers supporting the 10th (Chinese) Engineer Regiment and several American units in building the Ledo Road from Burma to China, a road `that was pushed across the hills by a band of gallant and hardy giants.119
Medical logistics training was conducted by the depots. In 1942 the St. Louis Medical Depot organized a two-week orientation course for officers commissioned from industry. In March 1943, expanded to one month, it was incorporated into the Army Service Forces Depot Course, which 412 Medical Department officers completed by June 1944. The other two phases were a month at the Quartermaster School, Fort Lee, Virginia, and a one-month practical experience
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U.S. Army Medical Supply Depot in New Caledonia, 1942
at the medical supply section of a general depot. In addition, the St. Louis Medical Depot trained ninety-eight officers as medical equipment maintenance officers, and a smaller number completed an optical repair course. OCS graduates were a primary source of students.120
Actions to resolve medical logistics difficulties also led to the first general officer among the precursors of the Medical Service Corps. The promotion of Col. Edward Reynolds, MAC, to brigadier general in 1945 boosted the morale of MAC officers. `That Reynolds, an MAC, could become a brigadier general, tickled the vanity of the MACs and enhanced their image very substantially."121
Reynolds` promotion had a lot to do with the actions of Col. Tracy S. Voorhees, an attorney who, with other talented civilian leaders, joined the staff of the Surgeon General`s Office. Commissioned as a colonel in the Judge Advocate General Department, Voorhees organized a legal division for the surgeon general and later served as director of the Control Division (a Somervell development). In 1945 he was appointed assistant secretary of war and after the war became under secretary of war.122
In November 1942 Voorhees, alarmed by the Wadhams Committee hearings, convinced the surgeon general to appoint a businessman with a national reputation as chief of supply in order to improve the department`s logistics and defuse the attacks. Even though the surgeon general was a physician and not a businessman, Voorhees warned that `he was operating what was in effect a national chain store enterprise,` and he needed expert help.123
Magee reluctantly took Voorhees` advice and appointed Edward Reynolds, the president of Columbia Gas and Electric Corporation, New York, as his spe?
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cial assistant. A Harvard graduate, Reynolds had seen action in 1916 as a first lieutenant in the Mexican Punitive Expedition, joined Columbia Gas and Electric in 1922, and became the company`s president in 1936.124 Reynolds` role was initially not well defined, at least publicly, but Voorhees` plan was to transfer all medical supply authority to Reynolds. Voorhees believed that Reynolds` appointment helped soften the report of the Wadhams Committee. `The Committee`s findings concerning the surgeon general were not particularly flattering,` he noted, `but were much milder than they otherwise might have been."125
Reynolds` position solidified in June 1943 when General Kirk, the new surgeon general, appointed Reynolds as the acting chief of the Supply Service and in August as the chief. Reynolds was commissioned an MAC colonel in April 1944.126 In the spring of 1945 General Kirk asked Colonel Voorhees for assistance in promoting Reynolds to brigadier general, something that Kirk had promised. Voorhees interceded with his friend Judge Robert P. Patterson, the under secretary of war. `I saw the `Judge` the next day,` Voorhees said. Reynolds was promoted on 17 June 1945, `but I don`t think he ever knew how it came about."127
MACs were members of three troubleshooting teams led by Colonel Voorhees in 1944 to correct major medical logistics problems overseas. The most dramatic occurred from January to April 1944, when a team composed of Voorhees; Lt. Col. Leonard H. Beers, MAC; Herman C. Hangen (on loan to the Medical Department from the J.C. Penney Company); and Lt. Col. Byron C. T. Fenton, MC, visited the ETO headquarters in England.128 There they found that medical support deficiencies were about to derail the Normandy invasion. Maj. Gen. Paul R. Hawley, the ETO chief surgeon, called it `a horrible mess. It was really terrible."129
American forces required an additional 44,000 beds to support the invasion, yet by mid-February only 7,000 were available. The problems were endless. For one thing, all the First Army`s mobile hospital sets had been opened for inspection, thereby destroying the integrity of their original amphibious packing. For another, the Americans had difficulties accommodating to the supply systems of its allies. Examples were many: U.S. oxygen tanks were green, the color that the British used for carbon dioxide-a problem that would cause several deaths early in the invasion. There were infinite differences in detail between the systems: Americans issued aspirins in 500-tablet bottles, for example, while the British issued 50,000 tablets in a stove pipe that had each end plugged.130
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Voorhees` team reported that an immediate reorganization was required.131 The team moved quickly. Col. Silas B. Hays, MC, was put in charge of the medical supply service and Colonels Beers and Fenton remained in England on Hays` staff. Capt. William B. Walker, MAC, arrived in late February to supervise the repacking of the fifteen First Army hospitals.132 Medical support was ready in time for the invasion, which began on 6 June, although medical logisticians would face great demands as the invasion proceeded. After the war the General Board of the European Theater of Operations concluded that the medical logistics system `would not have been able to support operation `Overlord` had not certain changes been effected as a result of the Voorhees Committee investigation."133
The summer of 1944, Voorhees, Hangen, and Louis F. Williams (then a Pharmacy Corps [PhC] lieutenant colonel) investigated medical supply problems in the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater.134 There they found that the Surgeon, Services of Supply (the chief administrative officer for the CBI medical support) had ignored complaints of medical supply problems.135 There were shortages throughout the theater because until the assignment of a competent medical supply officer, Maj. Claud D. La Fors, PhC, the theater had not requisitioned any supplies. His predecessor, a personal choice of the SOS surgeon, had been a dental officer. `Our suspicion was that the dentist must have pulled teeth in the morning and become so tired in the afternoon he could not even order what he could get merely for the asking."136 The commander of the largest activity, the medical depot in Calcutta, had been the `$125-a-month proprietor of an ice cream parlor` prior to the war and was quite incompetent.137 They removed him on the spot.
A final Voorhees mission traveled to Hawaii, New Guinea, the Philippines, Saipan, and the South Pacific in the fall of 1944. Voorhees, accompanied by Colonel Williams; Maj. Gordon S. Kjolsrud, MAC; and Charles W. Harris, deputy chief of the Supply Service, found enough medical supplies in the South Pacific Base Command for the current war and the next one as well. Requisitions submitted since August by units in Guadalcanal had not been filled by November because the forms were not properly filled out.138 Medical supply in MacArthur`s Southwest Pacific Area was an `utterly red-tape organization.` Subordinate depots were not permitted to requisition directly from outside the theater unless the item was not present within the theater. This caused insurmountable difficulties for an area of operations that spanned more than twenty-five hundred miles and lacked dependable transportation. `If the theater was short of an item, a lot would be on requisition, all of which might go to the Philippines and none to New Guinea or vice versa.` Corrective actions ranged from modifying stockage levels and requisitioning practices to immediate personnel changes.139
Summary
The principal story of medical administrative specialty officers in World War II was the breadth and depth of their movement into positions throughout the Medical Department as it woke from the somnolence of the interwar years. The revolution was propelled by pressure from a number of sources working in tandem: national and departmental politics, civilian associations and guilds, the bur?
