TEMPORARY VERSUS PERMANENT DETAIL OF SPECIALISTS: EXPERIENCE OF ARMY ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT
Lieutenant (j.g.) R.E. Bassler, (CEC), U.S.N.
The material contained in this article has been taken from the various appropriation bills and reorganization acts affecting the War Department. Only data bearing on the question of temporary versus permanent detail have been included. The purpose of the article is to present in a concrete form the experience of another government department sometimes cited in support of amalgamation.
The history of the Army Ordnance Department (or corps, depending on wording in particular bill) is interesting when considering amalgamation. There is to be found in this brief history an example which is as nearly analogous to the Navy's problem as can be cited.
In articles on the amalgamation question, proponents or opponents very rarely define the scope of the amalgamation under discussion; also there is a considerable lack of unanimity of opinion among proponents as to what corps should be included. The history contained herein may therefore be of benefit to the Navy by nullifying certain arguments that have been advanced as to the extent of amalgamation and its completeness, and by showing some of the alleged advantages to be chimerical.
The conclusions derived by the author are entirely unofficial and uninspired, and it has been his endeavor to arrive at correct and unbiased deductions. We should not hesitate to profit by the experience of another branch of the service especially since conditions are somewhat analogous. A wise man makes mistakes but never makes the same one twice.
The line of the Army may be considered as the Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery services. Army regulations include in the line other combatant branches which, however, are really corps, such as the Air Service, since personnel is not supplied by detailing officers temporarily but by permanent detail. The Army Ordnance Department supplies the line and other services with ordnance equipment. During the Revolution these duties were vested in a Purveyor of Supplies, which office ceased to exist at the close of the war. The office of Purveyor of Supplies was recreated on the recommendation of President Washington in 1795. This office was abolished in 1812, and in its stead an Ordnance Department was created.
From 1821 to 1832 its officer personnel was obtained by the detail system, that is, officers were assigned to the Ordnance service from the Artillery and functioned directly under the Secretary of War. In 1832 the Department was re-established, the President selecting the officers from the line (as considered above) who comprised the corps initially. In 1861 the Department was greatly enlarged, and its chief given the rank of Brigadier General, and it was expanded further in 1863. In the reorganization of 1901, following the Spanish-American War, the system of permanently commissioning officers in the Ordnance Department was abolished, and the detail system again supplied the personnel. Under the terms of the Reorganization Act, of 1901, line officers, except in the higher grades, were detailed for four years with the Ordnance Department and then they had to have two years of line duty before being again eligible for such detail.
These assignments to the Ordnance Department proved to be very unpopular with line officers for two reasons: First, the examinations for initial detail to the Ordnance Department were very severe, and second, officers were examined for promotion in their permanent branch of the service at any stage of their tour of duty in the Ordnance Department. They therefore had to study a second specialty in order to gain entrance into the Ordnance Department, and while serving in that Department, they had to keep abreast of the progress being made in their own particular line specialty.
Consequently the line officers did not attempt to qualify themselves for the Ordnance Department, and that Department soon began to suffer from lack of interest on the part of the line. The law requiring officers to have two years of line duty before being again eligible for detail to the Ordnance Department was modified to one year, and finally the one-year clause was eliminated in special cases, which of course kept officers continuously out of their specialty and in the Ordnance Department. Special legislation was therefore required to correct the apathy existing on the part of the line officer for duty in the Ordnance Department, and it is at this point that the case parallels the difficulty with our own Bureau of Engineering, in that special legislation was needed in 1916 to provide designing engineers. In 1906, therefore, a law was passed stating that details to ordnance duty could be made from the line from the grade in which the vacancy existed, or below. The lack of interest on the part of the line was to be overcome by granting officers detailed to Ordnance duty a temporary promotion. Needless to say, the majority of vacancies in the Ordnance Corps, particularly in the grades of Major and Captain, were filled by line officers in the grades of Captain and First Lieutenant, respectively. This inducement somewhat lessened the apathy of the line officer for ordnance assignment, and the Ordnance Department once more had officers sufficient for their requirements. It is interesting to note that upon our entrance into the World War detailing officers into the Ordnance Department immediately ceased, and the officers in that Department were continued in their assignments. In the reorganization which followed the World War, an Ordnance Corps was again established in the Army, which would seem to indicate that the system of detailing officers temporarily to the Ordnance Department had been tried and found wanting.
I believe it is reasonable to draw the following conclusions from the above history.
(1) The efficient line officer will shy at duties which remove him from his profession and hurt his chances of promotion. If he is at all interested in his particular specialty and anxious to make a success of it, he will of necessity neglect his part-time specialty, regarding it as an assignment to be passed through as quickly and easily as possible. He will regard the details of this assignment as something over which little time is to be wasted.
(2) To make the detail system function properly, there must be an inducement offered in one form or another, whether it be higher rank in the Army Ordnance case, or engineering duty only in the Naval Engineering example. The fear that an assignment to another specialty will decrease his chances of selection up must be removed.
(3) In time of war the detailing system was immediately abolished because of its inefficiencies, and the absolute necessity of retaining the personnel the Department happened to have, at that particular time.
(4) The officer personnel under the corps system, in cases of emergency, are a more competent body of men, more capable of immediate expansion, and have better esprit de corps than a similar body of officers under temporary detail system. For instance, under the temporary detail system at the outbreak of the war, we find the Department composed of officers, the majority of whom are in their first tour of duty and can be hardly called specialists. Others may be in a second assignment, and probably very few of them will have more than two assignments. Furthermore, under the temporary detail system, the type of knowledge stored away in an officer's brain is entirely different from that which he would attempt to remember were his temporary detail his permanent specialty. In cases of emergency under the corps system, there is a body of specialists whose capabilities are known to the Chief of the Corps, and whose assignments can be intelligently made. This same body of men are eager to hold up their end of the prosecution of a war because of their pride in the organization of which they, are and always will be members.
(5) The system of detailing line officers to ordnance duty was absolutely wasteful and uneconomical, for the history of the detail system is replete with examples similar to the following: Wherein line officers trained in Infantry, Artillery or Cavalry filled positions such as Superintendent of Factory, Machine Shop, Testing Shop, Paint Shop, Powder Expert, etc. The line officers were not experienced sufficiently to assume these duties and discharge them efficiently. As soon as they became familiar and efficient in their duties, their tour of duty ended and they were returned to their specialties in the line.
(6) The line officers' assignments in ordnance neither improved the quality nor quantity of ordnance equipment, nor did it improve their qualifications for the line.
(7) Enlisted men in the Army (as in the Navy) rarely change their specialty, and the Ordnance Department always has had its enlisted men for ordnance duty only. It is obvious that should enlisted men be switched from specialty to specialty, more or less confusion would reign due to the fact that there would be no organization to carry on.
(8) An officer cannot become a specialist under the temporary detail system. In other words, a "so-called" specialist under the detail system is not as efficient, capable, etc., as the specialist obtained under the corps of permanent assignment system.
(9) Any proposed amalgamation, therefore, which has for its object the temporary detail of line officers to specialist duties, is unsound. The experience outlined in the above brief at least shows this conclusion warrantable in the case of the Ordnance Department, and it is believed that the instance cited is as nearly analogous to our own general problem as can be obtained.