US History/US History (Bureau Development Inc.)(1991).ISO/dp/0084/00842.txt

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$Unique_ID{USH00842}
$Pretitle{79}
$Title{The Signal Corps:  The Emergency
Chapter IX-A  Working for the Ground Forces}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Terrett, Dulany}
$Affiliation{US Army}
$Subject{signal
training
corps
film
films
production
council
army
research
officers}
$Volume{D114.7:SI/V.1}
$Date{1956}
$Log{Pigeon-Training*0084201.scf
Film-Making*0084202.scf
}
Book:        The Signal Corps:  The Emergency
Author:      Terrett, Dulany
Affiliation: US Army
Volume:      D114.7:SI/V.1
Date:        1956

Chapter IX-A  Working for the Ground Forces

     Just before the fiscal year ended, the limited emergency broke all bounds
and was declared unlimited.  The difference was scarcely noted, for emergency
was reflected throughout the armed forces.  Not at all a world to itself, at
every point the Signal Corps felt the stirring and pressure. Soldiers left
their training center for destinations as far outside the immediate range as
the defense establishment had spread.  In the Laboratories, research accepted
the governing of every part of the Army. Signal supply channeled a multitude
of ground and air demands, for wire and radio uses, to interior and foreign
areas.  The slow complexity of the great defense program made all the more
remarkable whatever order emerged from it.  The grand design was not yet
clear; the goal looked fateful, but still general.  To keep its segments
distinct, to keep the lines of interrelationship serviceable at all of the
stages beyond the simplest, made a surprising problem, increasing daily with
the strength of the ground and air arms.  Communications were as diverse as
the number of communicators.  Both the ground and the air defined new uses
continually.

The Pigeon Service

     Many of the ground demands, whether in supply or training, were rather
more familiar.  Nonelectrical means were rapidly disappearing in air
communications, and air force requirements involved special problems in
organization with which no one felt at ease; but ground needs were somewhat
more diverse and still held room for nonelectric methods.

     Thus pigeon communication, an uncomplicated activity, had a secure if
minor place in the company of its intricate counterparts.  In exercises and
maneuvers, the ground arms habitually employed pigeons as a means of
communication from small units theoretically located at inaccessible spots.
The Camp McCoy maneuvers of 1940, for example, had developed "an immense
respect" for them.  In Hawaii, the departmental commander had asked for them;
and in Alaska also, the chief of the new defense command, Brig. Gen. Simon
Bolivar Buckner, Jr., had interested himself in their value in remote regions,
especially in the chilling and rugged wildernesses where pilots might be
forced to land.  Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the noted authority on the Arctic,
Frederick C. Lincoln, expert of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service,
and others advised the Signal Corps on a plan for the use of pigeons there.
The effort failed through no more hazard than ordinary delay:  birds which had
been started on their way to Buckner's new Fort Richardson while they were
still young enough to be trained were grandfatherly when they arrived.

     Innovations at the Monmouth Pigeon Center where the appropriation was
82,490 more in 1941 than it had been in the year before - were similarly
undetermined of their final success, and similarly plagued with an aspect of
absurdity.  A joke revived from World War I hinted that the Signal Corps was
crossbreeding pigeons with parrots so that the birds could say their messages,
with angels so that they could sing them, and with Western Union boys so that
they could sing and salute, too.  The actual experiments were rather more
likely to succeed.  The pigeon experts were making a serious effort to train
the birds to work at night, and to fly out from their home lofts as well as
back to them.  In effect, one experiment crossbred the pigeon with a nighthawk
and the second with a boomerang.

[See Pigeon-Training: Pigeon Lofts at Fort Monmouth, the scene of pigeon
training experiments.]

