PIN : 200285–000
Cover: A 1998 class of the Army Management Staff College at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, 

captures the diversity of Army civilians 

at the end of the twentieth century. (U.S. Army)
THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF

SKILL AND KNOWLEDGE

Stephen J. Lofgren

General Editor

Center of Military History

United States Army

Washington, D.C., 2016

A BRIEF HISTORY OF

U.S. ARMY CIVILIANS

1775–2015
CMH Pub 70-124
3

From the earliest days of the republic to the present, Army civilians 

have been critical to the success of the total force, delivering “beans 

and bullets”; treating the sick and wounded; procuring and maintaining equipment and supplies; operating state-of-the-art technologies; 

managing posts, camps, and stations; and caring for families. Too often 

overlooked, these quiet professionals have always been a vital part of 

the Army profession.

This short history is intended as a general overview of their important 

story. The careful reader will find two themes. One is the broad range 

of ways in which Army civilians have supported the service and the 

nation in war and peace. The other is the growth and maturation—the 

continued increase in professionalism—of civilian employees that began 

to spread across the federal government in the early twentieth century 

and continues to this day.

Today the Army possesses one of the most skilled, best-trained, and 

highly motivated groups of professionals in existence. In the words of 

the Army Civilian Corps Creed, the corps’ role is to provide “stability 

and continuity” to the U.S. Army. This narrative was prepared by the 

Historical Support Branch, Histories Division, U.S. Army Center of 

Military History, so that Army civilians could better appreciate their 

place in the history of the service.

James C. McNaughton

Director, Histories Division

FOREWORD

5

A real strength of our civilians is that they are stable, remaining in 

their jobs for much longer periods of time than the military. They thus 

learn their jobs and are able to hone the skills necessary to be at the 

highest level of skill and knowledge in their fields.

—Brig. Gen. (later Lt. Gen.) James H. Pillsbury (2003) 

Since the Continental Congress first created an American army 

on 14 June 1775 at the outbreak of the American War of Independence 

(1775–1783), U.S. Army civilians have been central to the success of the 

service in peace and war. From those early days in the nation’s history 

until the present, the Army has relied on its civilian employees to meet 

many critical needs. From clerks and wagon drivers to scientists and 

engineers, civilians have served the Army in a wide array of functions 

and jobs—some of which, particularly in the twenty-first century, are 

specialized and require as much training and education as any profession 

in the world. 

Members of the Continental Congress, delegates from the thirteen 

colonies who became the governing body of the American opposition to 

the British during the American Revolution, understood from the beginning that the Army would need more than soldiers to succeed. In 1776, 

Congress established the Board of War and Ordnance to keep records 

on troops and equipment and maintain personnel and financial records. 

The new members of Congress who sat on the board appointed Richard 

Peters, a Philadelphia lawyer, as the board’s permanent secretary (later, 

commissioner). In 1782, Secretary at War Benjamin Lincoln oversaw 

an assistant, a secretary, and two clerks in the department. During this 

same time, General George Washington’s Continental Army hired other 

civilians to work as storekeepers and custodians of military supplies as 

well as wagon drivers and other laborers. These men proved their value 

throughout the Revolutionary War. From this beginning, small in number 

but substantial in influence, would grow the large professional force of 

civilians who serve today throughout the Army and the world.

THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF SKILL

A ND K NOWLEDGE 

A BRIEF HISTORY OF U.S. A RMY 

CIVILIA NS, 1775–2015
6

The Early Years

The Treaty of Paris in 1783 marked the successful conclusion of the 

American Revolution and the independence of the United States from 

Great Britain. The thirteen states soon crafted a new form of national 

government in 1789 with the ratification of the United States Constitution, 

which guaranteed a central role for civilians within the Army. Congress, 

acting within the political philosophy that standing armies were an 

inherent threat to the liberty of the people, placed the nation’s military 

forces under civilian control within the executive branch. In August 1789, 

Congress created the Department of War. Its mission was to oversee 

the administration of America’s military forces. In that same month, 

President George Washington selected former Continental Army Maj. 

Gen. Henry Knox to become the first secretary of war. In addition to 

military matters, the secretary of war also assumed responsibility for 

supervising federal Indian affairs.

Secretary Knox managed the new department in New York City, 

initially with one clerk and then with only a handful of clerks and one 

messenger, to assist with his routine duties. Their job was to keep Army 

papers in order and to expedite departmental business. The administration 

of the Army also included a civilian-controlled military supply system 

under the secretary of war, responsible for keeping and distributing supplies. Knox’s staff continued to grow with the addition of another clerk 

in 1790 to handle land claims for Army veterans. In 1792, two years 

after the department moved with the rest of the national government to 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a civilian bureau named the Office of the 

Quartermaster General became part of Knox’s department to transport 

supplies to frontier Army posts for campaigns against Indians in the 

The War Department had several homes in the early 

years of the republic. Top: Fraunces Tavern, 

the location that the War Office shared with the 

Foreign Office in the mid-1780s in New York City; 

middle: Norris Row, Philadelphia, in the mid-1790s; 

bottom: Old War Office, Washington, D.C., 1800–1820.

(Lithography by G. Hayward, published in 1834, 

Library of Congress; Independence National 

Historical Park Collection; drawn by C. Burton, 

published in 1831, Library of Congress)
7
8

Ohio River Valley. By the end of 1792, there were ten civilian clerks at 

the War Department with an average annual salary of $60, including a 

chief clerk, John Stagg Jr. Due to the small number of U.S. Army forces 

in the 1790s and early 1800s, the department’s workforce remained 

correspondingly limited.

 The staff of the war office soon included seven civilians: chief clerk 

Stagg; R. J. Vandenbrock, second clerk; Philip Audebert, assistant clerk; 

Constant Freeman; Benjamin Bankson; and Frederick King, messenger. 

Additionally, Caleb Swan worked for the department as the United 

States ambassador to the Creek Indians in what is now Alabama. Shortly 

thereafter, the secretary’s office had seven clerks and seven more in the 

department’s pay office, in addition to five others in the bureau for settling 

military accounts with the states. In 1794, Congress created the civilian 

position of superintendent of military stores in the War Department 

responsible for inspecting and reporting on the condition of supply 

houses, armories, and arsenals, as well as overseeing proper departmental 

record keeping and cooperating with the Treasury Department regarding 

purchasing and accounts. Assisted by civilian storekeepers and clerks, 

the superintendent also maintained accounts and returns with each Army 

regiment, garrison, and detachment and received and stored all ordnance 

materials and artillery for the commander in chief. 

In short, from the 1790s and through the War of 1812, the War 

Department was chiefly an administrative and record-keeping bureau 

that served as a conduit for the military’s large volume of correspondence and reports. The primary operational function of the department 

in this quarter-century was the procurement, storage, and issue of 

military supplies. Still, some civilians ventured afield. During the 

military campaigns against the Indians in the Ohio country in the 1790s, 

quartermasters general in the field with the armies were civilians and 

were allowed the pay, rations, and forage of a lieutenant colonel (without 

the rank). They handled transportation of troops and all supplies. Thus, 

for Maj. Gen. Arthur St. Clair’s 1791 campaign against Indian forces 

in northern Ohio, Samuel Hodgdon was appointed quartermaster and 

was responsible for ordnance and quartermaster duties. Hodgdon had 

no staff officers to see to the execution of his orders, only three civilian 

assistants, and due to his lack of military rank, he had no authority over 

St. Clair’s officers. 

In 1794, Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne led American troops in a victorious expedition against several Indian tribes along the Maumee River 

and its tributaries in what is now Ohio. Supporting Wayne’s frontier 

operations was businessman James O’Hara, since 1792 the quartermaster 

general of the Army, a civilian position with no military rank. O’Hara 
9

hired numerous civilian workers, including deputy quartermasters, 

artificers (skilled craftsmen or mechanics), storekeepers, blacksmiths, 

wheelwrights, tinsmiths, rope makers, coppersmiths, armorers, boatmen, 

and coopers (barrel makers) to support his logistical requirements. Prior 

to the campaign, he appointed a commissary general of forage for the 

expedition and later a wagon master to handle transportation needs. 

O’Hara also hired a conductor of military stores to “receive, keep, and 

deliver all supplies” ordered by the commander and the chief of artillery. 

After O’Hara resigned his position in 1796, John Wilkins Jr. was 

appointed quartermaster general of the Army, which was still a civilian 

post. With the increase in the number of frontier posts after General 

Wayne’s victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers (near today’s Toledo, Ohio) 

on 20 August 1794, additional assistant quartermasters were appointed, 

although some were merely called “agents” in the field (Map 1). As the 

frontier Indian conflicts subsided, however, the War Department needed 

fewer clerks in Washington. A visitor to the War Department in 1796 wrote 

that he found “two clerks each sitting at his own table engaged in writing,” who were sufficient to transact “all the business of the War Office.”

During the early national period, Army civilians 

provided supplies and services for soldiers at remote 

posts like Fort Washington in the Ohio country.

(Library of Congress)
Rio Grande

Gulf of Mexico

Fort Snelling

Fort Leavenworth

Fort Scott

Fort Gibson

Fort Smith

Fort Towson

Fort Jesup

Fort Washita

Jeerson Barracks

Fort Atkinson

Fort Mackinac

Fort Armstrong

Fort Winnebago

Fort Crawford

Chicago

St. Louis

New Orleans

Louisville

TEXAS

KENTUCKY ALABAMA

TENNESSEE

ILLINOIS

INDIANA

MISSOURI

ARKANSAS

L O

U I S I A

N

A

M I C

H I G

A

N

M I S S I S S I P P I

CANADA

MEXICO

WESTERN FRONTIER

1817–1848

0 100 200 300

Miles

Boundary Fixed by Treaty 

with Spain, 22 February 1819

Territory in Dispute with Mexico,

by Texas and later United States

U.S. Army Forts

Map 1
11

When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, he brought with 

him a parsimonious approach to government spending and a long-standing 

wariness of standing armies. Congress further reduced the strength of 

the U.S. Army in accordance with Jefferson’s desire to lower government 

expenses and his mistrust of a large army. Congress also abolished the 

office of the quartermaster general in favor of using a contract system 

to supply the military’s needs. The country was accordingly divided 

into three regional military departments, each with a civilian agent and 

assistants, responsible for the movement of supplies and troops within the 

departments. A civilian paymaster general remained within the department, which was now located in Washington, D.C., with the rest of the 

federal government. Jefferson’s new secretary of war, Henry Dearborn, 

also favored the president’s military economizing.

Between 1798 and 1812, the civilians in the War Department 

controlled all supply functions for the Army through the quartermaster 

general, commissary general, master of ordnance, Indian commissioner, 

commissioner of pensions, and commissioner of public lands. All uniforms, ordnance, medical supplies, food, and equipment were obtained 

and managed by these civilian bureaus. Civilians were also responsible 

for maintenance of military depots and arsenals and for ordnance matters. 

Additionally, there was a civilian auditor within the department before 

the War of 1812, a post eventually transferred to the Treasury Department 

shortly after the conflict ended. To manage Indian affairs, the War 

Department included an office of superintendent of Indian trade between 

1806 and 1822, led by a civilian. Another section of the department, the 

Bureau of Indian Affairs, conducted all other business with the Indians 

through a civilian field service. In general, as one contemporary observer 

wrote in the early nineteenth century, the War Department was “a mere 

counting house establishment.”

