Return to First Page---ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 26, Summer 1967, p. 104
Second Army headquarters immediately began detailed planning for these exercises. As they developed subsequently, these exercises included maneuvers in Tennessee in June, others in Arkansas in August, and concluded with the massive and well-known (today) Louisiana operations in September.
The Arkansas maneuvers thus constituted the second phase of the 1941 maneuvers of the Second Army. This article will concern itself then with the so-called Corps and Army maneuvers in Arkansas between the middle of August and the middle of September 1941.
The VII Army Corps field exercises and maneuvers in southwestern Arkansas took place from August 17 until August 28. These were "warm up" exercises for units which had not participated in the Tennessee maneuvers. While GHQ laid down no prescribed exercises, requirements from Second Army headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee, and experience in the June maneuvers, led VII Corps commander, Maj. Gen. Robert C. Richardson to plan six main exercises. These encompassed so-called "controlled field exercises" with a concluding exercise as a two-sided free maneuver in which the VII Corps, less one of its divisions, operated against this division, itself reinforced with certain auxiliary troops (2).
The need for controlled field exercises in the preliminary stages of combined training of new divisions could be scarcely exaggerated. One of the VII Corps divisions, the 27th Division (New York National Guard) had received experience in Tennessee.
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- 2. HQ VII Corps, Report of VII Army Corps Field Exercises and Maneuvers in Southwestern
- Arkansas---August 17-28 and Participation of VII Army Corps in Second
Army and GHQ Maneuvers August 29---September 30, 1941, dtd. 29 Oct. 1941,
in RG 400 Maneuver Report VII Army Corps, Arkansas---Louisiana Aug. 10-Sept.
30, 1941, vol. I. All records cited in this article are in GSA, National
Archives and Records Service, World War II Division, Alexandria, Virginia,
unless other wise noted.
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