Page:John Banks Wilson - Maneuver and Firepower (1998).djvu/181

PRELUDE TO COMBAT units could be used overseas or to create new organizations as some divisions appeared to lend themselves to expansion. In November 1941 Twaddle took the 121st and 161st Infantry from the square 30th and 41st Divisions and reassigned them. At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor he had replaced the 34th Infantry with the 121st Infantry in the 8th Division and had slated the 34th and the 161st for deployment to the Philippines. The day after the attack he attached one infantry regiment each from the 32d, 33d, and 36th Divisions to the Fourth Army to augment the forces protecting the West Coast. A week later the 124th Infantry from the 31st Division was assigned to the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia.

On 31 December 1941, Marshall asked Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair, Chief of Staff, GHQ, to investigate bottlenecks that had developed during attempts to ship units overseas. Six days later McNair told Marshall that the Guard divisions used to organize task forces going overseas had "overheads" (noncombat personnel) that approached the "grotesque" and recommended their immediate reorganization as triangular divisions. Shortly thereafter Marshall directed the staff to prepare plans for reorganizing thirteen of the eighteen Guard divisions, omitting five because they already had orders for overseas duty. Ultimately either Marshall or his deputy approved the conversion to triangular formations of all Guard divisions except one, the 27th, which was targeted for Hawaii where that command was planning to receive a square division. Twaddle's staff prepared instructions for the reorganization, which he sent to the division commanders for comment. Units that the states had not adequately supported were to be eliminated.

The reorganization began with the 32d and 37th Divisions on 1 February 1942. All infantry brigades were disbanded except the 51st, an element of the 26th Division. One infantry brigade headquarters company from each division was converted and redesignated as the division reconnaissance troop, except in the 28th and 43d Divisions. In the 43d both infantry brigade headquarters companies were disbanded, and in the 28th one brigade headquarters company became the reconnaissance troop and the other the division's military police company. The headquarters and headquarters battery of each field artillery brigade became the headquarters and headquarters battery, division artillery. Other divisional elements were reorganized, redesignated, reassigned, or disbanded. The reorganization was completed on 1 September 1942 when the 27th Division, which had arrived in Hawaii that summer, adopted the triangular configuration.

In January 1942 the War Department created Task Force 6814 from surplus National Guard units to help defend New Caledonia, a French possession in the Pacific. Among these units were the 51st Infantry Brigade headquarters and the 182d Infantry from the 26th Division (Massachusetts) and the 132d Infantry from the 33d Division (Illinois). The units arrived in New Caledonia in March and others quickly followed. Eventually the Operations Division (OPD), War Department General Staff, instructed Maj. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, commanding Task Force 6814, to organize a division. Because he lacked men and equipment for a