This book was written to meet the need for a study of quartermaster operations at army level. The 10-volume series Quartermaster Supply in the European Theater of Operations in World War II dealt with the plans and operations of the Allied Expeditionary Force and could not treat in detail the supply operations of any one army. Colonel Irwin L. Hunt, Commandant of the Quartermaster School from 1925 to 1929, said "military writers have little interest in supply, and civilian historians know nothing about the subject." Unfortunately the little monographs on quartermaster supply during World War I, which were prepared at his direction, made no mention of tactics. In Quartermaster Supply in the Fifth Army in World War II an attempt has been made to correlate combat and supply. The clothing exchange and bath system employed in Italy is now regarded as a model operation. The use of the quartermaster battalion as field headquarters and the assignment of battalion commanders as staff officers in the Office of the Army Quartermaster exemplify the flexibility that the Quartermaster Corps advocates for these units. The salvage and graves registration procedures of the Fifth Army were the patterns for the salvage and graves registration procedures used in other theaters.

N16056.2 Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.