The Regulars: The American Army, 1898-1941

by Edward M. Coffman

In 1898 the American Regular Army was a small frontier constabulary engaged in skirmishes with Indians and protesting workers. Forty-three years later, in 1941, it was a large modern army ready to wage global war against the Germans and the Japanese. In this definitive social history of America's standing army, military historian Edward Coffman tells how that critical transformation was accomplished.

Coffman has spent years immersed in the official records, personal papers, memoirs, and biographies of regular army men, including such famous leaders as George Marshall, George Patton, and Douglas MacArthur. He weaves their stories, and those of others he has interviewed, into the story of an army which grew from a small community of posts in China and the Philippines to a highly effective mechanized ground and air force. During these years, the U.S. Army conquered and controlled a colonial empire, military staff lived in exotic locales with their families, and soldiers engaged in combat in Cuba and the Pacific. In the twentieth century, the United States entered into alliances to fight the German army in World War I, and then again to meet the challenge of the Axis Powers in World War II.

Coffman explains how a managerial revolution in the early 1900s provided the organizational framework and educational foundation for change, and how the combination of inspired leadership, technological advances, and a supportive society made it successful. In a stirring account of all aspects of garrison life, including race relations, we meet the men and women who helped reconfigure America's frontier army into a modern global force.

Genres: History, Military History, Military Fiction, American History, Nonfiction

528 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 2004

About the author

Edward Coffman was professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A specialist in military history, he earned his BA, MA, and PhD at the University of Kentucky.

Reviews

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coffman documents the state of the Army from 1898-1941 thru personal interviews, letters, journals, army histories and other sources. He shows their schedules in the far flung outposts in China, the Philippines and those closer to home like West Point. Pay, stability, discrimination and other issues are examined thru the lens of personal experiences.

Why I started this book: Another Professional Reading title that I recently found on Audible.

Why I finished it: Solid research, and I got a great feel for how the Army thought about itself, its profession and its isolation from the public. Fascinating that the isolation allowed the Army to go its own way, with the calvery convinced that they were vital and younger officers also convinced that the tank and airplane were the future of fighting forces.

[Kevin Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Regulars had two distinct strengths that were clear when assessing its historical merit. The amazing depth to the research is perhaps the greatest strength of the work. Initially the scope of the book was worrisome. However, Coffman takes great care to put the reader’s mind at ease about the scope of the monograph by covering each topic he discussed with much more than a cursory glance. The second strength of the work was the easily accessible prose as Coffman avoided the flowery and convoluted prose that is a common characteristic of academic history. Coffman’s monograph is not without weakness as the greatest strength of the work was also its biggest detriment to an extent. Coffman often got bogged down in the minutia when explaining certain aspects of the work like the managerial revolution. Overall, The Regulars is an indispensable work that irrevocably altered the state of American military historiography for the better and will remain a major point of discussion by historians for decades to come

[Erik Tolvstad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting history. It's mostly told as a very long string of anecdotes of family stories and everyday life in the US Army 1898-1941. The gist of the history is the gradual shift of Army culture from basically a very insular institution of frontier constabulary to the Philippine colonial fights eventually to the development of the burgeoning fighting force at the start of WW2. The proverbial "Great Men" are in the tale, but its more about the small stories.

[Schoppie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a superb social history of the U.S. Army as it transitioned from a frontier constabulary force to that of a world power!

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely informative. Amazing research.

[Michael Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m now in my 60s, and I grew up an Army brat in the 1950s, so much of the social history and attitudes depicted so clearly and engagingly in this engrossing book are familiar to me -- even though the author is speaking about a period a couple of generations earlier. Even though it changed dramatically during the forty years between the end of the War with Spain and the beginning of World War II, the Regular Army still is and always has been a deeply conservative institution. In times of national emergency, millions of civilians may volunteer and be drafted, but when the emergency is over they -- the survivors, anyway -- will take off their uniforms and go back to the civilian world. But the Regulars will still be there, like the rocks that reappear, unmoved, when the tide has flowed out again. During the late 19th century, the Army acted primarily as a frontier constabulary, fighting skirmishes against the Indians and maintaining order in Western communities (and suppressing labor strikes, unfortunately). The coming of war in 1898 brought a flurry of enlistments and applications for commissions, but the war itself didn’t last very long. The result, however, was an empire in Cuba and Puerto Rico, and especially in the Philippines, and the Regulars found themselves in the role of an imperial military force, not unlike the British Army in India. There were also several regiments stationed in China as part of the international occupation force that followed the Boxer Rebellion. That period also provided practical experience for such future luminaries as Pershing, McArthur, Marshall, Arnold, and later Patton and Eisenhower -- not unlike the role played by the Mexican War for future Civil War generals. During the few years just before the United States got involved in World War I, the Army underwent a managerial revolution -- and “revolution” is not too strong a word -- under the leadership of Secretary of War Elihu Root (strongly backed by Theodore Roosevelt), who pushed through a long list of much-needed reforms, especially the formation of a general staff to centralize military planning and coordinating. That was followed by the drastic overhaul of the Military Academy and the establishment of the War College. After 1918, the Army was practically in limbo for more than a decade, with its budget cut, little attention given to technical development, and promotions so glacial many ambitious officers and noncoms resigned in frustration. Under FDR, however, it became clear to most military planners that a new global war was coming and the mobilization that began in the late ’30s meant the Regulars were able to be halfway prepared by the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

