training its own cadre of disciplined non-commissioned officers—including that ofttimes rarest of wartime commodities: sergeants.24
However, the new administration feared that this welfare program would be seen as the American equivalent of the paramilitary Hitler Youth movement, which was making headlines in 1933. Roosevelt thus forbade military training as part of the CCC curriculum. American Socialist Norman Thomas was quick to remark that the CCC work camps seemed more like the product of a fascist state than a socialist one.
Furthermore, not all CCC recruits were comfortable with the relationship between the Tree Army and the real one. Oscar Baradinsky, a recruit from New York City, saw the CCC as nothing more than a propaganda and recruiting arm of the military. He made his case in an open letter to the president, which was published in the July 1934 edition of Panorama: A Monthly Survey of People and Ideas, an ephemeral periodical with a clear antiwar slant published in Boston. Baradinsky reported that at his camp in New Jersey, on the night of June 21, 1934, the Army was recruiting men from the camp for three-year hitches. “He painted a pretty picture of Army life, sunny Hawaii, glamorous Panama, etc.,” Baradinsky wrote of the recruiter. The young Corpsman believed this was contrary to the president’s promise that the camps would not be used to recruit.
Disturbed by the realization that the CCC had strong military ties, Baradinsky entered the mess hall a few nights later and recalled for his fellow Corpsmen accounts that he had read of shrapnel blowing away the faces of young soldiers in the previous war. He foresaw a terrible tragedy in the offing, fearing these faces were fated to be blown away in the next war. He then got up from the table, walked to headquarters, and told the Army captain in charge that he was quitting, which he was allowed to do without penalty.25
As if to bolster Baradinsky’s case, in early 1935—in opposition to Roosevelt’s stance—MacArthur proposed that two months of military training be added to service in the CCC. He suggested this before the House Appropriations Committee, saying, “I think there would be nothing finer than the men in the CCC camps should be used as a nucleus for an enlisted reserve.” He added: “These men are already fit for military training. I think the idea would be popular with them. I think if we had, for instance, 300,000 list reserves who could be called up to the colors immediately our military condition of preparation for defense would be immeasurably better.” MacArthur argued that the program would be cost-effective and that the new Reservists could be paid as little as a dollar a month for their service as Reservists.26 The proposal was rejected then and again later. Congress and the administration had no stomach for the inevitable photographs in the papers of CCC men drilling with rifles and bayonets rather than laboring with rakes and shovels.
Although forbidden by the president to recruit CCC prospects directly, MacArthur’s recruiters resorted to a sly scheme to convince men who were on the fence. The CCC paid $30 a month, compared to only $21 a month in the Army (full pay had been restored in 1934). But clever recruiting officers quietly pointed out that $25 a month from the CCC was automatically sent home to help the man’s family, while a private in the Army could keep the whole $21. “The sales talk is working,” wrote Ray Tucker in his syndicated column, Washington Whirligig, of August 5, 1935. “Soldiers are signing up at the rate of 2,500 a week—faster than quartermaster and medical office accounts can handle them.”27
The overall impact of the CCC on the military proved to be positive in that it made the Army stronger and better able to deal with a sudden influx of new men. At Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1933, Major Omar Bradley took command of six all-black CCC companies. These recruits he said were from the poorest farm areas of Georgia and Alabama, and some of the men had not had a square meal for at least a year. Bradley gave them food and physicals, set up a pay account, put them through a few weeks of training, and sent them on to replant the large deforested areas of the Deep South.
Bradley’s enthusiasm for the CCC seemed boundless. “The Army’s magnificent performance with the CCC in the summer of 1933, undertaken so reluctantly, was one of the highlights of its peacetime years,” he later recalled. “It all ran with clockwork precision; the CCC itself was judged first rate. It was a good drill for us.” To some in the Army, the CCC had been seen as a burden, but to Bradley and others it was a blessing.28
The CCC’s impact on Marshall was even more significant and enduring. From his Eighth Infantry Regiment headquarters at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, a large base on Sullivan’s Island near Charleston, Marshall found himself the administrator of an enormous labor project involving 25,000 young men flooding 17 work camps across the southern United States. Marshall threw himself into the CCC assignment with great enthusiasm. As he was facing a shortage of officers, his wife, Katherine Tupper Marshall, volunteered to help. As she encountered these young Americans, she was appalled by the all-too-visible effects of the Great Depression on them and the price they were paying for it. The men were underfed, and sores and skin rashes were the norm. The general condition of their teeth was appalling. They fought for food, even when there was an abundance of it, and they snarled at one another like packs of feral dogs. Fully half of the men being processed were illiterate.29
During this period, George Marshall praised the CCC, saying it was “the greatest social experiment outside of Russia.” He pointed out in a letter to a friend that he was “struggling to force [the recruits’] education, academic or vocational, to the point where they will be on the road to really useful citizenship by the time they return to their homes.” Marshall saw his role in rebuilding these men’s lives as helping to rebuild the country, noting that he considered the corps “a splendid experience for the War Department and the Army.”30
Marshall was unforgiving when it came to officers who complained about their CCC duties. A major came into Marshall’s office to announce that he was resigning. “I’ve put twelve years in the Army,” he said. “I’m a graduate of West Point. I’m not going to come down here and deal with a whole lot of bums. Half-dead Southern crackers, that’s what they are!”
“Major, I’m sorry you feel like that,” Marshall responded. “But I’ll tell you this—you can’t resign quick enough to suit me. It suits me fine! Now get out of here!”31
Conversely, the officers who assumed leadership roles in the CCC under Marshall were often singled out for praise and ultimately promotion. When a national award was offered to the best camp in the country, Major Alex Starke’s camp at Sumter, South Carolina, was named the winner. Starke later became a brigadier general during the Tunisian campaign in 1942.32
Marshall was also cognizant of the problems of his own soldiers, whose incomes had been slashed by the new administration, and he did much to alleviate their distress. “In order that the men could manage to feed their families on their small pay, my husband personally supervised the building of chicken yards, vegetable gardens, and hog pens,” Katherine Marshall remembered. “He started a lunch pail system whereby the men could get a good hot dinner, cooked up at the mess to take home to their families at a very small cost.”33
But the stress on the Regular Army went beyond hot meals. In April 1934, after leaving his southern post, Marshall wrote to a commander in the Illinois National Guard outlining the extent of the stress created by the CCC assignment coupled with Roosevelt’s pay cuts: “Officers and men were suddenly scattered in 1,400 Camps throughout the United States, under the necessity of maintaining their families in one place and themselves in another. The wives and children of married soldiers were often without funds for food and rent.” Marshall then pointed out that because of the pay cuts many soldiers struggled to keep up with a $10 a month allotment sent home to their parents, while the CCC man was able to send home a monthly allotment of between $25 and $40 depending on the circumstances back home. He then went on to compare the two situations: “While the soldier had no choice of post or duty. The CCC recruit was free to terminate his connection with the government at any time, and he could not be worked more than six hours a day.
