The Ordnance Department: On Beachhead and Battlefront

For the fighting man in time of war, the crucible that proves or disproves his training and his theories is combat with the enemy. So it is too with those whose milieu is not the drill field but the drawing board, not the staff college but the proving ground, those who design, develop, and maintain the weapons, munitions, and vehicles of war. The crucible for the Ordnance Department, like the individual fighting man, is the battlefield. In previous volumes in the Ordnance Department subseries of The Technical Services in the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II, historians have told the preliminary stories, the complex, often frustrating saga of planning munitions for war and of procuring and getting them to the troops who use them. This, the third and final volume in the subseries, tells the climax of the Ordnance role in World War II, the story of how the vast armory and its administrators fared in combat. In presenting this story of Ordnance in the overseas theaters, Mrs. Mayo has concentrated logically on Ordnance at the level of the army headquarters, for from this level munitions and fighting equipment flowed directly to the user. While giving some attention to all theaters involved in the global story of Ordnance administration, she has concentrated on the three main theaters as representative of the problems, the improvisations, the shortcomings, the achievements worldwide.