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PRELUDE TO COMBAT six months all eighteen Guard infantry divisions had entered federal service and were training at divisional posts.

Federal law required Guard units to be organized under the same tables as the regulars. But the Guard divisions had not yet adopted the triangular configuration, and the General Staff hesitated to reorganize them immediately as they were in federal service only for training. Furthermore, the staff feared political repercussions when general and field grade officers were eliminated to conform to the new tables.

The National Guard also maintained two separate infantry brigades, the 92d and 93d, which did not fit into any war plans of 1940. At the request of the National Guard Bureau, New York converted the 93d to the 71st Field Artillery Brigade, and Minnesota reorganized the 92d as the 101st Coast Artillery Brigade, and the units entered federal service as such.

Although war plans did not call for separate infantry brigades in the United States, the War Department authorized a new 92d Infantry Brigade in the Puerto Rico National Guard to command forces there. The new headquarters came into federal service on 15 October 1940, but served less than two years without seeing combat. In July 1942 the Caribbean Defense Command inactivated the brigade and replaced it with the Puerto Rican Mobile Force.

Besides infantry divisions and brigades, the National Guard maintained four partially organized cavalry divisions and one cavalry brigade. As these forces did not fit into any current war plans, the General Staff initiated a study in August 1940 to determine the Guard's requirements for horse and mechanized units. It concluded that the Guard needed both types of organizations, but not four horse cavalry divisions. At the time of the study it was rumored that the personnel from two cavalry divisions would form the nuclei of two armored divisions. The states, however, objected to the loss of cavalry regiments, and Armored Force leaders believed that armored divisions were too big and complicated for the Guard. On 1 November 1940 the National Guard Bureau withdrew the allotment of the 21st through 24th Cavalry Divisions, which in effect disbanded them. Some of their elements were used to organize mechanized cavalry regiments. After November the 56th Cavalry Brigade, a Texas unit, remained the only large unit authorized horses in the National Guard. It entered federal service before the end of the year.

With 18 infantry divisions, 1 infantry brigade, and 1 cavalry brigade from the National Guard undergoing training in 1941, a crisis soon developed regarding their future. The 1940 law had authorized the federalization of the Guard for only one year, and that period was about to expire for some units. But the units were now filled with both draftees and guardsmen, and the release of the latter from federal service would completely break up these units. In the summer of 1941 the War Department thus prevailed upon Congress to extend the Guard units and men on active duty. This decision allowed Marshall to conduct the great General Headquarters Maneuvers in the summer and fall of 1941.