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geoning demands of wartime patient care, the influence of modernization within the American health care industry, the need for trained executives, and the desires of physicians to practice medicine rather than occupy their time with nonclinical duties.
The department resisted those pressures, but the time was long overdue for modernization. Administrative specialty officers and their scientific specialty colleagues enabled the department to accomplish its enormously complex task. Opportunity for commissioning, training, and meaningful positions flourished. Promotion opportunity also opened during the war and was distinguished by the first selection of a general officer among this group of Medical Department officers.
During World War I the Army had learned all the lessons it needed on the necessity for a complete medical team. Yet the Medical Department`s failure to select, train, and nurture a sufficient number of administrative specialty officers during the interwar years continued to plague the department throughout World War II. A premier example was medical logistics. The trained and experienced senior medical logisticians the Army needed did not exist because no one had `grown` them in the necessary numbers before the war. Even with enormous efforts to turn around the medical logistics system, the absence of adequate planning and execution at the theater level seriously impaired the medical supply support in the China-Burma-India Theater and nearly derailed the invasion of Europe.
Medical administrative specialty officers were needed in great numbers to handle medical logistics worldwide, as well as the full range of management functions that were essential for a global industrial capability. The Army rapidly selected, trained, and pressed into service thousands of officers in the attempt to overcome the problems of medical support that had not been planned for before the war. Through their performance and contributions they were reshaping the Medical Department into a new kind of organization.
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Notes
1MAC: Most administrative specialty officers were commissioned in the MAC, although a handful served in the Sanitary Corps and the Pharmacy Corps, the latter a wartime creation.
2Quoted words: Albert E. Cowdrey, The Medics` War, volume in the series U.S. Army in the Korean War (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1987), p. 53.
3MAC numbers: McMinn and Levin, Personnel in World War II, pp. 15, 113, 376, 436; Disposition form (DF), Samuel Kier to Maj Israeloff, THU, OTSG, sub: Comparative Statistical Data, 17 Dec 65, MSC-USACMH; Bernard P. C. Aabel, `The Medical Administrative Corps,` Medical Bulletin (June 1947): 518, hereafter cited as Aabel, `The MAC.` The 1,343 MAC officers in June 1941 consisted of 68 Regular Army, 933 Reserve, 266 National Guard, and 76 Army of the United States officers, the last a wartime temporary component. In October 1944 over half of the corps was overseas. In all, 20,213 officers served in the MAC during World War II. Other August 1945 figures were Army Nurse Corps (ANC): 55,950; MC: 46,980; DC: 14,170; VC: 2,070; and enlisted: 493,209.
4U.S. casualties: Pamphlet, Armed Forces Information Service, Defense 83 Almanac (Arlington, Va.: Department of Defense, September 1983), p. 46, hereafter cited as Defense 83.
5Peak strength: McMinn and Levin, Personnel in World War II, pp. 12, 15, 247-66, 499. The Medical Department by the fall of 1944 was three times the size of the entire Regular Army in 1937. Kent Roberts Greenfield, The Historian and the Army (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University, 1954), p. 73, citing comparisons by Donald O. Wagner, Ph.D., TSG`s chief historian. In August 1945 the strength of the MAC was 19,867, the SnC was 2,490, and the PC was 68. These are TSG numbers; TAG numbers were slightly different.
6Casualties: Encyclopedia Americana, 57th edition, s.v. `World War II,` section by John R. Elting on `Costs, Casualties, and Other Data.` The estimate of the killed during the war is from Henry J. Gwiazda II, `World War II and Nazi Racism,` Prologue (quarterly of the National Archives) 25 (Spring 1993): 65. The figures remain very imprecise. For example, estimates of the number killed in the Soviet Union and China remain very fluid. Racial war: Gwiazda, `World War II and Nazi Racism,` pp. 65, 67; Rudolph J. Rummell, Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1992). The `final solution` of the Nazis was a deliberately planned and implemented genocide of the Jews. It was one aspect of a Nazi ideology that sought to preserve Aryan blood over all others. Rummell in a detailed examination of this complex and horrifying subject concludes that the Nazis probably murdered over 16.3 million (and possibly as many as 24 million) people because of race, religion, ethnicity or sexual preference. Ibid., p. 100.
7Armed Forces: Defense 83, p. 46. Theaters: John B. Coates, `The US Army Medical Department in World War II,` Journal of the American Medical Association 165 (September 21, 1957): 244. The major theaters and the numbers of soldiers in each were: European Theater of Operations (ETO), 3,000,000; Southwest Pacific Theater, 340,000; Pacific Ocean Areas, 450,000; and Mediterranean Theater of Operations, 500,000. Army buildup: Greenfield, The Historian and the Army, pp. 70, 86. Logistical burdens of fighting a global war caused Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall to suspend creation of new divisions in the summer of 1943 so as to concentrate on building up the support base. The Army finished the war with 89 divisions rather than the 215 originally envisioned.
8Prewar capacity: SG Report, 1941, p. 253. There were 78,734 beds on 30 June 1941, of which 41,051 were occupied, reflecting the buildup. Wartime capacity: Army Service Forces, Statistical Review: World War II, pp. 243, 245, 248, copy in JML; Eli Ginzberg, `Federal Hospitalization: II-Current Trends,` Modern Hospital 72 (April 1949): 73. Zone of the Interior hospitals: Eli Ginzberg, `Army Hospitalization, Retrospect and Prospect,` Medical Bulletin (January 1948): 38-44, hereafter cited as Ginzberg, `Army Hospitalization.` That there was sufficient stateside capacity to receive those patients was a tribute to TSG`s strenuous efforts before the Normandy invasion to preserve hospital beds in the face of enormous pressure from the War Department Staff to reduce hospital capacity. Ibid., p. 44.
9Doctrine: Medical Field Service School, Service of a Field Force, pamphlet no. 6 (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: U.S. Army Medical Field Service School, 1932), p. 47; Military Medical Manual, 6th ed., rev. October 1944 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Military Service Publishing Company, 1945), pp.
