On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress called for 10 companies of expert riflemen to be organized and sent to Boston to assist the militia facing the British. This was the birth of the U.S. Army. As these Soldiers gathered outside of Boston, they needed food, shelter, clothing, and all the other necessities for sustaining an Army in the field.
Two days later, on June 16, Congress established the Quartermaster Corps, Finance Corps, Adjutant Generals Corps, and the Commissary General of Subsistence to sustain this new Army — to clothe and house them, to pay them, to manage them, and to feed them. Quartermaster generals such as Thomas Mifflin, the 1st Quartermaster General, and later Nathanael Greene, brought order to the state and continental supply systems. By creating a structure of centrally managed supply depots and advance supply points, they supported the Army throughout the war.
To arm the men, the Continental Congress’s Board for War and Ordnance created the Commissary General of Military Stores — the forerunner of the Ordnance Department — to harness the munitions necessary for the Revolutionary War. COL Benjamin Flower served as the Commissary General of Military Stores throughout the war and established munitions facilities at Springfield, Massachusetts, and Carlisle, Pennsylvania, for the production of arms, powder, and shot. These supplies were sent to the armies in the field whose personnel, Soldier and civilian, operated the travelling forge for maintenance of the weapons, the ammunition wagons, and the arms chests to support the Soldiers on the front lines.
This support enabled the rapid and efficient movement of the Continental Army and allied French Army in August and September 1781, when they quickly moved 400 miles from White Plains, New York, to Yorktown, Virginia, to lay siege to and capture the British force at Yorktown. This was the victory needed to establish American independence.
Civil War
With the onset of the Civil War in 1861, massive mobilizations challenged the Army’s logistical systems in unprecedented ways. Unprepared for hundreds of thousands of troops, the sustainment branches initially struggled to equip the Union Army. By the end of the war, it adapted through victory and defeat on the battlefield to become one of the principal reasons for the ultimate success of the Union cause.
The new Quartermaster General, Montgomery Meigs, reorganized the Quartermaster Branch and instituted discipline in the system. Field commanders learned how to plan their operations in conjunction with logistical capabilities. They established a system of forward depots to support operations and employed diverse technologies, including railroads, telegraph, and steam transports. By the end of the war, City Point, Virginia, supported three field armies and operated as the busiest port on the Atlantic seaboard.
The Ordnance Department shared the initial challenges of the Quartermaster Department. Initially, infantry units were armed with a wide variety of small arms and artillery, and standardization suffered. However, as industrial expansion caught up to the needs of the Army, the Union Army Soldier was the best equipped Soldier in the world. The Ordnance Department furnished 90 million pounds of lead, 13 million pounds of artillery projectiles, and 26 million pounds of powder for a Union Army of 1 million Soldiers. In more than two dozen armories and arsenals, men and women labored to produce the munitions necessary to bring final victory in April 1865 at the Appomattox Court House.
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World War I
On April 6, 1917, the U.S. entered World War I. Even though the war had been raging in Europe for nearly three years, the U.S. Army was woefully unprepared. It had a myriad of problems to solve in order to support the 2 million troops of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) fighting in France. However, during the war it quickly matured as an organization and adapted to modern, mechanized warfare. World War I thoroughly remade the American Army and the Services of Supply of the AEF that supported it.
The Quartermaster Corps had to support an army overseas and establish a support structure in France that included port operations, advanced depots, and salvage yards. This war also marked the beginning of modern war with the introduction of petroleum and repair parts to the logistician’s load. Recognizing that personal cleanliness reduced the spread of disease, the Quartermaster introduced laundry and bath operations. The Quartermaster Corps transportation mission matured, as well, as it was soon managing rail, maritime, truck, and automobile operations.
The Ordnance Department established an embryonic system of echeloned maintenance. For major repairs, it established a system of Ordnance repair base shops in France. For maintenance support to the field, the Ordnance Department fielded the Mobile Ordnance Repair Shops and Heavy Artillery Mobile Ordnance Repair Shops. These units moved with the division and provided a wide array of support to the line. To train the new Ordnance Soldiers, the Ordnance Department established schools at numerous locations, including universities, civilian factories, armories, arsenals, and field depots.
