The American Army served in the Persian Corridor just over four years. In
November 1941 officers of the U.S. Military Iranian Mission reached Basra. On
the last day of 1945, not regretfully, the remnant of, what was then called
the Persian Gulf Service Command sailed away from Khorramshahr. Behind them
the forces of Britain and the USSR remained in uneasy watchfulness while in
the chancelleries of Moscow and London diplomats debated what date the
Tri-Partite Treaty had appointed for Anglo-Soviet evacuation. Soviet
reluctance to leave, discussed at Moscow in December by the American Secretary
of State, combined with the revolt in Azerbaijan against Iran's authority the
next spring to rock the United Nations with its first major crisis. But the
departing American service troops, whose country was not a signatory to the
treaty, were content to be the first to go. Argument was not their business.
Their mission was to supply Russia, and their mission was completed.1
The period of American service in the Corridor falls into two phases. The
first was characterized by the purely auxiliary status of the Americans, who
performed construction and industrial tasks nominated by the British. These
were connected with maintenance of the British line of communications and with
fulfillment of the British commitment to deliver supplies to the USSR. In
September 1942, only a few days more than a year after the President's Middle
East Directive was signed, the Combined Chiefs of Staff ushered in the second
phase by assigning to the United States direct responsibility for moving an
ever increasing flow of supplies through the Persian Corridor to the Soviet
Union.2 In October 1942, almost exactly a year from the date of the Letter of
Instructions given to General Wheeler, Maj. Gen. Donald H. Connolly arrived in
Iraq to assume command of the ex-
[28]

panded supply forces required to carry out the Combined Chiefs' directive.
There followed some months of transition during which, while the Americans
developed their Motor Transport Service and gradually militarized their
construction and assembly activities, the British handed over operation of the
railway from Tehran to the Gulf and of certain ports, and delegated numerous
other responsibilities which had remained in their hands the first year. By 1
May 1943, with American assumption of effective control of movements which
concerned American operations within the British zone, the transition to
co-ordinate status in transport was completed. The narratives of the two
phases unavoidably overlap, inasmuch as activities originating in the first
survived into the second, while some activities functionally identified with
the second phase actually began in the earlier period.

Wheels Within Wheels

There is something almost too neat, too precise, in the fact that the first
phase of the American effort ended one year after it began. The calendar
suggests a well planned and executed timetable, but nothing could be farther
from actuality. The first year was marked by uncertainties, contradictions,
false starts and reversals, improvisation, and experimentation. Planning and
foresight often proved discouragingly futile. It was a year of confusion.
When General Wheeler reached Baghdad on 30 November 1941 to establish his
headquarters there near the headquarters of the British General Officer
Commanding, Iraq, all of the elements which were to complicate the American
task were already in being. First were those already detailed: the involved
relationships of the British, Soviets, Iranians, and Americans, and the
procedural difficulties in delivering supplies to the USSR. But there were
also questions as to the American task itself: what it was; when, where, how,
and by whom it was to be performed. So many and varied were the factors
governing the answers to these questions that an entire year passed before a
clear-cut program evolved.

Numerous policy papers were produced in Washington to guide early planning,
but these, widely separated from the practical realities in the field, seem
oddly irrelevant when inspected among the archives. There is the War
Department message of 11 September referred to in the previous chapter. It
listed objectives for American aid to Great Britain in the Middle East as
follows: provision for the assembly, storage, overhaul, and repair of American
aviation, ordnance, quartermaster, and signals equipment furnished to British
forces in the Middle
[29]

East; provision in depots for instruction centers to train British personnel
in the operation and repair of American equipment, with necessary housing; and
expansion or construction of necessary port, rail, and highway transportation
facilities.

