Army & Navy - Prelude to Battle

(See Cover)

This week some 5,000,000 Americans in the Army of the United States will have Christmas dinner on the house. Not all will eat on the same day: more than 1,000,000 are outside of the U.S., and many are on the other side of the international date line. They will eat in at least 65 different countries or islands. For many there will be no turkey, no snow, no bells (see p. 38). For others in Alaska, in Greenland, in Iceland, there may be turkey and even bells, and there certainly will be snow. It will be a Christmas unique in the Army's history, for on no other Christmas have so many men in U.S. uniforms been scattered so far over the earth.

Some 3,000,000 will in a sense have dinner on a brisk, sandy-haired little man: Lieut. General Lesley James McNair, Chief of the Army Ground Forces. It is he who is training the new Army's doughboys, anti-aircraftsmen, field artillerymen, tankers, cavalrymen—all except the airmen and the Services of Supply—for the toughest war any U.S. army ever had to fight.

Lust for Battle. "I found many things wrong but I am never satisfied anyway," said General McNair, at the Tennessee maneuvers 18 months ago.

A lot of things have changed for Lieut. General Lesley James McNair since he expressed that dissatisfaction. Then he was charged with supervising the peacetime maneuvers of 27 infantry divisions. Then his artillery was mostly wooden sticks. There were two armored divisions in possible running order with some obsolete light tanks. Such devices as air-bome, mountain and amphibious troops were futuristic experiments. About 1,000,000 soldiers had been inducted into the U.S. Army. Some of them seemed to like playing soldier, but many others were writing to Senator Burt Wheeler to complain about their morale.

A year and a half of kaleidoscopic transition failed to change General McNair's dissatisfaction. A soft-spoken man with light blue eyes, he is perhaps the 20-minute hardboiled realist of the U.S. high command. When others were gasping at the growing might of the U.S. Army in October 1941 (around 1,600,000), McNair said only: "Our great potentialities must not lull us into complacency." Earlier (in Louisiana) he got to the verge of unbridled praise: "If the troops' equipment were completed, they would give a better account of themselves today than American troops did in the World War." Then he added: "Which is not saying too much."

Today General McNair sees vast qualitative as well as quantitative improvements in the Army of 1942 over the Army of 1941. But when others boast about planes and plane production, McNair observes: "We haven't got enough for proper air-ground training." The spirit of the soldiers—the persisting tendency to seek an easy war—troubles him. In a nationwide broadcast last month to the troops in his home command, he said: "There is no doubt that Americans can and will fight; when aroused they are brave in battle. You are going to get killing mad eventually; why not now, while you have time to learn thoroughly the art of killing. Soldiers learn quickly and well in battle . . . but the method is costly to both you and the nation."