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545-47; Monograph, Donald E. Hall, From the Roer to the Elbe with the 1st Medical Group: Medical Support of the Deliberate River Crossing (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1992), pp. 6-15. Lessons: Some lessons learned are in Rpt, ETO, U.S. Army, sub: Reports of the General Board, United States Forces, European Theater, established by GO 128, HQ, ETO, USA, 17 Jun 45, USACMH, hereafter cited as ETO, General Board. Medical doctrine is covered in report number 90. Experience in Europe taught that cellular units were impracticable and that a large and immediately available bed capacity was essential for combat support. See also Memo, Ginzberg for Director, History Division (Dir, Hist Div), OTSG, 5 Sep 45, MSC-USACMH; Ginzberg, `Army Hospitalization,` pp. 38, 42. Ginzberg was a noted economist (still publishing in 1991) who was a key figure in SGO during the war.
10MAC positions: Samuel M. Goodman, Training (Tng) Doctrine Branch (Br), Tng Div, OTSG, sub: A Report on the History of the Medical Administrative Corps Officer Candidate Schools, 1 Nov 44, with Supplement, 1 Jul 44-30 Jun 45, pp. 14, 56, MSC-USACMH, hereafter cited as Goodman, OCS Report.
11MAC positions: Col Joseph Israeloff, MSC, draft chapter, sub: Medical Officer Substitutions, THU, OTSG, 1965 MSC History Project (Israeloff revision, winter 76), pp. 13, 66, MSC?USACMH, hereafter cited as Israeloff, Medical Officer Substitutions.
12Reorganization: Maj. Gen. Henry H. Arnold assumed command of the Army Air Forces. Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair headed the Army Ground Forces, a command which formed the U.S. training base and put together the divisions that were furnished to theater commanders. This account is based on several sources: Blanche B. Armfield, Organization and Administration in World War II, volume in the series Medical Department of the United States Army in World War II (Washington D.C.: Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, 1962), pp. 145-85; Smith, Hospitalization and Evacuation, pp. 54-61; James E. Hewes, Jr., From Root to McNamara: Army Organization and Administration, 1900-1963 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1975), pp. 57-103; John D. Millet, The Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces, volume in the series United States Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1954), pp. 36-38. Access regained: See Ms, Tracy S. Voorhees, A Lawyer Among Army Doctors, pp. 79-80, USACMH.
13Quoted words: Charles Murphy, `Somervell of the S.O.S.,` Life (8 March 1943): 43. TSG: Millet, The Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces, p. 93.
14Wadhams Committee: Account drawn from Millet, The Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces, pp. 145-200; Smith, Hospitalization and Evacuation, p. 61; Rpt, War Department, sub: Committee To Study the Medical Department, Col. Sanford H. Wadhams, MC, USA, Ret., Chm, 9 volumes of testimony, 1942, copy in MSC-USACMH, hereafter cited as Wadhams Committee.
15Marshall and Magee: Interv, Eli Ginzberg with Samuel Milner, 10 Sep 63; Interv, Maj Gen Raymond W. Bliss, MC (TSG), Ret., with Milner, 14-15 Jun 63, both in interv files, USACMH; Armfield, Organization and Administration in World War II, p. 185, quoted words, p. 200.
16Logistics: One witness described seventeen medical procurement employees working up to twelve hours a day in a room adequate for six people. `They work until they get the jitters.` Wadhams Committee, testimony by Col Albert J. Browning, Dir Purchasing Div, SOS (formerly President [Pres], United Wall Paper Factories), 7 Oct 42. TSG received the report in late February 1943, after Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson approved it.
17The total staff numbered 337. Quoted words: Paul V. McNutt (Chm of the Board, United Artists; previously Governor of Indiana, 1933-37), testimony 3 Oct 42, Wadhams Committee, MSC-USACMH. For a perspective on this from within the Medical Department see Gibbs, Milner interv, 24 Jun 64.
18Wadhams Committee, Recommendation 95.
19ASF supervision: Brig Gen James B. Wharton, Dir Mil Per,, HQ SOS, to TSG, sub: Availability of Physicians, 22 May 42, Wadhams Committee, MSC-USACMH. TSG was directed to remove physicians from `administrative or executive positions which do not require professionally trained medical personnel.`
20WD policy: Smith, Hospitalization and Evacuation, p. 133, citing TAG to CGs of AGF, AAF, and all CAs (Corps Areas), sub: Relief of MC Officers from Duties Which Do Not Require
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Professional Medical Training, 13 Jul 42; WD Cir 99, 9 Mar 44, sub: Conservation of Medical Officers, PL.
21AMA: It was also an effort by organized medicine to control the allocation of medical resources.
22Physician draft: McMinn and Levin, Personnel in World War II, pp. 73-74, 134, 175, 185-88, including quoted words, p. 73.
23Physician requirement: McMinn and Levin, Personnel in World War II, pp. 67, 73-74; Israeloff, Medical Officer Substitutions, pp. 21, 31-32; Gerald H. Teasley, `Personnel Problems of the Medical Department,` Southern Medical Journal 36 (March 1943): 211. MC: The Medical Corps strength peaked at 46,970 in January 1945. McMinn and Levin, Personnel in World War II, p. 12.
24Quoted words: Gibbs, Milner Interv, 24 Oct 63.
25Report: Operations Service (Ops Svc), OTSG, General Bliss Notebook, Rpt, sub: Utilization of Medical Personnel in the Field, 31 Oct 44, folder 176, box 11/18, MSC-USACMH.
26Kenner Board: SGO, Medical Department Personnel Board, Brig Gen Albert W. Kenner, MC, Chm, Rpt to Chief Ops Svc, SGO, sub: Study of Medical Department Personnel, 28 October 1943, Board established by SGO Office Orders no. 715, 16 Sep 43, MSC-USACMH, hereafter cited as Kenner Board; also see Israeloff, Medical Officer Substitution, pp. 50-65.
27Heaton on substitution: Leonard D. Heaton, foreword to McMinn and Levin, Personnel in World War II, p. xi.
28Incompetence: `Our hospital administrators were generally medical officers who were not too successful in their practices.` Interv, Maj Gen George E. Armstrong, MC (TSG), Ret., Dir, New York University Medical Center, with Samuel Milner, 13 Jul 67, USACMH. See also Gibbs, Milner Interv, 18 Mar 64. Regular Army (RA) MC: All but six RA MCs served in staff or administrative positions during the war. THU, OTSG, Mtg of the Advisory Editorial Board for the Medical Service Corps History, 13 Nov 58, p. PR 3-5, 1, MSC-USACMH, hereafter cited as THU, AEB for MSC History.
29Pressure on TSG: Millet, The Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces, p. 95-96.
