"US Morale Problems in WII" Topic

This is a pretty good read about morale problems and the replacement process: link

Wolfhag

Well written – and it certainly points to the US repple-depple system as not contributing to combat effectiveness!

Thank you for pointing it out. Worth reading. He might have given it a bit more context, though. For instance, how do you keep the same soldiers training together for years while you're expanding the Army by a factor of ten? Cadreing out units to form new divisions meant accepting replacements who had not been with the unit so long. The thing was inevitable. And between June and October/November 1944, the priority was getting divisions into combat and maintaining the pursuit. About November, you will find units rotated to quiet sectors where they can integrate and train replacements, but how could this have been done in August or September? Also scarcely the replacement depots' fault that the highest levels of the US Army underestimated the percentage of replacements who would need infantry training--and overestimated the length of the war, leaving men in college later than we should have. As the author admits--though not in one place--after a hectic first few months, the system improved.

Yes, everyone should have followed "best practice"--welcoming and integrating replacements in quiet times, and not shoving them into combat in a matter of hours. But let only those wargamers feel superior who have never used the wrong unit in some situation because it was the only unit available. War does that.

Oh. And as regards the British system, some of the Grenadier Guards infantry advancing on Arnhem had been recently snatched from anti-aircraft units in London, and none too happy about it. About the same time, the Waffen SS units were receiving drafted sailors. Welcome to warfare.

"The needs of the military comes first." … I was told …

Not new, and the same problem applied in Vietnam. That's why units rotated and deployed as full units in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But WWII was a different beast…a really large Army with a lot of divisions. And the Brits had the same problem later in the war. They may have begun with "intact" units but by they time they hit Italy and especially Normandy, they were feeding in replacements individually. Before they hit the beaches they knew they were going to have consolidate and reintegrate units.

@ robert

some of the Grenadier Guards infantry advancing on Arnhem had been recently snatched from anti-aircraft units in London

Always been so. 600 of the same Guards at Waterloo had been in the Berkshire militia until two months previously.

The Germans found, IIRC, that although they were frequently able to put together ad hoc battle groups of cooks, clerks and stragglers, these extemporised units came apart very quickly in action. There's probably a maximum dilution of new bloods you can have in a unit before its quality starts to dominate that of the existing personnel and I suspect it's a lot less than 50% too…

Yep. I had dinner with a guy once and I was told that he was a WWII vet. I asked him what he did and he replied that he was in an anti-aircraft unit and that he was turned into an infantry replacement.

Biggest mutniny of the second war occurred when the British got desperate at what was it Salerno or Anzio?
They decided to send men who had returned from hospitals to whatevere unit was short as an emergency measure.

You just don't do that to experienced combat veterans who expect to return to their unit and people they have fought alongside.
It was a mutiny of between 600-800 retuning soldiers who refused to go to unitsthat weren't their original untis. It was quietly downplayed and few even know of it today.

By the end of 1944 the US British and Canadians were all disbanding units to fill infantry positions.

The UK even disbanded entire divisions to provide spare infantrymen.

The Canadians had it worst of all. They had a quarter million trauined infantrymen back in Canada, that they could not use because they couldn't send draftees overseas. So, they disbanded artillery and anti-air units and sent the men into infantry units. Finally in 1945 they changed the rules and started sending over draftees. The desertion rate along the way to Halifax has never been investigated.

4th Cuirassier, I remember something from a US paratrooper in the Bulge. Retreating units--even down to "fire teams" or 1/2 rifle squads--could be integrated into the defense. Individual soldiers weren't worth stopping. Someone was going to have to reintegrate them into a unit first.

There was also a US study of German units which concluded that--I think it was one in four or one in five of the unit had to be a trained, willing soldier for the unit to function credibly on the defense. Never saw a similar study for offensive operations. But one of the survivors of the Hammelborn raid said a particular action there was the only time he ever saw the Germans coordinate artillery, tanks and infantry, and he'd been in action since COBRA. Germans were raising units, but lacked time and resources to train them is my suspicion.

An uncle of mine drove tanks and TDs 1944-45. He was pulled out of the replacement center for that because he'd driven a tractor pre-war. Never told me what he was trained for, but clearly not that.