When hostilities again threatened to break out in 1812 between the 

United States and Great Britain, the War Department was considered too 

small to effectively prepare for and conduct war. Secretary of War William 

Eustis had a staff of twelve civilian clerks and bookkeepers working for 

him. Congress prudently reorganized and enlarged the War Department in 

the spring of 1812. The position of quartermaster general was reestablished 

to include a staff composed of masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, boat 

builders, harness makers, and other laborers, along with a civilian corps 

of artificers. The next year, Congress created the office of superintendent 

general of military supplies, to which a civilian was appointed to keep 

accounts of supplies purchased by the department. Secretary Eustis also 

added civilians with specialized knowledge to the departmental staff: 

a physician, surgeon general, and an apothecary general. 
12

Despite these changes, the War 

of 1812 against Great Britain was 

marked by unsuccessful campaigns 

and severe logistical and administrative difficulties. When John C. 

Calhoun became the secretary of 

war in 1817, he instituted muchneeded reforms and professionalism 

in the department. He introduced 

the Army’s bureau system in his 

administration, which by 1821 

included twenty civilian clerks 

in Washington engaged in correspondence, accounting, and record 

keeping. Most had specific assignments in subject areas and became 

specialists. All were overseen by 

a chief clerk. The Army’s civilian 

staff remained small during the 

Mexican War (1846–1848), while 

some civilians served in the Army’s 

Corps of Topographical Engineers 

due to lack of trained soldiers. 

In 1849 in Washington, D.C., the 

quartermaster general had only one 

assistant, a chief clerk, five clerks, 

and one messenger. Later Congress 

authorized several temporary clerks, 

and, after Quartermaster General 

Thomas Jesup requested more help, 

the department was allowed eleven 

permanent clerks. 

As the American frontier 

moved west during the mid-nineteenth century, the War Department 

employed civilians in several 

roles, including teamsters, scouts, 

and skilled laborers at forts and 

outposts (Map 2). Others served 

as Indian agents, perhaps the most 

famous of which was Christopher 

H. “Kit” Carson.

Camp Floyd

F

Mission of San Diego

Fort Vancouver Middle Cascades Blockhouse

Presidio of San Francisco

O R E G O N T R A I L

WASHINGTON

TERRITORY

UTAH

TERRITO

NEW M

TERR

CALIFORNIA

OREGON

MOVEMENT WEST

1848–1860

Transcontintental Trail

0 100 200 300 400

Miles
Mississippi R

Mississippi R

Rio Grande

Gulf of Mexico

San Antonio

El Paso

Sante Fe

Lawrence

Fort Bridger

Fort Laramie

Fort Leavenworth

Fort Scott

Fort Kearny

Fort Atkinson

Fort Snelling

Fort Crawford

Fort Deance Fort Union

Fort Webster

Fort Conrad

Fort Davis

Fort Duncan

Camp Ringgold

St. Louis

Jeerson Barracks

Fort Washita

Fort Gibson

Fort Ripley

O R E G O N T R A I L

S A N T A F E T R A I L

INDIAN

TERRITORY

UNORGANIZED

TERRITORY

KANSAS

TERRITORY

NEBRASKA

TERRITORY

RY

MEXICO

ITORY

TEXAS

IOWA

WISCONSIN

ILLINOIS

MISSOURI

ARKANSAS

M I N N E S O T A

L O U I S I A

N

A

M I S S I S S I P P I

C A N A D A

M

E

X

I

C

O

Map 2
14

Long-standing sectional hostilities, the election of President 

Abraham Lincoln, and the start of the American Civil War (1861–1865) 

created unprecedented issues for the War Department, its soldiers, and 

civilian employees. When the Civil War began in 1861 and the Army 

grew dramatically to meet the challenge of preserving the Union, 

Congress recognized the need for more civilians to administer the War 

Department. Initially, Congress authorized Secretary of War Edwin M. 

Stanton to add assistant secretaries to assist the three he already had, 

but this small staff was inadequate for the responsibilities of waging 

war across half a continent. In early 1862, consequently, Congress 

authorized Stanton to appoint fifty-two new clerks and messengers 

to serve under Chief Clerk Albert E. H. Johnson. In fact, the War 

Department needed so many staffers that for the first time in history 

the quartermaster general’s office hired women as copyists; they carried 

out the important task of duplicating documents by hand-copying them. 

By 1864, the staff in the War Department had grown to 213. Many of 

the clerks, wrote poet Walt Whitman, were “earnest, mainly honest, 

anxious to do the right thing—very hard working, very attentive.” In one 

Army civilians traveled wherever Army units did in 

the American West before the Civil War.

(Library of Congress)
15

notable incident—a Confederate attack on the defenses of Washington 

in July 1864—Army commanders sent clerks and other War Department 

employees to man the fortifications of the city.

Throughout the conflict, the War Department also employed civilians 

for highly technical work. For example, the War Department established 

the U.S. Military Telegraph Corps in 1861. These civilian telegraph 

operators had the critical responsibility of maintaining communications 

between the War Department and the Union armies in the field. This 

corps also maintained telegraph operations in the field, where it sustained 

a 10 percent casualty rate during the war. In order to better work with 

military quartermasters, some telegraph supervisors were later given 

military commissions, though most of the men employed remained 

civilians. Other civilian War Department positions included the Army’s 

numerous teamsters, mechanics, and laborers. 

One of the most important contributions civilians made to the Union 

cause was in the field of military transportation. They handled the 

Army clerks at Brandy Station, Virginia, 

Headquarters, Army of the Potomac, winter 1863–1864

(Library of Congress)
16

movement of troops by ships at sea and coordinated the transportation 

of men, munitions, and supplies on land by railroad. Herman Haupt, a 

railroad construction engineer, was the most prominent and successful 

of transportation officials in the War Department during the conflict, 

beginning in Virginia in 1862. As chief of U.S. Military Railroad 

Construction Corps in Virginia, he was a commissioned officer for much 

of the war, but Haupt formed a civilian corps of well-equipped artificers 

for railroad building and repairs, including bridge work. By the end of 

the war, the corps consisted of 10,000 civilians, who helped put railroads 

on a well-organized and efficient operating schedule in Virginia and 

seven other states.

The large scope of the war drew two new classes of civilian 

workers into the effort—women and African Americans. As war 

War Department clerks and soldiers in front of the 

War Department, Washington, D.C., 1865

(Library of Congress)
17

progressed, the Army hired many African Americans who were former 

slaves—some only recently escaped and known as contrabands—to 

be laborers, wagoners, and drivers. They soon formed the largest 

part of the military’s labor detachments. Performing unsung but vital 

work, they built entrenchments, herded droves of cattle and horses, 

and unloaded ships. Women joined the War Department’s civilian 

rolls primarily as nurses during the war, although this role remained 

a male-dominated field. The most prominent Civil War nurse was 

Dorothea L. Dix, who was made superintendent of Army female nurses 

in June 1861. Dix served during the entire war without pay: “I give 

cheerfully my whole time, mind, strength and income, to the service 

of my country,” she wrote, and would not “receive any remuneration for what I cheerfully render as a loyal woman.” Dix recruited 

Army clerks of the commissary depot at Aquia Creek 

Landing, Virginia, 1863

(Library of Congress)
18

matronly women over the age of thirty, who were required to adopt 

a simple dress code. In 1863, Congress authorized the employment 

of women nurses by the Surgeon General’s Office for duty at Army 

hospitals, to be paid $12 per month. Most of their duties were related 

to housekeeping and distribution of medical supplies, and most of 

the women received no medical training. About 3,000 women served 

under Dix during the conflict. The U.S. Army hired many laundresses 

and cooks for service in its general hospitals as well.

The blacksmith's shop, Quartermaster Department, 

Washington, D.C., April 1865

(Library of Congress)
Mary Walker was born in Oswego, 

New York, on 26 November 1832. 

She earned a medical degree 

in 1855 from Syracuse Medical 

College. At the outbreak of the 

Civil War, she volunteered to 

help the Union effort and worked 

as a nurse. In 1862, she went 

to Virginia to provide medical 

care to the wounded, and in 

1863 she was briefly appointed 

surgeon in an Ohio regiment. 

In the summer of 1864, she was 

a prisoner of war and later 

exchanged for a Confederate 

soldier. In September 1864, she 

was contracted to be acting 

assistant surgeon with the 52d 

Ohio Volunteer Infantry. In 1865, 

she was awarded a disability 

pension for partial muscular 

atrophy resulting from her 

wartime imprisonment. She was 

awarded the Medal of Honor for 

performing nursing duty following numerous battles and enduring 

hardships while a prisoner of war. After the war, she became 

a writer and lecturer, supporting such issues as health care, 

temperance, and women's rights. She died in 1919.

Dorothea L. Dix was born in 

1802 in Hampden, Maine. She 

became a noted social reformer 

who worked to improve the 

treatment of mentally ill 

patients and prisoners. After 

she volunteered her services to 

the Union in April 1861, she 

was appointed superintendent of 

female Army nurses and placed 

in charge of nurses working in 

U.S. Army hospitals. She had 

to convince skeptical military 

officials that women could 

perform nursing, and then she 

had to recruit the women. Dix 

only accepted plain-looking 

women older than thirty and 

implemented a modest dress 

code and forbade jewelry. 

Throughout the war, she took 

care of the more than 3,000 

women who served as Union 

Army nurses. Army nursing 

care was markedly improved 

under her leadership. At the war's conclusion, Dix returned to 

her work on behalf of the mentally ill. She died in 1887.

Dorothea Dix

(National Portrait 

Gallery, Smithsonian 

Institution)

Dr. Mary Walker

(National Archives)
20

An Era of Expansion and Progress 

1865–1939

The War Department rapidly decreased in size after the Civil War. 

When sectional hostilities ceased in 1865, the War Department was 

vast—more than 1 million soldiers supported by 50,000 civilians. Within 

one year, demobilization had cut the Army to 54,000 soldiers, and a slow 

decline would continue until 1874 when only 25,000 enlisted men and 2,161 

officers were on the Army rolls. The number and roles of Army civilians 

shrunk along with the military; the War Department employed fewer than 

5,000 civilians by 1874 as well. Most of these civilians worked in traditional 

jobs such as clerks, mechanics, and technicians. For the next seventy-five 

years, the civilian workforce of the War Department would be concentrated 

in Washington, D.C., and the Army arsenal system. The period was also 

characterized by significant progress in instituting needed improvements 

to civil service policies and regulations. Political progressives, forwardthinking secretaries of war, and others promoted changes that began the 

process of transforming the civilians as a group into a structured, highly 

qualified workforce of professionals. In addition, a small number of Army 

civilians, however, would find that the end of the Civil War began a period of 

opportunity for challenging and varied roles from working in the American 

West to helping former slaves in the American South.

