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Bring Back Daddy!

The war against Germany ended on May 7, 1945 and the Japanese surrendered three months later. Suddenly, almost four million United States soldiers were scattered around the world with no enemy to engage. Our military services had never had a policy of rotation. A soldier went to war and fought until the hostilities ended. As a result, many had been overseas for more than four years and some had been in combat for three years. Now they all shared a single purpose: they wanted to go home immediately.

The Queen Mary carrying troops

Even if all the available troopships had been put into a full-speed shuttle service, it would have taken many months to bring most of them home. Hundreds of thousands of U. S. soldiers would also be needed in Europe and Asia to guard prisoners of war, carry out occupation duties, enforce civil government, protect allied bases (including mountains of supplies, and billions of dollars worth of equipment), and help care for millions of refugees and displaced persons. The War Department estimated that three million people in Europe would have to be fed, but as it turned out the actual number was more than five million. Additional shipping would have to be diverted to food and grain transport.

The Army tried to deal with this problem as fairly as possible, implementing a point system of discharge aimed at letting soldiers go home based on the degree of their sacrifice. Those who had been wounded received a number of points. Additional points were assigned on the basis of months in combat; soldiers with dependent children received extra points; and so on. While there were gripes about the system – there are always complaints about any system – the troops generally accepted the fact that those who had served longest and had experienced combat would go home first, followed by those with dependent children.

But when General Eisenhower returned to Washington as Chief of Staff of the Army, he discovered that not all Americans were impressed with the quality of the Army’s demobilization program. Mothers and wives on the home front were not as tolerant of planning as the troops were. The storm broke just as Ike was taking up his new office in the Pentagon and the news got out that it would take more than eighteen months to bring all the wartime soldiers home. American women went on the warpath.

Among the many groups the women spontaneously formed, the “Bring Back Daddy!” clubs were the most vociferous. They aimed their efforts at Congress, demanding that the point system be abolished and that first and immediate return priority be granted to overseas wartime soldiers with dependent sons and daughters at home. From towns all across America they sent telegrams to their congressional representatives and to the Chief of Staff of the Army. They sent thousands of worn baby shoes, and cried out for the immediate discharge of every father in the Army and Navy.

This was a hard assault for any congressman to ignore. In the face of these demands from their constituents, several congressmen and senators quickly drew up legislation to require the Army to discharge immediately every serviceman who was a father. General Eisenhower testified at length before House and Senate committees to explain why the immediate discharge of more than a million soldiers was impossible without doing irreparable damage to America’s national security. General MacArthur needed at least half a million soldiers as occupation and security forces in the Pacific, and General Bradley needed 700,000 occupation troops in Northwestern Europe. In the United States 40,000 soldiers were guarding German and Japanese prisoners of war and hundreds of thousands of others were at bases and depots around the world guarding billions of dollars worth of supplies and equipment of every description. Eisenhower went beyond pragmatism in defending the military’s program. Destroying the point system, he said, would deny the ethical foundation of a policy that let those who had sacrificed most return home first.

Logic and ethics were swept aside, however, as thousands of angry constituents clamored for immediate action. Every congressional committee ignored Eisenhower’s testimony and voted out bills doing what the “Bring Back Daddy” clubs wanted. Senator Chapman Revercomb (a Republican from West Virginia) went so far as to enter a resolution calling for the immediate discharge of every father in the armed services.

President Truman did his best to get the congressional leadership to slow the progress of the legislation and delay bringing it to the floor. In consultation with MacArthur and Bradley, Eisenhower took drastic measures to speed up the discharge rate. He cut the basic training of newly drafted soldiers to eight weeks instead of twelve so that they could be sent overseas sooner and replace veterans. He reduced the number of soldiers guarding non-lethal equipment overseas, even though he knew that doing so would result in massive thefts and encourage the development of black markets around the world.

To the great relief of Truman and Eisenhower, the political storm clouds gathered around Bring Back Daddy began to clear away. House Speaker Sam Rayburn had delayed legislative action on the bills, allowing General Eisenhower’s efforts to speed up the return of veterans to undercut some of the demand to bring the daddies home.