As in his earlier book, The Old Army, to which this is largely a sequel, Coffman gives as much attention to wives and families as he does to the officers and enlisted men themselves, and I have to say it’s this that mostly interests me. To be the child of an officer c.1910 meant one or more transpacific voyages (lasting a month each way), and living in the exotic milieu of Manila or Tientsin. In the 1920s, the destination was likely to be Hawaii, which was being developed as the center of U.S. military and naval operations in the Pacific. It was, in many ways, a cloistered life; it was still largely that way overseas in the early ’50s, when I lived in occupied Europe. Things were a good deal different for the rank and file, of course, and even more so for non-white soldiers. The end of World War I coincided with a strong upturn in racial bigotry and discrimination, to which Coffman also gives full consideration, comparing it to the somewhat less strained earlier situation in which black officers like Benjamin O. Davis could built a career. Throughout the book, Coffman strews anecdotes and reminiscences from many published sources and from the hundreds of interviews he conducted with those who lived through the period, and there are a great many fascinating photos, mostly of the unposed snapshot variety, which makes them more true-to-life. The “all volunteer” Army of the 21st century is a very different world. This is a book that anyone with an interest in American military history, or in the U.S. in the 20th century generally, absolutely must read.

[Eric Burke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another wonderful social history of the Regular Army, "The Regulars" illustrates life in the small standing U.S. Army between the Spanish-American War and the outbreak of the Second World War. The sequel to Coffman's first work on the Old Army from the 1780s to the War with Spain, this volume similarly looks at not only officers and enlisted men, but also women, children, and families that lived "the Army life."

Coffman does a good job of showing how the Army professionalized across the era, adapting to new technological demands as well as to the managerial and administrative requirements of managing, controlling, and maintaining larger and far more complicated forces. Building on the budding trends toward professionalization that Coffman identified in the first volume (the proliferation of branch journals, increase of professional development opportunities for Army officers), "The Regulars" shows how the creation of the Army War College and the General Staff school at Leavenworth paid tremendous dividends in aiding the Army's evolution as it entered a new age of warfare. Coffman also illustrates how the post-Spanish War shift from guarding the frontier to defending the interests of a global imperial power altered not only the requirements and expectations of the Army, but also the experience of soldiering itself (and that of families attached to it).

In all, "The Regulars" is a solid sequel to Coffman's study of the Old Army. Still, I much preferred the more analytical approach used in the first volume, and felt that "The Regulars" relied far too much on biographical details in order to illustrate ostensibly generally applicable facets of Army life. While perhaps a more enjoyable, engaging, and accessible read, I felt this approach blunted much of the analytical edge of the first volume. Instead of separate chapters devoted to women, enlisted men, and officers, Coffman took a more chronological approach, mixing the three together along with analysis of racial and gender questions indicative of the impact of race and gender history on "New" Military History. Regardless, this work is well worth the time of anyone interested in understanding how and why the modern U.S. Army came to look so radically different from the "Old Army" of the first two centuries of the Republic's life.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second of Ed Coffman's wonderful social histories of the American Army, this one covering the era between the Spanish-American War and World War II. These are not books about battles or campaigns but rather about the lives led by the officers, men and their families in the insular world of the professional army, but also how the approach and outbreak of the wars of this era changed those lives. This well-written history also deals with issues such as the status of blacks and gays, officer training, the all-important role of athletics in the peacetime army, and even details like diet and health. A fine example of what is often referred to as the "new military history." Not merely for those interested in war or the military.

[JerryDeanHalleck · Rating 2 out of 5]

OK book about Army life from 1900-1940 with the focus on wives/family, garrison life Overseas, and Officers. Too much SJW chatter about racism for my taste. Even antisemitism gets dragged in! A more substantial criticism is that enlisted men get short shift, primarily - I suppose - because few wrote books and most were single.

[William J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat disjointed but interesting stories about military family life from 1898 through 1941.

[George]

Its a good book