Twentieth Century
See also: United States Army Air CorpsIn 1910, the U.S. Signal Corps acquired and flew the Army's first aircraft, the Wright Type A biplane.
The Maneuver Division was formed in San Antonio, Texas, in March 1911, to undertake offensive operations against Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. This was the United States' first attempt at modernizing the division concept. Major General Leonard Wood, then Army Chief of Staff, mobilized the division primarily to demonstrate to Congress that the United States was not adequately prepared for modern warfare. The division was disbanded on 7 August 1911.
Because of the mobilization difficulties experienced with the Maneuver Division, on 15 February 1913 a standing organization of a "regular army organized in divisions and cavalry brigades ready for immediate use as an expeditionary force or for other purposes..." and "an army of national citizen soldiers organized in peace in complete divisions and prepared to reenforce the Regular Army in time of war" was organized by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and known as the "Stimson Plan." The continental United States was divided into four geographic departments (Eastern, Central, Western, and Southern) and a regular army division assigned to each, and 12 geographic districts, each with a national guard infantry division assigned. 32 of the 48 state governors committed their national guards to support of the plan. There were also three artillery commands: the Northern Atlantic Coast Artillery District, the Southern Atlantic Coast Artillery District, and the Pacific Coast Artillery Discrict.
In 1914 and 1916, U.S. troops were sent into Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. The Pancho Villa Expedition under Brigadier General John J. Pershing attempted to capture Pancho Villa, a Mexican who had mounted attacks on U.S. border towns. The skirmishes on the border later became known as the Border War (1910–1919).
Read more about this topic: History Of The United States Army
Famous quotes related to twentieth century:
“Film is more than the twentieth-century art. It’s another part of the twentieth-century mind. It’s the world seen from inside. We’ve come to a certain point in the history of film. If a thing can be filmed, the film is implied in the thing itself. This is where we are. The twentieth century is on film.... You have to ask yourself if there’s anything about us more important than the fact that we’re constantly on film, constantly watching ourselves.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we’ve developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.”
—Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990)
“The nineteenth century planted the words which the twentieth ripened into the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. There is hardly an atrocity committed in the twentieth century that was not foreshadowed or even advocated by some noble man of words in the nineteenth.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“The descendants of Holy Roman Empire monarchies became feeble-minded in the twentieth century, and after World War I had been done in by the democracies; some were kept on to entertain the tourists, like the one they have in England.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid- twentieth century.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)