30Resistance: Smith, Hospitalization and Evacuation, pp. 259-60. SGO announced a test of substitution in June 1942 and asked fourteen hospitals to respond with their findings. Guidance from SGO in August 1942 said that the executive officer and registrar positions in large hospitals must be physicians. Col John A. Rogers, MC, XO, SGO, to hospital cdrs, 29 Jun 42; Lt Col J. R. Hudnall, MC, SGO, to Lt Col Arthur J. Redland, 5th Service Command, 10 Aug 42, both folder 44, box 4/18, MSC-USACMH.
31Command: Maj Gen John F. Bohlender to Col Gene Quinn, MSC, 19 Jun 59, MSC?USACMH.
32ETO: ETO, General Board, Rpt 89, USACMH.
33MAC positions: Goodman, OCS Rpt, p. 56.
34Quoted words: 5 Sep 42, Wadhams Committee.
35Shortages: Smith, Hospitalization and Evacuation, pp. 133-34; Army Service Forces (ASF), Statistical Review, World War II (1945), p. 73; Memo, Albert H. Schwichtenberg for Col Higgins, G-4, drafted by Eli Ginzberg, Special Asst to Dir, Hosp Div OTSG, sub: Station and Regional Hospital Bed Requirements, 31 Oct 44; THU, AEB for MSC History, 13 Nov 58, all in MSC?USACMH. ASF was reporting a shortage of 512 MACs as late as the fall of 1944.
36MAC Officer Candidate Schools (OCS): Unless otherwise noted, this discussion is based on Goodman, OCS Rpt; Rpt, MAC OCS, sub: Annual Rpt, 30 Jun 42, Medical Replacement Training Center, Camp Barkeley, Tex., folder 145, box 9/18, MSC-USACMH; Parks, Medical Training in World War II,pp. 97-123; and Col Joseph Israeloff, MSC, draft chapter, sub: Officer Candidate Schools for Medical Administrative Corps Officers, THU, 1965 MSC History Project (Israeloff revision, winter 1976), MSC-USACMH. Demand: The Medical Department projected that it could supply only 1,600 of the 2,450 officers required by January 1943, causing the start of a second OCS.
37Australia: Lt Col A. B. Miller, MC, to Capt John W. Harvey, OTSG, HQ SOS, 20 Mar 45, folder 185, box 12/18, MSC-USACMH.
38OCS prerequisites: WD Army Regulation (AR) 625-5, `Officer Candidates,` 26 Nov 42, PL.
39Quoted words: Rpt, Capt Peter A. Luppen, MAC, sub: Autobiography, 1945, folder 142, box 17/18, MSC-USACMH.
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40MAC requirements: WD AR 625-5, `Officer Candidates,` 26 Nov 42, PL.
41Quoted words: Goodman, OCS Rpt, p. 12.
42Barracks: Notes of telephone interv, Joseph P. Peters, Consultant in Strategic Planning and Health Care Services, Philadelphia, with Lt. Col. Richard V. N. Ginn, MSC, 24 Apr 85, DASG-MS.
43Peters: Ibid.
44Failures: Goodman, OCS Rpt, p. 31.
45Prep school: Bernard Aabel, `History and Mission of the Medical Administrative Corps,` Armored Cavalry Journal 56 (May-June 1947): 50, hereafter cited as Aabel, `History of the MAC.`
46MAC officers: Other MACs on the staff were Capts. Elmer W. Lindquist and Early E. Morton and 1st Lts. Vincent B. McFadden and Don D. Sherrill. Better conditions: Interv, Cols Otto H. Sandman, Jr., MSC, and Frank L. Lawford, MSC, with Lt Col Joseph Israeloff, MSC, THU, OTSG, 6 Oct 67, USACMH.
47Best OCS: Statement of Lt Col Mott, WD inspector, as reported in Col Paul R. Hawley, MC, Asst Commandant (Cmdt) MFSS, Carlisle Barracks, Pa., to Maj Frank B. Wakeman, MC, OTSG, 8 Sep 41, folder 185, box 12/18, MSC-USACMH.
48Benade: Interv, Lt Gen Leo F. Benade, USA, Ret., with Ginn, Alexandria, Va., 25 Jan 84, DASG-MS. Benade transferred as an MSC colonel.
49Black graduates: Carlisle OCS graduated 127, and Barkeley graduated 260. Parks, Medical Training in World War II, pp. 97-123. Segregation: See Col Elliotte J. Williams, MSC, Ret., to Ginn, 25 Nov 85, DASG-MS. This essay on the experiences of a young black officer during this period is a moving, valuable insight. Infantry: Memo, Maj H. M. Rexrode, MAC, for Ch, Pers Svc, 29 May 45, sub: Semi-Annual History of MAC & SnC for Period 1 Jan-31 May 1945, in file Research Notes WWII, box 2/18, MSC-USACMH.
50Black company: WD T/O 8-117, Sanitary Company, 1 Nov 40, USAMHI; McMinn and Levin, Personnel in World War II, pp. 320-21, 411-12; Smith, Hospitalization and Evacuation, pp. 223-24; Israeloff, draft chapter, sub: Winning the War, THU, 1965 MSC History Project, pp. 93-101, DASG-MS, hereafter cited as Israeloff, Winning the War; WD T/O 8-117, Medical Sanitary Company, 13 May 44, Military Medical Manual(4th ed., 1945), pp. 645, 817.
51Integration: Col Elliotte J. Williams, MSC, Ret., to Ginn, 15 May 85 and 25 Nov 85, DASG?MS.
52Quoted words: Williams to Ginn, 15 May 85. Blacks: McMinn and Levin, Personnel in World War II, p. 321.
53Verse: Rpt, 1st Lt Edwin H. Potts, MAC, sub: History of the Medical Administrative Corps Officer Candidate School, Camp Barkeley, Tex., 15 Mar 45, folder 185, box 12/18, MSC?USACMH, hereafter cited as Potts, History of the MAC OCS.
54Enrollment in September 1942: `One Thousand Administrative Officers a Month at Camp Barkeley,` Journal of the American Medical Association 121 (1943): 437. The article claimed that MACs were `releasing doctors of medicine for medical and surgical work.`
55Barkeley history: Potts, History of the MAC OCS.
56Quoted words: Interv, Lt Col Woodus Carter, MSC, with Israeloff, 13 Oct 67, USACMH.
57Canopy fall: Unpublished paper, Owen J. Brady, `A Memorial: The Hotel de Gink Association, MAC-OCS, Abilene, Texas, 1942-1945,` prepared for 8th reunion in Laguna, Calif., Oct 75, MSC-USACMH.
58Entertainment: Extract from MFSS, Annual Rpt 1942 and 1943, in file Research Notes WWII, box 2/18, MSC-USACMH.