In addition the message stipulated that the establishment and operation of all
depots and transportation facilities be by American private contractors and
American civilian personnel. All of these provisions were incorporated in the
Middle East Directive two days later, and reappeared in the War Plans
Division's specifications for the Iranian Mission dated 24 September. This
paper listed mission functions as follows: the study of British and Russian
operational methods and tactics in desert country; the exchange of information
and experimental equipment regarding new design, as influenced by terrain and
climate; the testing and observation of American equipment in actual
campaigns; the training of British and Russian personnel in the operation and
maintenance of American equipment; the representing of the War Department in
matters pertaining to lend-lease, especially in the supervision of supply and
maintenance of equipment which would include adequate dockage, transportation,
and depot facilities.

The Secretary of War's Letter of Instructions to General Wheeler, dated 21
October, was even broader. It authorized Wheeler to represent the War
Department in the area and to administer and co-ordinate all War Department
matters pertaining to the area; to command all military personnel, and to
direct, control, and supervise all civilian personnel assigned or attached to
the mission; to control and supervise American or other companies or agencies
engaged under contract to further execution of the mission's functions; to
establish and operate essential port, transportation, storage, assembly,
maintenance, and training facilities "subject to the approval of requests for
lend-lease assistance submitted by foreign governments"; to advise and assist
the British, Russian, and other friendly governments in obtaining appropriate
military defense aid as contemplated in the Lend-Lease Act, and to assure the
most effective and economic use of such aid; to study operational methods to
facilitate the use of American equipment in any future American operations;
and to advise and assist the British, Russian, and other friendly governments
in all phases of procurement, transport, and maintenance of United States
materials, equipment, and munitions requisite to the prosecution of their
military effort, and to advise and assist them in the training of their
personnel in the use and maintenance of American equipment.

The several statements of objectives and duties should be taken as indicating
not so much a considered program as an attempt to an-
[30]

ticipate any situation which might arise. Some of the duties, like the
training of Russian personnel, were never put into effect. Others, like
operation of port and transportation facilities, did not come into effect for
more than a year, until certain British treaty rights over movement and
transportation were delegated to the United States after the Combined Chiefs'
directive. Still others, like the establishment of port, storage, assembly,
and maintenance facilities, were put into effect immediately. The advantage of
broad and general definitions lay in their flexibility; the disadvantage lay
in their vagueness. Here was another element in the confusion which attended
the reduction of generalities to specific tasks.

In that process there were wheels within wheels. There were many planners,
many plans to be fitted together, many uncontrollable factors, like the
progress of the war, to affect planning. Under the Middle East Directive the
Iranian Mission existed to comply with "the expressed needs" of the British.
Over-all plans had therefore first to be decided upon by the British, whose
primary concern was with their line of communications and with their readiness
to meet not only the German attack, which until late in 1942 appeared imminent
from the west and north, but also the looming threat of a German-Japanese
junction in the Persian Gulf.3 Supply to the Soviet Union through the Corridor
necessarily came second in their planning. The Americans, who were committed
to aid both the Russians and the British in the area, strove to reconcile the
two obligations. The inability of some Americans in the field to understand
the direction of the British effort in the area contributed not only to the
general confusion but to the evidences of misunderstanding on this point with
which the early files abound. This was a price the Americans had to pay for
coming into the madhouse with relatively clean hands and pure hearts. They did
not know enough and the few who never learned continued to feel that the
British were not so serious about aid to Russia as were the Amercians.
American planning, then, was conditioned by British planning, which in turn
was conditioned by British local responsibilities for security; and both sets
of planning were affected by the relative weight to be given from
[31]

time to time to the aid-to-Russia program. Since there was no final authority
for priorities save that at the very top in London and Washington, priorities
assigned or agreed at intermediate and lower levels were subject to change,
with resultant confusion.

Aside from such large obstacles to smooth operations, there was the task of
intermeshing British and American machinery for planning and action. General
planning had taken certain British needs in Iraq into consideration previous
to the issuance of the Middle East Directive, while planning for Iranian
projects started from scratch in September with the British instructions to
General Quinan to prepare such road, rail, and river communications as were
required to move maximum possible supplies to the USSR. By the time the first
Americans reached Iraq in November 1941 the British were spread over Iraq and
Iran, their hands very full indeed with the new Russian-aid task superimposed
upon those necessary to secure the area against Axis attack.

