These trade tests and the methods of their application, as finally developed, were the result of much work and investigation by the Committee that had brought in the services of psychological experts, employment experts, statisticians and others. Their purpose was to procure a dependable record of the special ability of every soldier who possessed any kind of skill that would serve any one of the army’s varied needs. Every army unit must have specialists of several kinds and in an army that had to be built up at high speed it was necessary to find these specialists among its numbers. Bitter experience developed the fact, very soon, that the account of themselves which the men gave in answer to the questions of the interviewers frequently could not be depended on and the trade tests, which were of three kinds, oral, picture and performance, were devised to meet this necessity quickly and easily.
As the soldier passed through these various examinations his interviewers entered upon his record card his physical and mental qualifications, his trade or profession and his degree of proficiency. Thus was tabulated, for the first time in the history of any army in any nation, the exact physical, mental and industrial ability of every soldier in the American army. These records were kept by the unit to which the soldier was assigned, and followed him if he was changed to another, for the information of the officers under whom he served. A glance at such a card gave to an officer the knowledge he should have concerning the aptitudes, the abilities and the character of any of his men whom he might wish to assign to some particular service. If skilled men were wanted in any of the scores of special occupations which the modern army demands they could quickly and easily be brought together, with the sure knowledge that they would be able to do what was expected of them. One of the greatest of the many problems facing those who had to make an army of millions of men out of raw civilians in a few months was to be sure of getting the right man for the right place, and the Committee on Classification of Personnel, an innovation in the making of armies, solved it.
Similar tests helped to determine the qualifications of officers and enabled their superiors to judge their fitness for any specified duty with accuracy. The Personnel work was conducted by men chosen for it because of their aptitude and their experience in civil life and they were then trained especially for it in schools for that purpose instituted at army camps.
These individual records and the service records of the entire army, both privates and officers, with the history of each unit, are to be preserved among the archives of the Government.
This great army, growing at the rate of a hundred thousand per month, nearly the whole of it composed of civilians who had been entirely lacking in military knowledge and training, without interest in martial affairs and, in large part, averse to the principle of warfare as a means of settling human disputes, had to be trained in the quickest possible time for participation in the greatest, the most shocking and the most scientific war of all history. The Regular Army and the National Guard together could furnish no more than 9,500 officers, a mere handful compared with the number needed. Beginning in May, 1917, four series of Officers’ Training Camps were held, each series lasting three months, at which men studied and drilled with grueling intensity twelve hours a day, fitting themselves for the work of training the Selective Service men who began to be gathered into the cantonments early in September. At these camps were trained, all told, 80,000 officers, from second lieutenants to colonels, although the higher commissions were granted only at the first two series because of the urgent need, at first, for officers of all grades. There were also several special training schools, one for colored officers of the line, and others in Porto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines. Several thousand officers were trained and graduated also from Reserve Officers’ Training Corps units established at over a hundred colleges and universities.
French and British officers and British non-coms were sent by their governments to the United States to aid by giving practical training out of their own experience and their assistance was of great value. After our own men began to go overseas and have training and experience at the front many of them were brought back for the higher importance of the instruction they could give.
View Across One End of a Cantonment Three Months After its Construction was Begun
Training a Machine Gun Company