59Conditions: Also see Carter, Israeloff Interv. Quoted words: Telephone Interv, Peters with Ginn. Peer review: Notes of discussion, Col William B. O`Neill, MSC, Ret., with Ginn, Falls Church, Va., 20 Nov 85, DASG-MS; Maj Gen George E. Armstrong, Jr., Ret., and Lt Col John A. Ey, Jr., MSC, Ret., draft chapter, sub: Medical Administrative Corps Officer Candidate School, 1961, in 1958 MSC History Project, folder 243, box 15/18, MSC-USACMH.
60Blacks: Extract, Barkeley MAC OCS Annual Rpt, FY 1942-43, annex to pt. 2, Statistical Information, in file Research Notes WWII, box 2/18, MSC-USACMH; Israeloff, Winning the War, p. 101.
61Quoted words: Interv, Elliot L. Richardson with Ginn, Washington, D.C., 29 Jan 86, DASG?MS. He was also attorney general; secretary of commerce; secretary of health, education, and wel?
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fare; and ambassador to the Court of St. James. He is remembered for his resignation as attorney general during the Watergate scandal rather than follow President Nixon`s order to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox.
62. Quoted words: Interv Col Vernon McKenzie, USA, Ret., Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs (OASD-HA), with Ginn, Washington, D.C., 17 May 84, DASG-MS.
63. Quoted words: Interv, Col Knute A. Tofte-Nielsen, MSC, USA, Ret., Chief, Doctrine and International Activities Br, OTSG, with Ginn, Washington D.C., 23 Oct 84, DASG-MS.
64. Anecdote: Notes ofTelephone Interv, DonaldJ. Pletsch, Ph.D., with Ginn, 9 Jan 86, DASG-MS.
65. Duties: An occasional MAC was assigned to scientific specialty duties. Capt. Markus Ring, MAC, was assigned as the designing officer, Fort McPherson, Georgia, Dental Laboratory. See Ring, `Laboratory Procedures in Restoring Mastication, Vertical Dimension and Esthetics,` Journal of the American Dental Association 33 (October 1946): 1346-49; M. L. Mills and Ring, `Deflashing
Techniques,` Medical Bulletin (November 1945): 599-601.
66. Hospitals: Smith, Hospitalization and Evacuation, pp. 132, 251, 280; Mae Mills Link and Hubert A. Coleman, Medical Support of the Army Air Forces in World War II (Washington, D.C.:
Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Air Force, 1955), pp. 371-73; Israeloff. Winning the War, p. 80. The Army Air Forces School of Air Evacuation at Bowman Field, Kentucky, opened a special training program for MAC officers in June 1943.
67 Registrar: ETO, General Board, no. 89; George W. Mallory, `Utilization of Medical Administrative Officers in Hospitals,` Military Surgeon 101 (October 1947): 319, hereafter cited as Mallory, `Utilization of Medical Administrative Officers`; Israeloff, Winning the War, p. 80. Tucker: Israeloff, Winning the War, p. 80. Dorn: Biographical summary, THU, OTSG, USACMH; Albert G. Love, Eugene L. Hamilton, and Ida L. Helman, Tabulating Equipment and Army Medical Statistics (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, 1958), pp. 111, 183. Addressograph: Smith, Hospitalization and Evacuation, p. 345.
68. Langhenry: Lt Col Franklin P. Boeckman, MSC, HQUSA Log Mgmt Ctr, Fort Lee, Va., to Col Gene Quinn, MSC, THU, OTSG, 10 Jun 59, MSC-USACMH. Langhenry stayed in the D.C. area after the war as a vice president of Acacia Mutual Insurance Company. Quoted words: Ltr, Col James T. Richards, MSC, Ret., to Ginn, sub: Here`s My Story, 28 Feb 86, DASG-MS. Richards` calls angered some ETO senior medical officers who believed he `really rode roughshod.` See comments (to Maj Gen Paul R. Hawley, ETO surgeon) by Col John B. Coates, Jr., MC, and Brig Gen James B. Mason, MC, in Rpt, THU, sub: Meeting of the Advisory Editorial Board for the History of the Medical Service in the European Theater in World War II, 9-10 Oct 62, USACMH, hereafter cited as THU, Medical Service in the European Theater.
69. Regulating: James R. Francis, `Medical Administrative Corps Officers in the Chain of Evacuation,` Military Surgeon 100 (May 1947): 417, hereafter cited as Francis, `MAC Officers`;
Aabel, `History of the MAC.` Quoted words: Ginzberg, `Army Hospitalization,` p. 44. Also see Interv, Maj Gen Albert H. Schwichtenberg, USAF, with Milner, THU, 4 Oct 1967, USACMH. 70 Fogelberg: Office of the Surgeon General, Current Trends Conference, 1966, USACMH; Biographical data card, THU, OTSG, USACMH.
71. Quoted words: Armstrong, Milner Interv; also see Notes of Telephone Interv, Gibbs with Milner, 29 Jun 69, USACMH.
72. Commissions: Memo, Lt Gen Brehon Somervell, HQ SOS, for Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA), sub: Increase in Procurement Objective, 10 Jun 42, MSC-USACMH; DF, Lt Col Durwood G. Hall, MC, to Ch, Per, Svc, SGO, to Dir, Mil Per, Div, ASF, 29 Jul 43, and Address, Hall to Officer Procurement Service District Officers, Palmer House, Chicago, 17 Jun 43, both in folder 64, box 5/18, MSC-USACMH. Grade: Telephone Interv, Peters with Ginn.
73. Maj. Tolbert: `Major Raymond F. Tolbert,` Borden General Hospital newspaper, nd. (1943), and Mrs. Josephine J. Tolbert to Ginn, 30 Oct 93, both in DASG-MS.
74. XO: WD Cir 99, 9 Mar 44; Cir 122, 28 Mar 44; Cir 152, 17 Apr 44, all in PL; Smith, Hospitalization and Evacuation, p. 280.
75. MAC positions: Mallory, `Utilization of Medical Administrative Officers,` pp. 318-19; Robert S. Anderson, ed., Army Medical Specialist Corps (Washington, D.C., Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, 1968), p. 136.