Troopwo, what about that mutiny among the Rifles in North Africa when they found out they were going on to Sicily with no home leave after seven years in Egypt?

troopwo

My father was wounded early on in Normandy (507/82) he refused to be evaced because he didn't want to be replaced into some other unit -

The Canadians had it worst of all.

I highly recommend Tug of War by Denis and Shelagh Whitaker for insight into how the Canadian replacement system affected operations post-Normandy. Denis Whitaker (DSO and bar) commanded 1st Battalion RHLI during the fighting in Normandy and later in the Low Countries and Germany. It's a great combination of documentary research and first hand accounts from many of the units, not just the Rileys.

"By the end of 1944 the US British and Canadians were all disbanding units to fill infantry positions."

According to Michael Carver, manpower shortages had forced the British Army into disbanding formations as early mid-1942. Carver is an excellent resource, especially with regards to the Desert War. His three volumes on the NAfrican campaign are all well worth reading, although they be a bit too uncomfortably candid for some readers -
"Tobruk"
"El Alamein"
"Dilemmas of the Desert War"

I strongly suspect that the manpower problem in many ways dictated Montgomery's war-fighting approach, where heavy doses of armor, artillery and airpower tended to lead the tactical way.

B

I strongly suspect that the manpower problem in many ways dictated Montgomery's war-fighting approach, where heavy doses of armor, artillery and airpower tended to lead the tactical way.

It's also great for morale too.

Wolfhag

Excellent find and interesting leads to follow up with!

Some similar experiences on other fronts from recent readings:

In Gottlob Herbert Bidermann's Krim-Kurland mit der 132. Infanterie-Division he describes an episode in the winter of 1944-45 where, while in Berlin on special leave after being decorated, he escapes several attempts to draft him into various scratch units so that he can return to his unit in the Courland Pocket, feeling he has the best chance of surviving the war there with them.

On the other side, in Vasily Grossman's A Writer at War, he describes how wounded Soviet soldiers in the hospitals on the east bank of the Volga often wrote first to their commissars, since they could get orders cut for the soldier to return to their unit rather than be swept into a general replacement pool.

By mid-1942, the British and Commonwealth armies had lost roughly 50,000 prisoners at Dunkirk, 25,000 in Greece and Crete, 80,000 in Singapore, and 33,000 in Tobruk. Those are just the losses to capture. Battle casualties were in addition to those.

That prisoner tally alone equates to about, what, nine or ten divisions' worth? 190,000 men?

So when Carver notes that the disbandments started as early as 1942, it fits excellently with the facts. The Commonwealth was severely short of manpower for the last three years of the war.

When my son got orders to report to the Wounded Warrior Regiment at Camp Pendleton he instead reported back to his unit, told them he's recovered and they sent him back to his unit overseas. That was not uncommon.

I can't find the reference but I recall reading that after Normandy any new guys were designated as "Scouts". Their job was to walk point and go check out treelines and potential enemy locations. Being new and inexperienced they were expendable. If they survived they were replaced by the new "new guys" who took their place as Scouts.

Wolfhag

"Manpower and the Canadian Army" by Burns is a good read on replacement problems combined with political promises about not using draftees and then the shortages from about mid 1944 starting in the Italian campaign before Normandy got in the swing of things.

4th Cuirassier wrote -
"By mid-1942, the British and Commonwealth armies had lost roughly 50,000 prisoners at Dunkirk, 25,000 in Greece and Crete, 80,000 in Singapore, and 33,000 in Tobruk. Those are just the losses to capture. Battle casualties were in addition to those.

That prisoner tally alone equates to about, what, nine or ten divisions' worth? 190,000 men?

So when Carver notes that the disbandments started as early as 1942, it fits excellently with the facts. The Commonwealth was severely short of manpower for the last three years of the war.

Hi 4C,
Very interesting point, representing a number of "dots" that I never connected with the later disbandment trend. Those 190,000 men must also have represented a considerable proportion of pre-war trained soldiers.

Which brings me to another interesting book I forgot to mention – "Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign – The Eighth Army and the Path to El Alamein" by Jonathan Fennell. It is a book well worth a read -

link

As a sidelight – IIRC, by mid-1942, native British actually represented a minority of 8th Army infantry strength. As they say, the rabbit hole is indeed deep.

