In the Presence of Soldiers by Woody McMillen. The book is about Second Army's corps versus corps training exercises or maneuvers held in Middle Tennessee before and during WW2. In the first exercise, conducted before Pearl Harbor, Patton demonstrated that concentrated armor attacks, like the Germans had performed in Poland, were superior to the French doctrine of spreading the armor throughout the army as infantry support. Patton was the first to use the light observation plane as an operational command platform. Based on this first exercise, Second Army established an outline of training protocols to be conducted in three phases, after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The first period consisted of eight weeks of miscellaneous and advanced unit training. Activities to be stressed during this period included defense of air bases and of other installations against airborne attacks, destruction of road blocks, defense of road blocks, stream crossing, defense against river crossing, jungle operations, guerilla warfare, night fighting, tank stalking, and street fighting.
The second phase of six weeks was to be devoted to preliminary air-ground training. Subjects listed for this phase included identification of aircraft, air-ground communication, designation of safety limits, execution of observation, bombing and ground strafing missions, use of airplane photographs for intelligence purposes, dispersion, concealment, and camouflage of men and material, hasty entrenchments, antiaircraft security measures on the march, and defense against parachute and airborne troops.
The maneuver period was conducted last. Each maneuver period lasted eight weeks with one operation a week. These consisted of the following, set by Army Ground Forces:
- Movement to contact, meeting engagement, and aggressive action by both sides.
- Meeting engagement, aggressive action by a larger force, and the withdrawal of a small force.
- Aggressive action against a covering force, with a view to forcing it to withdraw across or through an obstacle.
- Attack and defense of a river line, the objective of the attacker to require the crossing of his major elements.
- Coordinated attack of a prepared position. Situation to be drawn as to permit at least 24 hours of uninterrupted and unobserved work on the defensive position.
- Delaying action on successive positions over a considerable distance.
- Breakthrough of an over-extended position and a withdrawal of the defender over a considerable distance.
Number 4, the attack and defense of a river line, was run twice in each period to make the total of eight operations.
Over 800,000 soldiers in 25 divisions participated in one of the seven maneuver exercises from 1941 through 1944.