One of these new roles for Army civilians was in the Freedmen’s 

Bureau. The bureau was established within the War Department in 1865 

to assist freed slaves, particularly those in the former Confederacy. Union 

Army Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard initially led the new agency. Several 

hundred Army civilians helped former slaves find employment and locate 

family members dislocated during the chaos of the war. Other bureau 

employees established schools to instruct reading and writing and acted as 

legal advocates for freed slaves in court cases and litigation. The Freedmen’s 

Bureau, however, met significant opposition in the South. When it was 

closed in 1872, many of the civilian employees transferred to the new 

Army school system where they replaced the soldiers or chaplains who had 

formerly taught the children of soldiers at installations around the country. 

The influx of these educators boosted the effectiveness and appeal of Army 

schools. The civilian-run schools proved so popular with local communities 

in many cases that citizens sent their children to the local Army school. 

Other new and specialized roles for civilian employees developed 

in this time. One was the maintenance of military cemeteries. In 1867, 

Congress passed the National Cemeteries Act, which appointed the U.S. 

Army to oversee and care for all Civil War burial sites and remains. 

Subsequent amendments expanded the mandate of Army cemeteries to 
21

allow for the burials of sailors and marines in these plots and to expand 

the system as needed to preserve and protect the remains of soldiers killed 

in future conflicts. On many Army posts, civilian employees were laid 

to rest in military cemeteries next to soldiers. 

Another role for Army civilians after the Civil War was as scouts 

for U.S. Army forces that operated in the vast spaces of the American 

West. In these territories, Army units required the specialized tracking, hunting, and reconnaissance skills that experienced scouts could 

provide. U.S. Army scouts often operated far in advance of military 

formations, supplying units with food by hunting, translating local 

languages, meeting with local inhabitants, and, when necessary, fighting 

alongside Army forces. The scouts included several of the most famous 

adventurers and explorers of the era, such as future showman William 

Fredrick “Buffalo Bill” Cody, and these civilians were praised in 

numerous citations for their steadfast dedication, courage, and military 

expertise. Four Army civilian scouts, Amos Chapman, “Buffalo Bill” 

Cody, James Doshier, and Billy Dixon, were awarded the Medal of 

Honor for their gallantry under fire.

Army carpenter school for freedmen, Beaufort, South 

Carolina

(National Archives)
22

In the West, Army civilians also provided the specialized construction expertise to transform temporary encampments into permanent 

military posts. Each Army regiment operating west of the Mississippi 

was authorized between five and fifteen civilian carpenters, stone masons, 

and wagon masters to support it. These civilians were supervised by the 

Quartermaster Department, and they worked alongside soldiers in the 

dangerous frontier environment. Many of the buildings constructed by 

Army civilians during this period are now preserved by the National 

Park Service for their historic importance.

In Washington, D.C., Army civilians ran the important Records 

and Pensions Division of the Office of the Adjutant General. Before the 

establishment of a separate department of veterans affairs, the adjutant 

general’s office employed hundreds of clerks who maintained military 

service records and processed benefits claims. Many of these civilians 

Cinching and loading a pack mule with flour during 

the starvation march of Bvt. Maj. Gen. George Crook's 

expedition into the Black Hills, 1876

(National Archives)
23

relied on new technology to do their jobs in the postwar years, particularly 

the typewriter, recently developed in the 1860s. These clerks and typists 

responded to inquiries from Civil War veterans and members of Congress 

and transmitted the documentation that allowed tens of thousands of 

veterans to claim their benefits. 

East of the Mississippi River, though, most Army civilians worked 

in the extensive Army arsenal and depot system, furnishing the technical experience and knowledge needed to support national defense. The 

arsenals produced a wide range of specialized equipment, such as large 

cannons, and tested a variety of weapons and equipment developed 

by contractors. The largest installation was the Frankford Arsenal in 

Philadelphia, where during the Civil War more than 1,000 workers had 

labored to make artillery, rifles, and gunpowder. The arsenal remained the 

U.S. Army’s primary source of munitions after the war, while its experts 

continued to evaluate new weapons designed by private citizens. Other 

significant installations of this type included the Rock Island Arsenal 

Explosive experts at the testing ground, Pittsburg 

Arsenal, Pennsylvania, 1908

(Library of Congress)
24

in Illinois, which became a leading manufacturer of carriages and gun 

mountings and then a center for vehicle development, as well as the 

Springfield Armory and Watertown Arsenal in Massachusetts and the 

Watervliet Arsenal in upstate New York. The Watertown Arsenal was 

notable for producing the massive coastal artillery guns that protected 

American ports and harbors. 

The postwar period was also a time of change in the nature of federal 

employment. War Department civilians would be in the forefront of the 

professionalization of the civil service in the United States at a time when 

nepotism, cronyism, and corruption were common in state and municipal 

governments. Abuses of the political patronage system, whereby elected 

politicians installed supporters in government positions, generated a 

movement to create a more meritocratic and transparent government hiring 

process. In 1883, the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act provided the first 

coherent legal structure for federal government employment practices. 

Over time, Congress expanded the scope of the Pendleton Act to include 

mandatory examinations for managerial and skilled positions. The first 

exam for Army clerks was held in 1887—almost 95 percent of the test 

takers passed. By the end of the 1890s, the majority of Army employees 

were required to pass examinations before being hired or promoted. 

In addition to the problem of employment practices, Army civilians 

during the 1870s and 1880s found they often lacked coherent oversight 

or clear guidelines for evaluating their work. Civil service reformers 

urged Congress and the secretary of war to clarify civilian employees’ 

roles and responsibilities, which had been decided on an ad hoc basis 

by the secretary of war. The matter of civil service duties became an 

especially prominent issue in 1889. Secretary of War William C. Endicott 

departed for a summer vacation, leaving the chief clerk in charge of the 

War Department, and returned to find that an assistant secretary of war 

position had been created in his absence.

The reforms of the 1880s, in any case, did not guarantee wartime 

competence. The challenges of mobilizing, supplying, and deploying 

the Army in the Spanish-American War of 1898 led to well-publicized 

problems and service failures that evoked widespread criticism of the 

War Department. The supply bureaus, which were primarily staffed by 

civilians, were particularly castigated for inefficiency and their failure to 

adapt peacetime regulations and bureaucratic rules for wartime. Accounts 

of ineptitude, red-tape, and callousness toward soldiers built support for 

systemic reforms. President William McKinley Jr. appointed a special 

commission, headed by former Civil War Maj. Gen. Grenville M. Dodge, 

to investigate the charges. Testimony before the commission generally 

reinforced the complaints, sometimes spectacularly, such as when one 
25

general famously coined the term, “embalmed beef,” when trying to 

describe the often-rancid and chemically adulterated meat that soldiers had 

received for rations. The Dodge Commission ultimately presented a scathing indictment of the War Department organization and bureaucracy, and 

President McKinley soon decided that he needed a new secretary of war.

Secretary of War Elihu Root moved quickly after he took office on 

1 August 1899 to address these institutional shortcomings and strove to 

improve the efficiency of the department. He pushed, for example, to 

centralize the system of production and procurement into five main arsenals 

and to reform the contracting methods to use outside manufacturers for 

much basic equipment. Root also sought to incorporate successful business 

models and practices into the Army and hired more civilian managers 

at the main arsenals and transportation centers for this initiative. Root’s 

efforts enhanced executive control within the department and promoted the 

professionalism of the Army civilian workforce. Root’s strong encouragement of progressive reforms of the War Department helped change the “old 

Army” of frontier forts and coastal batteries into a modern organization.

Preparing cartridges for coastal artillery, Benicia 

Arsenal, California, 1900

(Library of Congress)
26

John Tweedale (left)

(Library of Congress)

The wisdom behind the Root reforms would soon become apparent. 

In the summer of 1914, a decade after Secretary Root departed office, 

the nations of Europe went to war against each other with armies of 

millions in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. By the spring of 1917, 

German provocations had inflamed American public opinion and led to 

a U.S. declaration of war against Germany and the decision to aid France 

and Great Britain. The Great War (1914–1918), as World War I was first 

known, severely challenged the capabilities of the War Department. The 

number of civilian workers more than doubled to approximately 100,000 

personnel within a year. Of these, 34,000 men served as engineers in 

John Tweedale was born in 1841 in Frankford, Pennsylvania. He 

served as a private in the 15th Cavalry, Pennsylvania Volunteers, 

and received the Medal of Honor for gallantry in action at the 

Battle of Stones River, Tennessee. After the war, he received 

a law degree from Columbian University (now George Washington 

University) in Washington, D.C. He was appointed chief clerk 

of the War Department in 1882 and served until 1899, almost 

seventeen years under seven secretaries of war. In 1904 and 1905, 

he served as the Army’s assistant adjutant general and retired 

in 1905. He died in 1920.
27

France in 1917 and 1918. The most dramatic growth of civilian employment was at the Army’s arsenals and depots. Rock Island Arsenal, 

for example, grew dramatically, from some 600 civilians to 13,263 in 

November 1918. Altogether, the number of civilians in the Army arsenal 

and depot system expanded tenfold during the war. In a parallel development, clerks in the War Department organized the Federal Employees 

Union in 1916, which combined with the National Federation of Federal 

Employees the following year. It was the first union in the United States 

to represent federal civil service employees.

Nevertheless, the demands of modern industrial warfare meant that 

private companies produced most American war materiel. The resulting 

administrative workload for the War Department was staggering. More 

than 30,000 contracts, worth some $7.5 billion, were signed for warrelated necessities—more than fifty times the entire U.S. Army budget 

for 1914. Moreover, the department faced the challenge of transporting 

millions of soldiers and thousands of tons of munitions, vehicles, and 

supplies to France.

To help coordinate this vast undertaking, Secretary of War Newton 

D. Baker turned to America’s business community. Dozens of executives 

from major firms accepted civilian positions in the War Department for 

the nominal salary of $1 a year for the duration of the war. A good example 

of this new type of Army civilian executive was Samuel M. Felton, a 

prominent railway engineer who had risen to be the chief executive 

officer of Chicago’s Great Western Railways. After April 1917, Felton was 

appointed director general of military railroads. In 1918, he made a trip 

to inspect railroads behind the battle lines in France and became the first 

civilian to be awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. Another notable 

Army civilian was Robert J. Thorne, who had been the chief executive 

officer of Montgomery Ward. Thorne became the assistant acting quartermaster of the Army and helped establish a regional depot system for 

the millions of tons of supplies delivered by contractors. Army civilians, 

from arsenal workers and munitions inspectors to the dollar-a-year men, 

procured and steered the flow of men and supplies to the battlefields of 

Europe where they helped defeat Germany by the end of 1918. 