Although American help was for a time extended to strictly British-aid
projects in Iraq, it was the British commitment to supply the USSR through the
Persian Corridor that soon claimed the full efforts of the American mission
and its successors. In construction (highways, docks, buildings) and in the
assembly of aircraft and motor vehicles, the American projects paralleled and
multiplied similar activities by the British. In transport, the core of the
program of Russian aid, the British attempted to carry the entire burden
themselves along with all their other commitments. But time and the pressure
of mounting tonnages proved this to be unworkable. Late in 1942 the decision
of the Combined Chiefs of Staff to assign the operation of certain ports, the
railroad, and a supplementary trucking service to an augmented American
military force overcame the long-standing arguments of those who had hitherto
opposed sharing with the Americans British treaty rights over Iranian
communications.

One transport operation the British neither shared nor delegated. Inland Water
Transport, established as a branch of the British Army in October 1941,
operated interport and river barges and certain other port functions in Iraq
and Iran. In time this military office employed 200 Army officers, 600 British
other ranks, and 12,000 soldiers and civilians of Indian and other
nationalities. In its first year of operation (through September 1942) it
moved 680,000 tons of cargo for all purposes.4

Those British activities which were shared or delegated, while not the subject
of this book, are tied to the subject. The work of Brigadier
[32]

Sir Godfrey Rhodes and a staff of approximately four thousand officers and men
in supervising, regulating, and assisting Iranian operation of the ISR solidly
constructed a firm foundation for the American stint on the railway. In dock
and road building, as well as in the organization and operation of trucking
services, the British were equally busy when the first Americans arrived.
General Quinan's directive stressed the improvement of transport facilities.
Under it the British brought to completion in 1942 the branch line of the
railway from Ahwaz to Khorramshahr which enabled that port soon to outstrip
Basra in the Russian-aid program. Basra, too, came in for improvement. The
town of Basra lies about two miles inland from the south bank of the Shatt al
Arab River, its dock areas being concentrated at Margil5 and on the opposite
or north bank of the river at Tanuma-Cheybassi. When the British landed
at-Basra in 1941 they found a workmanlike port with six deepwater berths and
enough labor and machinery to work them. To accommodate the heavy demands upon
Basra as the seaport of their Basra-Baghdad line of communications, the
British set about adding six more berths on the river. To provide an
alternative port, in case the Shatt should be blocked by enemy action, they
were committed to an ambitious dockbuilding program at a desolate, almost
uninhabited sand and clay waste called Umm Qasr, south of Basra on the waters
of the Khor Abdullah at the border between Iraq and Kuwait. The occupation of
Iran in August-September offered the Iranian ports for use in the
aid-to-Russia program, thus permitting the Basra port area to concentrate
chiefly on traffic necessary for British military needs. The British therefore
undertook to increase dock facilities at Bandar Shahpur, sea terminus of the
ISR; at Khorramshahr; and at Bushire, an ancient Persian port served by
lighterage from ships anchored miles offshore, whose landward communication
relies upon a rudimentary road to Isfahan. British dock construction was
performed for the most part by British civilian contractors under Army
supervision; while local civilian stevedoring firms and the United Kingdom
Commercial Corporation (UKCC) were relied upon to unload ships and provide the
sorting and warehousing at dockside that is an important link in the chain of
inland clearance. The vagaries of these British contractors added only another
set of complications for the joint Anglo-American effort as American
responsibilities for cargoes increased.

