CHAPTER V
Training and Instructional Services
The expansion of the Army Veterinary Service, during World War II, to its peak strength of 2,116 officers and to three to four times that number of enlisted personnel suffices to indicate the magnitude of training. The majority of these personnel required some degree of training-perhaps only indoctrination-in basic military and technical subjects which would qualify them for assignment to duty in an Army occupational specialty. Almost without exception, there were no military position vacancies which could be satisfied merely by placing uniforms on civilian veterinarians. This procedure had been tried in World War I when the Veterinary Corps was constituted and organized, but the results were unsatisfactory. At that time, the untrained military veterinarian had failed to impress his field commander with professional recommendations and opinions on the conservation of animal health and efficiency.
In contrast, the onset of World War II found the Army Veterinary Service to be well advanced in its state of training. This had been made possible by the continuation of the Veterinary Corps and the Medical Department program for training veterinary personnel during the peacetime period. Thus, by 1940, nearly all of its regular officers had completed the annual two?phase course of military indoctrination, lasting 9 months, at the Medical Field Service School, Carlisle Barracks, Pa., and at the Army Veterinary School, Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C.; many such officers also had entered into postgraduate professional education or into advanced military training courses.
In addition, the Veterinary Reserve Corps officers who were being ordered into active military service in 1939-40 included many officers, who had completed their professional education in the civilian veterinary colleges and educational institutions which had Reserve Officers' Training Corps units, or who had seen active service, during the 1930's, with the Civilian Conservation Corps under Regular Army administration and supervision. These, and a greater number of other Reserve Corps officers, also had been prepared for military service by their entry in the peacetime correspondence or extension courses which were conducted by the Medical Field Service School and in the 2 weeks' duty training at summer training camps. There was also the relatively small group of veterinary officers with the National Guard units who had trained in the armories and in summer encampments. Altogether, the active and reserve veterinary components of the Army of the United States comprised a satisfactorily trained cadre about which the Veterinary Service of World War II developed into an efficient operational organization.
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During World War II, the urgent requirements for large numbers of specially qualified individuals were met by modifying or converting the military training courses that were operated by and for the Regular Army in peacetime and by establishing new ones. Naturally, these wartime courses were considerably shorter in duration. They were conducted formally in the Zone of Interior at service schools, replacement pools, and training centers, at certain military installations, and in some few civil educational institutions. The wartime courses generally were "refresher" in nature as they pertained to basic military or technical subjects, but others were at the level of postgraduate professional or advanced military training. Between July 1940 and June 1945, 1,898 veterinary officers and 4,256 enlisted personnel completed such courses.
However complete and extensive as these training courses in the schools and centers in the Zone of Interior may appear, they did not change the basic military concept that the state of training was a command responsibility. The Army camp commander, commanding officer of a unit, or oversea commander-particularly the station veterinarian, senior officer of a veterinary unit, or theater veterinarian-was actually responsible for properly training, or having trained, all of the organically assigned veterinary personnel of that detachment, unit, or command. The Surgeon General had no such responsibility, acting only as adviser and elucidating basic Medical Department doctrine, primarily at the level of schools and training centers (1). Thus, pursuant to the Army regulations in effect during World War II-originally promulgated during the 1920's-Army Veterinary Service generally was responsible for training its own personnel, and this concept at the Army camp level was expressed in the following words (2, 3).
8. Control of veterinary personnel.-As a detachment commander, the station veterinarian will be responsible that all veterinary officers are properly instructed with regard to their professional and military duties and responsibilities, and for the * * * instruction, training * * * of all enlisted men, Medical Department (veterinary service), who may be assigned to the station * * *.
9. Instruction and training of veterinary personnel.-All enlisted men of the Medical Department (veterinary service) will be instructed under the supervision of the station veterinarian in the methods of rendering first aid to sick and wounded animals, in the care, management, and hygiene of animals, and the various subjects pertaining to the veterinary enlisted man.
This veterinary responsibility was not removed from the Army camp or unit level, but its significance generally escapes attention because World War II saw increasing emphasis on training personnel at schools and training centers prior to their assignment to the units or station detachments. In other words, the Army camp or unit veterinarian, at the beginning of the war, almost alone had the all-important responsibility for training the individual, and only such personnel as could be spared were detailed to the service schools for additional training. New station detachments and veterinary units were developed by ordering cadres of trained personnel from existing
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ones and by such cadres then training the new, additional personnel (that is, selectees) who were being ordered into the detachments and units directly from the reception centers. This was the cadre training system; it contrasted with the preactivation training which came into existence later in the war period.
This cadre system involved the movement of new personnel from the reception centers into training centers and schools in sufficient number to form certain planned units and detachments. Thereby, the recipient unit or camp was relieved of much of its responsibilities for operating training schedules on basic military and technical subjects, and at the same time this preactivation training assured a certain known level of individual training in all detachments and units. However, the preactivation system singularly favored the new organizations because existent ones could no longer slough off their undesirable personnel into cadres.
Another advantage was that the preactivation training overcame the objections which were voiced against the stripping of personnel from units in training and operational detachments to attend the training schools, thus delaying the training of the unit as a whole. Actually, preactivation training was not in operation during the early part of World War II when a great number of new veterinary units and detachments were brought into existence-for the reason that the output from formal training schools and centers was not yet adequate to meet the numerical demands for trained personnel in the great numbers of new units then being formed. On the other hand, somewhat similar results were being obtained because, beginning in November 1940, great numbers of veterinary officers on being ordered to active duty were sent to the Meat and Dairy Hygiene Course, Chicago Quartermaster Depot, Chicago, Ill., while en route to initial assignment; others were initially ordered for processing and reassignment training at officers' replacement pools which were established at depots, ports, and medical installations after January 1942.
The training of the individual veterinary officers and enlisted personnel did not stop after their completion of the school courses; it was continuous throughout their military service. Frequently, the training of individuals within units and detachments was applicatory in nature, on-the-job training. Also, they were trained to function together as a team-this being referred to as small unit training. Such training was extended to approximately 85 veterinary hospital, company, troop, and detachment (or cellular team) units which were activated and organized in the Zone of Interior for oversea deployment. These units, following completion of their unit training programs, were frequently advanced in their training by ordered movement into maneuver areas with army corps and field armies. At their representative table of organization strength, these veterinary units aggregated more than 2,000 personnel. The veterinary officers and enlisted personnel who were organically assigned to the combat divisions, Army Ground Force units other
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than divisional, Medical Department laboratories and hospitals, Quartermaster Corps refrigeration companies, Signal Corps pigeon companies, and Army Air Force commands were similarly trained.
TRAINING VETERINARY OFFICERS
During World War II, the training of Veterinary Corps officers was a part of the Medical Department training system. Several refresher-type and short courses on postgraduate professional subjects were conducted at the Army Veterinary School; their training for field service was conducted in parallel with that of Medical and Dental Corps officers at the Medical Field Service School, Carlisle Barracks, Pa. The veterinary officers' course in meat and dairy hygiene, established and maintained on request of The Surgeon General, though sanctioned as a Quartermaster Corps activity, was actually regulated by and for Medical Department veterinary personnel.
Veterinary officers were also detailed as students for further training in non-Medical Department service schools and civilian educational institutions which better adapted such officers for military assignments of a more general nature-such as defense in chemical warfare, medical supply procurement, foreign language, or duty with military government in liberated and occupied countries. Generally, this training was conducted under the jurisdiction of the wartime Army Service Forces organization of the War Department in the Zone of Interior, but it was made equally applicable to the veterinary personnel assigned to the Army Ground Forces and Army Air Forces. Overall, this entire program of training was purposefully established and maintained for the fitting-in of Veterinary Corps officers as integral members of the medical team in the Army formation.
Army Veterinary School
The Army Veterinary School, in operation since the early 1920's, was at the onset of the pre-World War II emergency period conducting its 23d (and final), shortened session (15 September to 30 November 1939) of the Basic Graduate Course for five newly commissioned veterinary officers, Regular Army. Following the completion of the session of this course, the Army Veterinary School-so far as veterinary officer training was concerned-instituted two wartime courses; namely, the Refresher Course in the Forage Inspection and the Special Graduate Course in Clinical Pathology (later replaced by the Refresher Laboratory Training Course). The graduates from these courses numbered 112 veterinary officers during the period from January 1940 through December 1946. The aforementioned courses were continued throughout World War II. The Army Veterinary School conducted these courses of training within the organization of the Medical Department Professional Service Schools, Army Medical Center.
The mission of the Army Veterinary School, as set forth in AR 350?1021, included the operation of training courses, the conduct of research and
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maintenance of a veterinary laboratory, and the production of certain biologicals. This mission closely paralleled the missions which were assigned to the other school elements of the Medical Department Professional Service Schools. The school's staff, during the war, increased from a nominal peacetime strength of 2 to 3 veterinary officers to 9 officers as of 30 June 1945; at this time, there were also 23 enlisted technicians and 10 civilian employees. These personnel for the most part were not engaged in the conduct of training, however, as they were used in the laboratory and research section of the Army Veterinary School organization. Within the training or school section of the Army Veterinary School there were academic departments-five for the officers' course and another two for the enlisted men's course.
