Written by Todd DePastino
An army may march on its stomach, as Napoleon supposedly said, but it functions on its paperwork.
Modern armies are large bureaucracies, and keeping track of who and what is where requires an army-within-an-army of clerks and record keepers.
From 1912 to 1974, the US Army accounted for its personnel through the “Morning Report,” the daily building block of a vast network of files that tracked the day-to-day status of various units.
Bill Bonnamy’s 319gliderman.com website, which archives everything related to the WWII 319th Glider Field Artillery of the 82nd Airborne Division, has an excellent introduction to and decyphering code for Company Morning Reports.
As the name suggests, Company Morning Reports were reports produced every morning in Army units relating to personnel matters. These morning reports were usually written by the company clerk who signed off on then by the company commander. These reports detail on a daily basis who is present for duty, army personnel who are on leave, detached duty, in the hospital, those who have been promoted or disciplined and offer much more information.
Information is as much the lifeblood of the military as bullets and rations. Every order given is information based on other information, whether of enemy positions or movements or the status of one’s own forces. Reports convey essential data to soldiers, NCOs, officers, and generals. Reports form the basis of critical decisions. The Morning Report evaluates the operational status of every unit, documenting who is wounded, deceased, transferred, reassigned, demoted, or otherwise unavailable. For this reason, Morning Reports are classified material.
Morning Reports are as boring and turgid as any written matter, but the information they hold can be treasures, not only to commanding officers and headquarters, but to modern-day military records researchers.
Of special value on the 319 Gliderman site is the sample Report and code table, breaking down how to read the various abbreviations used.
Morning Reports can help individuals searching for family members in the military records, especially those veterans whose records were damaged or destroyed in the 1973 NPRC fire. Researchers who have despaired ever locating the files of individual soldiers have been overjoyed to find their veteran mentioned in Morning Reports.
Most critically, Morning Reports can be used to determine eligibility for VA and other benefits when information is missing from a Official Military Personnel File (OMPF).
That is why it was such big news when Stars and Stripes recently reported that the National Archives will soon provide digital access to the Morning Reports of Army units in 1943-1945. Before digitization, these records were only available onsite on microfilm at the National Archives facility in St. Louis.
Morning Reports were only filed by Army and Air Force units. How the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard kept tracked of their personnel, I don’t know.
Morning Reports eventually went the way of all analog systems. According to the National Archives, the Air Force discontinued the use of morning reports in 1966, and the Army followed suit in 1974. Instead of typewritten reports, these branches used something called the Standard Installation and Division Personnel Reporting System (SIDPERS).
Then, in 2009, the Department of Defense rolled out the Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System (DIMHRS) to keep track of their members. It was the largest human resources program ever created and attempted to bring all payroll and personnel functions for all branches into one system. It was a disaster whose story awaits a full telling.
Top image: “RUM AND COKE,” A FELINE VETERAN OF SAIPAN, AND ONE OF THE MASCOTS OF THE 364TH AIR SERVICE GROUP, PROVES A PLAYFUL PAPER WEIGHT AS 1ST SGT. JOHN PAVESICK OF MCDONALD, OHIO, TYPES HIS MORNING REPORT AT AN IMPROVISED DESK IN THE SHADE OF A TREE ON IE SHIMA, RYUKYU RETTO, 5/2/1945. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES IDENTIFIER 193706428)
