In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

16 Reflections Donn A Starry Annually, April marks the anniversary of the 1917 arrival in France of the first elements of the AEF, the United States's contribution to the Allied defeat of Imperial Germany in the 1914-18 world war. Subsequent deployments to the AEF included a fledgling group known as the Tank Corps. Tanks came to battle in that war as a means to counter the devastating effects of massed artillery and machine-gun fire on infantry. Some visionary tank persons of the day even foresaw a larger role for tanks—independent of mud, trenches, and massed infantry in collision along the static western front. At the operational level, tanks would strike deep, disrupting command and control, reserve forces, and support infrastructure, and turning forward-deployed enemy forces out of their fixed entrenchments. The battle would be won by encirclement, envelopment, and maneuver. It was a vision far beyond the capabilities of the machinery of the day. Indeed, tactical close action in support of infantry, despite some striking successes, was fraught with substantial mechanical challenges for the fragile machines of the time. My father, Don Albert Starry, enlisted in the Tank Corps out of college. The Tank Corps and the Air Service were the premier branches of the time. Recruiters from both services worked college campuses of the nation, seeking to enlist the brightest and most active young men into these elite organizations rather than rely on conscript forces. They also sought—at least in places like rural Iowa, where my Dad went to college—young men from the farms, men who had at least some experience with engines and the running gear of machinery. Some tankers of the day enjoyed basic soldier training at Camp Colt, a site now buried in the town or on the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Cpl. Starry's promotion to sergeant was signed by Capt. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the camp Commander. Since but a single tank was avail- 532 Donn A. Starry able for training at Camp Colt, Sergeant Starry and some of his buddies were trained with their tanks—French made Renaults—at the Tank Corps School at Langres, France. Lt. Col. George S. Patton Jr. was the Commandant there. Patton later accompanied his Renault tanks on foot through the wire and across the trenches in the Saint-Mihiel and MeuseArgonne offensives in September 1918. He took a round through the leg and buttocks on the first day of the latter action—an event the tank was designed to prevent (for those inside), but of which he was, nonetheless , forever proud. Later, of course, Captain Eisenhower would become a General and then President, and the U.S. Army would name a couple of generations of tanks (the M46, M47, M48, and M60) after General Patton, who became the premier U.S. armor Commander of World War II. World War I was soon finished for the AEF and its Tank Corps. Without a decent requiem for either, both just went away. It was called demobilization—the logical antithesis of mobilization. It was a process with considerable historical precedent in U.S. military affairs. Its political genesis was aggravated by a can-do willingness on the part of the military to simply do the best it could at whatever its civilian masters demanded of it. If mobilization had seemed frenetic and helter-skelter, demobilization put its predecessor to shame. In 1918 demobilization took the U.S. Army quite by surprise. Numbers and time lines are instructive. For example, the Army's rolls on 1 April 1917 included fewer than 130,000 soldiers. In the succeeding nineteen months well over three million Soldiers enlisted or were conscripted. Then the war abruptly ended. Soon it was ruled that draftees and enlistees alike were eligible for immediate discharge. The "war to end all wars" was truly over. While a large staff section had been charged with mobilization planning, one lone Colonel, C.H. Conrad Jr., was charged with planning demobilization . Appointed to the task just a few weeks before 11 November 1918, he was sworn to secrecy lest word that demobilization was even being considered would be condemned as "peace propaganda." Eleven days after the Armistice, Colonel Conrad's demobilization recommendations were forwarded to Chief of Staff Peyton C. March by the War Plans Division of the General Staff. After several false starts, much confusion, and considerable meddling by the press and Congress, legislation governing demobilization was passed on 28 February 1919. By November, one year...

Share