To manage all these efforts in France, the first coordinated support organization was created, the Services of Supply. This organization ran all support operations in France and showed the value of coordinated, managed support to the battlefield. The oldest sustainment commands in today’s Army date themselves to their creation in World War I.
Birmingham, England, in 1945. VIEW ORIGINAL
World War II
World War II was unlike all previous conflicts in American history. Army logisticians had to support an Army of 8 million men and women organized into 90 divisions from the sand and heat of the African desert, to the snow and cold of Iceland, to the hot and dense jungles of the Philippines. To organize this effort, the Chief of Staff of the Army, GEN George C. Marshall, selected GEN Brehon B. Somervell to lead the Army Service Forces as the top logistician in the Army during the war. To achieve this goal, every sustainment branch ballooned in size to perform its mission and assumed new missions to achieve victory.
Around the globe, more than 3,000 Quartermaster units fed, clothed, supplied, and recovered Army Soldiers wherever they were. They moved and distributed every class of supply in every weather condition possible. When the Army broke out of Normandy in the fastest, farthest drive in northern Europe, Quartermaster units in the Red Ball Express pushed supplies to the advancing units up to the farthest point possible.
The Ordnance Department was responsible for roughly half of all Army procurement during World War II, $34 billion dollars. President Franklin Roosevelt’s Arsenal of Democracy depended on the Ordnance Department to become a reality. During World War II, the Ordnance Branch gained its third core competency, bomb disposal (renamed Explosive Ordnance Disposal [EOD] after the war). By war’s end, there were more than 2,200 Ordnance units of approximately 40 different types.
On July 31, 1942, the Transportation Corps was established as a separate branch due to its specialized skill set necessary to support the mission of maritime, rail, and vehicular transportation. During the war, it moved millions of Soldiers in the U.S. and around the world, including the two longest lines-of-communication in the war: the Burma Road and the Persian Corridor. In addition, these transporters sustained every Army amphibious operation over-the-beach.
Army Material Command
In 1962, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara directed a study of the functions and procedures of the Department of the Army. This study, known as Project 80 or the Hoelscher Committee Report, recommended significant changes in administration and organization along the lines of functionality vice the historical prerogatives of each of the branches. The seven technical services (which included Ordnance, Quartermaster, and Transportation) lost much of their autonomy and some of their missions and responsibilities. Research, development, procurement, production, storage, and distribution of most classes of supply and materiel were centralized in a new organization to stand at the top of the Army’s logistical pyramid, U.S. Army Material Command (AMC).
AMC assumed control of the arsenals, proving grounds, depots, works, and plants. Combat development functions were transferred to another new organization, Combat Developments Command (CDC). Most of the technical service schools were transferred to an existing command, the Continental Army Command (CONARC). Yet, in 1973, many of the responsibilities of CDC and CONARC were merged into the new U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), including the combat developments mission and all technical service schools.
Finally, five of the seven chiefs of the technical services and their offices were eliminated. Only the Surgeon General and the Chief of Engineers remained. These positions, however, were reestablished in the 1980s to foster a greater sense of identity for those branches and to improve branches’ personnel proponency missions.
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Vietnam
In contrast to World War II, the Vietnam War was a decentralized, counterinsurgency war. In the early years, combat units were rushed to Vietnam at the same time, or ahead of supporting logistics units. Consequently, logistics infrastructure had to be built up while fighting was ongoing.
In April 1965, the 1st Logistical Command was established in Saigon to manage the highly fragmented logistics structure. The problem was not a lack of supplies, but a surplus of them. Quartermaster officers and Soldiers had to deal with this overabundance of materiel, duplicate requisitions, and old-style manual accounting techniques, making it all but impossible to effect proper supply management. Yet, by 1967, a fully automated Inventory Control Center was established; with its newly introduced computer systems, it was better able to tabulate in-country requirements, establish priorities, curb duplicate requisitions, and stem the tide of unneeded supplies throughout Vietnam.
At the same time, Ordnance officers and Soldiers continued their core missions of ammunition handling, maintenance, and EOD. The dispersed nature of the fighting meant that maintenance units were spread thin. They lacked sufficient special tools, materiel handling equipment, wreckers, and recovery vehicles to support such dispersed operations. Moreover, the sabotage threat forced logistics units to spend a great deal of time preparing, maintaining, and manning defensive perimeters. Despite these challenges, equipment operational readiness rates continued to improve until, by 1969, they were better than operational readiness rates in previous wars.