Of all the civilian contractors, the semiofficial UKCC, with its early
assignment to procure and deliver Russian-aid supplies, was the most
[33]

formidable. The inconsequential capacity of the railway in 1941 emphasized the
vital part trucking would have to play in inland clearance, and this required
not only the organization of trucking services accomplished by UKCC and later
supplemented by convoys of British Army drivers who took over haulage of
strictly military stores and ammunition but also the improvement of primitive
roadways to carry vastly increased traffic. In September 1941 the British
Chief Engineer, Iraq, sent Lt. Col. A. J. R. Hill, Royal Engineers, into Iran
to reconnoiter the roads. A pattern for road construction and maintenance was
evolved whereby the Iranian Government, with large British grants-in-aid,
undertook improvement and maintenance of roads in the British zone. A contract
was agreed to and the work put into the hands of Consortium Kampsax, the
Danish firm which had shared in building the ISR for Reza Shah. Under the
supervision of the Corps of Royal Engineers, Kampsax, as supervising and
consulting engineers, administered and subcontracted locally. It did not
directly construct or maintain highways. From Tehran a British Army engineer
staff of fewer than twenty officers and other ranks supervised Kampsax, which
in turn administered far-flung operations. By March 1942 a force of 67,000
native workmen and 14,000 donkeys were working on roads. Using shovels and
rakes and little straw baskets, hand-filled with earth, men toiled much as in
the days of Cyrus and Darius. Floods plashed away some roads in the east and
these were rebuilt; but this happened too when .the Americans built roads with
their laborsaving machines.6

At one time or another British trucking organizations, either military or
UKCC, used four routes to haul goods to Soviet receiving points. (Mad 2-inside
back cover) The easternmost of these picked up at Zahidan loads brought by
rail from Karachi. Trucks carried on from Zahidan to Meshed. This route, used
intermittently in 1941, 1942, and 1943 for supplies arriving from overseas at
Karachi and for raw materials en route from India to the USSR, was abandoned
in 1943 through a combination of bad highway conditions and Soviet objections
to its use.

A second route provided inland clearance north from the port of Bushire, where
lend-lease trucks were being assembled for the Soviets. This route ran via
Shiraz, Isfahan, Qum, and Tehran to Tabriz and was used not only for delivery
of assembled trucks under their own power but for UKCC convoys carrying
cargoes unloaded at Bushire.
[34]

The route was abandoned because in the early days it was too costly in
manpower to protect against tribal raiders.

At Andimeshk British military trucking units and the UKCC convoys took over
certain cargoes which had come up by rail from Bandar Shahpur and forwarded
them by truck via Hamadan and Kazvin to Tabriz. The British used this route
until mid-July 1943 when it became a part of the road system prepared by the
Americans for their trucking service. Between this route and the
Bushire-Isfahan-Qum route, the British also repaired a connecting road from
Malayer to Qum via Sultanabad (sometimes called Arak) which was used in due
course by Russian-driven convoys of American trucks assembled at Andimeshk and
Khorramshahr.

The fourth British-used route, the Khanaqin Lift, came ultimately to bear the
chief burden of British trucking for the Soviets, although in the beginning
its Basra-Baghdad leg was heavily pre-empted for British military needs. This
route started at Basra from which three types of clearance served it: the
railway from Basra to Baghdad, barges on the Tigris between the two cities,
and a highway. From Baghdad all cargo proceeded by rail to Khanaqin on the
Iranian border, whence trucks took over by road via Kermanshah, Hamadan, and
Takistan to Tabriz.7

In addition to their transport and construction activities the British forces
established in the Basra area two large assembly plants. At Shu'aiba, site of
the airfield maintained under the Anglo-Iraqi treaty and of a large base
ordnance depot, American lend-lease aircraft were being assembled for the
Royal Air Force. Near by, at Rafadiyah, where the British had large engineer
base workshops, American lend-lease motor vehicles were being assembled for
both British and Russian account.