B

The story of British Divisions being formed, disbanded or re-designated is a complicated one. At the outbreak of war there were 31 Divs in existence. At the time of the Dunkirk evacuation there were 34, which dropped to 31 in the immediate aftermath, before nudging back up to 34 at the start of 1941. At the end of 1942 there were 38, which was the same by mid-1943. A year later there were 35, and by May 1945 29, so close to the 1939 starting point.

In Aug/Sep 1944, 9th Armd Div, 76th, 77th and 80th Inf Divs were all disbanded. The three Inf Divs were all Reserve Divs and never left the UK. 59th Div was broken up after Normandy, and replaced in 21AG by 52nd Div a few months later. 50th Div was returned to the UK at the end of 1944 and became a Reserve Div. 1st Armd Div was deactivated in Italy in Oct 1944, though its 2nd Armd Bde remained active as an Indep Bde. 1st Abn Div did not take part in offensive operations after Sep 1944 but was still 'on the books'.

The highest headcount for British Divs I can see (according to an old spreadsheet I compiled from Joslen) was between May-Oct 1943, with 38, made up of 27 Inf, 9 Armd and 2 Abn. The nine disbandments up to May 1945 consisted of five Inf Divs (four UK based fmns plus 59th), and four Armd Divs (two UK fmns and 8th and 10th in the Middle East).

Gary

Since we've accidentally drifted onto the subject, I've long wondered what further research has uncovered about "untapped" British manpower in 1944-45. In Decision in Normandy Carlo D'Este discusses the large numbers of infantry still in the UK in the autumn of 1944 and wonders why they weren't used, the threat of invasion being long gone. Besides disbanding Divisions, the British were also disbanding artillery regiments (principally LAA) and using the men as infantry replacements.

The book came out in 1983, so did D'Este miss something? Were the deception roles of 76th, 77th and 80th Divisions still classified when he wrote it?

. In Decision in Normandy Carlo D'Este discusses the large numbers of infantry still in the UK in the autumn of 1944 and wonders why they weren't used……………

That book is a slightly softer (very slightly) version of the post-war us view that The Commonwealth performed badly in Normandy and hindered the US Army campaign. It is a relentless hatchet-job on Monty.
The example you give is D'Este claiming that Churchill deliberately lies to the USA and hid soldiers away in the UK because he feared defeat/prop up The Empire after the war/insert favourite perfidious albion quote. It is total fiction and was comprehensively demolished in Colossal Cracks by Stephen Hart.

D'Este:……………………

The evident availability of vast numbers of uncommitted infantry poses
several disturbing questions. Why were none of these troops used in
Normandy? Why were United Kingdom-based infantry units not
disbanded instead of line infantry units of the Second [ (British) ]
Army? Were they deliberately withheld …? Did Churchill, perhaps, so
mistrust the eventual success of Overlord … that he was simply
unwilling to commit them to Montgomery…? Or did the Prime Minister
place limitations on the numbers of men he was willing to sacrifice at this
stage of the Second World War?
--------------------------------------

Hart:…………………….
Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth; there simply were not
'vast numbers of uncommitted men' still in the United Kingdom. On paper
there were over one hundred-thousand infantry within the United Kingdom
outside those in 21st Army Group. The simple truth is that only tiny fraction
of these were fit for active combat duties in France; Home Forces, as has been
demonstrated, had been virtually bled dry of draftable infantry by August
1944. Of these one hundred-thousand infantry, there were, as D'Este rightly
concedes, no less than 52,916 other ranks in training, depot and miscellaneous
units. These units consisted of a small cadre of trainers, and a bulk of new
recruits undergoing training. Virtually all of the trainers, while having
combat experience, were either not in Medical class A or had previously shown
signs of battle fatigue, and were thus deemed unfit for infantry combat.
Equally, the training of infantry recruits was a long and through affair. Just
like the Wehrmacht in 1944-45, the manpower crisis within the British army did
not prompt more than minor curtailing of the thoroughness of infantry
training; to send men half-trained into combat was a guarantee that many
would swiftly die for their inexperience

Chapter 3, page 72 below:
PDF link

Excellent stuff, thank you so much! Funnily enough, I don't remember D'Este being such a hatchet job on Monty and the Commonwealth forces, but it's been a few years.

to send men half-trained into combat was a guarantee that many
would swiftly die for their inexperience
Yes, the Whitakers' book I mentioned above has some stark examples, e.g. men who had never trained with live grenades.