     In no way inconsequential, the work was supported by an increasing and
general agreement to organize separate pigeon companies to serve field
commanders.  Plans went forward to create the first although it was
temporarily called the 2nd Pigeon Company of these units at Camp Clarborne,
Louisiana, in June, and to draw at least two of the officers from that
considerable group of persons who especially admired these birds.  Pigeon
fanciers all over the country had sought to lend fine stock to be bred with
the pedigreed strains in the Signal Corps lofts at Fort Monmouth, Fort
Benning, and Fort Sam Houston.  Many enthusiasts in the breeding and racing of
pigeons had seen service in 1917 and 1918, and some were now coming back into
the Signal Corps for duty in the emergency, among these being the officers for
the new company and those performing the experiments at the Pigeon Breeding
and Training Center.

     With the first addition to its cadre, the new unit, redesignated the
280th Pigeon Company, made a reconnaissance trip to Vicksburg, reconnoitered
along the Mississippi River, and after a little while took part in the summer
maneuvers.  Pigeons from the Fort Sam loft were winning long races by flying
distances as great as 600 miles within 17 or 18 hours. Both there and at Fort
Benning the signal officers received instructions to breed young stock for the
280th, first for the maneuvers, then to replace a 75-percent loss of birds
during them.  The 280th for a time had 800 or 1,000 pigeons on hand at the
beginning of a month and only 250 or 275 survivors at its close.  In the
Hawaiian Department, the loft was transferred from Schofield Barracks to Fort
Shafter in an effort to reduce losses:  the birds had been flying into wires,
disappearing into a eucalyptus grove near the loft, and even colliding with
the aircraft of the adjacent base.

     Yet there was no suggestion that the Signal Corps ought to drop pigeons
from its list of communications means.  By midsummer, the Pigeon Breeding and
Training Center was able to report progress.  The experiments as yet had no
tactical value since their range had not got beyond a dozen miles, but the
trainers had accustomed an increasing number of birds to fly at any hour and
to cover a two-way course at six in the afternoon, a good meal providing the
spur.  At the close of the breeding season all of the pigeons lent by civilian
owners were returned, and thence forward the Signal Corps bought birds at two
dollars apiece.  In nine months during 1941, the center bred and shipped out
2,150 to tactical units everywhere.

The Photographic Service

     The force of the times which gave even the Pigeon Center a modest
importance at the great Signal Corps training installation markedly changed
and increased photography.  Every part of the service was a seller's market
for photography.  Wherever civilians were being transformed into soldiers, the
Army wanted training films in quantity.  To meet the demand required the
Signal Corps to expand both the training program and the production program.
In 1936 the War Department had hesitated to schedule production of twenty
training films a year.  Now in 1941 there was a program of 192 subjects alone,
any of which might require as many as five training films. The resources of
the Signal Corps were small.  Few officers had the year's sponsored training
with the Research Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Production space was small at Fort Monmouth and minuscule at Wright Field.

     Lt. Col. Melvin E. Gillette, the Signal Corps top officer in photography,
proposed consolidating the Photographic Laboratory with the Training Film
Field Unit Number 1 and the photographic instruction given at the Signal Corps
School, focusing them all at Fort Monmouth as a Training Film Production
Laboratory.  Pending this change, Gillette arranged with the Henry R. Luce
interests to take over some of the training.  In February 1941 The March of
Time began a new seven-month course in motion picture filming and editing; it
dealt with the expository and hortatory sort of film which was the closest
commercial parallel to what the Army would need.  For still photographers,
Life commenced a nine-week course in June.

     Meanwhile, Gillette began to hire civilian instructors, because uniformed
ranks 3 yielded too few who were competent to do the work.  He had assumed
that motion picture men would be coming into the service through the draft,
reach the Replacement Training Center, and qualify for these or similar
courses.  Some time elapsed, however, before he learned that the instructions
for diverting such men toward the Signal Corps had been garbled, and that
clerks at the reception centers had missed the point altogether.  This
misunderstanding corrected, another block appeared in the personnel procedural
maze:  classification assignment lists had recognized only a few of the
aspects of photographic work; cutters, for instance, had been given a number,
but scenario writers had not.  They were being assigned to information offices
rather than to training-film production.  The corrective action for this was
highly informal but effective.  The Photographic Division sought out
scenarists and men of other essential but unnumbered specialties and coached
them to say that they were cutters when they filled out the occupational
questionnaires.  At the Wright Field Training Film Field Unit Number 2, Lt.
Col. Frederick W. Hoorn and his man of all work had been joined from the
Reserve by Maj. A. E. Holland; together they patrolled the reception area to
make off with any new arrival who could take photographic training.  Since the
Wright Field command had not been able to provide them with a building, they
got an evacuated Civilian Conservation Corps barracks on a memorandum receipt.
By late summer they were at work on twenty-three projects which involved
fifty-two films.