Planning and Action

It was a formidable list of tasks which the Americans offered to share, and no
small item in the inventory of early confusion was the fact that the urgency
of war needs forced the work to proceed even while tasks were planned and
allocations discussed. As happened elsewhere in the war, the machine had to be
made to run even while it was being built. Two objectives vied for priority:
the readiness of the British forces to meet invasion, and aid to the USSR
which held top priority
[35]

in all Anglo-American global planning through the first half of 1942. A minor
example will illustrate how those interrelated yet conflicting purposes
increased the confusion. In his planning late in 1941 for road construction
tasks in Iran and Iraq, the American engineer in charge relied upon advice
from the field that adequate stocks of explosives for blasting stone would be
available from local British stores. Therefore, to save scarce shipping space
explosives were not sent abroad; but, when it was time to begin the blasting,
it was discovered that local British stocks had been earmarked for demolition
purposes in case of invasion and were unavailable for blasting. Thus British
need temporarily frustrated the road building essential to Russian aid.8
As a result of the Pearl Harbor attack, existing shipping had to be spread
over the whole world, while the mounting loss of ships by enemy action which
followed Pearl Harbor aggravated an already bad situation. The allocation of
dwindling tonnages was a factor to frustrate the most careful and foresighted
planning. In the case of shipping priorities for the Persian Corridor, the
very zeal of the President to render maximum aid to Russia paradoxically
contributed to the long list of situations making for confusion. Deeply
concerned lest the solemn promise of the First ( Moscow ) Protocol be violated
because of unlooked-for demands on shipping, Roosevelt Wrote the Secretary of
War:

I desire that the Soviet aid program as provided in the Protocol Agreement be
re-established beginning January 1. Existing deficits are to be made up and
shipped from this country not later than April 1 . . . . The whole Russian
program is so vital to our interests I know that only the gravest
consideration will lead you to recommend our withholding longer the munitions
our Government has promised the USSR.9

After shipments to the Soviet Union had again fallen behind the protocol
schedule in the following spring, the President directed Donald Nelson of the
War Production Board to get materials "released . . . regardless of the effect
of these shipments on any other part of our war program," and told Rear Adm.
Emory S. Land of the War Shipping Administration to give Russian aid "a first
priority in shipping."10 Increased tonnage of lend-lease supplies flowed out
to all of the Russian supply routes, including the Persian Gulf route; there
the paradox was that the high priorities which stimulated the increased flow
did not apply in the same degree to the additional shipments of men and mate-
[36]

rials needed to build and operate the facilities for handling the flow of
supplies. The consequent accelerating imbalance between the arrival of
supplies and the ability to move them on to the Russians was perhaps the most
troublesome phenomenon of the year of confusion.

From the foregoing account of complexities it is apparent that the business of
determining which of the many British tasks were to be assumed by the
Americans would have been difficult enough even had the machinery involved in
that determination been simple. But here again nothing was simple. There was
no neat funnel through which screened and co-ordinated plans could be
transmitted from X to Y; and although both the British and the Americans
maintained clearance and liaison agencies, translating general directives into
field tasks was cumbersome.

On the British side, for example, the War Office in September 1941 instructed
the Commander-in-Chief, India, to prepare lists of tasks for the United States
to perform in Iraq, Iran, and India.11 One of the first of these, supply of
rolling stock for the ISR, reached the British Supply Council in Washington
via Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of Supply, and was transmitted to Harry Hopkins
through Generals Burns and George Spalding of the Division of Defense Aid
Reports.12 At the same time Lord Beaverbrook communicated requests for aid
through the American Ambassador at London directly to Hopkins and Harriman.
Data gathered by Sir Oliver Lyttleton, Minister of State, in the Middle East
were transmitted to the British Supply Committee at London, who sent
recommendations for dispatch via the Foreign Office to the British Supply
Council at Washington. The process in general was to funnel recommendations up
from the field agencies to coordinating agencies at the top and from them
across to similar American agencies which transmitted them on down to the
field. As it had not been decided by early October whether General Wheeler's
mission was to be attached to the General Officer Commanding, Iraq, whose
command embraced Iran, or to the Commander-in-Chief, India, who commanded
Iraq, tasks nominated for the Iranian Mission originated at both of these
British headquarters. Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary, notified Sir Miles
Lampson, British Ambassador, Cairo, on 7 October that discussion of needed
tasks should go forward promptly
[37]