As with previous wars, the increase in Army and civilian strength 

did not last after the fighting had stopped, and the War Department soon 

returned to its smaller size and limited mission. By 1923, the Army civilian workforce had returned to its prewar size of roughly 45,000, mostly 

located in the arsenal and depot system. The two decades after the war 

saw many lasting reforms and innovations that would transform the role 

of Army civilians even as the increasing complexity of organizing the 

Army and equipping it with modern technology led to the expansion of 
28

Julia Ward (standing, center)

(National Security Agency)

Julia Ward was born in December 1900. She earned a bachelor’s 

degree from Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, in 1923, and a 

Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr in 1940. She was employed by Bryn Mawr 

from 1923 until World War II, when she joined the Signal 

Security Agency. There she worked as a librarian in the 

reference section, building a collection of classified and 

unclassified material for use by analysts. By the end of 

World War II, she was deputy chief of this organization. In 

October 1945, she became chief of the reference section. Under 

her leadership, it was reorganized and, within a few years, 

she turned it into a highly respected institution to which 

other federal agencies came for collateral information. As 

the reference section chief, she monitored agency reporting 

to ensure that products maintained the highest standards of 

accuracy. Her vast knowledge of cryptologic targets all over 

the world allowed her to catch many mistakes that would have 

otherwise been overlooked. Her pioneering efforts to build 

a library of classified and unclassified resources to aid 

analysis greatly advanced the American cryptologic effort. In 

1949, with the formation of the Armed Forces Security Agency, 

Ward was named head of the Collateral Branch and held this 

position through the earliest days of the National Security 

Agency (NSA). She died in 1962.
29

civilian opportunities and roles. At the same time, Army civilians in the 

department’s Bureau of Insular Affairs continued to perform a variety 

of roles in places such as the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, and 

Puerto Rico. In these locales, Army civilians carried out a wide range 

of administrative, public health, and legal reform initiatives. In the 

Philippines, for example, a staff of about one hundred War Department 

civilians created a postal system, established a network of banks, and 

initiated railway development while also supporting the development of 

American military bases for both the U.S. Army and Navy. 

Legal changes also helped to attract a more talented and stable civilian workforce. In 1920, Congress created the Civil Service Retirement 

System to provide federal employees with disability, health-care, and 

retirement benefits. Prior to the creation of the retirement system, many 

Army civilians had remained in their positions into their seventies and 

eighties. Now, they could retire with a pension (mandatory at age seventy), 

and younger workers could be hired. In 1920, the National Defense Act 

also created an assistant secretary of war position for economic mobilization, which allowed for the creation of a small staff of Army civilians 

focused on war planning and coordination. Under this act, responsibility 

for procurement of military supplies and the mobilization of material and 

industrial organizations were explicitly assigned to the civilian assistant 

secretary of war position, not the military heads of the arsenals. 

Another unique and vital role for Army civilians during the interwar 

period was in the emerging field of cryptography. Continuing the work 

of signals intelligence and code-breaking operators during the war, the 

War Department employed several prominent mathematicians to develop 

codes to protect U.S. communications and read enemy transmissions. 

The most famous of these cryptologists, William Friedman, served for 

thirty-four years as a civilian and made contributions to the success of 

U.S. Army operations in both world wars.

Two decades after the end of the Great War, the Army civilian service reflected the broader changes in American government and military 

power and had evolved from Civil War–era clerks and bookkeepers into 

a professional force of engineers, weapons designers, statisticians, and 

code breakers. Two new laws also brought major changes. Accusations 

that federal employees had been coerced to donate money to political campaigns in 1938 led to passage in 1939 of “An Act to Prevent 

Pernicious Political Activities,” better known today as the Hatch Act, 

for sponsor Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico. The law, among its 

provisions, prohibited active participation in politics by civil servants 

and certain other federal employees. The following year, Congress 

passed “Extending the Classified Civil Service of the United States,” 
30

John Garand (left)

(Library of Congress)

John C. Garand was born in St. Remi, Quebec, in 1888 and moved 

with his family to the United States at the age of ten. He 

was the primary designer of the M1 rifle, also known as the 

Garand. The M1 rifle was a result of Garand’s experimentation 

and innovation for more than a decade as he strove to develop 

a rifle with the combination of firepower and portability that 

the world war had shown was needed. He was given a position in 

1919 as a consulting engineer at the Springfield Armory, in 

Springfield, Massachusetts. He became a U.S. citizen and rose 

to chief civilian engineer. Beginning in 1924, he worked for 

twelve years to improve the reliability of his experimental 

semiautomatic rifles, to increase the caliber of bullets 

they fired, and to ensure their dependability in all weather 

conditions. When his rifle was adopted by the U.S. Army in 

1936, it was the first semiautomatic shoulder-fired rifle to be 

fielded as the standard infantry weapon by a major world power. 

It featured a sophisticated gas-recoil design that allowed 

American soldiers to fire eight .30-caliber rounds before 

reloading. Garand's remarkable mechanical skill and singular 

determination also resulted in the design of the numerous tools, 

jigs, and gauges necessary for the mass production of the Garand 

rifle. For his work with the Springfield Armory, he was awarded 

the Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 1941 and the first 

Medal for Merit by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944. 

During the 1930s and 1940s, more than 6 million M1 Garand rifles 

were produced, equipping U.S. and Allied forces in every theater 

of World War II and the Korean War. He remained at Springfield 

Armory until his retirement in 1953. He died in 1974.
31

otherwise known as the Ramspeck Act, for sponsor Congressman Robert 

Ramspeck of Georgia. The act expanded competitive service to almost 

all non-policy-determining positions, including unskilled laborers, and 

banned discrimination within the federal government based on race, 

color, national origin, or creed (religion). 

From World War II to the 1970s

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 and began the 

conflict that would be known as World War II, 122,595 civilians worked 

for the Army, a majority of whom belonged to one of the technical 

services: Ordnance, Quartermaster, Signal, Engineer, and Medical. The 

following twenty-seven months until the 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl 

Harbor, Hawaii, was a period of tremendous growth in both military and 

civilian strength. By December 1941, the service’s civilian strength had 

increased to 320,291, surpassing the Post Office to become the largest 

employer in the federal government. To improve the management of this 

expanded force, a Civilian Personnel Division was established in the 

Office of the Secretary of War. 

Even before Pearl Harbor, the Army found itself in competition 

with the Navy and with industry for competent workers, and the service 

had to meet its ever-growing need for new personnel by hiring and then 

training people in a wide variety of skills. Apprentice programs had 

existed before 1941, but these now proved inadequate. In July 1941, the 

War Department issued its first policy on educating civilian employees. 

Among its provisions were that education should be conducted with the 

same care given to the training of soldiers; that it be a progressive system 

that included basic and advanced skills; and that it be flexible enough 

to take into consideration local conditions. Later that year, a director of 

civilian training was appointed in the Office of the Secretary of War, and 

similar positions were established in the office of each technical service 

and the Air Corps chief and in each of their major field organizations. 

Three months after the United States entered the war against Germany, 

Italy, and Japan, the War Department undertook a major reorganization in 

March 1942 that created three major commands: Army Ground Forces, 

Army Service Forces (ASF), and Army Air Forces (AAF). All technical 

and administrative services were placed under Army Service Forces, which 

meant that about 75 percent of civilian employees fell under ASF; almost all 

the rest worked for AAF. Five months later, the War Department delegated 

to the major commands authority to take final action on almost all civilian 

personnel transactions and directed that in turn they give this authority to 

their field establishments. A month later, Army Service Forces transferred 
32

technical services’ employees assigned to installations controlled by a 

service command from the ASF to the rolls of the service command—the 

most extensive decentralization of civilian personnel administration of any 

federal agency during the war. This change prompted the establishment of 

central personnel offices at the installation level.

The demands of waging a world war were immense and affected 

everyone. The War Department put almost all of its civilians on a wartime 

schedule of forty-eight hours per week and expanded the workforce 

to 908,000 in July 1942 and to 1,355,000 in July 1943. Appointments 

during the war were made on a “war service indefinite” basis—for the 

duration of the emergency plus an additional six months. Between 1943 

and mid-1945 the number of Americans in uniform continued to grow 

while the increasing intensity of operations produced greater casualties. 

These factors tightened the labor market even further. In response, the 

War Department Manpower Board was established to recommend specific 

manpower savings within the continental United States. For the remainder 

of the war, the board worked with ASF and AAF to make more efficient 

use of personnel. These efforts produced a modest drop in the number 

of civilian employees in the United States from the mid-1943 totals: to 

1,244,000 in July 1944 and to 1,138,000 in July 1945.

To accommodate the dramatic expansion of the Army’s workforce, 

the War Department required a new building. In September 1941, thenCol. Leslie J. Groves of the U.S. Army broke ground on an effort to 

provide much-needed centralized office space near Washington, D.C. 

This massive effort produced the Pentagon, constructed around the 

clock by thousands of men, which enabled the first employees to move 

into the 6.6 million-square-foot building in Virginia by April 1942. The 

structure was completed in January 1943, and at its peak in World War 

II it held about 33,000 workers. Groves went on to lead a more ambitious 

wartime project that would involve great numbers of highly skilled civilian professionals in the War Department—the Manhattan Project, which 

developed the atomic bomb.

At this time, the Army experienced great difficulties attracting and 

retaining employees, particularly since many male employees were 

drafted. Some installations were distant from population centers, and 

often there was a shortage of affordable housing nearby. Wages in industry 

were frequently higher, encouraging employees to leave government 

service. The shortage of skilled labor also prompted organizations within 

the Army to poach workers from each other. The Army’s response to these 

challenges had three main components: hiring an unprecedented number 

of women for positions usually filled by men before the war, improving 

working conditions, and expanding training programs.
33

In 1939, women constituted 12 percent of the War Department’s 

civilian employees. Two years later, they comprised 21 percent, and by 

1943, 34 percent. Though the number of civilian employees declined over 

the next two years, the percentage of women rose as the number of men 

in uniform continued to increase. In July 1944, 46 percent of employees 

were women; a year later the percentage was the same. The war opened a 

wide variety of positions to women. They worked as airplane mechanics 

in the Army Air Forces and over 1,000 served as civilian pilots, ferrying 

aircraft in the United States and towing targets.

Betty Murphy, a War Department stenographer in the 

kitchen of the Walsh Club for civilian war workers, 

Washington, D.C., March 1943

(Library of Congress)
34

At Ordnance Department facilities, women worked as tool-crib 

operators, weapons testers, forklift operators, and truck drivers. They 

also functioned as computers in the literal sense, that is, performing 

the calculations needed to prepare ballistic trajectory tables for artillery 

shells. Six of these women in 1945 were selected to work on the world’s 

first general-purpose electronic computer, ENIAC (Electronic Numeric 

Integrator and Computer), which was designed to perform the same 

calculations that the women had done. The six women thereby became 

the first computer programmers.

To retain workers, the War Department made efforts to improve 

working conditions in a variety of areas. Because so many supervisors 

were inexperienced, department officials instituted training programs to 

improve their management skills and also established grievance procedures. 

The War Department set aside a special space on the 

ground floor of its building for interviews and 

filling out job applications, June 1940.

(Library of Congress)
35

Workplace safety received greater attention as well. In the Army Service 

Forces, the accident rate declined from 12.3 injuries per million man-hours 

in 1943 to 6.3 in 1945. Installations offered assistance with matters outside 

the workplace by locating and building affordable housing, finding needed 

transportation, and convincing local businesses to extend their business 

hours. Many women employees had young children, so installations 

arranged for child care. After-work events such as picnics, dances, and 

sports helped to raise civilian morale. Likewise, employees received cash 

rewards for helpful suggestions that were adopted. Three awards were 

established in 1943 for satisfactory service and outstanding achievements.

The expansion of the workforce in 1942–1943 was accomplished in 

large part by hiring people without the abilities needed for their position. 

