The Ordnance Department: On Beachhead and Battlefront - Paperback

by Lida Mayo (Author)

For the fighting man in time of war, the crucible that proves or disproves his training and his theories is combat with the enemy. So it is too with those whose milieu is not the drill field but the drawing board, not the staff college but the proving ground, those who design, develop, and maintain the weapons, munitions, and vehicles of war. The crucible for the Ordnance Department, like the individual fighting man, is the battlefield. In previous volumes in the Ordnance Department subseries of The Technical Services in the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II, historians have told the preliminary stories, the complex, often frustrating saga of planning munitions for war and of procuring and getting them to the troops who use them. This, the third and final volume in the subseries, tells the climax of the Ordnance role in World War II, the story of how the vast armory and its administrators fared in combat. In presenting this story of Ordnance in the overseas theaters, Mrs. Mayo has concentrated logically on Ordnance at the level of the army headquarters, for from this level munitions and fighting equipment flowed directly to the user. While giving some attention to all theaters involved in the global story of Ordnance administration, she has concentrated on the three main theaters as representative of the problems, the improvisations, the shortcomings, the achievements worldwide.

Author Biography

Lida Mayo, a graduate of Randolph-Macon Woman's College, served as historian with the Military Air Transport Service from 1946 to 1950, when she joined the Ordnance Historical Branch, becoming its chief in June 1959. In 1962, when Ordnance historical activities were transferred to the Office of the Chief of Military History, she became a senior historian on its staff. She contributed substantially to The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for War (1955), first of the three Ordnance volumes published in this series, and was coauthor of the second, The Ordnance Department: Procurement and Supply (1960). Other published works to her credit are Henry Clay (New York, 1943, and London, 1944) and Rustics in Rebellion (Chapel Hill, 1950). Her articles have appeared in American Heritage, Virginia Quarterly Review, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and numerous professional journals. Mrs. Mayo is presently at work on another volume in the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II: The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Germany.