The National Guard officers' course, or the part of the original basic Graduate Course relating to forage inspection, was continued during World War II as the 1-month Refresher Course in Forage Inspection, for veterinary officers only, regardless of whether they belonged to the Regular Army, National Guard, or Reserve Corps. It was inaugurated under a letter of authorization from the War Department, dated 31 July 1940 , whereby wartime refresher and special graduate courses could be established by The Surgeon General (4, 5, 6). The course was temporarily suspended in June 1942, but, at the request of the Surgeon General's Office, it was reestablished by Headquarters, Army Service Forces, beginning again on 1 March 1943 . Until V-J Day, after which time this course was set aside in a nonoperational status, the Refresher Course in Forage Inspection was conducted 21 times, its graduates totaling 66 veterinary officers.
The section of the Refresher Course in Forage Inspection, relating to the grading of hay in accordance with U.S. standards, was actually conducted by personnel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (at cost to the Army) pursuant to an agreement which had been reached between that agency and the Army in 1925. The agreement provided that veterinary officers successfully completing such instructions would be licensed each year by the Secretary of Agriculture as official Federal hay inspectors. In practice, the inspection of the Army's supply of hay by Veterinary Corps officers was conducted on a professional basis, and this inspection had gained a degree of statutory recognition.
The other wartime course for veterinary officers, the Special Graduate Course in Clinical Pathology, established by the Army Veterinary School, followed recommendations which were made by the Veterinary Division, Surgeon General's Office, during June 1940. This course was inaugurated a few months later. Designed as a refresher or preparatory course to train veterinary officers who were being assigned to veterinary laboratory activities and Medical Department laboratory units, it included 454 hours of applicatory study and instruction in bacteriology, parasitology, serology, and food chemistry (7). Although conducted several times as a regularly scheduled 4-month course, the urgent wartime need for such officers and the use of it
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in the local veterinary officers' replacement pool soon saw the course scheduled whenever veterinary officers reported for training. This special graduate training course was restarted after V-J Day when it was renamed the Refresher Laboratory Training Course. By the end of 1946, 46 veterinary officers had completed this training course.
Medical Field Service School
Although the officers' courses at the Army Veterinary School were conducted only for Veterinary Corps officers-in the same manner as Medical Corps officers were trained at the Army Medical School and Dental Corps officers at the Army Dental School-the officers' course at the Medical Field Service School at Carlisle Barracks, Pa., was generally open to Medical Department officers of the three professional corps; that is, medical, dental, and veterinary officers were given parallel training in medical field service. During peacetime, these Medical Department officers, on gaining Regular Army commissions, were routinely entered into a training and indoctrination course lasting 9 months-4 months at the respective professional service schools, and then they were grouped together for the 5-month course at the Medical Field Service School. The latter was the so-called Basic Officers' Course. With the approach of World War II, the course was modified in length to a shorter one, and sessions were scheduled in rapid succession for the training of new Regular Army officers.
The special Basic Officers' Course was further modified in December 1940 and converted into the wartime Refresher Officers' Course which was continued through World War II. Shortly after World War II, the Carlisle Barracks training facility was discontinued, and the Medical Field Service School was concurrently established at the new Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Tex. During the years 1940-46, a total of 683 veterinary officers had completed training in medical field service.
This training of veterinary officers at the Medical Field Service School was integral to the school's assigned missions which included the training of Medical Department officers in the principles and methods of medical field service so as to increase their ability as instructors and to enhance their proficiency in the performance of their command and staff duties. To accomplish this training mission, the school was divided into several academic departments. The Department of Veterinary Field Service was first recognized by AR 350-1030, 8 September 1942 . The veterinary representative or department was scheduled to provide certain instructional services not only in the Advanced and Basic Officers' Courses but also in a variety of other courses such as the Medical and Field Sanitary Inspectors' and the Officer Candidate Courses that came into existence during World War II.
The wartime Refresher Officers' Course in field service for medical, dental, and veterinary officers was conducted 73 times; its veterinary student
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output totaled 677 officers. In contrast with the 5-month peacetime course which it had replaced, the wartime course was originally scheduled for 4 weeks, but this was later revised to 6 or 8 weeks. Each session included a comprehensive and intensive study in a variety of subjects which would qualify younger Medical Department officers of the wartime Army of the United States to better understand and apply the principles of military medicine and to conserve the health of the Army. The instructional services within the course that were rendered by the veterinary academic department were gradually increased from 1 hour in 1940 to 5 hours in 1945. Sessions having five or more veterinary officer students saw the withdrawal of some of the students from certain parts of the general course to be given specialized training in veterinary field service. Such training originally comprised 15 hours of so-called substitute instruction, but this was gradually increased to a total of 53 hours by 1943. At this time, the topical subjects included veterinary administration, the organization of the veterinary service in task forces and theaters of operations, the care and transportation of animals, pack animal transport, Army dogs, diseases of animals, veterinary preventive medicine and public health, and the inspection and care of subsistence in field storage.
The attendance of the 677 veterinary officers in the Refresher Officers' Course on medical field service during the war actually led to the criticism that insufficient numbers were being so trained. The Veterinary Division, Surgeon General's Office, sought to remedy this by originally emphasizing the detail of veterinary officers to the course from the tactical units and commands. Unfortunately, the field army or command surgeons-though generally in agreement with the program of training-voiced opinions that the individual veterinary officers who were under their jurisdiction were then too few in number to be spared from their units which, at that time, were entering into field maneuvers. The corps areas, later renamed service commands, were also requested to send their assigned veterinary officers to the Medical Field Service School for training, but this seemed to have no material effect on increasing veterinary officer enrollment. Later, the Veterinary Division, Surgeon General's Office, augmented its request to the service command veterinarians in the Zone of Interior by adding as a prerequisite to the training of officers in military meat and dairy hygiene the prior completion of the Refresher Officers' Course in field service. In 1943, the service command veterinarians were even advised that unless they sent greater numbers of their assigned personnel to the Medical Field Service School, the Veterinary Division, Surgeon General's Office, would have to withdraw veterinary activities there.
Meat and Dairy Hygiene Course
Officially, there was no Medical Department Meat and Dairy Hygiene School until after the end of World War II; there was, however, throughout
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the war period, the official Meat and Dairy Hygiene Course for veterinary officers that was conducted at the Chicago Quartermaster Depot (8, 9). This course of specialist technical training found its beginning in the establishment, by The Surgeon General, of several refresher and special graduate courses for Medical Department personnel such as were contemplated in the current Army mobilization regulations (4, 5, 6). Although the greater number of the wartime courses (not excluding the aforementioned Refresher Course in Forage Inspection, Special Graduate Course in Clinical Pathology, and Refresher Officers' Course) were set up within hospital and school facilities of the Medical Department, short courses for training 20 or more Veterinary Reserve Corps officers (who were being ordered into active military service) as meat and dairy inspectors were inaugurated in mid-1940 at three quartermaster depots and one port of embarkation.
At this time, the operation of a school-type course became a subject of discussion between the Depot Veterinarian, Chicago Quartermaster Depot, and the Veterinary Division, Surgeon General's Office. On 1 November 1940, the Veterinary Division obtained approval from the Office of the Quartermaster General to conduct short courses for training veterinary officers under the supervision of the depot veterinarian and to obtain classroom space within the depot. No reference was then made to a school, because the conduct of a wartime course was paramount; the new Meat and Dairy Hygiene Course was convened in its first session, beginning 25 November 1940, with an enrollment of 17 Veterinary Corps officers. While some consideration had been given for training veterinary enlisted personnel in Chicago, the enlisted men's Meat and Dairy Hygiene Course was not added to the veterinary training facility at the Chicago Quartermaster Depot until the fall-winter of 1945. Through 1946, the Meat and Dairy Hygiene Course was conducted 52 times, with its graduates totaling 1,038 veterinary officers as follows:
Calendar year | Number |
1940 | 17 |
1941 | 169 |
1942 | 191 |
1943 | 194 |
1944 | 188 |
1945 | 165 |
1946 | 114 |
This number included more than a hundred officers originally assigned to the Army Air Forces; others so trained were later reassigned to the Army Air Forces, also to the Army Ground Forces.
