And More to Come

Part of the invaders of North Africa sailed direct from the U.S. Part used Britain as a way station. The two forces were segments of an army that in two years had grown tenfold and encircled the earth.

Back in November 1940 (France had fallen, Britain had staved off the Luftwaffe, Russia was neutral), the U.S. Regular Army numbered a pitiful 380,000 men, the National Guard 112,000. Then came conscription. As the army multiplied, so did its tasks.

Even before Pearl Harbor, part of the available forces (the Regular Army plus quickly trained recruits) had been doled out to these far-flung regions:

1941: April 9, to Greenland; April 23, to bases acquired from Britain in Newfoundland, Labrador, Bermuda, Jamaica, Trinidad and other Caribbean islands; July 7, to Iceland; Nov. 23, to Surinam (Dutch Guiana). Garrisons were strengthened in Hawaii, the Canal Zone and Alaska.

After Pearl Harbor the Army spread itself geographically at an even faster pace: Dec. 22, to Australia; 1942: Jan. 26, to Northern Ireland; Feb. 19, to the Dutch East Indies; Feb. 23, to Burma; March 4, to England; March 17, to New Caledonia; March 20, to India; late June, to the Middle East; June 23, to New Hebrides and Fijis; Aug. 7, to Solomons. Units filtered into Africa and China.

In October General George C. Marshall disclosed that 800,000 U.S. soldiers were serving overseas. Secretary Stimson said that by December the U.S. Army would total four and a half million men. The tasks of organization, equipment and transportation had been titanic, but U.S. fighting men, eleven months after the U.S. entry into the war, were on every continent except Antarctica. Now the fighters were spread thin but gradually they were thickening. Gradually they were surrounding all Europe and all Asia. The invaders of North Africa were the vanguard of millions more to come.

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