Provost Marshal General School
(Military Police)
MPs at what is today the Harker Road entrance to the fort. Circa 1943-1945. Photo credit unknown.
From June to December of 1942, Fort Oglethorpe was the site of a military police school known as the Provost Marshal General School (PMG). The PMG School occupied the South Post on the Chickamauga Battlefield. Although it was short-lived, this small chapter of Fort Oglethorpe history contributed to the global picture of World War 2.
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US Army Military Police (MP) served vital roles at home and around the world during World War 2. Such duties included the internment of nearly half a million prisoners of war; the training of about 200,000 MP personnel; the apprehension of absentees, deserters, and escaped military prisoners; the investigation of crime within the Army; training personnel for military government duties (occupation army); and supervising the War Department's internal security programs to protect the production of war material (Office of the Provost Marshal General, World War II, a brief history, edited by Warren D. Chandler, January 1946).
Colonel Hobart B. Brown Arrives
Colonel Hobart Blauvelt Brown was the commandant of the Provost Marshal General School in Fort Myer, VA, when the Army relocated the school to Fort Oglethorpe. Col. Brown is important to Fort Oglethorpe not only because of the military police chapter, but also because he would later be the Commandant of the Third Women's Army Corps Training Center at Fort Oglethorpe.
Brown's military experience began in 1909 when he volunteered for the New Jersey cavalry militia at the rank of private. In 1916, at the rank of Captain, the NJ "Essex Troop" was sent to assist with the Mexican border issue. While there he was promoted to the rank of Major and commanded the 1st Squadron. In May of 1917, he married Mary Elizabeth James in New Jersey. In preparation for World War 1, the New Jersey troops moved to Camp McClellan, AL, where from September 1917 to April 1918, Brown oversaw the reorganization of the cavalry squadron into the 104th Military Police Battalion. During this time, he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and became Provost Marshal. While still at Camp McClellan, he was reassigned to the 116th Infantry and shipped with this unit to France when America entered World War One. Upon arrival, Brown was given command of the 114th Infantry, which was composed of New Jersey National Guard troops that had been formed at Camp McLellan. He led this unit during the bloody Meuse-Argonne campaign. After the Armistice in November 1918, he was reassigned as Deputy Provost Marshall General of American Expeditionary Force in France and served in this capacity until February 1919. His wartime service was recognized with the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM). After the war, Brown worked as a treasurer in the insurance business but continued to serve in the New Jersey reserves between the two World Wars.
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According to his St. Petersburg (FL) obituary, he was recalled to active duty in 1939, when he was tasked with revising the Manual for Military Police and establishing a series of schools for MP training. By 1941, as a result of increased mechanization of the Army and a rapidly growing defense industry, local police forces around the country were strained with both manufacturing security and traffic control. Large-scale unit maneuvers were clogging local towns with training exercises. The War Department was also preparing for enemy aliens and prisoners of war. These were a few of the reasons that created the need for expanding and professionalizing the US Army Military Police. By December of 1941, Brown was the commandant of the newly established Provost Marshal Military Police School at the Arlington Cantonment, attached to Fort Myer, VA (which later became part of Arlington Cemetery).
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In early June 1942, six months after the attack at Pearl Harbor, the Army moved the Provost Marshal General School to Fort Oglethorpe. Col. Hobart B. Brown would be the school's Commandant, which was like the school principal. Col. Archer L. Lerch would be the school's Commanding Officer, which was more like the school district superintendent. The Post Commander of Fort Oglethorpe at the time was Col. Duncan Richart, and while the school would be under his command, its day-to-day operations would be left to Lerch and Brown.
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In early December 1942, The Army transferred the PMG School again to Fort Custer, MI. Col. Brown was transferred with the unit but before December was out, he would be transferred back to Fort Oglethorpe to assume the duties as Commandant of the newly formed Third Women's Army Corps Training Center. Col. Hobart B. Brown is a significant figure in the history of Fort Oglethorpe.
Col. Hobart B. Brown at Fort Oglethorpe during the WAC era. Photo credit: 116th Infantry Regiment Roll of Honor website.
Origins of Hand-to-Hand Combat Training
The organized and intentional training of hand-to-hand combat in the US military seems to have some roots in the Provost Marshal General School. This author first found reference to this in the Chattanooga Daily Times (June 12, 1942), but later discovered the photographic sequence shown below printed 3 months earlier in the Washington Daily News (March 4, 1942), while the PMG School was still at Fort Myer, VA. It is not the intent of this webpage to write the history of hand-to-hand combat training, but rather to highlight the man who brought this combat skill to the training school.
Leading up to the war, Anthony (Tony) Flores had been the Physical Director of the Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, TN. He reportedly had a history of studying Judo/Jiu-Jitsu since the age of 14, beginning in Nicaragua and continuing in Brooklyn, NY. The caption above claims he was a former "national jiudo champ," although there is little publicity about this claim. Eventually, he was commissioned into the US Army and ended up at Fort Myer, VA, as an instructor in the PMG School.
The need for military police to be able to subdue a threat using bare hands was a real prospect. In World War 1, there was no unarmed defense training, rather soldiers were taught the bayonet. World War 2 saw the need for simple and lethal techniques that could easily be standardized and taught to rapidly expanding forces. The development of hand-to-hand combat was known as "combatives." Lt. Flores' presence as the chief combatives instructor at Fort Oglethorpe offers us the opportunity to learn more about this military advancement that gave the Allies an advantage over their opponents and ensured success on numerous battlefields and wartime secret operations.
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The US Army combatives techniques were largely influenced by British Commando methods. Bringing the instruction to American soldiers were two British military police officers who had served in Shanghai, China, during the interwar years, William E. Fairbairn and Eric A. Sykes. Balancing the complexity of martial arts instruction with the need to learn a few critical skills quickly, Fairbairn created his own fighting system called "Defendu." A student of Fairbairn's was Colonel Rex Applegate, who became the combatives instructor at the Army's training program for secret missions. Applegate was purportedly a friend of John Wayne and is credited with teaching him how to shoot and also was a technical advisor on the movie set The Alamo. In 1943, Applegate wrote a book called Kill or Get Killed, which was adopted by the US Marine Corps. The origins and influence of combatives beginning with Fairbairn, Sykes, Applegate, and Flores still persist today in military police, civilian police, and soldier training around the world.
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Lt. Anthony Flores has been credited with being involved in the production of the US Army's first manual on hand-to-hand combat titled Field Manual 21-150, Unarmed Defense for the American Soldier, published June 30, 1942. The War Department does not credit individual authors on any of their military publications, but Flores is considered to be in most of the photographs, appearing as the shorter of the two men. When the pictures in FM 21-150 are compared to the newspaper photo sequence above, in which Flores is the man on the left in the first three photos, the resemblance is similar.
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In 2021, Roberrt H. Sabet published a book about Lt. Flores, his influence on US Army hand-to-hand combat training, and the evolution of combatives.
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