     The Monmouth installation was weighted down with a far greater load of
work, but had a far larger staff.  A force of 20 officers, 178 enlisted men,
and 31 civilians was formed into seven crews to make training films and three
teams to do film bulletins.  This Training Film Production Laboratory was also
quartered in an unsuitable building, a frame warehouse neither fireproof nor
sound-repellent which had no indoor stage.  Just at the same period, Paramount
Pictures put on the market its large studio in Long Island City, the Astoria
studio where hundreds of films had been made in the era of silent pictures.
Gillette lost no time in urging its purchase.  He had approval in hand for
construction of a production center at Fort Monmouth, but this opportunity
offered something better and half a million dollars cheaper.  The Office of
the Chief Signal Officer entered negotiations forthwith.

     While the crowding at Fort Monmouth and Wright Field, coupled with
obstacles created by early draft procedures, held both training and production
below their desired point, the Office of the Chief began to put plans into
effect to relieve the situation by using the resources of the great west coast
industry.  The restrictions governing the appointment of Reserve officers had
somewhat affected this relationship.  In a kaleidoscopic business, persons
moved about enough so that it was not possible for them to meet the
requirement that they hold at all times a civilian position exactly comparable
to the one which their Reserve commission would indicate.  Because change and
intervals of detachment from any studio were so common, the Signal
Photographic Laboratory, GHQ, a unit intended to call for twenty-six officers
under the Affiliated Plan, had never been strong.

     The two Reserve officers with whom the Signal Corps dealt especially were
Nathan Levinson, Warner Brothers pioneer sound engineer, and Darryl F. Zanuck,
vice-president of Twentieth Century-Fox.  Both men were officers of the
Research Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Zanuck,
the council chairman, sponsored the Affiliated unit and also organized
himself, Levinson, and John O. Aalburg, sound director for Radio-
Keith-Orpheum, into a component of the Chief Signal Officer's Advisory
Council, that group of industrialists which was intended to take a leading
part in the forming of Signal Cirps policy.  Levinson, the Academy Research
Council vice-chairman, took over the selection of officers for the Affiliated
unit as well as the obtaining of the enlisted cadre.  He did so quickly.

     The Signal Corps was not yet ready to call it into service but did want
to link the training of the knit with Hollywood's share of the training film
production program.  Affiliation, however, had agreed to an expedient
advocated by Col. Carroll O. Bickelhaupt of the Bell System and Col. William
C. Henry of the independent telephone companies which would keep men selected
for the enlisted cadres unaware of their selection until their unit was
activated.  The Signal Corps could not bring together the men of the Signal
Photographic Laboratory, GHQ, to work on a film without letting them know of
their mobilization assignments.  The Secretary of War agreed to an exception,
and the men were notified; but no sooner was the information out than rumors
followed of a government scheme to take over the amusement industry and to
name Cecil B. DeMille, then a major in the Signal Corps Reserve, as some sort
of potentate of pictures and rajah of radio.  Variety straightened the matter
out, but not before the gale had blown away any illusions that the public
shared the Signal Corps and industry's regard for the Affiliated Plan.

[See Film-Making: Training Film Under Production at the Astoria studios of the
Signal Corps.]

     The planning for Hollywood production of training films got under way in
the Research Council late in the fall of 1940.  The large studios notified
Secretary Stimson that they would produce the films at cost.  Capt. Charles S.
Stodter, one of the seven Signal Corps officers who had a Research Council
fellowship, set up a liaison office to advise the council in the further
selection of candidates for commissions under the Affiliated Plan, to provide
the studios with military consultants whom they might need during the course
of the filming, and to negotiate the purchase of the films as they were
completed.