@ Blutarski

Re Alamein – yes, the Commonwealth western desert forces later termed the 8th Army consisted of British, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, South African, Indian, and Free French troops. After Operation Torch, the only Allied troops not represented there were the Russians…!

Just had a quick scoot through the Order of Battle for Second El Alamein, as shown by Joslen (waiting in for a plumber…).

4 British Armd Divs
3 British Inf Divs

1 Indian Inf Div
1 Aust Inf Div
1 NZ Inf Div
1 SA Inf Div

9 Br Mot Bns
27 Br Inf Bns (includes 3 with Ind Bdes)
4 Br MG Bns

6 Ind Inf Bns
1 Ind MG Bn

9 Aus Inf Bns
1 Aus MG Bn

10 NZ Inf Bns
1 NZ MG Bn

9 SA Inf Bns
1 SA MG Bn

3 Greek Inf Bns (served as Bde in 50 Inf Div)

I think for armoured (which gets a bit confusing);

21 Br Armd Regts
5 Br Armd Car Regts
1 SA Armd Car Regt
1 NZ Div Cav Regt
1 Aus Div Cav Regt

There was something of a carousel of Divs serving in North Africa, with some serving in Persia, Iraq and Palestine for periods. There were three Australian Inf Divs in theatre for a spell in 1941, before 6th went to Palestine in mid-1941 before returning to Australia in Apr42, joining 7th who returned in Feb42..

Gary

All armies had morale problems in that long, horrid war, sometimes for the same reasons, but often for reasons quite specific to their own systems, governments, and commitments. The real miracle is that they were not worse. Focussing on the problems, though real, can overlook the obvious: that the vast majority of men and women, draftees or volunteers, stayed the course, did their duty, and contributed in ways great and small to defeating one of history's most brutal and tenacious groups of enemies.

For Canada, much of the conscription debate was a bit ungrounded until the Whitakers' fine book, referenced above, gave a passionate exposition of the problem "at the coal face". This problem, the losses posed by intense ground combat and the need to produce trained replacements fast, was not entirely dissimilar to WWI, in that it rocked all estimates of infantry loss rates and forced reconsideration of personnel policies, etc. Canada and others re-mustered AA gunners, drivers, etc. into the combat arms, and also loaned hundreds of officers (CANLOANs) to other Commonwealth front-line units. They combed out Canadians bases etc., and also, late in the war, overturned the pledge not to conscript for overseas service. Each country faced its own challenges, some of which were eased as the war wound to a bloody close (e.g., air superiority released AA gunners for other duties) and others of which grew (e.g., the complexities of occupation duties and feeding the liberated).

Makes for some interesting campaign, morale, etc. possibilities.

The British infantry still in the UK would have included quite a number from draftees to those undergoing conversion to infantry. Keep in mind that the Uk was activley sending men out to Normandy, the Italian campaign as well as Burma. They would have gone through those numbers in little time.

The reinforcement problems for Canada was not something new. It was widely known and equally widley censored and suppressed by wartime media.

The government got elected promising not to send draftees overseas. There were a lot of trained infantrymen in Canada that could NOT be used because of the governments political decision.

It got so bad in Italy that armoured units were dismounted and took the mgs out of their vehicles to use in the front line bumnkers to stop gap the infantry shortages. Even AA untis in Italy were disbanded or outright turnied into infantry units.

The defence minister made a tour of the Italian campaign and got absolutely railed when he spoke in private with a meeting of the unit RSMs. When he returned to Canada he resigned over the issue.

When things got desperate for replacements at the fall of '44, the government held a referendum asking for the public to let it slf out of its' promise of not using draftees in combat. The public voted to send them. why should my family have to suffer and not everyone?

They nly started sending draftees the last two or three months of the war.

