PRE-WORLD WAR I

Before World War I, the Army employed a variety of means to commission officers based on the needs of the time. From its creation, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point provided a small number of officers. This was sometimes sufficient to meet the Army’s needs but when large crises developed the supply of officers proved woefully insufficient. A small number of military colleges such at Norwich University in Vermont, the Citadel in South Carolina, and the Virginia Military Institute offered military training, but at these institutions as well, the numbers were small. Both the Mexican War and the Civil War saw the Army raising large numbers of “volunteer” regiments with the commander of these regiments appointed by a state governor and with most of the officers in the regiment elected by the unit’s members. Volunteer regiments with largely untrained officers saw service again during the Spanish-American War.

WORLD WAR I

1916 saw the Army preparing for war and that included planning for officer procurement. The Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) was formalized in 1917 and while this provided a means for growing the wartime officer corps the total number of officers remained too small. Highly qualified non-commissioned officers found themselves commissioned as second lieutenants to help fill the void but the Army required still more officers. Ultimately, the Army created sixteen officer training camps followed by eight officer training schools. Careful selection provided these programs with candidates but even with the careful screening only about 60% of those entering the programs received commissions. These individuals represented the best trained citizen-Soldier officers the Army had seen to date.