     The work commenced immediately, without waiting for the financial
arrangements to be made.  In fact, to avoid delay, Zanuck had authorized his
own studio to go ahead with the first two scenarios as soon as the War
Department had them ready.  After a few months, mutual adjustments appeared.
Scenarios became the function of writers rather than of officers; the branch
of the Army for which a film was being made provided the scenarist with an
outline only.  To allay criticism that the work was not being evenly
distributed, the Research Council rotated the assignments among the
participating studios in a rough alphabetical order somewhat disrupted by
exceptions.  The original plan to contract for the films died under some of
these exceptions, contract terms not being compatible with a large commercial
production schedule of which the Army's part was small and subjoined.  The
Signal Corp consequently used purchase orders.  Under this system, the
Research council offered the finished product to a contributing studio had
fitted into its schedule when a stage and a production company became
available to the government at a fixed price.  If the Chief Signal Officer
accepted it, his liaison officer issued the purchase order against spotted
funds, which the finance officer of Fourth Army paid out.  The Signal was also
free to reject a film outright to turn it back for revisions.

     The initial admixture of altruism thus appeared from the arrangement,
which solidified instead into more familiar forms.  The studios based their
price on four items:  first, studio overhead; second, direct costs such as the
expense of script writing, titling, cartoon animation, shipping, and travel;
third, such indirect costs as appeared in the maintenance of the Signal Corps
Liaison Office and additional staff and rent required for the Research Council
in connection with the work; and fourth, an amount to meet current expenses on
training film projects in progress.

     Final accounting later established the industry's contention that the
Research Council paid out more than it charged the program under the fourth
item; and for the later investigation conducted by the Truman Committee of the
United States Senate, the Research Council was able to argue other actual
savings in the salaries of producers, directors, and actors, in
sound-recording royalties, in the use of existing sets and so on.  On the film
Safeguarding Military Information alone, the government was said to have saved
nearly $20,000.

     In any case, speed was more important than economy.  It was essential
that masses of men coming into the Army, to be trained in mass, take major
parts of their instruction from mass media like the films.  Four basic
pictures, Sex Hygiene, Personal Hygiene, The Articles of War, and Military
Courtesy and Customs of the Service, were in demand for all reception centers.
It was a fruit of the arrangement with the Research Council that the Signal
Corps was able to distribute these within the first six months of the draft,
the first two being ready by March."

     In July Zanuck went to Washington to apprise General Marshall directly of
Hollywood's part in the defense effort.  The Chief of Staff, who was
interested in the training power of films, agreed to send him upon a tour of
training camps and service schools to report how extensively and how
effectively they were using pictures.  The Operations and Training Division of
the General Staff, in the person of Its director, Brig. Gen. Harry L. Twaddle,
opposed the survey, and to a degree so did the Office of the Chief Signal
Officer.  Twaddle doubted that the trip could "accomplish any useful purpose"
and in any event asked that he and the Signal Corps send their own observers
along.  Marshall preferred to leave the itinerary to Zanuck, as well as to let
him choose his associates.  The Hollywood producer, with two other Reserve
officers and prominent members of the motion picture community, went to
installations in California, Washington, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas,
and returned a report at the end of the summer which was summarized and sent,
at the Chief of Staff's order, to all replacement centers.

