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artillery, signal and engineer troops, and service units. A small division, some 13,000 infantrymen, would allow greater mobility and enhance the ability to exchange units in the line and maintain battle momentum. The French and the British had found that for each unit on line-army corps, division, brigade, regiment, battalion, or company-they needed a comparable unit prepared to relieve it without mixing organizations from various commands. The French had tried relief by army corps but had settled on relief by small divisions. Scott felt that his proposal would ease the difficulty of exchanging units on the battlefield.

By 10 May 1917, Majs. John McAuley Palmer, Dan T. Moore, and Brunt Wells of the War College Division outlined a division of 17,700 men, which included about 11,000 infantrymen in accordance with Scott's idea. In part it resembled the French square division. Planners eliminated 1 infantry brigade and cut the number of infantry regiments from 9 to 4, thereby reducing the number of infantry battalions from 27 to 12. But regimental firepower increased, with the rifle company swelling from 153 officers and enlisted men to 204, and the number of regimental machine guns rising dramatically from 4 to 36. To accommodate the additional machine guns, Palmer, Moore, and Wells outlined a new infantry regimental structure that consisted of headquarters and supply companies and three battalions. Each battalion had one machine gun company and three rifle companies. Given the reduction in the number of infantry units, the proportion of artillery fire support per infantry regiment increased without altering the number of artillery regiments or pieces. The new division still fielded forty-eight 3-inch guns, now twelve pieces per infantry regiment. The division was also authorized a regiment of twenty-four 6-inch howitzers for general support, and twelve trench mortars of unspecified caliber completed the division's general fire support weapons.

Cavalry suffered the largest cut, from a regiment to an element with the division headquarters, a change in line with British and French recommenda-