Letters to the Editor

We are always pleased to have letters to the editor because this shows that people are taking our Journal seriously. However, due to space limitations, we ask that you keep your letters under 500 words.

To the Editor:

When reading LTC (ret.) Albert Garland's letter in the January 2003 JMH, I was struck by the terms "leftovers" and "those left over" used by Earl A. Reitan and Russell Weigley respectively to describe U.S. infantryman in World War II. The Armed Services did indeed make an effort to siphon off the better educated or more technically proficient into categories where their skills and abilities might be put to effective use. But it was a mighty big system processing literally hundreds of thousands of men per month at a breakneck pace. The end result was that "skimming" ultimately had little effect on the composition of units in a system that inducted some 8,892,836 men from October 1940 through December 1944.

It should also be recognized that any skimming resulting in the infantry receiving the "least promising recruits" did not involve the Navy and Marine draftees, as Weigley states, but the local draft boards attempting to meet monthly Selective Service quotas. The principal bane of the Army Ground Forces was the Army Air Force which argued that far too many men with desired aptitudes and experience were becoming groundpounders and tank drivers.

Weigley also writes of how the supposed leftovers "were then expected to bear the main burden of sustained battle" and that is a fair enough characterization from his point of view. The U.S. Army, however, was actually far more selective than the German Army late in the war in who it sent into combat. While the Germans ended up fielding units composed of old men, invalids, and boys, the U.S. Army routinely rejected huge numbers of young men on physical or mental grounds that they did not believe were fit enough to become Reitan's and Weigley's "leftovers." The last month for which I have rejection rates immediately at hand is December 1943. After exclusions for those granted deferments, the Selective Service sent forward 344,767 men to meet a draft call of 314,413. Of this number, fully 150,788 were rejected outright leaving only 193,979 to be inducted. Differences in individual and group performance between the two were a product of how the opposing armies were trained, organized, supplied, and led; the grand strategy they attempted to fulfill; and the realities of population demographics and mounting casualties. As for Reitan's "poorly educated" Southern riflemen for whom "ignorance [was] an asset," I suspect that their lack of formal schooling was not a principal factor in what made them good soldiers. And skimming tended to be further offset by other personnel factors. Unfortunately, Elliot Richardson, the antithesis of Reitan's stereotypical Southerners, is now deceased so we cannot solicit him for an opinion.

Known best as the U.S. Attorney General who resigned rather than carry out orders to fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor, Richardson finished college and entered law school shortly before Pearl Harbor was attacked. Quitting to join the Army as a foot soldier, he served as a platoon leader in the 4th Infantry Division's 12th Regimental Combat Team where, in fighting from the Normandy hedgerows through Mortain, the Hürtgen Forest and the Ardennes, the Harvard graduate earned a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts before going back to law school after the war.

D. M. Giangreco
U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
Leavenworth, Kansas

To the Editor:

I should like to comment on the review by Roger Cirillo of my book General Patton which appeared in the Journal of Military History in January 2003. I have no idea who Mr. Cirillo is or why he was given the book to review. His assertion that he is a "former staff college instructor" is meaningless. When I punched in his name in both the West Point...