The training facility which conducted this course came to be regarded as a Quartermaster Corps activity under the control of The Quartermaster General. Its instructional staff of Veterinary Corps officers, usually three in number, were actually depot-assigned personnel, including one who was designated as director and was responsible to the Depot Veterinarian, Chicago Quartermaster Depot, for the operation of the course. Their assignments,
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however, were regulated by the Surgeon General's Office which also maintained control over the training doctrine.1
Programs | 5?-week course | 8-week course |
| Hours | Hours |
Veterinary administration | 28 | 38 |
Fresh meats | 31 | 41 |
Sausage | 8 | 11 |
Cured and smoked meats | 10 | 13 |
Canned meats and Army rations | 16 | 13 |
Fats and oils | 2 | 6 |
Fish and seafoods | 6 | 7 |
Poultry and eggs | 35 | 42 |
Milk and dairy products | 38 | 49 |
Inspection procedures | 12 | 22 |
Establishment inspection | --- | 8 |
Refrigeration and warehousing | 3 | 10 |
Food poisoning and microbiology | 4 | 6 |
Basic military training or troop information, and physical conditioning | 49 | 32 |
Examinations and reviews | 10 | 6 |
Commandant's time | 12 | 16 |
Total | 264 | 320 |
The veterinary officers' Meat and Dairy Hygiene Course was originally scheduled as a 4-week course, including 166 hours of lectures and demonstrations. Gradually, the course subjects were changed, and new ones were added to better qualify its veterinary officer graduates to inspect the Army's food supply which also changed; thus, additional training was provided in dehydrated products such as dried eggs and milk powder, in field rations, and in boneless beef. By mid-1943, the course scheduled 217? hours of technical instruction and, in the fall of 1943, Headquarters, Army Service Forces, added several hours of concurrent basic military training and physical conditioning. During June 1944, a 5?-week program was scheduled and officially approved by the Military Training Division, Army Service Forces. The 264 hours of training that were now scheduled included 50 hours on veterinary administration and miscellaneous matters, 165 hours of technical and professional subjects, and 49 hours on military training and physical conditioning (table 12). There were no major changes in the course program for the remainder of the war period.
1In 1946, War Department Pamphlet No. 20-21 concerning official courses of training in Army schools made reference to the "Meat and Dairy Hygiene School, Chicago Quartermaster Depot, Chicago, Illinois," but reference to the training facility officially as a school was not made until 1952, when War Department General Orders No. 80 changed the "Army Medical Service Meat and Dairy Hygiene School" from an activity under the control of The Quartermaster General to one under the control of The Surgeon General.-E. B. M.
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Graduate Professional Training in Civilian Educational Institutions
Though the war saw a many-fold increase in the refresher and short?period professional training for Veterinary Corps officers within the Medical Department service school system, the postgraduate or advanced professional training in civilian educational institutions (at Government expense) was more or less suspended so far as veterinary officers were concerned. In fact, during the academic year of 1940-41, only one officer attended the advanced course in animal breeding that was given at the University of Kentucky, Louisville, Ky., and it was not until 1946 that veterinary officers resumed this training in educational institutions.
Advanced Military Training
Advanced and specialist military training, as distinguished from professional or technical training in Medical Department schools and civilian universities, was given to 105 veterinary officers in a variety of Army service schools, including the Army Industrial College, and in schools maintained at civilian institutions. In the fall of 1941, two veterinary officers were in attendance at two successive sessions of a 3-month course of training on the mobilization of civilian industry and the procurement of military supplies at the Army Industrial College, Washington, D.C. Also, after a lapse of 13 years, including the entire active war period, the War Department reestablished a quota for veterinary officers to enter into the Command and General Staff School, Fort Leavenworth, Kans. Though the Surgeon General's Office, then encountering an extreme shortage of Veterinary Corps officers, did not favorably review the detail of veterinary officers as students to the school, one veterinary officer attended a course during 1946.
Among the special service schools, outside of the Medical Department, to which veterinary officers were most frequently detailed as students was the Chemical Warfare School, Edgewood Arsenal, Md. During the academic year of 1940, an officer attended that school's 7-week Basic Officer's Course for Chemical Warfare Service officers. In 1942, on request of the Surgeon General's Office, the Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service cooperated in establishing a short course at the school for training on the medical aspects of chemical warfare. When the War Department, on 4 August 1942, announced the establishment of this course, reference was made only to the detail there of Medical Corps officer students. However, the Veterinary Division, Surgeon General's Office, argued the need for similar training for Veterinary Corps officers, so that Headquarters, Services of Supply, on 9 October 1942, authorized changes in the Medical Corps Officers' Course, Chemical Warfare School, to include the training of veterinary officers. Eventually, the course title was amended to Medical Department Officers' Course. Veterinary officers attended 19 of the 29 sessions of this course that
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were conducted, with the number completing it totaling 62 personnel, as follows:
Calendar year | Number |
1942 | 8 |
1943 | 26 |
1944 | 22 |
Year not known | 6 |
Programmed originally as a 4-week course, the Medical Department Officers' Course at the Chemical Warfare School was reduced to one of 3 weeks' duration beginning in May 1943. Prior to entry into this course, the concerned medical and veterinary officers were required to have successfully completed the Refresher Officers' Course at the Medical Field Service School. (It may be noted that the latter course included some training on the medical aspects of chemical warfare during the time that the Medical Department course at the Chemical Warfare School was nonoperational.) The Medical Department Officers' Course included instruction, by Veterinary Corps officer instructors, on the protection, care, and decontamination of foods and of animals in the event of chemical attack; these subjects were given in more detail to the veterinary officer students in 15 to 24 hours of substitute instruction which was scheduled for all sessions having such students. As a sufficient number of Medical Department personnel had become specially qualified to meet the potential medical exigencies of chemical warfare and as the enemy use of this type of specialized warfare was then improbable, the course was discontinued in the winter of 1944-45.
In the program of training personnel for civil affairs and military government assignments in liberated and occupied countries, 13 veterinary officers were sent to the School of Military Government that was established in May 1942 at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va., and was operated under the command of the Provost Marshal General; another two officers were entered into a 4-week training course at the Provost Marshal General's School at Fort Custer, Mich. From these service schools, the student officers were advanced in their preparation for future assignment by detail for 12 weeks' training in the Civil Affairs Training Schools at civilian educational institutions, including Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., and Yale University, New Haven, Conn. Eleven of the veterinary officers attended the latter schools, and another one attended the Naval School of Military Government which had been established at Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. By the end of 1945, 19 veterinary officers had completed this training.
It is interesting to note that 12 veterinary officers (1 in 1944, 10 in 1945, and 1 in an unknown year) attended the Army Chinese Language School which was operated at the University of California, Berkeley, Calif. Personnel with this training were urgently needed in the Army Veterinary Service which instructed, and operated in liaison capacity with, the Allied-sponsored and U.S.-trained Chinese military forces in China, Burma, and India. After
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August 1945, the assignment of additional personnel in such training, lasting from 4 to 6 months per course, was brought to a halt.
Reserve Officers' Training Corps
There were no veterinary ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) units in operation during World War II; however, mention should be made of the training, as a very substantial number of the Veterinary Corps Reserve officers called to active duty during the war had been commissioned following completion of ROTC training. Prior to June 1933, 453 ROTC graduates had been commissioned in the Reserve. During 1920-21, veterinary ROTC units were established in four veterinary colleges, Kansas State Agricultural College, Cornell University, Ohio State University, and Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts. Enrollment in these units steadily increased, reaching a peak at about the time that the appropriations of 14 July 1932 prohibited training of a student not enrolled prior to 5 May 1932. Training of students enrolled prior to that date was continued until the student graduated-the last enrollees graduated in 1935, and the units were disbanded. It was not until 1948 that the restriction in the military appropriation acts was removed and ROTC veterinary units were established in six veterinary colleges.
TRAINING VETERINARY ENLISTED PERSONNEL
After the fall of 1917 when enlisted personnel were authorized for the Army Veterinary Service, their training as animal service technicians, meat and dairy inspectors, and laboratory technicians was an important activity within the Medical Department. In comparison to the training of more than 9,000 enlisted men in World War I, during World War II, such training was conducted in eight separate Medical Department schools, replacement training centers, and other facilities in the Zone of Interior for 4,240 enlisted personnel.
Beginning with the two sessions of the Army Veterinary School which were started in September and December 1940, the School's Veterinary Technicians Course was lengthened to 3 months, with 22 personnel completing the two sessions. The changes in the duration of the course and acceleration of the course schedules were the first real progress made during the pre-Pearl Harbor emergency periods in the development of the Medical Department wartime training program for veterinary enlisted personnel. Effective in March 1941, the responsibility for conducting this course was transferred from the Army Veterinary School to the Medical Department Enlisted Technicians School which was then established as a separate school within the organization of the Medical Department Professional Schools, Army Medical Center. A second Enlisted Technicians School with a comparable veterinary
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training course was established at about the same time at William Beaumont General Hospital, El Paso, Tex.
Replacement Training Centers
During the period that Medical Department school training was being converted and accelerated into a wartime program, the training of enlisted men became involved in the procedures of receiving and processing those who, pursuant to the Nation's new draft laws (that is, the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940), were being inducted into the Army. At first, the selectees (then, at times, also called draftees), as well as volunteer recruits or enlistees, were assigned to Regular Army and recently federalized National Guard units for their basic training. By mid-1941, these personnel were being processed instead through reception centers, and from there they were moved into replacement training centers.
At these training centers-one or more in number for each combat arm and service branch-all selectees and recruits were given basic military training and basic technical training prior to their assignment to the new units which were being organized or to units as replacement personnel. Several such centers were expressly established as medical replacement training centers and later, on 15 April 1944, were renamed medical sections, Army Service Forces training centers. However, in only one of these was veterinary replacement or basic technical training actually conducted at any one time. Originally, this was at the Medical Replacement Training Center, Camp Grant, Ill., where the Veterinary Section of the Center was established in November 1941. During the summer-fall of 1944, this veterinary instructional group and its equipment were transferred to a new station as a part of the Medical Training Section, Army Service Forces Training Center, Fort Lewis, Wash.
