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 GENESIS OF PERMANENT DIVISIONS

Division. Although he found no glaring deficiencies in the unit, he recommended the maintenance of permanent headquarters detachments for divisions and brigades in peacetime to ease mobilization and to prevent the breakup of regimental organizations for division details. Carter also recommended that all communications equipment be centralized in the signal unit because the training of men assigned to combat arms units to operate signal gear seemed wasteful.

On 9 March 1916, trouble flared again on the southern border when Mexican bandits raided Columbus, New Mexico, killing and wounding several soldiers and civilians. The following day the Southern Department commander, Maj. Gen. Frederick Funston, ordered Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of the 8th Brigade, to apprehend the perpetrators. For his mission Pershing organized a provisional division and designated it as the Punitive Expedition, United States Army.

This division differed considerably from the organizations outlined in the Field Service Regulations. It consisted of two provisional cavalry brigades (two cavalry regiments and a field artillery battery each) and one infantry brigade (two regiments and two engineer companies), with medical, signal, transportation, and air units as divisional troops. The design of the division followed the organizational axiom that it adapt to the terrain and roads where the enemy was located. In hostile and barren northern Mexico, Pershing planned to pursue the bandits with cavalry and to protect his communication lines with infantry.