Therefore, the Army had to further augment its training programs, in both 

scale and scope, for civilian employees. When the size of the workforce 

declined after 1943, the focus shifted to improving the skills of existing 

employees. Training occurred both in the classroom and on-the-job and 

was conducted by other employees, by outside schools under contract 

to the Army, and by the manufacturers of materiel used by the Army.

Marlyn Wescoff (standing) and Ruth Lichterman wire 

the right side of ENIAC with a new program.

(U.S. Army)
36

William Coffee (right)

(National Security Agency)

William D. Coffee was born in 1917 in Abington, Virginia, and 

studied English at Knoxville College in Tennessee. In September 

1941, he was hired as a waiter at Arlington Hall School 

for Girls. The Army's cryptologic organization, the Signal 

Intelligence Service (later, the Signal Security Agency) soon 

acquired the property, and in June 1942 he was hired as a junior 

janitor. By April 1943, he was promoted to head messenger, 

and in June 1944 he was called on to recruit African American 

cryptologists to work at Arlington Hall. He brought on board 

about one hundred African Americans with proper qualifications 

for cryptologic activities. With this achievement, his title was 

changed to cryptologic clerk. In November 1944, he was promoted 

to assistant civilian-in-charge of a nineteen-person unit tasked 

to exploit nongovernmental coded messages originating from 

European, Asian, and Latin American countries. His roles and 

responsibilities continued to increase to include exploiting 

diplomatic codes of several countries and managing thirty people 

who worked in code identification and decoding, researching 

and analyzing unknown codes, and translating. In 1946, he 

was awarded the Commendation for Meritorious Civilian Service 

for his wartime leadership in exploiting critical enciphered 

messages (above). During the Cold War, Coffee's office became 

involved in an important transcription activity for which he 

became its officially recognized supervisor in 1947. In 1949, he 

joined the Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor of the 

National Security Agency, and then transitioned to NSA. He left 

NSA in 1972 and died in 1989.
37

The limits to American manpower as it fought another, larger world 

war forced the Army to employ greater numbers of foreign civilians to 

support the forces deployed around the globe: 149,000 by the end of 1943, 

377,000 a year later, and peaking at 680,000 in June 1945. While most 

worked as laborers, others were trained in a wide variety of professions 

from carpenters to clerks to doctors. Throughout the war, overseas commanders sought the cooperation of local authorities in procuring and 

administering civilian employees and, on the grounds of military necessity, treated them generally in accordance with local laws and customs 

instead of American civil service regulations. Even with the hiring of 

local labor during the war years, the Army still employed about 237,000 

American civilians overseas by the end of the war.

Although the postwar drawdown was rapid and steep, the demands 

of occupation duty and the Cold War prevented civilian strength from 

returning to prewar levels. By the start of the Korean War (1950–1953) 

in June 1950, the Army had 303,000 civil servants, close to three times 

the number it had in 1939, and the percentage of women in the workforce, 

while dropping from its wartime level, was still twice that of 1939. The 

Veterans Preference Act of 1944 had performed as intended; by 1950 

about 45 percent of Army employees were veterans. Another change 

was that in 1939 Army civil servants did not work in foreign countries 

(although some were overseas in U.S.-controlled territories); in 1950, 14 

percent were employed outside the continental United States, alongside 

about 20,000 noncitizens, almost all of whom were wage grade employees. 

The interwar period had brought other changes. The Civil Service 

Commission made permanent the wartime practice of delegating 

authority to agencies to act in individual personnel matters without prior 

commission approval. The commission ordered that open competitive 

examinations be held for postwar positions occupied by a wartime 

appointee, who could compete to retain that job but who often lost it to 

a returning veteran. When the National Security Act of 1947 created a 

separate Air Force, some 110,000 civilian positions were transferred to 

the new service. The same law established the Office of the Secretary of 

Defense, which soon began developing policies to standardize the three 

services’ civilian personnel programs.

Also in 1947, as the Cold War intensified, the administration of 

President Harry S. Truman set up a loyalty program that required the 

investigation of current and prospective federal employees. At first the 

undertaking had few procedural safeguards and frequently violated the 

rights of those being scrutinized. On a number of occasions the Army 

Security Review Board or federal courts found that Army employees had 

been dismissed because of unfounded accusations or guilt by association. 
38

Amory Waite (right) being presented a 

silver ice ax on his retirement.

(Naval History and Heritage Command)

Amory H. "Bud" Waite was born in 1902 in Newton, Massachusetts, 

and served in the U.S. Navy from 1919 to 1923. After leaving 

the Navy, he worked installing radio equipment in naval vessels 

while taking night classes at the Lowell Institute (presentday Massachusetts Institute of Technology), where he graduated 

in 1926 with a degree in radio and electrical engineering. 

As a member of R. Adm. Richard E. Byrd’s second Antarctic 

expedition, he gained national recognition as one of the three 

men who rescued Byrd from Bolling Advanced Base in Antarctica 

during the winter of 1934. After the Japanese attack on Pearl 

Harbor, Hawaii, on 7 December 1941, he became a civilian radio 

engineer with the U.S. Army Signal Corps. From then until 1965, 

he worked as an electrical engineer with the U.S. Army Signal 

Corps at the Coles Signal Laboratory, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. 

In 1944, he went to Europe to install radio-relay communication 

systems for the invasion of Normandy and was awarded the Bronze 

Star Medal for his work. In 1946, he was at Bikini Atoll in the 

Pacific Ocean to research the effects of atomic bombs on radio 

communications, and he ultimately was involved in fourteen 

nuclear weapons tests. From 1946 to 1965, he was the coordinator 

of the Antarctic and Arctic research teams for U.S. Army 

Electronics Command and participated in ten Antarctic and twelve 

Arctic expeditions. He developed a technique to measure the 

depth of ice using a radio altimeter. Cape Waite in Antarctica 

is named in his honor. He died in 1985.
39

The Dwight D. Eisenhower administration revised the program in 1953 

from looking for just the deliberately disloyal to identifying any employee 

who could threaten national security, including those open to coercion for 

such reasons as financial irresponsibility or homosexuality. This concept 

would govern employee screening for the remainder of the Cold War.

In response to the report of the Commission on Organization of the 

Executive Branch of the Government, Congress passed the Classification 

Act of 1949, which superseded the 1923 Classification Act. The new law 

consolidated all white-collar grade systems into the General Schedule 

(GS). It also established three new “supergrades,” GS–16 to GS–18, 

based on the commission’s finding that the existing pay structure made 

it increasingly difficult to attract high-caliber individuals to fill top-level 

executive, professional, and scientific positions. Initially, Congress limited 

the number of employees holding supergrades to 400 for the entire government and directed that the Civil Service Commission would decide which 

positions qualified for these grades. Agencies quickly took to lobbying 

Congress and pressuring the commission for additional positions. The 

Army had one supergrade employee in 1950; by 1965 it had 198.

The Korean War generated an increase in the number of civilian 

employees, which rose to 521,000 in 1951 and then to 543,000 in 1952. 

Concern over the effect of the military buildup on the U.S. economy led 

to a cut in the Army’s budget during the last year of the war, and civilian 

strength declined to 504,000 by June 1953. As during World War II, 

most of the new civilian positions were in the technical services, and 

career appointments were replaced by indefinite appointments—that 

is, appointments without a specified end-date; by the end of 1954 only 

49 percent of employees were in career status. Because the war did not 

entail a full-scale national mobilization, it did not fuel a major increase 

in the number of female employees similar to that in World War II. The 

war did stimulate an increase in the number of American civil servants 

and the number of direct-hire noncitizen employees working overseas. 

Additionally, thousands more foreign nationals worked for the Army 

overseas, their costs assumed by the host nation. 

The end of the Korean War and President Eisenhower’s “New Look” 

national security strategy brought steep cuts to the Army’s budget and 

authorized strength. The number of civil servants declined to 429,000 

by 1957 and to 390,000 in 1960. While a postwar program converted the 

force back to career status by 1956, the civilian force was insufficient to 

fully support all the Army’s activities, particularly installation operations. 

Overseas, much of this shortfall was covered by using noncitizens paid 

for by host nations. In the United States, many soldiers had to be detailed 

to post-support duties, which hurt troop morale and unit readiness.
40

During these years, the administration, Congress, and the Army 

sought to make the civil service more efficient and more attractive. 

Overseas positions were shifted from Schedule A excepted to competitive 

status, and Congress passed legislation providing reemployment rights in 

the United States for those who accepted an overseas posting. Congress 

also enacted the Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance Act, the 

Government Employees Training Act, the Federal Employees Health 

Benefits Act, and the Overseas Differentials and Allowances Act. The 

Civil Service Commission established the Federal Merit Promotion 

System. Within the Army, the Office of Civilian Personnel was transferred 

from the Office of the Secretary of the Army to the Office of the Deputy 

Chief of Staff for Personnel. The process of establishing career programs 

for different occupational areas began. Two new civilian decorations—the 

Meritorious Civilian Service Award and the Distinguished Civilian 

Service Award—were created to recognize superior performance. 

An Army civilian works with a Friden mechanical 

calculator at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, c. 1950s.

(Army Materiel Command)
41

Legal changes also affected Army civilians starting in the late 

1950s. From 1775, under the Articles of War and then the Uniform Code 

of Military Justice in 1951, the Army had exercised legal jurisdiction 

over civilians (both employees and soldiers’ dependents) accompanying 

its forces in the field, to include court-martial authority. In a series of 

decisions between 1957 and 1960, the Supreme Court ruled that this 

practice was unconstitutional. Thereafter, the Army had no means to 

punish civilian employees who committed crimes while serving overseas 

except for dismissal, until Congress passed the Military Extraterritorial 

Jurisdiction Act in 2000.

The rise in Communist- and nationalist-inspired unrest in the world 

concerned President John F. Kennedy. In the years of his brief administration, 1961–1963, he increased the size of the active Army; however, 

the Army’s civilian strength fell to 375,000. Most of this decline came 

from the decision to create new Department of Defense agencies—such 

as the Defense Supply Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the 

Defense Contract Audit Agency—which were assembled by transferring 

organizations from the military services to the new agencies. Additional 

cuts came from efforts to streamline the installation infrastructure by 

closing bases. 

Another major reorganization initiated by Secretary of Defense 

Robert S. McNamara was Project 80, which ordered the Army to review 

its functions, organizations, and procedures. The project, directed by civilian Deputy Comptroller of the Army Leonard W. Hoelscher, resulted in 

the elimination of five technical services (Quartermaster, Transportation, 

Signal, Chemical, and Ordnance) and their replacement by Army Materiel 

Command (AMC). The new command was built mostly by absorbing 

elements and personnel from the disestablished technical services, which 

meant that few civilian positions were lost by the change.

The new decade brought major changes to the civil service. 

Presidential executive orders directed that the federal government take 

affirmative action to ensure equality of opportunity for employees without 

regard to race. In the early 1960s, African Americans constituted 12.5 

percent of the Army’s civilian workforce, but they were disproportionately 

concentrated in the lower salary and wage grades. The Department of 

Defense and the Department of the Army instituted programs to comply 

with these orders and with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, both in hiring 

and promotion. By the early 1970s, the Army had adopted an equal 

opportunity action plan with numerical goals and timetables. The Federal 

Women’s Program (FWP), created in 1967 to implement an executive 

order that added sex to other prohibited forms of discrimination, sought to 

enhance the employment opportunities and advancement of women in the 
42

federal government. A subsequent 1969 executive order required federal 

agencies to take positive steps to ensure equal opportunity and integrated 

the FWP into the agency equal employment opportunity programs. 