Basic technical training of selectees for future assignment as veterinary animal service technicians and meat and dairy hygienists was started at Camp Grant on 1 December 1941. Until the fall of 1944, selectees and recruits in this center who advanced from their initial basic military training into the veterinary basic technical training course numbered 1,419; of this number, 1,260 successfully completed their basic technical training in the 35 sessions of the veterinary course that were conducted. At Fort Lewis, two more sessions of the veterinary basic technical training course were conducted during the winter of 1944-45; its enrollees who completed the training numbered 61. There was no further training of individuals in technical specialties for the Army Veterinary Service in the centers after January 1945, and shortly after V-J Day, all technical training was stopped in the Army Service Forces training centers.
The veterinary basic technical training, which was conducted at Camp Grant and then at Fort Lewis, comprised only a part of the whole program of training being given to the selectees and recruits coming into the replacement centers. The selectees and recruits were given basic military
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training, and, on completion of this training, those who had prior civilian experience or education and otherwise seemed to be qualified for potential assignment as veterinary animal service technicians or meat and dairy inspectors were entered into the veterinary basic technical course at the centers. These two courses together were referred to as comprising the mobilization training program.
Obviously, not all selectees who possessed prerequisites for assignment to the Army Veterinary Service, even those who may have been particularly well qualified, were advanced into veterinary basic technical training; also, selectees who were not specially qualified were passed on at times into veterinary basic technical training. In a sense, the aforementioned situation lends itself to some criticism of military wastages of civilian trained manpower, but the fact remains that the Selective Service procedures for inducting men in World War II did not assure the input of men having certain civilian educational or occupational qualifications in such numbers and proportions as were needed, sometimes quite urgently, by the military services. The whole mobilization training program varied between 8 weeks and 17 weeks. Within the 17-week program which was prescribed by the War Department in August 1943, there were 6 weeks of basic military training; 8 weeks of technical, tactical, and logistical training; and 3 weeks of field training. Of course, the basic technical training period changed as the length of the mobilization training program was changed.
The training center's basic military trainees who were selected for veterinary basic technical training and future assignment to the Army Veterinary Service came under the jurisdiction of the veterinary instructional staff of the replacement training center. At Camp Grant, this instructional staff, averaging four veterinary officers, was referred to as comprising the Veterinary Technicians School, Medical Replacement Training Center (fig. 1). The basic technical course lasted approximately 5 weeks and included 240 hours of instruction as follows:
Subject | Hours |
Administration | 15 |
Anatomy and physiology | 25 |
First aid | 30 |
Animal management | 15 |
Veterinary sanitation | 1 |
Pharmacy | 4 |
Horseshoeing | 2 |
Supplies and equipment | 6 |
Defense in chemical warfare | 3 |
Field veterinary service | 22 |
Army dogs | 2 |
Horsemanship | 12 |
Meat and dairy hygiene | 77 |
Concurrent basic military training | 26 |
Later, an 8-week course was developed.
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This training program prepared the selectee for eventual assignment either as a veterinary technician (animal service) or as a meat and dairy inspector-each recognized as a particular military occupational specialty and having a so-called SSN (specification serial number) of 250 and 120, respectively. On completion of the training, the selectee was assigned one SSN or the other according to his prior civilian experience and education, his aptitude shown during the basic technical training which he had just completed, and the existing requirements. Assignment or movement orders then were issued by the Adjutant General's Office for these trainees to proceed to units, to unit training centers, to Army camps in the Zone of Interior, or to ports for oversea shipment, or wherever requisitioned. Some selectees were lost to officers' candidate schools, and many others were sent to Medical Department enlisted technicians schools for further training.
During August 1944, the instructional staff at Camp Grant was transferred to reestablish veterinary basic technical training in the Medical Training Section, Army Service Forces Training Center, Fort Lewis. At this Center, the instructional staff experienced a rapid turnover of its personnel, but two sessions of an 8-week replacement training course were conducted, with 61 enlisted men completing it, before 3 February 1945. Refresher training courses also were conducted for 19 meat and dairy inspectors who were being assigned to medical hospital units. After 3 February 1945, there was no basic technical training of men in replacement training centers for the Army Veterinary Service for the remainder of the war period.
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Enlisted Technicians' School for Army Air Forces Meat and Dairy Inspectors
During the war, the Camp Grant training center also conducted a special program for training enlisted men in the Army Air Forces. Under the terms of an agreement that was reached, on 1 December 1942, between the Army Service Forces which controlled this training center and the Army Air Forces, the existent veterinary instructional staff of that medical replacement training center was temporarily augmented to form a new Enlisted Technicians' School for Army Air Forces Meat and Dairy Inspectors. Between the opening date and its closure, in August 1943, the Enlisted Technicians' School for Army Air Forces Meat and Dairy Inspectors enrolled 1,147 enlisted students in an 8-week course which was conducted seven times; of this number of students, 1,027 completed the course. The course was entirely technical in nature-being given only to Army Air Forces selectees who had already completed a course in basic military training-and included 384 hours of instruction in the following subjects:
Subject | Hours |
Dismounted drill | 16 |
Physical training | 24 |
Veterinary hygiene and sanitation | 30 |
Veterinary anatomy | 30 |
Veterinary bacteriology | 22 |
Meat and dairy hygiene | 170 |
Veterinary administration | 46 |
Inspections and tests | 14 |
Open time | 32 |
Medical Department Enlisted Technicians Schools
In the discussion of training of veterinary enlisted personnel at Medical Department schools during World War II, reference is necessarily made to the Course for Veterinary Technicians that was being conducted in its peacetime 22d session (1 February to 31 May 1940 ) at the Army Veterinary School. On 3 July 1940, this course was shortened and, beginning in September, was rescheduled at 3-month intervals. The changeover to the wartime Course for Veterinary Technicians was initiated by the Surgeon General's Office. On 31 July 1940, this action was generally confirmed by a War Department authorization for establishing any variety of specialist courses suitable and needed for the training of Medical Department personnel in time of war. Pursuant to existing mobilization regulations of the Army which provided for the establishment of such courses in existent service schools or hospitals where replacement center facilities were not readily available (as they were not at the time), the Surgeon General's Office established such courses at the Army Medical Center and at 10 or more general hospitals in the Zone of Interior. The original Course for Veterinary Technicians was considered as one of such specialist courses.
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After the conduct of two shortened sessions, or the 23d and 24th sessions, the Course for Veterinary Technicians was transferred, during March 1941, from the operating responsibility of the Army Veterinary School to the newly established Medical Department Enlisted Technicians School, Army Medical Center (figs. 2 and 3). During the same month, the newly opened School for Medical Department Technicians, William Beaumont General Hospital, was requested by the Surgeon General's Office to provide for the operation, also, of the Course for Veterinary Technicians. Each of the two enlisted technicians schools included a veterinary section with instructional staffs of three Veterinary Corps officers and four to six enlisted men. The William Beaumont school conducted the course 45 times, and, at the Army Medical Center, the course was conducted 47 times, including the 22d through the 24th sessions that were conducted by the Army Veterinary School. The student output from the Course for Veterinary Technicians totaled 1,642 enlisted personnel before the schools at the Army Medical Center and William Beaumont General Hospital discontinued such training, in 1945.
This course was conducted in the Medical Department enlisted technicians schools to standardize the qualifications of veterinary enlisted personnel. It implemented the program of veterinary basic technical training
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which was being given in the replacement training centers during the war and was never considered as a substitute for the on-the-job training that was being given within Army camps or units. Many of the enlisted men, entering the Army Veterinary Service directly from reception centers (that is, having bypassed the center level of veterinary basic technical training), were advanced in their assignments in a veterinary occupational specialty by their detail for such school training during the war.
By 1943, quotas were being established as to the numbers of enlisted personnel that were to be selected and sent to each school from both the replacement training centers and the major echelons of command within the Zone of Interior. As a result of this quota system, there were several problems. For example, the schools had cause to complain against the quality of selectees sent to them from the replacement training centers; the latter did not seem to comply always with requirements to "in the selection of men to fill quotas, [give] careful consideration * * * to their adaptability, intelligence, and previous educational attainments" (10).
The service command veterinarians also protested that the quotas meant a loss of men from their operations which were already reduced to barest minimum strength pursuant to local command programs of personnel economies. In other instances, service command and unit veterinarians indicated their opinion that their personnel were sufficiently trained to meet local
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requirements and thus there was no real need to select personnel to satisfy such quotas. In answer to such comments, the Surgeon General's Office had earlier advised that such arguments were not the answer to the overall needs to obtain and maintain a minimal trained force which would be needed to satisfy future requirements when Army camps would be expanded, for organizing new units, or for oversea replacement. The quota system for selecting students for the Course for Veterinary Technicians was started in early 1941; prior to that time, the Surgeon General's Office had selected and nominated the personnel who were to be trained in the schools.
