Early Military Service
Prior to World War II, he was in 1938 a Colonel in command of 27th Infantry Regiment. In 1941 he was promoted to Brigadier General and Assistant commander of the 9th Infantry Division.
Harding had an agile mind. He could quote T. S. Eliot or Tennyson or Kipling, and discuss history or astronomy like an Ivy League professor. Harding understood the modern military and had literally written the book on it. During 1934, Col. George Marshall was assistant commandant at Fort Benning and selected Harding as an instructor and put him in charge of the Infantry School's publications. He edited Infantry in Battle, a book that codified new ideas on how to organize infantry in battle. Harding was responsible for planning the book and supervising preparation and editing of the manuscript.
The triangular division structure it described was composed of three regimental combat teams each supported by its own simplified support and command structure. The organizational structure emphasized speed, agility, a lower casualty rate, and adaptability. This contrasted with the square division structure of World War I which was designed for attrition combat characteristic of trench warfare. Infantry in Battle is still used as an officer's training manual in the Infantry Officer's Course, and was the training manual for most of the infantry officers and leaders of World War II.
Read more about this topic: Edwin F. Harding
Famous quotes containing the words early, military and/or service:
“And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 14:25.
“The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“The more the specific feelings of being under obligation range themselves under a supreme principle of human dependence the clearer and more fertile will be the realization of the concept, indispensable to all true culture, of service; from the service of God down to the simple social relationship as between employer and employee.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)