Page:John Banks Wilson - Maneuver and Firepower (1998).djvu/39

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EARLY EXPERIENCES
17

Staff of the 2d Division, I Army Corps, 1898

mately 3,600 officers and enlisted men organized into three regiments and, with three such brigades, each division was to total about 11,000 officers and men. Thus the division was to be about the same size as the division of 1861, but army corps were to be larger. The division staff initially was to have an adjutant general, quartermaster, commissary, surgeon, inspector general, and engineer, with an ordnance officer added later. The brigade staff was identical except that no inspector general or ordnance officer was authorized.[1]

The Commanding General of the Army, Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, had planned to expand the Army in an orderly fashion by holding the volunteers in state camps for sixty days. There they would be organized, equipped, and trained for field duty. During that period the War Department was to prepare large training camps and collect the necessary stores to outfit the new army, while McKinley was to appoint the general officers who would command the new brigades, divisions, and army corps. Miles' plan soon went awry. Because of the lack of Regular Army officers to staff state camps and the need to have volunteers and regulars train together, he quickly abandoned it. In mid-May the volunteers were moved to a few large unfinished camps in the South, and when they arrived only seven instead of the eight projected army corps were organized. Two army

  1. WD GOs 30, 36, and 96, 1898,