This is a book in "The Army Ground Forces" subseries. The Ground Forces were established in March of 1942 from the old GHQ. Commanded, until his death in July, 1944, by Lt. Gen. Leslie McNair, it was the force that organized and trained ground combat units in the United States. It had to compete with the Army Air Forces and Army Service Forces for manpower, as well as with the Navy and the Marine Corps. Initially it was stuck at the bottom of the manpower pool, since particularly the Air Forces were expected to do much of the early fighting and had first call on resources. Many of the people who might have been expected to become platoon leaders were instead given berths in the Army Specialized Training Program, a program of training young men in colleges and universities for technical and professional specialties. In Feb. of 1944 the program was virtually terminated, the participants retrained, by and large, as infantrymen, because of the crying need for replacements. So were large numbers of antiaircraft men and tank destroyer men.

The book emphasizes that, initially, the Army was being built up, and then subsequently it was being maintained, and the challenges faced during the two periods were quite different. ( )