to enable the Americans to decide "which of these projects they will be able
to undertake and when they will be able to start." To provide machinery for
screening proposals from various British field agencies, Gen. Sir Robert H.
Haining, Intendant-General, Middle East, a special emissary acting at Cairo
for the Prime Minister, on 15 October organized within the Middle East War
Council at Cairo an American Aid Subcommittee. Under his chairmanship this
body undertook to remedy a condition of serious confusion which, in his
opinion, arose from the independence of the several British services and
agencies that found themselves competing for American-aid projects.13
On the American side the general process of planning was similar to the
British. Before the arrival of the missions in the field, British requests
reached mission planning staffs via lend-lease and the War Department. At this
stage the Amercians were handicapped by their unfamiliarity with the regions
and conditions involved; but personal consultation with British opposite
numbers after the Americans arrived overseas reduced the handicap, while some
early planning had to be modified to fit the realities. The Iranian Mission
thus received nominations of tasks both from Washington and through its direct
contact with British Army representatives in Iraq, Iran, and India. Selection
of tasks, assignment of local priorities, and the devising of means of
performing the work devolved, in the last analysis, upon the chief of the
mission, General Wheeler, subject to the direction and approval of the
Secretary of War and to the inevitable and frequent shifts of plan arising
from the several causes already discussed.

General Wheeler's plans were subject to still other limitations, for he was by
no means the only American charged with interest in, or responsibility for,
decisions and actions in his area. There was Colonel Faymonville, already at
Moscow as head of the civilian Lend-Lease Administration office there. His
interest in seeing that the Russians got what had been promised them required
that he keep a very close check on what was going on in the Persian Corridor.
He could make inquiries, suggest investigations, consult, transmit Soviet
wishes and requirements, and report to Washington his observations and
suggestions. Every decision of General Wheeler affecting aid to Russia was of
concern to Colonel Faymonville.

General Maxwell, who established the headquarters of the U.S. Military North
African Mission at Cairo on 22 November, attended shortly thereafter the third
meeting of the American Aid Subcommittee of the Middle East War Council.
Although discussion at that
[38]

meeting turned chiefly upon projects in the area within General Maxwell's
responsibility, the British aircraft assembly operations in the Basra area and
proposals for establishment there of American-operated assembly plants were
also discussed by General Maxwell as the American representative. In this
informal way began an arrangement of convenience by which General Maxwell came
increasingly to speak for General Wheeler's interests at British headquarters
in Cairo. As time went on, and GHQ, British Middle East Forces, at Cairo,
extended its responsibilities to Iraq and Iran, the interest of American
headquarters at Cairo in operations in the Persian Corridor likewise increased
until its command responsibility for those operations was formalized the
following June 1942 by the activation of the U.S. Army Forces in the Middle
East under General Maxwell.14

Another American agency whose presence in the Persian Corridor affected the
decisions and acts of the Iranian Mission was the USSR Mission under General
Greely. Organized as a lend-lease instrumentality on the pattern of the North
African and Iranian Missions, the Greely mission had been instructed to
proceed into the Soviet Union and to carry out its tasks from there. To this
end its chief was provided on 5 November 1941 with a Letter of Instructions
identical with those given Generals Wheeler and Maxwell, except that Greely
was to render advice and assistance to Russian and other friendly governments,
in contrast to Wheeler's aid to British, Russian, and other friendly
governments, and Maxwell's aid to British and other friendly governments.
Greely's functions and authorized powers relative to lend-lease aid to Russia
were described in the same words as Wheeler's. Furthermore the War Department
had left to their mutual agreement the delimitation of the geographical areas
to be commanded by each. Greely arrived at Basra on 31 January 1942 and
proceeded to Tehran where he established his headquarters; but the Soviet
Union refused
[39]

entry or the USSR Mission as a whole, and so the War Department, early in May,
abolished it. During the intervening three months, the USSR and Iranian
Missions jostled one another uncomfortably in a Corridor which was already
crowded.15