This wartime course had a dual purpose; graduates from the two Medical Department technicians schools were qualified both as veterinary animal service technicians and as meat and dairy hygienists. The course title itself became misleading, during World War II, because the words "veterinary technician" gradually assumed limited application as pertaining to personnel qualified or engaged only in caring for animals. In April 1945, the title of the course was lengthened to Course for Veterinary Technicians and Meat and Dairy Hygienists. Later that year, the course was divided into two separate courses-one for veterinary technicians and the other for meat and dairy hygienists. Thus, insofar as school training was concerned, the term "veterinary technician" was applicable to veterinary animal service personnel only after 1945.
The dual-purpose Course for Veterinary Technicians which was conducted originally by the Army Veterinary School and then converted and transferred to the Army Medical Center's enlisted technicians school was at variance with the course of the same name which was established at the William Beaumont General Hospital's enlisted technicians school. Some of the differences may be accounted for by the fact that the latter facility did not have a veterinary laboratory at the onset such as was available in Washington, D.C., but it was located adjacent to an area having a large number of military animals. Actually, at the beginning, several newly formed veterinary hospital units were located at nearby Fort Bliss, Tex., which also had a sizable station veterinary hospital. Eventually, these differences in the course schedules of the two schools were narrowed, and greater emphasis was placed on training in military veterinary food inspection.
During August 1943, Headquarters, Army Service Forces, issued a 12?week training program for use as a guide in the conduct of the dual-purpose Course for Veterinary Technicians at both schools (table 13). A revised program was approved in July 1944, and this included the arrangement of technical subjects into 6 weeks' training in animal service followed by 6 weeks' training in veterinary food inspection. Another revised program of the school course appeared on 7 April 1945, and this, significantly, amended the course title to Course for Veterinary Technicians and Meat and Dairy Hygienists. Insofar as possible, these programs were adopted at the
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schools, but difficulties were continuously experienced in finding suitable facilities in the vicinity of El Paso, Tex., that would provide field training to supplement the classroom or didactic instruction in meat and dairy hygiene.
TABLE 13.-Programs for the Course for Veterinary Technicians, 1943-45
Subject | 29 Aug. 1943 | 26 June 1944 | 7 Apr. 1945 |
| Hours | Hours | Hours |
Concurrent basic military training | 108 | 108 | 48 |
Army orientation | --- | --- | 24 |
Athletics and mass games | --- | --- | 48 |
Total | 108 | 108 | 120 |
Veterinary anatomy and physiology | 20 | 20 | 20 |
Veterinary hygiene and sanitation | 18 | 18 | 14 |
Veterinary first aid and emergency medical treatment | 36 | 36 | 40 |
Veterinary bacteriology and parasitology | 20 | 20 | 18 |
Veterinary pharmacology | 30 | 30 | 30 |
Horseshoeing | 8 | 8 | 8 |
Roentgenology | 15 | 15 | 15 |
Minor surgery and operating room technique | 10 | 10 | 12 |
Forage and grain inspection | 42 | 42 | 22 |
Meat and dairy hygiene | 115 | 127 | 216 |
Veterinary administration | 52 | 52 | 37 |
Field trips | 30 | 42 | --- |
Examination, tests, and inspections | 24 | 24 | 24 |
Open time | 48 | 24 | --- |
Total | 468 | 468 | 456 |
Grand total | 576 | 576 | 576 |
Source: (1) ASF Memorandum, 29 Aug. 1943, subject: Training Program for Medical Department Technicians. (2) Training Program for Medical Department Enlisted Technicians, with 1st indorsement thereto, 18 Mar. 1944. (3) Programs of Instruction for Medical Enlisted Technicians, with 1st indorsement, Headquarters, Army Service Forces, 7 Apr. 1945.
Course in Clinical Pathology for Enlisted Specialists
The 3-month Course in Clinical Pathology for Enlisted Specialists (also called the Course for Enlisted Specialists, Veterinary Laboratory Technicians) was established and conducted by the Army Veterinary School in much the same manner and under the same authorization that the veterinary officers' Special Graduate Course in Clinical Pathology was established and operated. Recommendations for this course were made originally in April 1941 by the Surgeon General's Office which then scheduled the opening of the first session on 9 June 1941. It was not continued through the
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entire war period, and only 23 personnel were graduated in the six sessions of the course that were held between the opening date and May 1943.
Veterinary Technicians' School, Fort Riley, Kansas
The dual-purpose training of veterinary enlisted personnel in Medical Department Enlisted Technicians Schools was brought to a halt at the Army Medical Center in February 1945 and 3 months later at William Beaumont General Hospital. In the postwar period, the Course for Veterinary Technicians and Meat and Dairy Hygienists was divided into two separate courses, each with a single purpose and each conducted at a separate training facility in more suitable locations. The changes were recommended to Headquarters, Army Service Forces, by the Surgeon General's Office, on 19 October 1945, which then requested (11)-
A course of instruction for Veterinary Technicians, SSN 250, be established as a class I activity at Ft. Riley, Kansas, on or about 14 January 1946 with a capacity of fifteen (15) students. The duration of this course would be six (6) weeks. It would be conducted under the modification of the presently approved program * * *.
A course of instruction for Meat and Dairy Hygienists, SSN 120, be established at the Chicago Quartermaster Depot, Chicago, Illinois, on or about 1 December 1946 with a capacity of fifteen (15) students. The duration of this course would be six (6) weeks. It would be conducted under the modification of the previously approved program * * *.
Both recommendations found acceptance with Headquarters, Army Service Forces. In connection with the new single-purpose Veterinary Technicians Course, the veterinary instructional staff and training equipment of the former school for Medical Department technicians, William Beaumont General Hospital, were moved during the period, 12 December 1945 to 7 December 1946, to Fort Riley, Kans. At the beginning, the new Veterinary Technicians School which was established there came under the control of the Seventh Service Command, but, effective on 25 April 1946, it was reclassified as an activity under control of The Surgeon General. Its instructional staff totaled two veterinary officers, including the school commandant, and four enlisted personnel, who were placed under the supervision of the senior veterinary officer assigned to Fort Riley.
This new course was expressly designed to technically train enlisted personnel for the Army Veterinary Service in the care and management of horses and mules. It was conducted in its first session, beginning on 24 January 1946, as a 5?-week course. However, concurrent with the post?war plans on readjusting the Army's school system, the fifth session of the Veterinary Technicians Course (22 July to 8 November 1946 ) was considerably lengthened-comprising 640 hours of instruction.
The continuing reduction in the Army's horse and mule strength and the gradual revision of plans for training the postwar Army caused the Surgeon General's Office to discontinue the Veterinary Technicians Course on completion of the fifth session. By that time, 75 veterinary enlisted
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personnel had or would have completed this training. The Veterinary Technicians School, at Fort Riley, was discontinued on 9 November 1946 .
Meat and Dairy Hygienists Course, Chicago Quartermaster Depot
Concurrent with the establishment of the postwar Veterinary Technicians Course at the short-lived Veterinary Technicians School at Fort Riley, the training of veterinary enlisted meat and dairy hygienists was started at the Chicago Quartermaster Depot, which was also the place of operation of the Veterinary Corps officers' Meat and Dairy Hygiene Course. This establishment of training for enlisted meat and dairy hygienists was recommended by the Surgeon General's Office and approved by Headquarters, Army Service Forces, on 13 November 1945; the schooling facilities needed at that depot were provided, on request, by the Office of the Quartermaster General. The first session of the Meat and Dairy Hygienists Course was convened on 3 December 1945 with 7 enlisted enrollees; by the end of the next year, 162 veterinary enlisted personnel had completed the course. Conducted originally as a 5?-week course, it was later developed into one lasting 8 weeks (table 14).
TABLE 14.-Programs for the Meat and Dairy Hygienists Course
Subject | 5?-week course | 8-week course |
| Hours | Hours |
Veterinary administration | 21 | 61 |
Fresh and frozen meats | 37 | 41 |
Sausage and specialty meats | 10 | 10 |
Cured and smoked meats | 11 | 9 |
Canned meats and rations | 12 | 8 |
Fats and oils | 4 | 4 |
Fish and seafood | 6 | 7 |
Poultry and eggs | 40 | 42 |
Milk and dairy products | 38 | 39 |
Food poisoning | 2 | 3 |
Inspection procedure | 6 | 6 |
Establishment inspection | 3 | 6 |
Packing and storage | 10 | --- |
Refrigeration and warehousing | --- | 8 |
Commandant's time and tests | 32 | 38 |
Physical training | --- | 30 |
Troop information | --- | 8 |
Total | 232 | 320 |
UNIT TRAINING
The training of veterinary personnel, both officer and enlisted, did not stop with their completion of the courses which were conducted at the
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school or training center levels. It was continuous during the military service of the individuals, while they were in Army camps and units, and in the Zone of Interior as well as in the oversea theaters. Most of this training was largely applicatory in nature as contrasted to didactic instruction in school classrooms.