One old guy once explained to me how he wound up inEurope.
He was drafted in Canada and figured he was all set to wait the war out. It seems his unit was posted as guard to an airport in Gander Newfoundland in late August.

A sign went up on the notice board in late September, asking for volunteers to go oversaes to Europe. No one bothered.
When October hit, the first snowfall hit Newfoundland. The first dusting of snow in those parts happened to be about two foot of snow. The troops start asking the locals what the rest of winter would be like.

The entire unit then signed up to volunteer for Europe.

As much as we have spoken about morale and replacements, I think there is one group we are drastically overlooking. The Poles in Italy and Normandy onwards.

Let me explain to you their recruitment method as told to me by one of their own.

A truck would arrive at the center for recent POWs captured. A polish NCO would stand on a box in the middle and ask who spoke or was Polish. Anyone who answered positive was then put on the back of the truck and redressed in battle drress and taken on strength of the Polish unit.

I undertsand that they werent too fussy about administrative details.

Seeing as how the British, at that time, controlled India (including Pakistan and Bangladesh), the second-most-populous country in the world -- why did they have manpower problems?

The Indian Army was enlarged incrredibly during the war.

You have to look at global use of how spread out they actually were.
North African campaign, to-thee diviions.
Italian campaign 2-4 divisions.
East African campaign, Somalia/Ethiopia 2-3 divisions.
Invasion and Occupation of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon 4-6 divisions and maybe another one or two triaining to go to an active cmpaign.
Occupation of Edypt and Lybia post campaigns, 2 divisions.

Lost in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaya, 3-5 divisions

Occupation and frontier duties in india, Northwest frontier, Northeast frontier and Ceylon-???

Numbers held as recruiting and training-???

Don't forget each Indian division would have had anywhere from two to five british battalions in each depending of where they were sent.

That doesn't even mention the inclusion of Indian State forces which were independant armies controlled by their local states/princes who contributed entire battalions and brigades for imperial service.

It takes time and equipment to grow an army.
by wars end, they were probably just coming into their own.

If you think the number of men sitting around in the UK was high, compare it to the numbers of men in continental US establishments.

The total includes everything from waiting to arrive draftees, convalescing wounded to in training and waiting to be posted overseas drafts.

A lot of soldiers. Almost all in transit somewhee though. Not a lot sat idle ifor very long. Too many theatres to feed replacements to.

@ Starfury Rider

Thanks for the reminder re the Greeks of the 8th Army.

In aggregate, Commonwealth manpower losses to capture to mid-1942 were, approximately, one Stalingrad*. The population of the British Commonwealth and of Germany and its allies were probably about the same (you can't really include India as the Indian army very rarely served outside India), but as well as manning armies and air forces, Britain also had a navy and a merchant marine to man. Prisoners do at least come home eventually, but the often-quoted UK losses in WW2 of ~250,000 would have felt like a lot more at the time due to the absence of so many men as prisoners.

Monty needed the Commonwealth, the French, the Greeks and pretty well anyone else by the second half of 1942.

* A 'Stalingrad Bag', equalling roughly 250,000 men, is actually quite a handy unit of measure of actual or potential losses to capture. It's a bit like the way rainforest depletion is always expressed in units of "an area the size of Vermont" (UK equivalent: "an area the size of Wales" – 1 ATSOV = 1.2 ATSOW). Dunkirk saved 1.6 SBs of troops; the USSR lost 2.7 SBs at the battle of Kiev and another 2.6 SBs at Vyazma-Bryansk; the Axis lost 1.2 SBs in Tunisia; and so on. Makes huge numbers a bit more digestible.

One other aspect concerning the Indian Army was the need to defend India until quite late in the war. We could probably debate for yonks as to when when the UK was no longer under threat of invasion, but with India it's pretty straightforward; U-Go was launched in March 1944. The Japanese were in retreat by mid-May and broke off the offensive in early July. So, at the time the manpower crisis was becoming acute in NWE, the Indian Army was replenishing it's own losses from Kohima and Imphal, pursuing a retreating enemy, and prepatring for the reconquest of Burma.

By that time,,,the invasion of Malaya and the forward planning for the Dutch East Indies was on the planning board.