In the autumn of 1941—just before Pearl Harbor—350,000 American troops participated in the Carolina Maneuvers, surging around homes, farms, and towns still at peace. It was America's last dress rehearsal before war, with mock battles that far eclipsed the size of Revolutionary or Civil War campaigns and even some prominent World War II clashes and brought the army up close to civilians for the first and last time. A who’s who of U.S. Army leaders took part. George Marshall, chief of staff, who knows war is near and owns the heavy responsibility of getting the army ready to fight; George Patton, before he led armor and armies with great bravado in North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, and the Battle of the Bulge; Mark Clark, soon to be a controversial, publicity-seeking general in command of the Fifth Army in Italy; and Lesley McNair, chief of the army’s General Headquarters, who was responsible for this massive training event and destined to die on a Normandy battlefield. Many more luminaries also appeared in these war games, including Hap Arnold, Jacob L. Devers, Ira Eaker, Robert Eichelberger, Walter Krueger, Sandy Patch, Courtney Hodges, Terry Allen, Lloyd Fredendall, and even the secretary of war, Henry Stimson. By the same token, most of the units that war gamed across the Carolinas were bound for heavy fighting with Hitler’s armies. Numbered among these units were the 1st and 2nd Armored Divisions and the 1st, 4th, 8th, 9th, 28th and 30th Infantry Divisions. Other units, including the 1st Cavalry, 31st, and 43rd Infantry Divisions, would fight Japanese troops in bloody Pacific battles. The maneuvers showed the army at its best and its worst, as it practiced tactics and tried equipment that would either be discarded or employed in the months ahead. It also brought the military of the times face to face with the American public. The men and the units that participated in the maneuvers would go on to fight on battlefields across the globe, helping to lead the Allies to
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