Louisiana Maneuvers

In 1940 Lieutenant General Stanley D. Embrick of the U.S. Army Fourth Corps Area in Atlanta, Georgia, selected central Louisiana as the site of training maneuvers to prepare American forces for possible involvement in war in Europe. Louisiana's 1941 maneuvers became the Army's largest peacetime training exercise, with approximately 400,000 troops divided into the armies of two imaginary countries, Kotmk and Almat, supposedly at war over Mississippi River navigation rights. The maneuvers allowed Army strategists to test conventional defenses against attacks by armored vehicles, and Major General George Patton's tanks pushed back conventionally armed defenders but did not achieve a spectacular victory. Army commanders also encountered reconnaissance and troop supply problems expected in battlefield conditions, giving them several months to formulate solutions before the U.S. entered World War II. The Army conducted smaller-scale maneuvers in the same area in 1942 and 1943, but cancelled the 1944 exercises so troops could participate in the D-Day invasion of Europe. Military leaders who visited central Louisiana during the maneuvers included Joseph Stillwell, Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Mark Clark, and J. Lawton Collins, and many of them headquartered at the Hotel Bentley.

Alexandria, Louisiana · United States