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76Field unit positions: Francis, `MAC Officers,` pp. 415-17; Aabel, `The MAC,` pp. 517-18; Israeloff, Winning the War, pp. 80-92. See also Interv, Lt Gen Hal B. Jennings, MC, USA, Ret., with Col Kenneth K. Yamanouchi, MSC, USAMHI Senior Officer Oral History Program, 8 Jan 1983, in USAMHI, Carlisle Barracks, Pa. Jennings, a retired surgeon general, described his experience with the continued use of MC and DC officers early in the war. For examples see WD T/O 8-15P, 1 Oct 39, Medical Battalion (a new unit that replaced the medical regiment in division medical service, which initially had no MAC officers but was changed in revisions of 1 April 1942 and 1 March 1943); T/O 8-504, 1 Nov 40, Medical General Lab, which authorized sixteen SnC officers; T/O 688-W, Hospital Center (no MAC officers in 1 April 1942 version, but five MACs in that of 23 April 1944); T/O 8-22, 20 May 43, HHD, Medical Group (every staff section headed by MACs); T/O 8-75, Med Bn, Armored Division (MAC major as XO); T/O 8-661, Medical Supply Depot, Army or COMMZ, 2 Apr 43 (officer staff almost entirely MAC and SnC); T/O 8-317, 5 Dec 44, Ambulance Company (Separate), (MAC commander), all in USAMHI. Numbers: Francis, `MAC Officers,` p. 417. Dannenburg: GO 131, U.S. Army Forces in the Far East, 15 Jan 45, cited in Joe Kralich, Ranchos, N.Mex., to Ginn, 4 Jan 93, DASG-MS. Historian: James H. Stone, ed., Crisis Fleeting (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, 1969). Lt. Gen. Leonard Heaton, TSG, called Stone`s account `unique and distinctive` (p. vii).
77Training: Israeloff, Winning the War, pp. 88-92. The seven Medical Replacement Training Centers were at Camps Lee and Pickett, Virginia; Camp Grant, Illinois; Camp Barkeley, Texas; Camp Joseph T. Robinson, Arkansas; Fort Lewis, Washington; and Camp Crowder, Missouri. The nine Medical Department Enlisted Technician Schools were at the Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C.; William Beaumont General Hospital, El Paso, Texas; Billings General Hospital, Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis, Indiana; Brooke General Hospital, Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas; Fitzsimons General Hospital, Denver, Colorado; Lawson General Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia; and O`Reilly General Hospital, Springfield, Missouri. Weapons training: Mobilization Training Program (MTP) 21-3, 1 May 44, and MTP 8-5, 1 Jun 44, established requirements for training in the bayonet, carbine, grenade, and rifle for the defense of medical personnel and patients. See Col Edward A. Zimmerman, MC, draft chapter, sub: Training Programs of Medical Replacement Training Centers, training Ms, n.d., THU, OTSG, folder 251, box 16/18, MSC-USACMH.
78Quoted words: Arthur W. Wolde,Ambulance #11 (New York: Vantage Press, 1982), p. 52. See this account for an enlisted ambulance driver`s perspective.
79Quoted words: Jack C. Coleman, The Second (Santa Anna, Calif.: privately published, 1985), p. 9.
80Odahl: Stone, Crisis Fleeting, pp. 2, 26-27. Harris: Ibid., pp. 25, 28, 64. Seagrave`s Hospital: Named for Lt. Col. Gordon S. Seagrave, MC. Seagrave, who is highly praised by Stone, had come to Burma in 1922 as a medical missionary. When war broke out, he provided medical support to the Burmese and set up a series of small hospitals in support of the Chinese Sixth Army. See Gordon S. Seagrave, Burma Surgeon (New York: W. W. Norton, 1943), pp. 162-73. General Stilwell commissioned him as a Medical Corps officer in 1942, and his hospital was later absorbed into the American forces. Lada: Col John Lada, MSC, Ret., to Col Tim Jackman, Asst to Ch, MSC, 6 Dec 89, DASG-MS. With the exception of the commander and executive officers, the key staff and three company commanders were MAC officers. The battalion was expanded with the addition of four ambulance companies and three sanitary companies.
81Richardson: Richardson, Ginn Interv; David S. Broder, `Richardson: Diverse Career,` Washington Post, 29 November 1972.
82Quoted words: Richardson, Ginn Interv. See also Richardson, `A Cause Worth Dying For,` Washington Post, 16 February 1986.
83Hospital duties: Francis, `MAC Officers,` p. 415.
84Need for quality: ETO, General Board, no. 89. 21st GH: 21st General Hospital (GH) historical rpt, 1944, folder 152, box 10/18, MSC-USACMH.
85Farley: Stone, Crisis Fleeting, pp. 5, 110, 131.
86Philippines: Julien M. Goodman, M.D.P.O.W. (New York: Exposition Press, 1972), pp. 3, 43, 61, 67; Alfred A. Weinstein, Barbed Wire Surgeon (New York: MacMillan Co., 1948), pp. 50-51, 243, 275; John E. Olson, O`Donnell, Andersonville of the Pacific (Lake Quivira, Kans.: self-published,
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1985), p. 78. The Japanese confiscated medical supplies and issued only small amounts to the prison hospitals. Olson, O`Donnell, pp. 114-19.
87Rehabilitation: 5th GH historical rpt, 1945, folder 149, box 9/18, MSC-USACMH.
88Davis: Interv, Dorothy S. Davis, R.N., HQ, American Red Cross, with Ginn, Washington, D.C., 8 Nov 84, DASG-MS. Captain Davis was later Colonel Davis, MSC. Field hospital: WD T/O 8-510, 28 Sep 43, Military Medical Manual, 6th ed., 1945, pp. 644, 830. The title was misleading because the hospital was not designed for employment in the combat zone. The portable surgical hospital (T/O 8-572S), developed in the Pacific, was (ibid., pp. 643-44).
89XO: Interv, Lt Col Gilbert A. Bishop, MSC, with Israeloff, 29 Dec 66, USACMH.
90Schaefer: Gov William D. Schaefer to Ginn, 8 Apr 87, DASG-MS. Quoted words: Gwen Ifill, "A Complex Big-City Mayor Who Defies the Conventional,` Washington Post, 2 June 1986.
91Prideaux: Hall, From the Roer to the Elbe with the 1st Medical Group, p. 21. Aabel: U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Armed Services, Hearings on H.R. 1982, To Establish a Permanent Medical Service Corps in the Medical Department of the Regular Army, beginning 20 February 1947, testimony 12 March 1947, 80th Cong., 1st sess.; Francis P. Kintz and John Edgar, `Medical Groups of First U.S. Army in European Campaign, I: Beach Head, Break Through and Pursuit,` Military Surgeon 106 (January 1950): 39, and `II: Siegfried Line, Ardennes, Rhine River and German Collapse` (February 1950): 142, 144.
92Hospital ships: WD T/O 8-537T, Hospital Ship Complement, 7 Dec 43, USAMHI; Howard A. Donald, `The Hospital Ship Program,` Medical Bulletin (February 1944): 37, 41. Of the twenty-eight, twenty-five were transports converted and used by the Army as hospital ships and three were ships built expressly for that purpose. Blood: THU, Medical Service in the European Theater.
