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 PRELUDE TO COMBAT but the airborne division had only 401 trucks as opposed to over 1,600 in an infantry division. The new division numbered 8,505 officers and enlisted men, of whom approximately 2,400 were parachutists.

The Airborne Command also trained smaller parachute and glider units and requested the authority to organize tactical airborne brigades in 1942. The Deputy Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Joseph T. McNarney, turned down the request, believing that only divisions should conduct operations involving more than a regiment. The Airborne Command, nevertheless, organized the 1st Parachute Infantry Brigade, a nondeployable unit, to assist in training parachute units.

After 7 December 1941 the General Staff also turned its attention to the future size of the Army and the number of divisions required to wage and win the war. Some officers believed that as many as 350 divisions might be needed, while others estimated considerably fewer. Outside considerations included the manpower needs of the other services and civilian industry as well as the speed at which divisions could be organized, equipped, and trained given the limited pool of experienced leaders and industrial limitations. On 24 November 1942, nearly a year after United States entered the war, the War Department published a troop basis that called for a wartime force structure of 100 divisions—62 infantry, 20 armored, 10 motorized, 6 airborne, and 2 cavalry—to be organized by 1943 within a total Army force of 8,208,000 men.

Meanwhile, the Army continued to expand the number of divisions. Working with tentative troop bases early in 1942, the General Staff decided to bring the Organized Reserve divisions into active military service. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order calling units of the Organized Reserves into active military service for the duration of the war plus six months. The order was a public relations document more than anything else because most Organized Reserve personnel were already on active duty.

Members of General Twaddle's staff next examined the sequence for inducting infantry divisions. They considered such factors as the number of World War I battle honors earned by units; the location and availability of training sites, particularly in the corps areas where divisions were located; and the ability of the Army to furnish divisional cadres. Based on these considerations, the staff established a tentative order, beginning with the 77th Division, which had the most combat service in World War I, and ending with the 103d, which had not been organized during World War I.

Meanwhile, corps area commanders prepared the Organized Reserve units for induction early in 1942 by placing the infantry divisions under the 1940 tables of organization. Infantry and field artillery brigades were eliminated, with the headquarters and headquarters companies of the infantry brigades consolidated to form divisional reconnaissance troops. As in the National Guard divisions, the