Change also took place for Army civilians after they were hired. For 

example, a 1962 executive order had directed that federal employees had the 

right to join labor organizations, which could engage in limited collective 

bargaining. The Army’s civilian workforce quickly embraced this change; 

by mid-1968, it had more approved bargaining units than any other agency. 

In 1967, the Civil Service Commission established the Coordinated Federal 

Wage System to replace a confusing array of trades, labor occupations, and 

pay rates for wage grade employees that had developed over the previous 

century. The new system’s objective was to ensure that trade, craft, and 

laboring employees within a local wage area who performed the same 

duties received the same rate of pay. In 1972, Congress gave this system 

a statutory basis by creating the Federal Wage System. Soon after, many 

nonappropriated fund employees—that is, employees whose salaries are 

An Army civilian technician works on a tape drive 

for an IBM 7090 mainframe computer at Redstone 

Arsenal in 1962.

(Army Materiel Command)
43

not appropriated by Congress but instead generated by operations of an 

activity itself, such as a service club or a golf course—were also brought 

under the new system. 

Since 1950, full-time civilian technicians had become vital to reserve 

component readiness. Those working for Army Reserve units had always 

been federal employees, but those working for Army National Guard 

units, although paid for by the federal government, had been considered 

state employees with none of the protections and benefits provided by 

the federal civil service. To remedy this discrepancy, Congress passed 

the National Guard Technicians Act in 1968, converting them to federal 

civil servants.

In 1965, the civilian workforce began a rapid growth in concert with 

the deployment of ground combat troops to South Vietnam. This increase 

provided personnel both to directly support operations in Vietnam and 

to free up soldiers for overseas duty by replacing them with civilians in 

such areas as medical care, food service, administration, and transportation. By 1967, civilian strength had risen to 491,000, and to 503,000 by 

1969. Initially, much of this expansion used indefinite appointments, but 

to improve the quality of hires these positions were converted to fixedterm appointments in 1968. In Vietnam, the number of Army civilian 

employees quickly rose, peaking at over 600 in early 1969, augmented 

by specialists dispatched there on temporary duty for specific missions. 

The Army also hired large numbers of Vietnamese citizens; by mid-1969, 

there were 35,000. As American forces withdrew, the number of these 

employees declined, but they continued to have a key supporting role 

until the last units left in 1973.

Army civilians working in Vietnam provided a wide range of skills, 

none more important than aviation maintenance. Vietnam was the first 

conflict that employed helicopters extensively, and the military personnel 

system never was able to fully meet the demand for experienced aviation 

maintenance specialists. Therefore, units depended on Army civilians, 

assisted by contractors, for detailed technical expertise; at the height of 

the war in 1969, thirty-seven Army civilians were assigned to aviation 

units in Vietnam.

The 1970s were turbulent years for Army civilians. In addition to the 

aftermath of the Vietnam War, declining budgets, installation closures, 

and inactivation of some major headquarters led to cuts in the civilian 

workforce that left it at 347,000 by 1980. There were several large-scale 

organizational changes—most notably the division of Continental Army 

Command into U.S. Army Forces Command and U.S. Army Training 

and Doctrine Command—with attendant anxiety for many employees 

that their positions would be eliminated or moved to another location. 
44

In May 1941, Clifton W. Gray 

entered federal service as 

an explosives operator in 

the ammunition production 

facility at Savanna Ordnance 

Depot, in Savanna, Illinois. 

After working for two years 

as an explosives operator, he 

was assigned as an ammunition 

inspector. In 1946, he was 

transferred to Okinawa. 

During this tour, he was 

among the first Department of 

the Army civilians on Okinawa 

and the Philippines after 

the end of the war. He made 

significant contributions to 

the clean-up of ammunition 

and explosives after World 

War II. During the next 

thirty-three years, he held 

progressively more responsible 

positions at duty locations 

in the United States, France, 

Germany, Japan, Korea, and 

Vietnam. During this time, 

he served as an ammunition inspector and later a quality 

assurance specialist (ammunition surveillance). For the last 

twenty-eight years of his career, he served as the deputy 

chief or chief of ammunition surveillance (that is, quality 

assurance) organizations. Throughout his career, he mentored 

countless numbers of ammunition officers and noncommissioned 

officers. He retired in January 1980 and died in 2008.

This instability also created skill imbalances at U.S. installations, which 

aggravated the problems created by a workforce that declined much more 

than the workload placed on it. In October 1978, the Army established 

and activated the U.S. Army Civilian Personnel Center as a field operating 

agency under the deputy chief of staff for personnel. The purpose of the 

new center was to improve the management of the civilian workforce. 

The center, comparable to the Military Personnel Center, consolidated 

the functions, personnel, and equipment of the Civilian Personnel Field 

Operations Agency and Civilian Career Management Field Agency, 

which had been created in 1974 during a reorganization of Headquarters, 

Department of the Army (HQDA). 

Equal employment opportunity issues also affected the civilian 

workforce. The Army considered that it had a special obligation to 

Vietnam-era veterans and made a concerted effort to comply with the 

Clifton Gray

(U.S. Army Joint 

Munitions Command)
45

Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974. Also, the 

Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 made executive branch 

agencies subject to equal employment opportunity provisions in the 

Civil Rights Act of 1964. In response, the Army instituted policies and 

programs to comply with these requirements, both in regard to overall 

strength and in grades GS–12 and above. In the same period, a number of 

civilian employees sued the Army, alleging racial and sexual discrimination. By the end of fiscal year 1980, minorities comprised 18.8 percent 

of the total civilian workforce and women constituted 36.8 percent. In 

1975, the Civil Service Commission removed the ban on the employment 

of homosexuals. 

The most important development in this period was the far-reaching 

Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. The Civil Service Commission was 

abolished, and the Office of Personnel Management assumed oversight 

of government civilians. The act codified nine principles governing the 

merit system, defined prohibited personnel practices, and established the 

Merit Systems Protection Board to oversee the personnel system and to 

adjudicate complaints when an agency was alleged to have committed 

a prohibited personnel action. The board also had a special counsel to 

investigate charges of prohibited practices, including retaliation against 

whistleblowers. Another new agency, the Federal Labor Relations 

Authority, would deal with labor-management issues in federal agencies. 

The act also established the Senior Executive Service (SES) to 

replace the supergrades above GS–15. The SES would be an elite corps 

of top career executives, just below the level of the politically appointed 

officials, with a separate system of selection, evaluation, and pay. Unlike 

the supergrades, whose rank was tied to their position, members of the 

SES would carry their rank with them, making it easier for agencies to 

move them to wherever they were needed. By the end of fiscal year 1980, 

there were 275 members of the SES in the Army.

The government-wide rating system was eliminated in favor of 

directing each agency to develop its own employee performance appraisal 

system in which employee ratings would be based on specific criteria 

related to their jobs. New procedures were instituted for adverse personnel 

actions and for appealing them. The Equal Employment Opportunity 

Commission would now hear complaints involving discrimination and 

would be responsible for approving agency affirmative action plans. 

Moreover, the roles and responsibilities of employee labor unions were 

clarified regarding performance appraisals. A performance-based system 

for GS–12 to GS–15 manager and supervisor pay raises was instituted. 

Agencies were directed to conduct recruiting programs to help eliminate 

underrepresentation of minorities in the civil service.
46

From the End of the Cold War to 2015

By the 1980s, Department of the Army civilians had taken on additional 

missions to help maintain military readiness and defend the nation. In 

addition, new federal legislation, modifications in Department of Defense 

policies, and a number of Army initiatives and programs would combine to 

great effect. Civilians would become even more integral to Army operations 

in both peace and war. Significant changes in personnel management, pay 

and benefits, and training would increasingly turn Army civilians into a 

fully professional workforce that was integrated into the total Army team.

Edgar B. Vandiver III earned 

bachelor’s and master’s 

degrees in physics from the 

University of Missouri–

Columbia. From 1970 to 1974, 

he served as chief, Force 

Planning Division, Scientific 

Advisor’s Office, Office 

of the Assistant Chief of 

Staff for Force Development, 

Headquarters, Department 

of the Army. In 1977, he 

became technical adviser to 

the deputy chief of staff 

for operations and plans, 

HQDA. In 1979, he became 

a charter member of the 

Senior Executive Service. 

From 1993 until 2012, he 

was the director of the 

Center for Army Analysis and 

the senior analyst of the Army. 

As director, he led an agency 

consisting of 147 military 

officers and civilian employees 

that supported HQDA and Army major commands by examining the 

issues of greatest importance to Army leaders. The Center for 

Army Analysis conducts studies addressing a wide range of 

planning and force development concerns, while focusing on 

and maintaining special expertise in theater-level operations 

and Army-wide processes, especially those involving resource 

allocation. As the senior analyst of the Army, he mentored 

and advised other senior analysts on subjects affecting the 

entire Army and joint analysis community. He also led the 

Army international operations research cooperative engagement 

program with selected international partners. He retired from 

active federal service in 2013, with forty-four years’ service. 

Edgar Vandiver

(U.S. Army)
47

Speaking to Congress in 1980, Secretary of the Army Clifford L. 

Alexander and Chief of Staff General Edward C. Meyer emphasized the 

critical role Army civilians would have in Army operations in the first 

stages of the next war. Yet, General Meyer warned, the current strength 

of the civilian workforce was far below the level required and “the gap 

between required and available personnel could not be quickly closed by 

emergency augmentation plans.” Elected officials in Congress accepted 

that the reduction of civilian personnel had hurt Army readiness and 

authorized the growth of civilian strength throughout the decade. From 

358,900 employees in 1980, the Army civilian workforce rose to more 

than 487,852 before the end of the decade. 

The Army made the most of this increase in civilian employee 

strength by augmenting it with wide-ranging initiatives. For example, 

the Army developed and fielded the Army Automated Civilian Personnel 

System, which integrated Army civilian personnel data into the Army 

Mobilization Operations Planning and Execution System. Army civilians 

could now be organized and directed with the same speed and precision 

as their uniformed counterparts.

Another 1980s reform involved the professional training of civilians. The Army Civilian Training Education and Development System 

(ACTEDS) was introduced in September 1983, a program designed to 

identify high-potential employees at grades GS–12 and above and select 

them for intensive training and development programs. The system used 

a comprehensive approach to professional development and mixed practical work experience with grade-appropriate managerial and technical 

training. Twenty-four civilian career fields were enrolled in ACTEDS 

by the end of the decade.

Such efforts were a good start, but the Army struggled to maintain 

the pace of change and to unify its civilian oversight and training reform 

activities. In 1985, the Army’s inspector general found significant problems in the existing civilian personnel management system. In response, 

Army Chief of Staff General John A. Wickham Jr. directed Deputy Chief 

of Staff for Personnel Lt. Gen. Robert M. Elton to oversee improvements 

to the administration of the Army’s civilian workforce. The result of 

this effort, the Civilian Personnel Modernization Project, was unveiled 

in April 1986 and laid the foundation for the reforms that would follow 

in the next decade. 

