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The greatest waste of all resulted from the frenzy to "bring the boys home" in 1945. Said Army Chief of Staff Joseph Lawton Collins: "The haste of demobilization was such that troops virtually had to walk off and leave their equipment." They abandoned billions of dollars' worth of equipment overseas to be given away, stolen or left to rot. In Manila harbor, an entire shipment of small arms was dumped into the sea; in Germany, whole fields of planes were dynamited. At home, even items that could be easily stored—and that would have proved useful today (such as clothing)—were declared surplus.*
The Navy managed to provide somewhat better for its future, chiefly because ships could be sailed back to the U.S. before the crews were demobilized. Thus, the Navy was able to mothball 2,027 ships, for the small cost of $173 million. The Army did succeed in storing $15 billion worth of ammunition, tanks, trucks, etc., according to its estimates. But whether it had that much was questionable. Army records, for example, showed 25,000 tanks on hand at war's end; but when the Army looked for the tanks, it could find only 16,000. And some of the stored material (e.g., communication equipment) turned out to be rotted when it was sent into battle in Korea.
Said New Hampshire's Senator Styles Bridges of the Senate's Armed Services Committee: "The haste to declare things surplus was one of the very tragic things that went on in this country . . . Specific items of military equipment might become outmoded, but basic material (e.g., uniforms, underclothes) could have been stored easily and would be just as good now as then. We had the supply and equipment for 128 divisions at the end of the war, and look where we are now."
HOW COSTS ROSE
Though the winding up of World War II took the biggest single slice of postwar military spending, the services still had $48 billion left. Where did that money go?
The bulk of it (before Korea) went for "housekeeping" expenses, i.e., the basic needs of military life. Out of
every defense dollar, 40¢ went for pay, food, clothing and transportation. And for the military, as for every other housekeeper, the cost of living has been bouncing higher almost every day. Examples:
¶A G.I.'s daily rations used to cost 43¢; now the bill comes to nearly $1 a day.
¶A flannel shirt which cost only $3.68 ten years ago, now costs $5.47; cotton khaki trousers which used to cost $2.25, now cost more than $4; boots priced at $3.66 in 1940 now list at $6.84.
¶At the start of World War II, clothing and equipping a recruit cost $122; now it comes to $377.
¶Maintaining an individual soldier for one year now costs $5,300—more than four times what it cost just before World War II.