The number of American missions in the field directly or indirectly involved
in operations in the Corridor was matched by the several agencies of the War
Department concerned in the planning and execution of Iranian Mission tasks.
The Air Corps was charged with the assembly of lend-lease aircraft at a site
to be designated by the chief of the mission, and three of the technical
services, Ordnance, Quartermaster, and Engineers, divided among them the
planning and execution of tasks suitable to their special functions. A
considerable tug of war ensued over the determination of the activities to be
undertaken by each; data available to one set of planners were not always
known to the others, overlapping and confusion continued for many months. The
ordnance plan, largest of all from a monetary aspect, was abandoned after
months of busy planning because of a re-estimate of the requirements in the
light of changing conditions overseas. The Quartermaster Corps as late as
February 1942 expected to operate two or three of the chief Persian Gulf ports
although, as has been stated, American responsibility for port operation did
not become effective for more than a year after that.16 It also planned for
the operation of motor vehicle assembly plants, a function transferred in the
War Department reorganization of 1942 to Ordnance.

Upon the Corps of Engineers fell the duty of planning and executing necessary
engineering and construction tasks for the mission. On 22 September 1941 the
Lend-Lease Administrator, Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., wrote the Secretary of
War of the British requirements for the railway, thus setting in motion the
machinery of engineer planning. Transmitted to the Chief of Staff, the problem
was referred to General George Spalding and by him to the Chief of Engineers,
who appointed a committee to explore and recommend. On 29 September the Chief
of Engineers reported progress to the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4, and on 24
October, at General Wheeler's request, instructions were dispatched to the
Chief of Engineers by The Adjutant General "to permit essential collaboration
between" him and the chief of the Iranian Mission.17 The Chief of Engineers
was directed in addition to
[40]

furnish technical engineering advice and assistance relative to port,
transport, storage, assembly, maintenance, and training facilities; to
purchase and ship equipment and supplies needed by the mission; to negotiate
and execute contracts for construction necessary to his tasks; and to provide
the necessary engineer commissioned, enlisted, and civilian personnel. On 28
October the Office of the Chief of Engineers assigned to the Division
Engineer, North Atlantic Division, New York, "the duty of carrying out the War
Department instructions through a new engineer district to be established and
known as the Iranian District. Lieut. Colonel Albert C. Lieber, Jr. will be
ordered to report to you for duty as District Engineer for the Iranian
District." Establishment of the new district with headquarters in New York,
and the appointment of Colonel Lieber, followed on 31 October.18
The collaborative relationship established by War Department directive between
the chief of the Iranian Mission and the Iranian District engineer requires
further notice. Colonel Lieber moved his headquarters to Iraq in February
1942, and therefore, as an Army officer located in the territory of the
Iranian Mission, came under the command of the chief of the mission. His
responsibility for the execution of engineer tasks, however, derived via the
North Atlantic Division from the Chief of Engineers. The Iranian District
engineer maintained a staff of his own and his headquarters were separate and
distinct from Iranian Mission headquarters. His function, subject to the
control of the chief of the mission, was to execute certain mission projects;
but as the Iranian District engineer was the contracting officer for the U.S.
Government, the purse strings for engineer tasks were in his hands, and he
exercised full control over matters of finance, procurement, and personnel
related to his projects. With regard to engineer work, the functions of the
chief of the mission were to make plans through his own engineer planning
staff, to adopt projects and assign them priorities, and to allocate the
tonnages requested to bring materials from the United States. The
co-ordination necessary to the successful carrying out of mission tasks by a
district engineer whose authority stemmed from the Chief of Engineers rather
than from the chief of the mission was achieved by a voluntary working
agreement in the field that recognized the efficacy of reposing final
on-the-spot authority in the chief of the mission. The district engineer was
not under General Wheeler in matters covered by the War Department's directive
to the Chief of Engineers; but the work proceeded as though
[41]

he were. Difficulties inherent in a parallel or collaborative procedure were
in this way reduced to a minimum.19

