Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

110 The OrganizaTiOnal hisTOry Of field arTillery
from cadres of the existing regiments. In late 1917, because cavalry was not being
used in France, eight cavalry regiments were converted to field artillery. As a
result, the total number of Regular Army field artillery regiments increased from
twenty-one to twenty-nine. 49
The vast majority of field artillery during the war came from outside the Regular
Army. The National Guard had six regiments, nineteen battalions, and seventy-nine
batteries of field artillery at the beginning of the war, all of which had served on the
Mexican border. By the end of the war, the number of National Guard field artillery
regiments totaled fifty-one. Transfers of personnel from the National Army and
some from the Regular Army were made to fill the units. 50
The organization of units for the National Army was a major project. Unlike
the Regular Army and National Guard, the National Army had no cadre upon
which to expand, for the reserve system that had been established under the
National Defense Act was too new and too small to provide much assistance for
the one hundred four field artillery regiments created in this component. Eventually,
cadres were organized using personnel of the Regular Army and Organized
Reserve Corps, plus National Army officers trained at officer training camps. Of
the 80,568 officers commissioned from these centers, about 25 percent (20,291)
were for field artillery. 51
To solve problems deriving from duplication in regimental numbers (such as
the 1st Field Artillery, Regular Army, and the 1st Field Artillery from one of the
states), the War Department established a standard numbering system in the summer
of 1917. The numbers from 1 through 100 were reserved for the Regular Army,
from 101 through 300 for the National Guard, and 301 and above for the National
Army. Under this system the 1st through 21st and 76th through 83d were organized
in the Regular Army; the 101st through 151st, in the National Guard; and the 301st
through 351st, plus the 25th through 75th and the 84th and 85th, in the National
Army. By August 1918, the system became obsolete with the War Department’s
decision to eliminate references to the respective component. This notwithstanding,
48 Annual Reports of the War Department, 1919, 1:5051; Snow, “First Chief of Field Artillery,” pt.
1, p. 3.
49 Annual Reports of the War Department, 1919, pp. 5061–65, 5074–75; WD GO 139, 1 Nov 1917.
Orders were issued in July 1917 to convert the cavalry regiments into field artillery, but actual organization
was delayed until Congress could legalize the conversion of units from one branch to another. The
National Defense Act of 1916 only allowed the field artillery twenty-one regiments.
50 Annual Reports of the War Department, 1919, 1:5051–64; Marvin A. Kreidberg and Merton
G. Henry, History of Military Mobilization in the United States Army, 1775–1945 (Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1955), pp. 221, 224–25; Order of Battle of the United States Land
Forces in the World War, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army,
1988), 3/3:1238–56.
51 Kriedberg and Henry, History of Military Mobilization, p. 283; Annual Reports of the War Department,
1919, 1:5051–64; Order of Battle, 3/3:1238–56. The Chief of Field Artillery in his 1919 report
states that 138 field artillery regi ments were formed in the National Army, but the appendix of the same
report lists 104 regiments. Other records also show that only 104 regiments were ever organized in that
component. See also Final Rpt, CofArty, AEF, 1919, fldr 381, box 41, Entry 22, RG 120, NARA, and
Annual Rpt, CofFA, WD, FY1925, p. 70, file 319.12, box 1726, Entry 37c, RG 407, NARA.