Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-327- A Historical Analysis of Cadre
6.2—WARTIME MOBILIZATION
Two cadre forces were mobilized during World War II. First, the Regular Army
scattered its officers across new units to serve as cadre to train and lead these units. This was
an extemporized cadre force as the Army created this force from a peacetime Regular Army
that did not have enough officers to lead even its existing units. The second cadre force
mobilized during World War II was the Organized Reserves. However, because of the need
for officers to lead new “draftee” units, very few Organized Reserve units were deployed
with the same cadre leaders that they were assigned in peacetime.
6.2.1—An Extemporized Cadre Force
After the Pearl Harbor attack, the Army ramped up mobilization. 199 Weigley
recounts that the War Department created “new divisions … through a cadre system,
whereby a quota of experienced officers and enlisted men would be withdrawn from a
parent division to form the organizing and training nucleus of a new division.” 200 The
process of creating these divisions was envisioned to take “ten to twelve months…from
activation to combat readiness: seventeen weeks for establishing initial organization and
accomplishing the thirteen-week basic training program; thirteen weeks of unit training up to
and including the regimental level; fourteen weeks of combined training, to include at least
one division-versus-division maneuver.” 201 Initially, the cadre was to comprise ten percent of
a division (172 officers and 1,190 enlisted men) but it was increased several times until it
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199 Because all War Department plans had assumed a single M-Day, there were few relevant plans on which to
base this multi-phase mobilization. For a review of pre-WWII mobilization plans, see Kreidberg and Henry
(1955), p. 382-492.
200 Officers for these units “would undergo special training at the service schools to prepare them for their
heavy burden as the divisional cadre. Most of the officers for the new division would come from officer
candidate schools.” [Weigley (1984), p. 436]
201 Weigley (1984), p. 437 (emphasis added). This process is outlined in more detail in Quigley (1942).