As part of the project, the deputy chief of staff for personnel established the Army Management Staff College (AMSC) to provide training 

and professional development for mid-level civilian employees (GS–12 

to GS–14 and GM–13 and GM–14). The college, in short, was intended 

to serve as the equivalent of the U.S. Army Command and General 
48

Staff College for Army civilians. As such, prospective students would 

apply for the lengthy residential course where, in a seminar setting, they 

would receive a comprehensive program in the institutional and Title X 

functions of the Army and in subjects such as logistics and mobilization 

as well as managerial issues such as leadership and force development. 

In addition to reforming civilian management and professional 

development, the Army also sought to simplify civilian manager pay by 

making it easier to administer and provide performance incentives while 

preserving the General Schedule system. These efforts met with limited 

success. More fruitful was an overhaul of the civilian pension program. 

In June 1986, Congress established the Federal Employees’ Retirement 

System (FERS). FERS consists of three parts: social security, a basic 

plan to supplement social security, and an optional tax-deferred savings 

plan. The system required its members to pay social security taxes and 

contributions into the basic retirement plan. The optional tax-deferred 

savings plan, the Thrift Savings Plan, became effective in April 1987. 

In 1986, the Army also instituted a program of drug testing in four 

critical job categories: aviation, law enforcement, safekeeping of chemical 

and nuclear materials, and clinical and control staff for Army drug and 

alcohol prevention. The undertaking, although intended to safeguard 

the health and welfare of its civilian workforce, initially met with some 

controversy and was challenged in the federal courts. At first, the Army’s 

drug testing program was declared unconstitutional in a lower federal 

court but was later upheld in 1989 and implemented that same year. 

In the 1990s, the Army continued to build on the professional development initiatives that were started in the previous decade. On 10 April 

1990, Army Chief of Staff General Carl E. Vuono approved the Army 

Civilian Leader Development Action Plan. This was a comprehensive 

program designed to bring civilian leader development more in line 

with what the service provided to uniformed officers and noncommissioned officers. The Center for Army Leadership (CAL) and the Army 

Management Staff College designed and delivered the centrally managed, 

mandatory leader training courses. CAL offered formal training at three 

career stages; intern, supervisor, and manager. The AMSC provided the 

Army’s civilian capstone course for leader development. In April 1992, 

the U.S. Army Personnel Command mandated completion of both the 

Basic Supervisory Development Course and the Leadership Education 

and Development Course by all supervisors of civilian employees and 

implemented a new procedure for the competitive selection of individuals 

to attend the AMSC.

In addition to making Army civilian professional development 

more comprehensive and competitive, the Army was granted a measure 
49

of flexibility in hiring and compensation as a result of the Federal 

Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 (FEPCA). The act included 

several provisions that came out of the Army’s Civilian Personnel 

Modernization Project and brought about a significant change in the 

white-collar pay system. The FEPCA authorized basic pay above the 

General Schedule minimum—known as advanced in-hire rates—for 

new employees with superior qualifications for all positions, rather 

than the previous limit of GS–11 and above. It also allowed recruiting, 

relocation, and retention allowances as well as providing for locality 

pay adjustments. These tools gave managers the flexibility to recruit 

more qualified applicants and helped ensure the retention of high-quality 

employees with diverse skills.

The Army reaped the benefits of its training and management 

reforms after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and throughout the following decade. During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 

1990–1991, more than 1,600 civilian logisticians deployed to provide 

critical services to the Army units in the Persian Gulf. Army civilians 

set up depots, repaired and transported heavy equipment and aircraft, 

ran water purification units, furnished technical expertise, and helped 

process the countless tons of supplies required to wage a successful 

campaign. They also rendered important logistical support during 

Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1993, Operation Uphold 

Democracy in Haiti from 1994–1995, and Operation Joint Endeavor

in Bosnia in 1995. The vital roles that Army civilians played in 

these deployments led the Department of Defense and the Army to 

reexamine civilian personnel deployment policies and doctrine. The 

results of these efforts would be codified in regulations and policies 

in the next decade.

In 1993, the Army established the Total Army Performance 

Evaluation System (TAPES), similar to the Officer Evaluation Report 

system used to record the performance of uniformed officers. Employees 

developed written performance plans that documented objectives based 

on organizational missions and goals while reflecting the duties and 

responsibilities listed in their job descriptions. These performance plans 

consisted of responsibilities, professional standards, and individual 

job-related expectations set forth during formal counseling. Civilian 

employees could now be evaluated according to their assigned role in 

accomplishing the mission of their unit or organization in the same 

manner as their uniformed colleagues. The TAPES also provided “an 

environment where all understand that they are important members of 

the Army Team” and were “challenged to develop professionally and 

to perform at their full potential.”
50

In May 1996, Army Chief of Staff General Dennis J. Reimer 

published a white paper that emphasized the importance of the Army 

civilian workforce. General Reimer wrote that Army civilians were a 

great resource, possessing “tremendous ability and expertise.” Thereafter, 

he pointedly integrated civilian employee development into his plans 

to modernize the Army for the next century. He created the Civilian 

Personnel Management XXI concept to develop a civilian personnel 

system to support these programs. Under this proposal, the Army 

reviewed civilian personnel authorities and requirements to determine 

the lowest level to which they could be delegated and sought to modify 

Pallets and containers of equipment sit in a logistical 

support area during Operation Desert Shield (2 August 

1990–17 January 1991). During Operations Desert Shield

and Desert Storm, more than 1,000 civilians from Army 

Materiel Command set up major depot operations, 

while other AMC civilians purchased, transported, 

and maintained personal supplies, combat materiel, 

and spare parts; established water purification and 

distribution systems; and offered technical assistance 

on the operation of weapons and equipment.

(Army Materiel Command)
51

civilian professional development and evaluation programs to more 

closely mirror the military system.

Unfortunately, reform activities in the 1990s were complicated and 

often overwhelmed by the daunting efforts to manage the personnel 

drawdown mandated by Congress at the end of the Cold War. In January 

1990, the Office of the Secretary of Defense imposed a total civilian hiring 

freeze. The Army reduced its civilian strength by 22,500 during fiscal year 

1990 and by an additional 14,900 in the following year. Further decreases 

resulted from force structure downsizing, base consolidations or closures, 

and extension of the hiring freeze for additional years. Civilian personnel 

strength declined from 365,500 to 333,600 during fiscal year 1992, the 

largest reduction since the end of the Vietnam War. The number of Army 

civilians dropped from 376,000 in fiscal year 1989 to 223,300 in fiscal 

year 2000, a decline of nearly 45 percent. This decrease also affected the 

age and experience of the Army’s civilian workforce. The average age of a 

civilian employee went from 43 to 47 years old and average time of service 

rose from 13.5 to 17.4 years, reflecting an older, top-heavy workforce.

The Army sought to avoid using a reduction in force (RIF) by providing 

outplacement employment assistance and making full use of Voluntary 

Early Retirement Authority. This initiative allowed employees to choose 

early retirement with a reduced annuity if they met program requirements 

for age and length of service. Voluntary separation incentives, the successful placement of surplus employees through the DOD Priority Placement 

Program, and vigorous outplacement initiatives established at the installation level made it possible to keep involuntary separations to a minimum. 

The reduction in strength did not lead to a decrease in mission 

requirements. Civilian employees still formed the backbone of Army 

depot and logistical operations. The refusal of Congress to approve 

additional base closures exacerbated the problem by preventing the 

realignment of the remaining employees into more active posts and 

around high-priority missions. Contracted labor was used increasingly to 

fill the gaps in support. More frequently, Department of the Army civilians made policy and management decisions, and contractors executed 

them. As one Army historian explained, “Contractors became a shadow 

workforce, backfilling government employees they had replaced and 

often demonstrating considerable job stability. Indeed, an iconic figure 

of the time was the civilian, soldier, or noncommissioned officer who 

terminated his government employment one day and came back to the 

same position as a contractor the next.” This outsourcing of labor and 

expertise would become increasingly controversial and expensive in 

the years ahead. Based on Office of Management and Budget Circular 

A–76 issued in 1983, the belief that the private sector could do most 
52

government jobs better and cheaper became widespread, along with a 

push for the Army to use contractors whenever possible. In recognition 

of the principle that “the competitive enterprise system, characterized 

by individual freedom and initiative, is the primary source of national 

economic growth,” Circular A–76 stated that it was “the general policy 

of the Government to rely on commercial sources to supply the products 

and services the Government needs.”

The new century would bring new challenges to the Army’s civilian 

workforce. Increasingly, the nation’s enemies targeted the U.S. homeland, 

and all who served in defense of the republic would face this new threat. 

The civilian employees of the U.S. Army found themselves in the direct 

line of fire on the morning of 11 September 2001, when al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airliners and crashed two of them into the World Trade 

Center in New York City and one into the west side of the Pentagon. 

Forty-six Department of the Army civilians perished in the Pentagon 

Joel B. Hudson began 

working for the Army as a 

management analyst in the 

Office of the Assistant 

Chief of Staff, Comptroller, 

at Fort Eustis, Virginia, 

in 1962, and was chief of 

the Management Improvement 

Branch of the Office of 

the Deputy Chief of Staff, 

Resource Management, in 

1973–1975. From 1975 to 

1978, he became deputy 

director of studies and 

analyses on the staff of the 

Office of the Administrative 

Assistant to the Secretary 

of the Army; in 1978–1989, 

he was director of plans 

and projects in Washington; 

from 1989 to 1995, he served as 

director of policy and plans/safety, 

security, and support services; 

and from 1995 to 1996, he was 

deputy administrative assistant 

to the secretary of the Army. In 1996, Hudson was appointed 

administrative assistant to the secretary of the Army. In 

this position, he was responsible for administrative support 

to Headquarters, Department of the Army, and for logistical, 

personnel, and communications assistance to the Department of 

Defense in the Washington area. He received the Presidential 

Meritorious Rank Award in 2000, and the Presidential 

Distinguished Rank Award in 2003. He retired from civilian 

service in 2004.

Joel Hudson

(U.S. Army)
53

The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 

brought war directly to Headquarters, Department 

of the Army, in the Pentagon. Top: the collapsed 

section of the Pentagon between fourth and fifth 

corridors; bottom: the scene in the Pentagon’s 

South Parking lot. (Both Department of Defense)
54

and many more were injured. Seventy-seven HQDA civilians were 

decorated for their actions that fateful morning. There were several acts 

of selfless service performed that day and many Army civilians risked 

their lives to help save others and give aid to their injured comrades. 

As James H. Schwartz, assistant chief of operations for the Arlington 

County Fire Department, stated, “Truly heroic acts were exhibited on 

the parts of both military and civilian personnel who were employed at 

the Pentagon, who saved far more lives in those first minutes . . . than 

we saved in that incident.”

The nation now found itself at war, and the work done by the Army 

to strengthen and improve the professional management and training of 

its civilian labor force would be put to the test in Operation Enduring 

Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq. As was 

the case in the Gulf War nearly a decade before, Army civilians would 

be called on to provide a wide range of services and logistical support to 

forces deployed for combat overseas. However, the nature of combat in 

this war proved to be different from that encountered during Operation 

Desert Storm over twenty years earlier. The focus soon shifted from 

fighting enemy combat units to counterinsurgency operations in which 

identifying the enemy was the first problem. There were no longer any 

front lines or secure rear areas from which to operate. This fact, along 

with lessons learned from the Gulf War, caused the Defense Department 

to issue new guidelines on the employment of civilian employees in a 

theater of war.