Transporters were among the first units to deploy to Vietnam to facilitate the ever-increasing number of American Soldiers. Transportation units established and operated numerous logistics-over-the-shore sites and port facilities along the coast to facilitate the mountain of materiel coming into the country. On land, Transportation truck companies had to build gun trucks as a means of self-protection against the ever-present threat of convoy ambushes.
equipment to maintain a MOGAS and vehicle repair operation during Exercise
Bright Star, November 1993, Cairo, Egypt.
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Desert Storm
In the 1980s, Army sustainment shifted toward multi-functional logistics in support of the new Army doctrine, AirLand Battle. The U.S. Army Logistics Center (now the U.S. Army Combined Arms Support Command) began this process by forming Forward Support Battalions. The success of this initiative led to the redesign of logistics support at the division and echelon-above-division level. The real-world test of this concept occurred in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm when the XVIII Airborne Corps and the VII Corps were deployed to Saudi Arabia for the invasion of Iraq.
Supporting this conflict presented some unusual problems for Quartermaster units. The latest generation of vehicles consumed huge quantities of fuel. VII Corps alone had 50,000 vehicles, including 6,000 armored vehicles. Total fuel consumption exceeded 2 billion gallons and required construction of 13 new petroleum facilities. The high temperatures and arid environment created unprecedented demands on water purification units. Tragically, a water purification unit suffered the highest number of casualties of any unit in Operation Desert Storm when a SCUD missile struck the barracks of the Soldiers of the 14th Quartermaster Detachment; 13 Soldiers were killed and 43 wounded.
Ordnance Soldiers had to move and disperse the tens-of-thousands of tons of ammunition, and maintainers had to keep the thousands of vehicles operating in all the dust and sand. To handle the EOD mission, the 1st EOD Group (Provisional) was established to handle the ordnance disposal mission in theater.
Transporters executed the largest deployment since World War II. The 7th and 32nd Transportation Groups played a critical role in opening the seaports and building up sufficient forces and mountains of supplies in Saudi Arabia to stem any further aggression. Next, they discreetly moved American forces to the west to prepare for the famous left hook maneuver that commenced ground operations on February 24, 1991.
Today
The focus for today’s Army is largescale combat operations against a near-pear adversary, a return to the objective of moving and sustaining numerous units in offensive operations using innovative technology to support Soldiers in the field.
To achieve this goal, the Army has established exercises to build this capability. Operation Pathways has become a forcing function for the logistical and sustainment enterprise to confront and work through a myriad of issues associated with the deployment and sustainment of units to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility. Operation Defender tests the same capability, but in the other direction, toward the European theater and our allies in NATO.
Transporting our forces is only one aspect of the sustainment challenge. Once in theater, supplying and maintaining the troops are critical, and new capabilities are being developed to adapt to the modern battlefield. 3D printing will become a critical enabler for maintaining combat power and providing responsive sustainment to widely dispersed units by providing parts that can be quickly and efficiently manufactured at the place of need. It can reduce Class IX storage and distribution times and can also manufacture parts for obsolete equipment.
Autonomous aerial resupply can be used in situations where time, threat, terrain, weather, or priorities make other resupply methods unfeasible or unresponsive. Sustainers can load preconfigured supply packages, which will navigate to the supported Soldier’s position, unload and return with materiel.
These and other technologies and capabilities will enable the best logistical and sustainment possible for today’s Army. The past 250 years of Army history show that Army sustainment has always risen to the challenges, overcome the difficulties, and enabled the American Soldier to win the nation’s wars.
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Karl Rubis is the U.S. Army Combined Arms Support Command & Sustainment Center of Excellence Command Historian. He holds an M.A. degree in American History and Military History from the University of Kansas and a B.A. degree in History from Pepperdine University. He also has a Certificate in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He has published articles and book reviews in the Journal of Military History, Army History, Army Sustainment Professional Bulletin, the Ordnance Magazine, and various other volumes focusing on military history and military logistics. He has taught courses at the University of Kansas; University of California, Los Angeles; and Pepperdine University. In 2016, he retired from the U.S. Navy as a Naval Intelligence officer and is a graduate of the Naval War College.
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This article was published in the summer 2025 issue of Army Sustainment.
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