Officer Replacement Pools
Although each Army camp and installation in the Zone of Interior that had a veterinary detachment operated its own programs for introducing newly assigned personnel into its organizational operations, one of the more important of these training programs at camp level involved those programs which were conducted in officer replacement pools. During December 1941?January 1942, such pools for Veterinary Corps officers were established, pursuant to War Department authorization, at 11 medical installations, replacement training centers, depots, and ports; a few more pools were added later. These pools were located at the Army Medical Center; William Beaumont General Hospital; the replacement training centers at Camp Grant and Camp Lee; the ports of embarkation at New York and San Francisco; the general depots at Boston, San Antonio, Seattle, and Lathrop; the quartermaster depots at Chicago, Fort Worth, Kansas City, and Oakland; and the remount depot at Fort Robinson, Nebr.
The capacity of the pools, at any one time, in terms of number of personnel, was not to aggregate more than 50 unassigned veterinary officers, who were to be regarded as constituting a reserve force of veterinarians in refresher and preparatory military training, pending their initial assignment as "filler" or "loss replacement" veterinary officers to newly forming or existent units (12). The officer replacement pool system, which then came into operation, more or less replaced the procedures previously used by the Surgeon General's Office in the pre-World War II emergency periods, when a small surplus number of Veterinary Reserve Corps were being ordered to active duty for preliminary training at the larger Army camps, remount purchasing and breeding areas, and depots prior to initial duty assignment.
The training which was conducted varied according to the parent installation of the replacement pool. Subsequently, the Surgeon General's Office developed a master schedule of training which was promulgated as a guide by Headquarters, Army Service Forces, for adoption at all pools. This prescribed a 4-week course, having 192 hours of training as follows:
Subject | Hours |
Military basic and general administration | 45 |
Veterinary administration | 10 |
Veterinary field service with animals | 3 |
Veterinary food inspection | 102 |
Miscellaneous, including "open time" | 32 |
Total | 192 |
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This course was divided into two phases, the academic and the applicatory. The latter, also called on-the-job training, was obtained by the attachment of the unassigned veterinary officers so that they would receive the maximum training possible by actual performance of the major duties of the position in which training was received.
In May 1944, Headquarters, Army Service Forces, amended their earlier schedule for training veterinary officers in the replacement pools by promulgating a course having 48 days of on-the-job training. The change for the longer course was occasioned by the growing need to amend the original purposes of the replacement pools. These pools were now being filled by veterinarians who were being inducted into the Army as enlisted men and by recent graduates from civilian veterinary colleges who had completed their education while holding Medical Administrative Corps officer appointments or under the auspices of the Army Specialized Training Program. The personnel were reviewed for qualifications for additional military training and assignment as Veterinary Corps officers prior to their release from the officer replacement pools.
After the end of the active war hostilities, the purpose of the pools was again changed because they were filled largely by veterinary officers who were returning from the oversea theaters and were awaiting separation or new assignment orders. By the end of 1945, many of the replacement pools were closed. Only five continued in operation: at the New York port and the Chicago, Kansas City, Seattle, and Lathrop depots (13). Information on the number of officers processed through these replacement pools is fragmentary, but at least 650 veterinary officers were sent through the pools at the Kansas City Quartermaster Depot, San Antonio Army Service Forces Depot, and New York Port of Embarkation during the war period.2
Small Unit Training
Informal programs (other than those in the officer replacement pools) were undertaken at camp level to introduce or orient newly assigned personnel on the organizational operations of veterinary detachments inside of the Army camps (as well as at the depots, ports, hospitals, and other installations) in the Zone of Interior. Such programs were essential in the autonomy and part of the internal administration of each camp, depot, or
2After 1 May 1946, Headquarters, Army Service Forces, authorized the continuation of only the veterinary officers replacement pool at the Chicago Quartermaster Depot, but, on 31 March 1947, this pool was also closed by the War Department. During a part of this period, this pool facility was the central administrative agency for the Army Veterinary Service in the Army's post?war plan which was to provide refresher professional training to Medical Department officers prior to their separation from the military service. Though some extensive plans were made to establish 12-week training in large animal and small animal practice, in food inspection, and in laboratory work for 25 to 50 veterinary officers at remount depots, the Chicago Quartermaster Depot, and the Army Veterinary School, only a few Veterinary Corps officers (probably five in number) volunteered for delay in their release from the Army in order to undertake a refresher course at Government expense.-E. B. M.
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port veterinary detachment; pursuant to Army regulations, the conduct of detachment training to insure the proficiency of detachments was the responsibility of the veterinary officer commanding that detachment. At times, on account of shortages in the number of personnel who were available, service command veterinarians in the Zone of Interior favored on-the-job training of camp veterinary detachments rather than to detail personnel to military branch service schools for training. The extent of such training, during World War II, obviously varied because no two detachments were internally administered in the same way. There is no available record to indicate to what extent the Surgeon General's Office vitiated the training at camp level as it had done in World War I. Information is available, however, regarding the training of the units which were organized in the Zone of Interior for oversea deployment.
After World War I, tactical unit training was almost forgotten or disappeared as peacetime economy forced the Army into garrisons and a minimal day-to-day existence. The onset of World War II saw only a few veterinary units in the Army formation: two company elements of medical regiments and a medical squadron's veterinary troop in the United States. These units were at "peace strength" or skeletonized so that tactical unit training for Army Veterinary Service was regarded as practically nonexistent.
During the war years, the number of veterinary units was increased to more than 200-including six types of such larger units as hospitals, companies, and troops and about the same number of types of smaller units called detachments or cellular teams. With the exception of one unit, the larger veterinary units (21 in number) were organized and trained in the Zone of Interior, and one-third of the detachment-size units (or 61) likewise were organized and trained in the Zone of Interior-the remainder being developed overseas. The training of these units in the Zone of Interior was variable, and at no time was a unit training program specially designed for them.
Many of the wartime units, particularly the veterinary hospitals and companies, were brought into existence by assigning cadres of trained officers and men from Army camp detachments and existing units who would train the untrained and newly assigned personnel. Later, units were formed by the assignment of individual personnel who, under the preactivation training system, were previously trained for such assignment at service schools, officer replacement pools, or training centers.
Unit training centers were established by the Army Service Forces at Camp Ellis, Ill., at Camp Plauche, La., and at Camp Sibert, Ala. However, these centers were rarely used for training the veterinary units which were newly organized during World War II. Instead, the units were activated near places where they could enter into functional training. Thus, Fort Bliss and Camp Hale, Colo. (home of the Army Ground Forces Mountain
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Training Center) became focal points for activating and organizing many of the veterinary animal service units and detachments; Fort Clark, Tex., and Fort Riley likewise had a large number of animals, mounted units, and each had a station veterinary hospital, so that other veterinary animal service units were brought into existence there.
The veterinary food inspection detachments, on the other hand, were activated in the Zone of Interior at a dozen or more Army camps at which suitable facilities were readily available to provide functional training in the sanitary inspection of food animals at slaughter and in food surveillance. After the winter of 1944-45, under the conditions of preactivation training, several food inspection detachments were activated and trained together at the Army Service Forces Training Center, Fort Lewis. These units completed their training as a unit in a relatively short period of time because their schedules were less disrupted by the admixture of untrained personnel such as happened during the unit training under the older cadre system of developing new units.
In the planning for redeployment of units, after the end of active hostilities in the Mediterranean and European theaters, unit training was reviewed as urgently requiring the facilities of three Army Service Forces training centers. It was contemplated that Medical Department units on return to the United States would have to be retrained for eventual redeployment to the Pacific theaters. Between V-E Day and V-J Day, only 23 Medical Department units, having seen active service in the European and Mediterranean theaters, were entered into the training centers for redeployment training; these units included the 71st Veterinary Food Inspection Detachment at the Army Service Forces Training Center, Fort Lewis. Several similar type units were redeployed direct to the Pacific theaters, but a greater number, including 13 food inspection detachments newly activated in the Mediterranean and European theaters, which were scheduled for redeployment, either were not shipped from theaters or were not reshipped from the Zone of Interior after they had arrived.
Training in the Oversea Theaters
The training of veterinary personnel and units was continued after their arrival in the oversea theaters. For the most part, such training was purposely conducted only to indoctrinate and orient them, after arrival, in matters peculiar to the veterinary situation of the theater. Nowhere was this nearly as comprehensive and extensive as the wartime training system that was developed in the Zone of Interior. There were exceptions; for example, long after the Africa-Middle East theater had passed into a standby basis, the theater veterinarian noted a need to better qualify veterinary enlisted personnel by training them on the surveillance inspection of the Army food supply. Elsewhere, such as in the Mediterranean theater and in the
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Central and South Pacific Areas, incoming veterinary food inspection detachments and veterinary sections of quartermaster refrigeration companies were required to undergo more training in food surveillance because they had been essentially trained in the Zone of Interior along the lines of rendering at-slaughter food animal inspections. The latter training did not reflect on the practicality of the training system in the Zone of Interior. Mention is made here that the Army Veterinary Service overseas inspected all of the Army's foods, whereas, in the Zone of Interior, their training gave little emphasis on inspecting foods of nonanimal origin.