In 2003, the Department of Defense reaffirmed Directive (DODD) 

1400.31, Civilian Workforce Contingency and Emergency Planning and 

Execution, providing joint guidance on the incorporation of the civilian 

workforce into war plans and overseas contingency operations. The 

directive stated that the services had to support deployed civilians “in 

the same manner as military personnel . . . as permissible by law and/or 

existing status of forces agreements with foreign nations.” The next 

year, the Army combined this instruction with lessons learned from the 

Gulf War to inform a revision of Army Regulation 690–11, Use and 

Management of Civilian Personnel in Support of Military Contingency 

Operations. This document assigned responsibility to the Army deputy 

chief of staff, G–1, for establishing policy and providing guidance for 

issues that impacted deployed Army civilians. The Army deputy chief 

of staff, G–3/5/7, was directed to add emergency-essential employees to 

unit manning records. Commanders at all levels became responsible for 

tracking and reporting the status of their deployed civilians. The regulation also listed the entitlements granted to deployed Army civilians, such 

as medical care, authorized equipment and clothing, and specialized 
55

training. In the future, Army civilians would be integrated into the total 

Army team. As part of this commitment, a new initiative to strengthen 

civilian professionalism and provide continuity and stability for the force, 

named the Army Civilian Corps, was created in June 2006 under the 

guidance of Secretary of the Army Francis J. Harvey “to unify the Army 

civilian service.” The Army Civilian Corps Creed was published at this 

time as a statement of values and intent. 

The number of Army civilians increased with the growing demands 

of an Army at war. By 2008, the Army employed 261,488 civilians. 

This included 7,553 directly hired foreign nationals and 16,649 foreign 

nationals employed through agreements with host nations. However, 

the Army still employed contractors to provide vital assistance to 

forces deployed overseas. The innovative Logistics Civil Augmentation 

Program allowed the Army to quickly employ contractors to fill critical support requirements on a temporary basis. This flexibility proved 

valuable in satisfying the shifting requirements of an Army waging a 

counterinsurgency. While contractors worked alongside their civilian 

counterparts in sustaining the force, Army civilians continued to serve 

on staffs at all echelons and operate the depots, maneuver training areas, 

ports, and mobilization stations.

The escalating expense of contractor support and a series of abuses 

perpetrated by security and logistical contract organizations operating 

in the Balkans and Iraq led Congress to reassess contractors’ roles and 

governance. In the Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization 

Act, Congress directed the Defense Department to consider converting 

functions performed by contractors to Army civilian positions, a process 

termed in-sourcing. Congress further instructed the Defense Department 

to return “inherently governmental” tasks that had been delegated to 

contractors back to accountable Army civilians. The wars in Iraq and 

Afghanistan made clear that the Army would need both Army civilians 

and contractors to sustain its forces overseas. However, Army civilians 

often proved to be more cost effective and accountable. They also demonstrated that they were adaptable in the face of new requirements and 

unexpected challenges.

Early in his tenure, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had 

determined that the increasingly specialized demands being placed 

on civilian employees required the department to reform the oversight 

of its diverse workforce. The National Defense Authorization Act of 

Fiscal Year 2004 authorized the Defense Department to implement a 

performance-based compensation and personnel management system. 

That same year, the Defense Department established the National Security 

Personnel System (NSPS). NSPS was a comprehensive initiative designed 
56

to provide “greater flexibility in hiring and compensating employees.” The 

fifteen grades on the GS pay scale were replaced by three “pay bands,” 

and employees would receive pay raises and performance bonuses based 

on the achievement of collaboratively derived, written performance 

objectives. Like previous attempts to install a merit pay system, NSPS 

encountered resistance from federal employee unions and other internal 

stakeholders that delayed its implementation. The system was criticized 

for inconsistent application and pay inequities across the new pay bands. 

Many managers also found the NSPS too cumbersome and a burdensome 

Kathryn A. Condon received 

a bachelor's degree from 

the University of Rochester 

and a master's degree in 

business administration 

from Syracuse University. 

She began her Army career 

as a management analyst at 

the United States Military 

Academy in 1986. She then 

moved through progressively 

more responsible management 

and program analyst positions 

in Headquarters, Department 

of the Army, and was selected 

for the Senior Executive 

Service in September 1997. 

Her initial assignment from 

1997 to 2000 was as special 

assistant for resources 

and military support in the Office 

of the Assistant Secretary of the 

Army (Installations and Environment), 

Washington, D.C. From 2000 to 2003, 

she was the interagency coordinator 

for military support to civil authorities, Office of the 

Secretary of the Army, Washington, D.C. In 2003, she became the 

first civilian assistant deputy chief of staff for operations, 

G–3/5/7, on the Army Staff, where she remained until 2006. She 

then served as the civilian deputy to the commanding general, 

Army Materiel Command, until 2009. In that capacity, she 

oversaw more than 50,000 employees in more than forty states and 

thirty-eight countries. During 2009–2010, she served as special 

assistant to the under secretary of the Army. She became the 

executive director of the Army National Cemeteries Program in 

June 2010. Her leadership at Arlington National Cemetery led to 

the correction of significant problems at the cemetery and the 

creation of processes to ensure that previous mistakes were not 

repeated. She retired from federal service in 2013 after thirty 

years of public service.

Kathryn Condon

(U.S. Army)
57

drain on scarce time and resources. In the face of growing opposition 

and institutional challenges, Congress terminated the NSPS as a part of 

the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2010. 

Efforts to shape professional development opportunities for Army 

civilians were more successful. In 2008, Secretary of the Army Pete 

Geren and Army Chief of Staff General George W. Casey Jr. chartered the 

Army University. After a series of funding delays, the Army University 

was established on 7 July 2015. The school was organized like the central 

institution of a state university system. Its mission was to provide centralized management and resourcing for the seventy Training and Doctrine 

Command school programs that train both soldiers and Army civilians. 

The purpose of the Army University, according to Secretary of the Army 

Army Chief of Staff General Raymond T. Odierno talks 

with civilian helicopter mechanic Robby Cain during 

a tour of the Aviation Center Logistics Command, Fort 

Rucker, Alabama, 1 April 2013.

(U.S. Army)
58

John M. McHugh, was to “educate and develop Soldiers and Civilians to 

grow the intellectual capacity to understand the complex contemporary 

security environment to better lead Army, Joint, Interagency, and multinational task forces and teams.”

In 2011, Secretary McHugh ordered a review of the Army civilian 

personnel management system and ACTEDS, a process called the Army 

Civilian Workforce Transformation initiative. Its purpose was to increase 

the training and professional competence of the civilian workforce. One 

of the project’s major accomplishments was the establishment of a career 

program for all civilian occupational specialties. All Army professionals 

would now have a career path with codified performance and training 

goals to mark and guide their professional development. The Army civilian was recognized as a valuable asset, and the service committed itself to 

improving the quality and professional competence of its civilian cohort. 

A striking example of the dedication and commitment of Army civilians 

is that of John Bruce Jr., who began his military service in the U.S. Army 

Signal Corps in 1942 and then in 1946 started his civilian career at the 

Detroit Arsenal under the Tank and Automotive Command. In 2011, he 

retired in his nineties after sixty-nine years of service in acquisitions and 

contracting. While the length of Bruce’s service is unusual, the depth of 

his dedication to the Army is typical of his civilian colleagues—testimony 

indeed to Army civilians!

For more than a century, and particularly since the end of the Vietnam 

War, the professional training and management of Army civilians has 

moved in the direction of their uniformed counterparts. The result has 

been the creation of a specialized workforce of skilled professionals who 

are programmatically linked to the operational, logistical, and administrative needs of the Army. Today, when women and men become one 

of the more than 330,000 U.S. Army civilians, they know that they are 

joining the Army and will perform work that is essential to the health 

of the service.

Army civilians support the nation, the Army, and its soldiers in 

times of war and peace. They are part of the total force supporting the 

Army’s worldwide mission in what former Army Secretary Geren called 

“a diverse and complex environment.” The Army will continue to rely on 

civilians to be creative and strategic thinkers, confident and competent 

decision-makers, and educated professionals in demanding times.
59

William M. Donnelly is a senior historian and the author of 

Transforming an Army at War: Designing the Modular Force, 1993–2005

(2007) and Under Army Orders: The Army National Guard during the 

Korean War (2001), as well as “Bilko’s Army: A Crisis in Command?” 

Journal of Military History (October 2011). He was commissioned in 

the U.S. Army and deployed to the Persian Gulf for Operation Desert 

Storm. After he earned a Ph.D. in history from Ohio State University, he 

became an Army civilian in 1999 when he joined the U.S. Army Center 

of Military History (CMH).

Stephen W. Lehman is a senior historian and oversees CMH’s oral 

history program. He holds a master’s degree in national security studies 

from Georgetown University. He served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 

1975 to 1995. He became an Army term employee in 2003 and a GS 

civilian employee in 2007. He joined CMH in 2010. He is a graduate of 

the Army Civilian Education System (CES) Advanced Course.

Stephen J. Lofgren is the chief of the Historical Support Branch. 

He is the author of U.S. Army Guide to Oral History (2006) and editor of 

Then Came the Fire: Personal Accounts from the Pentagon, 11 September 

2001 (2011). He received a master’s degree in history from American 

University and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Management Staff College. 

He became an Army civilian when he joined CMH in 1987. 

John R. Maass is the author of Defending a New Nation, 1783–1811

(2013) and The Petersburg and Appomattox Campaigns, 1864–1865

(2015), as well as The Road to Yorktown: Jefferson, Lafayette and the 

British Invasion of Virginia (2015). He served in the U.S. Army Reserve in 

1988–1992 and later earned a Ph.D. in history from Ohio State University. 

He became an Army civilian in 2007 when he joined CMH. 

Robert M. Mages was commissioned in the U.S. Army and 

served with the 1st Infantry Division in the Persian Gulf in Operation 

Desert Storm. He earned a master’s degree in European history from 

Washington State University. After working as an operations research 

CONTRIBUTORS
60

analyst for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, he became an Army 

civilian in 2005 and served as the chief of the oral history program at the 

U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. 

In 2011, he joined CMH. He is the general editor of The Sergeants Major 

of the Army (2013). 

Eric B. Setzekorn is the author of “Eisenhower’s Mutual Security 

Program: Taiwan as a ‘Strategic Bargain,’” Journal of American-East 

Asian Relations (Spring 2016), and “Chinese Imperialism, Ethnic 

Cleansing and Military History, 1850–1877,” Journal of Chinese Military 

History (Spring 2015). After serving in the U.S. Army, he earned a Ph.D. 

in history from George Washington University and became an Army 

civilian when he joined CMH in 2015. He is a graduate of the Army 

CES Intermediate Course.
Cover: A 1998 class of the Army Management Staff College at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, 

captures the diversity of Army civilians 

at the end of the twentieth century. (U.S. Army)
PIN : 200285–000