In the historical ebb and flow of financing the military, a pattern
of vacillation is evident: the services have adopted new technologies from the civil sector and placed experts in uniform,
transferred some to the Reserve Components, contracted businesses, and reconstituted capabilities once considered superfluous. Transportation provides a case study of episodic needs, for
which no single approach provides reliable access. As a military function it relies so heavily on Reserve units that around
2006 the pending release from active duty of Army and Navy
port-handling organizations in Iraq was a key staffing issue.1
U.S. military transportation history demonstrates a preference
that dates back to the Continental Army in which the contracting function oscillated between quartermasters and troops
contracting for military transport. The desire to avoid diverting
troops from combat arms is appealing until contracts do not
deliver services effectively. Fear that civilians would not deploy
into harm’s way, and concern over status under the customs of
war, led to continual consideration of means to ensure military control of both personnel and equipment. The history is
instructive, as unresolved issues and ameliorative solutions offer
reason to consider alternatives when circumstances differ from
those of recent experience.
Early Transportat ion History
Military historian William Epley notes that Washington’s
quartermaster contracted for wagons and drivers to haul supplies, primarily subsistence.2 During the Mexican War, Colonel
Trueman Cross, the quartermaster supporting Zachary Taylor’s
axis of advance, requested the War Department procure wagons
and supplies in Philadelphia and hire blacksmiths and wheelwrights to deploy to Texas, to establish a repair depot. More of
a challenge than acquiring the wagons was hiring the drivers.
Because competent drivers could be difficult to hire, they could
(and did) strike for higher wages. Consequently, Colonel Cross
advocated establishing a corps of enlisted train drivers,3 but
a continuing line of reasoning ran that soldiers should not be
diverted from their duties in combat arms.
As railroads developed, logistics improved considerably. During
the Civil War, Union forces were better positioned than the
Confederates to expand rail capabilities, and they increased
trackage in the North by 4,000 miles.4 The relation between
the public and private sectors was not an easy one, however. In
1861, Secretary of War Simon Cameron appointed railroad
executives to coordinate movement of troops and supplies,
but the arrangement among cronies facilitated overbilling the
government. By 1862, President Lincoln had appointed Edwin Stanton to replace him, and Congress facilitated Stanton’s
changes by authorizing the seizure and militarization of the
railroads. Although owners still operated their railroads, aspects
of operations became government-run or, more accurately,
hybridized with railroad executives now in uniform supervising
a combination of military and civilian employees.
During the Indian Wars, the Army acquired a fleet of wagons
for quartermaster use, but by 1895, the War Department decided to sell off the wagons in the expectation that in future wars
it would contract logistical support. Since there was no longer
a market for replacement wagons or parts, three years later,
when the Army tried to contract the Studebaker Corporation
to produce 1,200 wagons in two months for the war with Spain,
Studebaker had neither the raw material nor the machinery
to supply the need. Studebaker would need a year, and other
contractors estimated at least nine months to meet military
specifications.5 Although multiple suppliers could respond in
small numbers each, that option would have created difficulties
in maintenance and management of spare parts.
The transport of personnel and cargo would remain subject to a
periodic rebalance of organic and contracted means but demonstrate a continuing reliance on the private sector. During World
War I, ocean shipping was never sufficient to supply the American Expeditionary Forces. Over the first seven months of the
deployment, only 10 percent of supplies reached the AEF. For
the entire effort, expeditionary forces received only 8 million of
the 18 million tons of supplies they requested.6 The 19 months
the U.S. spent in World War I cost the nation’s Treasury 10
times as much as Union expenditures during four years of the
Civil War, with the cost of transport a significant contributor.7
World War II
World War II demonstrated an enormous logistical effort using
multiple modes of transport: internally in the United States,
strategic sealift to multiple theaters, and intra-theater transport.
In July 1942, the Army finally acted on recommendations from
the Mexican War and created a separate Transportation Corps,
whose office would grow to 407 military and 1,573 government
civilian personnel in Washington, DC, and to 164 military and
969 civilian billets outside the capital. Although much transportation of personnel would depend on civilian contracts, government personnel controlled movement, ordered transport, and
ticketed personnel on commercial carriers.
Layers of civil-military staff moved troops to pre-deployment
training at multiple installations, and then to ports. The predominance of rail travel and freight transport to military installations called for considerable coordination with the railroad
industry. Individual railroads and industry associations sponsored the development of affiliated units in the Army Reserve
that comprised the Military Railway Service. In essence, the
railroad industry could thus put their own personnel in uniform, ensuring both competent operation of the rail service and
retention of personnel, who otherwise might have been subject
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