Probably, the greatest conversion training of veterinary units and personnel occurred in the Southwest Pacific Area and in China, Burma, and India. In the Southwest Pacific Area, 16 veterinary animal service sections or detachments were inactivated, and their 125 personnel locally retrained as food inspectors. This had become necessary because the planning for extensive utilization of animal transport for campaigning on the jungle islands of the Southwest Pacific Area was discontinued after the units had been requisitioned and scheduled for shipment from the Zone of Interior. In the interim, Australia (like New Zealand in the South Pacific Area) suddenly and unexpectedly had become a major source of food supply to the Armed Forces in the Pacific.
In India-Burma, the campaigns against the Japanese to clear the way for the Stilwell and Burma Roads and the strategy for support of the Allied?sponsored Chinese military forces originally created urgent demands for veterinary animal service personnel. However, the gradually increasing needs for a more expansive program of food procurement and food surveillance inspection eventually saw many of the existing units in the theater broken up to form 14 food inspection detachments for deployment in China. These detachments also had to be specially trained. They were entered into a 4-week training (totaling 188 hours of instruction) which emphasized abattoir operations and at-slaughter inspections; the sanitary situation and resources of the local livestock and food industries; the proper handling, storage, and conservation of foods; and the protection of troop health against food supplies of local origin that might have been contaminated or spoiled.
The orientation and indoctrination of veterinary personnel and units arriving in the theaters was different from the problems of conversion training. It was a prerogative usually assumed by each theater veterinarian to improve the internal administration of the local veterinary organization and to acquaint new arrivals of their purpose and their place within the organization and mission of the theater as a whole. The manner and the extent, in which this was conducted, varied among the theaters. In the Central Pacific Area, for example, this orientation was quite complete and successfully conducted at two provisional veterinary hospital organizations on Oahu, T.H., because, until late 1944, almost all personnel arriving in the theater came through this single portal of entry in the Hawaiian Islands. This was
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equally true in England, which became the portal of entry during the buildup and organization of the European theater that lasted for a considerable length of time before active ground combat operations were started. There, for example, veterinary officers were given last-minute instructions on European veterinary medicine and practices before deployment to civil affairs and military government in the liberated and occupied countries on the European Continent. In the Southwest Pacific Area, the orientation of veterinary personnel in Australia emphasized at-slaughter inspections and processing of foods in establishments, whereas later, in New Guinea, these personnel were indoctrinated on the sanitary defects of nonperishable foods and conservation measures to minimize food spoilage and losses in the tropics. Army Air Forces veterinary personnel and detachments were given the same instructions as were those of the Service Forces.
In India-Burma and China, the orientation and indoctrination was so extensive at times as to approach the level of training conducted in the Zone of Interior. This orientation and indoctrination training of the Army Veterinary Service in the two theaters was purposefully divided into that conducted for the personnel and units who were used in inspecting the Army's food supplies and that for the personnel and units who were concerned with the Chinese military forces.
The former group was oriented and indoctrinated largely in the local British, Indian, and Chinese methods of processing and handling foods and in sanitary inspection procedures. The latter group, which included the veterinary instructional personnel and those on liaison duty with the Chinese military forces, prior to assignments, was specially instructed at the Rāmgarh, India, training center and, later, at the Y?nnan Field Artillery Training Center at K'um-ming, China. Their instruction necessarily emphasized horseshoeing, the pack loading of animals, field veterinary service and management of animals, and the several animal diseases which were seriously threatening the movement of the Chinese armies and divisions. It was a locally expressed opinion that Army veterinary personnel might have been better trained or experienced in these matters, but, on the other hand, the personnel were being required to supervise animal matters in the Chinese forces that in the past were normally taken care of by Cavalry, Field Artillery, and Quartermaster officers. Indoctrination and orientation also included the discussion on Chinese customs and, of course, the training in small arms firing and unit protection against enemy infiltration.
INSTRUCTIONAL SERVICES
In addition to training veterinary personnel, Veterinary Corps officers also rendered instructional services to the combat arms and other service branches (including the Medical Department). During World War II, such training activities were greatly expanded in the Zone of Interior and, in the oversea theaters, were extended to Allied and cobelligerent armies.
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Veterinary Instructional Service in Zone of Interior
There is no information available regarding the extent of the veterinary instructional services which were conducted in garrison schools at the Army camp level or in units. At the branch service school or training center level, on the other hand, available information indicates that such services were provided by the Army Veterinary Service to more than 47,100 officers and enlisted personnel, including those belonging to the Medical Department.
During 1939-40, veterinary officer instructional services were being rendered in the special service schools for the mounted combat arms and services at Fort Benning, Ga., Fort Belvoir, Va., Fort Riley, and Fort Sill, Okla. The Cavalry School, at Fort Riley, and the Field Artillery School, at Fort Sill, each had a veterinary officer assigned as a full-time instructor. At the Cavalry School, this officer conducted instructions on a variety of topical subjects relating to the care and management of Army horses and mules. The subjects, all or a few, were included in five officers' courses and two enlisted men's courses; the student output from these courses in the period 1940-45 totaled more than 4,400 Cavalry officers and 1,041 enlisted personnel. The veterinary instructional services in the Field Artillery School were almost as extensive in scope. At both schools, the veterinary officers conducted a portion of the enlisted men's courses for horseshoers. Between 10 July 1940 and 23 September 1944, the Fort Sill facility graduated 397 enlisted horseshoers; between 6 January 1941 and 7 June 1945, the Cavalry School graduated 1,054.
Instructional services were provided also to more than 4,800 dog handlers (2,100 Army and 2,700 U.S. Coast Guard) who were trained in the Quartermaster Corps war dog reception centers in the Zone of Interior and to the enlisted pigeoneers personnel of the Signal Corps. In both instances, the basic doctrine for training these personnel on the care and management of the Army dog and the Army signal pigeon was developed in cooperation with the Veterinary Division, Surgeon General's Office; the training manuals that had been developed previously without veterinary professional assistance were now corrected or amended to advance the practices of dog and pigeon care and management and the relevant animal disease controls and prevention in the Army. In connection with instructions to pigeoneers, the veterinary officers both at Fort Monmouth, N.J., and at Camp Crowder, Mo., had prepared and assembled extensive notes which were incorporated in the Signal Corps manual on the signal pigeon.
The mobilization training program of the War Department, which was designed for use in basic military and technical training of Signal Corps enlisted personnel at replacement training centers, expressly provided for the basic technical training of pigeoneers (MOS 560) to include 25 hours of veterinary instructions on pigeon care and management. This program was conducted at Fort Monmouth and then, after the fall of 1942, at Camp
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Crowder. A similar program was developed to train Quartermaster Corps officers and enlisted personnel to be dog trainers, who were identified as MOS 4371 for the dog training officer and MOS 458 for the enlisted dog training. Therein, approximately 15 percent of the total instructional period in the 8- to 12-week courses included such subjects as emergency first aid, care and management of sick and wounded dogs, detection and prevention of commonly occurring diseases, kennel management, grooming, dog rations and feeding and watering transportation, and use of the dog gas mask. The veterinary officers in the Columbus Depot participated in the Packaging, Processing, and Packing Course that was conducted for the training of Quartermaster officers in the preparation of supplies for domestic and oversea shipment.
Another military branch school which provided veterinary instructional services was the Chemical Warfare School, Edgewood Arsenal. In its Medical Department Officers' Course, instructions were given, by veterinary officers who were assigned to the station, in such subjects as the effects of chemical agents on animal health and efficiency, and the defense and care (or decontamination) of animals and troop food supplies in the event of chemical warfare attack.
During World War II, veterinary instructional services were used extensively in training Medical Department personnel other than veterinary. Within the Medical Department Professional Service Schools, veterinary officer instructors from the Army Veterinary School and the Medical Department Enlisted Technicians School participated in four medical courses. In the 8-week Tropical and Military Medicine Course (originally designated as the 4-week Tropical Medicine Course), approximately 1,700 Medical Corps officers were provided 2 to 12 hours of instruction on military food hygiene and viral diseases. Also, there was the Course in Food and Nutrition in which the principles of military meat and dairy hygiene were described to Sanitary Corps officers who were being trained for duty as medical nutrition officers. Much the same scope of instructional services, including food sanitation, lasting about 53 hours per session, was provided for female dietitians attending the Hospital Dietitians Course. Part of the Course for Medical Department Laboratory Enlisted Technicians in the Army Medical School and the Medical Department Enlisted Technicians School was conducted by Veterinary Corps officers.
At the Medical Field Service School, the Department of Field Veterinary Service provided instructional services in the Officer Candidate School for Medical Administrative Corps Officers, in the Medical and Field Sanitary Inspectors Course, and in the Officers' Refresher Course. The last?named course was attended by Medical Corps, Dental Corps, and Veterinary Corps officers. In this course, all student officers were given an hour's lecture on veterinary field service, but after mid-1943, an additional 4 hours were added to include instruction and demonstrations on the subjects of military
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food hygiene, the evacuation of wounded personnel by pack animal, and dehydrated foods. Altogether, more than 26,000 Medical Department officers completed this training course in the 73 times that it was conducted; its veterinary officer output, totaling 677, comprised only 2.5 percent.