93New Guinea: `Air Evacuation of Patients in New Guinea,` Medical Bulletin (August 1945): 185-90. Evacuation squadrons: Rpt, Robert F. Futrell, USAF Historical Division, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Ala., USAF Historical Studies no. 23, sub: Development of Aeromedical Evacuation in the USAF, 1909-1960, May 1960, DASG-MS.
94Air ambulance: M. J. Musser, Jr., and Emmett C. Townsend, `Use of Small Airplanes for Medical Evacuation on Luzon,` Medical Bulletin (August 1945): 191-97; Richard Tierney and Fred Montgomery, The Army Aviation Story (Northport, Ala.: Colonial Press, 1963), pp. 77, 141, 161, 204-06; David M. Lam, `From Balloon to Black Hawk: World War II,` part 2 of 4-part series, U.S. Army Aviation Digest 27 (July 1981): 44-47.
95Burma: Tierney and Montgomery, The Army Aviation Story, pp. 205-06.
96BSAs: Smith, Hospitalization and Evacuation, p. 148; Francis, `MAC Officers,` p. 415; Aabel, `History of the MAC,` p. 51; Kenner Board, 1944; WD Cir 99, 9 Mar 44; WD Cir 327, 8 Aug 44, PL.The ETO General Board said the BSAs did `an especially fine job.` ETO, General Board, no. 88, p. 6.
97Duties: Israeloff, Medical Officer Substitutions; Carter, Israeloff Interv, 13 Oct 67. Carter, a graduate of the second Barkeley class, was a BSA in the 4th Armored Division. Transports: Aabel, `History of the MAC,` p. 50. The use of MAC officers as troop transport surgeons was limited to trips not exceeding 3,000 troop transport days (e.g., 300 troops for ten days).
98Stayer: Maj Gen Morrison C. Stayer, Surg, North African Theater of Operations, U.S. Army (later, Mediterranean Theater of Operations), to Maj Gen Norman T. Kirk, TSG, 3 Sep 44, MSC?USACMH.
99Quoted words: Kirk to Stayer, 11 Sep 44, MSC-USACMH; Extract from Pers Div, Office of Chief Surg, ETO, Annual Rpt, 1944, in file Research Notes WWII, box 3/18, MSC-USACMH.
100Quoted words: Keith Winston, V-Mail; Letters of a World War II Combat Medic (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 1985), p. 254.
101BSA school: Parks, Medical Training, pp. 123-24; Goodman, OCS Rpt, pp. 15-16; Potts, History of the MAC.
1024th Infantry Division: Richardson, Ginn Interv.
103Quoted words: Klaus H. Huebner, Long Walk Through War: A Combat Doctor`s Diary (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1987), p. 118.
104Hertzell: George Sharpe, Brothers Beyond Blood (Austin, Tex.: Diamond Books, 1989), pp. 159-60, 196. For a private`s view of an MAC lieutenant in a medical platoon of the 87th Division in the ETO see Lester Atwell, Private (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958). Unfortunately,
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Atwell`s lieutenant folded under the pressure of the fighting through France and Belgium. `From the beginning he had neglected, or avoided, much of his actual work-that of locating the companies in an attack, establishing collecting points. . . . His face had grown small and haggard, and his eyes were rheumy with dark circles beneath them.` Ibid., pp. 213-14.
105Kanaya: Col Jimmie Kanaya, MSC, Ret., Gig Harbor, Wash., to Ginn, 23 Aug 83 and 12 Oct 84, including copy of diaries at Oflag 64, Schubin, Poland, and Oflag XIII-D, Nuernberg, Germany, DASG-MS. On 26 October 1984, Kanaya and about three hundred of his fellow unit members were honored in France at the fortieth anniversary of the liberation of Bruguieres.
106Quoted words: Charles M. Wiltse, ed., Medical Supply in World War II, volume in the series Medical Department of the United States Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, 1968), p. 562.
107Quoted words: Col Robert L. Black, MSC, Ret., to Col R. L. Parker, MSC, 20 Jun 60, box 19/18, MSC-USACMH.
108Logistics: Israeloff, Winning the War, pp. 70-71, 77; Rpt, Capt Charles G. Langham, Jr., MAC, sub: Activities of Medical Administrative Corps, Sanitary Corps and Pharmacy Corps Officers in the European Theater of Operations, THU, OTSG, 1965, folder 142, box 17/18, MSC?USACMH. 23d GH: 23d General Hospital, Historical Rpt, 1944, folder 154, box 10/18, MSC?USACMH. The 23d operated in Italy and France. ETO chief: Col. Robert A. Black, PhC, replaced Col. Silas B. Hays, MC, as ETO chief of medical supply on 1 October 1945. Britell: Col Claude C. Britell, MSC, account in Lt Col Andrew Colyer, MSC, draft chapter, sub: Medical Field Service, 1961, in 1958 MSC History Project, folder 243, box 15/18, MSC-USACMH.
109Kirk: Speech, Maj Gen Norman T. Kirk, MC, sub: Address to the Storage Operations Field Clinic, Denver, Colo., 24 Sep 43, MSC-USACMH.
110Logistics lessons: Col Silas B. Hays, MC, Lt Col Louis F. Williams, PhC, and Maj Robert L. Parker, MAC, to Dir, Planning Div, ASF, sub: Supplementary Material to be Included in ASF Manual M409, 18 Feb 46, DASG-MS; Wiltse, Medical Supply in World War II, pp. 29, 559-62.
111Quoted words: Williams, Ginn Interv, 15 Nov 84.
112Pallets: Rpt, Capt Richard E. Yates, MAC, sub: The Procurement and Distribution of Medical Supplies in the Zone of the Interior During World War II, OTSG, 31 May 46, folder 269, box 17/18, MSC-USACMH, hereafter cited as Yates, Medical Supplies, 1946. Quoted words: Alan Pappas, `Responsibilities of the Medical Supply Officer,` Medical Bulletin of the North Africa Theater of Operations 2 (October 1944): 90, USACMH.
113Vacancies: Ltr, Shook to Robinson, 9 Dec 40, MSC-USACMH. Procurement: Memo, 1st Lt George A. A. Muller, SnC, Office Manager (Mgr), Procurement Div, for Col M. E. Griffin, Dir, Procurement Div, OTSG, Supply Service Notes, March-December 1943, MSC-USACMH.
