America Demobilizes the AEF

The 26th Yankee Division Arrives in Boston aboard USS Agamemnon, 7 April 1919

The U.S. Army was utterly unprepared to demobilize its unprecedentedly huge army when the Armistice occurred. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, later wrote: "The collapse of the Central Powers came more quickly than even the best informed military experts believed possible." In fact, planning for eventual demobilization had begun only a month before hostilities ceased. The wartime American military had grown to 4.7 million with the largest part serving in the army, including 2 million men in France on 11 November 1918. The easiest group to deal with were the men in training camps stateside who had recently entered the service. Between the Armistice and New Year's Day, 690,000 men were mustered out of the Army. However, the much bigger issue was what to do about the men overseas and the forces ready to ship out had the fighting continued into 1919.

Taking the welfare of the nation as well as that of the Army into account, the demobilization planners considered four distinctly different ways of demobilizing the emergency troops: soldiers could be separated by length of service; by industrial needs or occupation; by locality (through the use of local draft boards); or by military units. For the Great War, length of service didn't make any sense. The first three possibilities offered insurmountable difficulties. Most of the combat forces had been overseas for less than a year. Compiling records for every soldier's occupational history and need for those skills in the peacetime economy would take an unacceptably long time. Finally, placing the load of mustering out military men on local draft boards was simply unworkable. The boards had no facilities for processing troops and they were semi-independent local entities making an effort to make the process uniform across the country futile. The Secretary of War described the implementation of the fourth option:

. . . the policy adopted was to demobilize by complete organizations as their services could be spared, thus ensuring the maximum efficiency of those organizations remaining, instead of demobilizing by special classes with the resulting discontent among those not given preferential treatment and retained in the service, thus lowering their morale and efficiency and disrupting all organizations with the attendant general discontent.

                    The 27th New York National Guard Division Marches Down Fifth Avenue, 24 March 1919

Discharge of troops was largely accomplished at demobilization centers throughout the country, where camp personnel conducted physical examinations, made up the necessary papers to close all records, checked up property, adjusted financial and other accounts, and generally gathered up the loose ends. Many organizations remaining in the zone of interior were not immediately inactivated. Men were needed to man the ports of debarkation, the convalescent and demobilization centers, the supply depots, the base and general hospitals, and the garrisons along the Mexican border and bases outside of the United States. Accordingly, many men assigned to these duties were retained in service for many months.

Most important, the processes of demobilization were to be as rapid as conditions would permit. Three groups–coal miners, railroad employees, and railway mail clerks—were discharged immediately; and instructions were issued specifying the order in which various organizations should be demobilized, beginning with the replacement battalions in the zone of the interior and ending with the combat divisions. It was General Pershing's job to say who should return from Europe and when.

When a soldier was discharged, he received all pay and allowances due him, plus a bonus of $60. Each enlisted man was also given a uniform, shoes, and overcoat, if the weather was cold, otherwise a raincoat. It is interesting to note that men returning from overseas were allowed to retain their gas masks and helmets as souvenirs. When a soldier had been paid his allowance, he was marched directly to a place where he could purchase a railroad ticket to his home.

The 363rd Infantry Regiment at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts Just Before Mustering Out, 22 April 1919
(The Presidio is right next door.)

The process proved chaotic—the term "madhouse" was occasionally invoked—and was subject to countless complaints, many well deserved. America's World War One demobilization, however, did work quickly. Within one year of the Armistice, the Army had sent 3.4 million officers and men back to civilian life.

Sources: History of Personnel Demobilization in the United States Army, U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps; Panoramic Photos from the Library of Congress, New York from the National Archives