The Civilian Contractors

One further factor in the catalogue of confusion remains to be noted. The
British forces in the Corridor had found it expedient to employ a variety of
civilian contractors to carry out or to supervise, under military direction,
certain tasks. Rail, highway, and dock construction, housing, stevedoring at
the ports, and inland motor transport, were handled in varying degree in this
fashion. Partly because of the British example, partly because preliminary
American planning was carried on while the United States was still neutral,
but chiefly because American resources of trained military personnel were
wholly inadequate to meet anticipated requirements, the President's Middle
East Directive had stipulated use of civilian contractors acting under
military direction. Accordingly, the Air Corps, the Ordnance Department, the
Quartermaster Corps, and the Corps of Engineers engaged civilian contractors,
three of whom shipped men and machinery to the field during the first part of
1942. Serious difficulties were inherent in the contractor system:

overlapping, such as that which produced in Iran in 1942 a situation where
four American agencies and one British felt themselves responsible for
construction of essentially the same sort of buildings in the same general
location; the delicate balance of management controls between military and
civilian authorities; and the still more delicate problem of the status of
American civilians, legal and military, in war areas. But no other means were
available to the planners to accomplish tasks largely technical in nature on
the scale called for by the emergency. Furthermore, since a nation still
neutral could not send an expeditionary force even if it possessed enough
trained officers and men, all early planning, procurement, and shipment had to
proceed on the assumption of continuance of the civilian contractor system.
Pearl Harbor removed one set of obstacles to militarization. On the day after
the attack the Iranian District engineer conferred on the subject of .troops
with the Deputy Chief of Engineers, Brig. Gen. Thomas M. Robins. They agreed
that during the period required to train engineer forces it would be necessary
to carry on with the civilian contractors.20
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Systematic militarization of overseas contract activities throughout the world
was decreed by a War Department directive on 18 February 1942. In accordance
with this directive, such activities, with listed exceptions, were to be
"terminated as soon as possible, and in each case within six months from the
date of this directive."21 Activities were to be "carried out by military
organizations and units to be organized in the United States and sent
overseas" to replace the contractor forces. In the case of the Iranian Mission
local circumstances delayed militarization well past the year of confusion and
into the period of reorganization initiated by the Combined Chiefs' directive
of September 1942. The first of the civilian contractors for this area to go
was the one retained by the Ordnance Department. It was released on 14 March
1942. This company, alone of all the contractors, put no men into the field.
The termination of contracts by the Engineers and by the Air Corps followed on
1 January and 31 March 1943 respectively; while the Quartermaster contractor
(whose contract was transferred to Ordnance) remained in the field until 30
June 1943. Uncertainty as to the continuation of the several contracts
hampered all stages of the work, from planning and procurement, through
shipment of men and equipment, to actual operations; while the difficulties of
transition from civilian to military operation, protracted during a six
months' period in 1943, slowed the attainment of targets set by early
planning.

As one reviews the months from September 1941 to October 1942, and those
following months of long-drawn-out transition, it is apparent that the one
thing needful to prevent confusion, besides the rare qualities of divination
and absolute wisdom, was unified command. Unified command in the Persian
Corridor was, however, impossible. Instead there evolved, through
improvisation, through trial and error, and in spite of a host of
difficulties, a working co-operation among the representatives of the four
nations involved, which brought order out of what was, for a time, very nearly
chaos.
[43]