The Medical Field Service School 's Medical and Field Sanitary Inspectors Course (originally called the Medical Inspectors Course) was inaugurated during November 1942, but it was not until August 1943 that its student Medical, Sanitary, and Medical Administrative Corps officers were given some instruction by veterinary officers. At that time, the Veterinary Corps officers were being removed from the organization of Infantry divisions so that these medical, sanitary, and administrative officers had to be prepared to perform such duties. Their veterinary instructions-comprising a total of 21 hours during the courses held during 1945-included lectures and demonstrations on sanitary food inspection, the sanitation of food establishments, and the handling of canned, frozen, and dehydrated foods in messhalls. In the Officer Candidate School for Medical Administrative Corps Officers, the Department of Field Veterinary Medicine provided 4 hours of instruction in the course that was conducted 26 times.
Instructing Allied and Cobelligerent Military Veterinary Services
Veterinary instructional services were conducted in the oversea theaters largely for improving the Allied-sponsored Chinese military forces in India?Burma and China and the cobelligerent Italian forces in the Mediterranean theater. At the request of the Philippine Army, 11 of their veterinary officers (and some few enlisted men) were instructed on military food inspection by the Army Veterinary Service of the Philippine Base Section command of the Southwest Pacific Area. In the Mediterranean theater, the Veterinarian, Fifth U.S. Army, supervised the establishment of training courses for the personnel who comprised the cobelligerent Italian Army's veterinary hospital units that were attached to, and were deployed in rear echelon support of the pack trains of, the U.S. corps and combat divisions. Veterinary Corps officers assigned to the U.S. supervisory regiment and on liaison duty with the Italian veterinary units also provided a limited amount of technical assistance to these Italian hospitals which were assigned to the theater's Services of Supply remount depots.
In the China-Burma-India theater, reorganized in November 1944 into the India-Burma and the China theaters, veterinary instructional services to the Allied-sponsored Chinese military forces comprised the major activity of the Army Veterinary Service. This was started soon after the arrival, in May 1942, of the first contingent of U.S. troops that followed the Military Mission to China under Maj. Gen. (later General) Joseph W. Stilwell who had seen the Japanese cut up and disperse Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek's armies. A small part of these troops retreated out of Burma into India, and the other and larger share that survived returned to China. The Chinese
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forces which came into India were temporarily held there in a new project of training and re-equipping them for the future offensives that were to reopen the Burma Road into China. The training of these Chinese forces in India, which were also called the X-Force, was undertaken at the U.S. training center established at Rāmgarh.
Later, the Chinese forces which had been forced to retreat out of Burma back into China were started in their training by the U.S. Army. These Chinese forces-also referred to as the Y-Force-were trained for the most part in and about K'un-ming. From the original U.S. training center in India, four veterinary personnel were ordered during February 1943 to the new Y?nnan Field Artillery Training Center, and two others were ordered in the next month to the Y?nnan Infantry Training Center, also near K'un-ming. The training program in India gradually came to a halt, as the X-Force was deployed with the Allied forces that cleared the Japanese out of northern and central Burma. This program for the Y-Force was stopped when they were moved out of their training to stem the Japanese drive southward into eastern China. During this period, a third group of Chinese armies and divisions-designated as the Z-Force-was brought into the strategic plan for training, equipping, and eventual deployment. The Z-Force, developing in eastern China, however, was not too far advanced in its training when the threatening enemy drive in its direction caused the abandonment of original plans. The training of these three Chinese forces was conducted formally at training center level and included the training of the individual as well as of the unit. The Army Veterinary Service trained more than 2,000 Chinese military personnel including veterinary officers. After their training, Veterinary Corps personnel, in liaison duty with the Chinese combat forces, continued the training of the Chinese at the unit level.
In order to conduct this training of the Chinese military forces, the U.S. forces in the China-Burma-India theater were organized, in March 1942, to include the so-called Chinese Training and Combat Command. This comprised a headquarters group, the Training Group which operated the training centers in Rāmgarh and in K'un-ming and the Liaison Group which included the U.S. personnel assigned liaison duty with the Chinese armies and divisions. The Training Group, in addition to the operation of the aforementioned centers, established training schools for the Chinese Y-Force at Ta-li, in October 1943, at Yen-shan, in November 1943, and in several other places in central South China. In November 1943, Veterinary Corps personnel established training of the Z-Force at Kuei-lin, China. By the summer-fall of 1944, the training at center level was discontinued, except at the Y?nnan Field Artillery Training Center, and was replaced in part by training, by liaison personnel, within the Chinese military units (fig. 4). Most of the liaison personnel were in China or were moving there from Burma at about this time. These personnel, as were the remaining training center assigned personnel, were reassigned to the Chinese Combat Command
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and the Chinese Training Command, respectively, which were formed, in January 1945, from the breakup of the original Chinese Training and Combat Command, shortly after the China theater came into existence as a separate entity.
The center training for the Y-Force, at K'un-ming, was aided by the detail of instructional groups to certain Chinese units which could not, or would not, send their personnel to K'un-ming. During September-October 1943, six Veterinary Corps officers were ordered to establish a school course for training the Chinese 11th and 20th Group Armies at Ta-li. In November 1943, Training Instructional Group No. 4, made up of the same number of veterinary personnel, was ordered to organize veterinary training schools for the Chinese 8th, 52d, and 60th Armies at Como, Yen-shan, and Meng-tzu. On 30 October 1943, the Y?nnan Infantry Training Center's veterinary school was closed. The new training schools with the Chinese armies were closed during the spring of 1944. After that time, only the Y?nnan Field Artillery Training Center remained in operation, becoming the chief veterinary training facility for Chinese forces until V-J Day.
The developing emphasis on unit training, as contrasted with the emphasis on training in centers, saw the Veterinary Corps officers on liaison duty establish a variety of unit training programs within the Chinese armies and
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divisions. Such personnel had been on duty with the Chinese forces as early as the summer of 1943, but it was not until January 1945 that a sufficient number of them had become available for assignment to all Chinese divisions and armies. On their arrival in the Chinese units, the liaison veterinary personnel set up courses for training the unit's veterinary officers and enlisted men, operated a horseshoeing school, and organized schedules to improve the methods of animal care and management and the means of pack loading animals. Their task was not an easy one because the instructions were given through a Chinese interpreter, the training aids were unavailable, equipment was necessarily improvised, and the Chinese by habit held little regard for enhancing the efficiency and military life of animals (fig. 5). For example, to them, shoeing was a disgraceful menial task and, even after that attitude was overcome, horseshoe-making equipment had to be improvised before the new Chinese army horseshoers could even be started in their training. Against such hindering obstacles, however, much was accomplished by the Army Veterinary Service to increase the efficiency of forces whose mobility was so much dependent on their animals.
During the period that U.S. forces were located in China, the previously mentioned instructional services were expanded to include assignment of two Veterinary Corps officers to the faculty of the Chinese Army Veterinary
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College, An-shun, China. Their assignment followed the grant of approval by the Commanding General, China-Burma-India theater, in July 1944, to a request initiated by the Chinese National Health Administration. In July 1945, arrangements were completed with the Chinese Ministry of War for veterinary college graduates to attend a 4-week postgraduate course at the Y?nnan Field Artillery Training Center, K'un-ming. In mid-August 1945, this course, emphasizing clinical veterinary medicine which could not be given at An-shun, was opened at the training center; its enrollment included 23 college graduates and 2 college faculty members.
References
1. Goodman, Samuel M.: History of Medical Department Training in U.S. Army for the Period 1 July 1939 to 30 June 1945. Vol. IV. [Official record.]
2. AR 40-2035, 15 Apr. 1922.
3. AR 40-2035, 18 Dec. 1942.
4. Letter, The Adjutant General to The Surgeon General, 31 July 1940, subject: Courses at Special Service Schools.
5. Annual Report of The Surgeon General, U.S. Army. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941.
6. Mobilization Regulations No. 3-1, 23 Nov. 1940.
7. Letter, Lt. Col. R. B. Stewart to Army Veterinary School, 3 Aug. 1940, subject: Special Course of Instruction in Veterinary Laboratory Procedure.
8. Shook, L. L.: Historical Report on Meat and Dairy Hygiene School, November 1940 to June 1943. [Official record.]
9. Lee, F. M.: Training Activities Report of Meat and Dairy Hygiene Course (MO-9), 1 July 1943-30 June 1945.
10. War Department AG Memorandum W615-52-43, 12 June 1943, subject: Trainees Selected to Attend Medical Department Enlisted Technicians Schools.
11. Memorandum, Operations Service, Surgeon General's Office, for Military Training Division, Army Service Forces, 19 Oct. 1945, subject: Training of Veterinary Technicians, SSN 250, and Meat and Dairy Hygienists, SSN 120.
12. Letter, Adjutant General's Office, Services of Supply, 19 December 1941, subject: Officer Filler and Loss Replacements for Ground Arms and Services; as amended by Letter, Adjutant General's Office, 20 Feb. 1942, subject: Officer Filler and Loss Replacements.
13. War Department Circular No. 365, 1945. See also Circulars Nos. 115, 137, and 205, 1946.
