US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

172 Amphibians Came To Conquer
transports. Had Rear Admiral Turner more clearly visualized then the
pressing needs for transports and tankers in the early stages of World War
II, he would have pressed his case for them even harder.”
The Army War Plans Division and the Navy War Plans Division were
agreed in their dislike for the Azores occupation, hut the Army was the
more reluctant to see one of its only two amphibiously trained combat divi-
sions disappear over the horizon for occupation duties before a war had even
started. The Azores Occupation Force was scheduled to total about 28,000
troops, with the Army and the Marine Corps each to supply 14,000 troops.
The British had 25,000 troops in Iceland and when the President on 4
June 1941, changed the objective from the Azores to Iceland, he assigned
the occupation task to the Army. When the Army begged off temporarily,
the Marines received the nod on 5 June 1941, and a 4,000-man Marine
brigade sailed in four transports and two cargo ships via Argentia, Newfoundland
on 22 June 1941.
It was not until September 1941 that sizable Army forces arrived in
Iceland and took over command and, during the next five months, relieved
the Marines and assumed the duties of the United States Forces in Iceland.
Rear Admiral Turner was in the White House again during the week of
16 June 1941 in connection with the Iceland occupation, but no report of
this visit has been located in the files. Presumably, however, it strengthened
his favorable impression of Mr. Harry Hopkins.’”
In July, he also had business with the nation’s top political authorities. As
Mrs. Turner described it:
Kelly had a very exciting day. First the Vice President asked him for lunch.
There were just the two of them, and Mr. Wallace wanted to ask a lot of
questions. Later Admiral King, Admiral Stark, the Secretary and Kelly all
had a conference with the President. . . .
The burning question now is what are the Japs going to do, and what we
will do? AI
STATE OF MIND—MAY 1941
One thing that continually irritated the Director of War Plans in the first
months of 1941, was what he labeled the “Army planners defensive atti-
- Turner.
w Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt mrd Hopkins, An Intimate History (New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1948), p. 302.
4’Mrs. RKT to LuciLeTurner, letter, 18 Jul. 1941.