     Zanuck reported a "complete absence of coordination between the
production, distribution and use of training films."  He supplied such
familiar details as the facts that equipment was short and that training
officers were less than resourceful in limiting the use of films to rainy days
and then showing one after another in dreary succession.  Had this been all,
his report would scarcely have created any interest.  The whole military scene
was a scene of inadequacy; few commanders needed to be told that.  Zanuck
recommended that all silent and otherwise obsolete films be withdrawn, that no
more than one picture be shown at a session and that none be more than half an
hour long, that lifelike details and humor be introduced into the scripts,
that professional actors tide the picture over the dull parts likely to be the
explanations - by giving them the benefit of variety in manner and inflection.
Although these were certainly helpful and practical suggestions, they, too,
were not his main point.  This was that the Army should either drop its
training film program altogether or standardize and run it according to the
methods of the motion picture industry.  He proposed that the War Department
designate an individual with Army-wide powers to set up a complete
distribution system like the one used by commercial producers.  In this
apparatus the director-in-chief would have a representative at each post,
responsible only to him and charged with supervising the films and projection
equipment, and a staff of traveling supervisors, one for each branch of the
service.

     Thus the Zanuck survey once again advanced a question which was basic in
Signal Corps, and, indeed, in Army policy.  Should civilian industry
administer and possibly even determine the equipment of the military service?
In this case, should Hollywood do all of the films the Army needed?  Or should
the Signal Corps go on making a sizable share of them? The survey urged that
the training film distribution program be centralized to the extent of making
one officer on each post solely responsible, and solely responsible in turn to
the national administrator of the whole. Since this individual would probably
be an executive of the industry commissioned into service, the direction of
the recommendations was clear.

     As on any basic question, there was a difference of opinion.  In the
opinion of some, training film production was not a proper function for the
military; training films were manufactured items as much as radios or cameras.
It had never been Army policy to compete with civilian industry, nor should
the policy be changed.  Commercial producers, eastern as well as western,
could make any kind of Army film wanted, according to specification, just as
they made films to train salesmen or factory workers.

     In the Signal Corps this view was taken, for example, by Lt. Col. Kirke
B. Lawton, who believed that the Army should confine itself to training
photographers in both still-picture and motion-picture field techniques, and
to maintaining laboratories to process their work, meanwhile leaving the
production of films to industry.  Colonel Gillette, who had made the
recommendation that the Signal Corps buy the Astoria plant for a place in
which to expand, felt quite otherwise.  What he proposed was a liberation of
the Signal Corps training film program from the benevolent despotism of the
Motion Picture Academy's Research Council.  He urged that the Signal Corps
break away renting its own liaison office in Hollywood rather than accepting
one from the industry; by hiring its own employees from among persons free
from obligation to the industry; by having scripts prepared, not in the
studio, but in the branch or service school which was going to use the film.
In sum, he questioned the unwritten agreement often years standing which gave
the Research Council the exclusive supervision of all training film production
for the Army which the Army did not do itself. This arrangement restricted
competition to the extent that the Research Council did not represent all of
the companies capable of bidding for training film production contracts.  In
his estimation, the whole arrangement could invite Congressional
investigation.

     The Signal Corps was responsible for completing 370 reels in the next
year, a production load approximating that of a large commercial company
equipped with twenty or thirty stages and a staff of three or four thousand.
Even without Astoria, although with a staff increased to 500, the Monmouth
installation was turning out two thirds as many films as a large studio of
this sort would, and at very much lower cost.

     Understandably, there was strong support, including that of General
Twaddle, for keeping the activity within the Signal Corps.  On the other hand,
the Chief of Staff and some of the field generals favored settling all film
production upon the motion picture industry.  One of their points of approach
which the Gillette argument, they felt, left unsatisfied was that not the
quantity but the quality of training films set their value. Quality was not to
be measured in reels any more than a book is measured in the number of pages.
To these supporters of the Zanuck survey there was a strong appeal in his
contention that soldiers films could be made interesting, that training could
proceed without tears, or worse, yawns. Gillette contended that the Signal
Corps could do as much if provided with indoor studios and stages, improved
shop and recording equipment, and a great increase in qualified writers and
editors.  But this brought the discussion back to the question of whether the
Army should seek to put itself upon a comparable production level with
civilian facilities.  The decisions which finally emerged included the
purchases of 500 projectors, an increase in the number of film libraries from
90 to 140, and the commencement of a full photographic record, including
foreign pictures, of contemporary developments and experiments.