114`Penicillum`: Memo, Maj C. W. Torbet, SnC, Dep Dir, Procurement Div, for Maj Kibler in Supply Service, OTSG, sub: Supply Service Notes for the Surgeon General`s Notebook, March-December 1943, DASG-MS, hereafter cited as OTSG, Supply Service Notes, plus date; Yates, Medical Supplies, 1946; Memos, Edward Reynolds, Actg Chief, Supply Service, for Under Secretary of War, 4 Nov 43, 2 Dec 43, DASG-MS; Each vial contained 100,000 units. In Italy the 23d General Hospital received its first two vials on 6 January 1944. 23d GH, Historical Rpt 1944, folder 154, box 10/18, MSC-USACMH. Secrecy: Early reports on penicillin were classified. After the war the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey found that German scientists were surprised that the Allies had been able to keep from the scientific literature several details essential for production. Cortez F. Enloe, Jr., `Medical Supplies: Development, Production and Distribution,` in U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Effect of Bombing on Health and Medical Care in Germany (Washington, D.C.: War Department, 1945), p. 338.
115Supply personnel: Memo, Col Reuel E. Hewitt, MC, for Col Albert G. Love, Historical Div, OTSG, 12 Jul 43, MSC-USACMH; and Wiltse, Medical Supply in World War II, pp. 9, 23, 559.
116Depot staff: St. Louis Medical Depot unit rosters, 1942-45, folder 115, box 8/18, MSC?USACMH. Duties: Col Joseph C. Thompson, MSC, XO, 34th GH, to Col R. L. Parker, 3 Apr 61, MSC-USACMH; Gibbs, Milner Interv, 24 Jun 64; Interv, Maj Gen Silas B. Hays, MC, USA, Ret., with Milner, 25 Oct 63, USACMH. Cooper: Thompson to Parker, 3 Apr 61, MSC-USACMH. MAC and SnC: Memo, Col Charles F. Shook, MC, for Col Paden, 10 Sep 42, MSC-USACMH.
SnC officers: Memo, Shook for Maj Robinson, sub: Assistant Secretary of War`s Weekly Report, 10
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Sep 40, DASG-MS; OTSG, Memo, sub: Qualification for Appointment as First Lieutenant, Sanitary Corps, signed Lt Col John A. Rogers, MC, XO, 7 Jan 42, MSC-USACMH.
117Lend-Lease: Maj R. E. Wilson, MAC, Historical Rpt, Apr 46, and other documents in SGO Lend-Lease Historical Files, folders 22, 23, 24, box 4/18, MC-USACMH.
118Kempf: Biographical data card, based on report of death, THU, OTSG, 27 May 47, USACMH. For a description of the conditions aboard ship and the attack see extracts from the war crimes trials in Paul Ashton, Bataan Diary (published privately, 1984), pp. 292-332.
119Quoted words: Rpt, Maj Walter S. Jones, MC, liaison officer, 10th (Chinese) Engineer Regiment, sub: Chinese Liaison Detail (May to December 1943), 1 Aug 45, folder 273, box 17/18, MSC-USACMH. DeBroeck and Farley were assigned to the 69th Medical Supply Platoon.
120Supply training: Parks, Medical Training in World War II, pp. 48-49; Wiltse, Medical Supply in World War II, pp. 6-7, 23, 43-44. Maintenance: Rpt, OTSG, sub: History of Maintenance of Medical Department Equipment, n.d., in Medical Supply Files, MSC-USACMH.
121Quoted words: Gibbs, Milner Interv 1 Nov 63.
122Voorhees: Voorhees, `A Lawyer Among Army Doctors,` p. 201.
123Quoted words: Ibid., p. 18.
124Magee`s action: Armfield, Organization and Administration in World War II, pp. 161-62. Reynolds: Lt. Gen. Leonard D. Heaton, TSG, Statement before the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, 20 July 1966, DASG-MS; Biographical data card, USACMH.
125Quoted words: Voorhees, `A Lawyer Among Army Doctors,` p. 20.
126Reynolds` appointment: Reynolds replaced Col. Francis C. Tyng, MC. Wiltse, Medical Supply in World War II, p. 19; see also Memos for the Undersecretary of War, 1 Jun 43 from Tyng, Chief, Supply Service, and 8 Jun 43 from Edward Reynolds, Actg Chief, Supply Service, MSC?USACMH.
127Reynolds` promotion: Voorhees, "A Lawyer Among Army Doctors,` pp. 86-87. He was not, as McMinn and Levin called him, `Chief, Medical Administrative Corps.` McMinn and Levin, Personnel in World War II, p. 78. Reynolds left active duty 8 January 1946 and became administrative vice president of Harvard University.
128Normandy invasion: Voorhees, `A Lawyer Among Army Doctors,` pp. 101-10; Wiltse, Medical Supply in World War II, pp. 280-83; THU, Medical Service in the European Theater.
129Quoted words: Interv, Maj Gen Paul R. Hawley, MC, Ret., with Col John B. Coates, Jr., MC, Charles M. Wiltse, Ph.D., and Hubert E. Potter, THU, OTSG, 16 and 18 Jun 62, USACMH.
130Glitches: Williams, Ginn Interv; THU, Medical Service in the European Theater.
131Quoted words: Voorhees, `A Lawyer Among Army Doctors,` p. 101.
132Repacking: Walker repacked ten 400-bed and one 750-bed evacuation hospitals plus four field hospitals. THU, OTSG, draft chapter, sub: Medical Preparations for the Invasion of the Continent, n.d., in draft history, sub: Medical Support for the European Theater of Operations, 15 January-6 June 1944, folder 267, box 17/18, MSC-USACMH.
133Quoted words: ETO, General Board, no. 93.
134CBI: Voorhees, JAGD, Dir, Control Div, SGO, sub: Visit to China-Burma-India Theater to Survey Medical Supply, 11 Sep 44, DASG-MS; Voorhees, `A Lawyer Among Army Doctors,` pp. 116-21; Wiltse, Medical Supply in World War II, pp. 522-24.
135CBI: Stone, Crisis Fleeting, p. 176. Stone was highly critical of the SOS surgeon, Col. John M. Tamraz, MC.
136Quoted words: Voorhees, `A Lawyer Among Army Doctors,` pp. 119-20; Williams, Ginn Interv, 15 Nov 84.
137Quoted words: Voorhees, `A Lawyer Among Army Doctors,` p. 121.
138Pacific: Rpt, Voorhees, sub: Story of Pacific Trip, October thru December 1944, n.d., DASG?MS; Voorhees, `A Lawyer Among Army Doctors,` pp. 152-200; Wiltse, Medical Supply in World War II, pp. 478-80.
139Quoted words: Voorhees, Story of Pacific Trip.
