James Alexander Ulio (29 June 1882 – 30 July 1958) was an American military officer who served as Adjutant General in the United States Army from 1942 to 1946. As such, he was responsible for the classification and assignment of soldiers in an Army that would grow to 8.2 million by March 1945.
The son of an Army officer, Ulio was raised on Army posts in the Washington Territory and Montana. He enlisted in the Army in 1900, and rose to be a battalion sergeant major. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the infantry in 1904. During World War I he served at El Paso, Texas, during the Pancho Villa Expedition, and on the Western Front, where he was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel on the staff of IV Corps. After the Armistice was signed in November 1918, he served with the Army of Occupation in Germany, and in Armenia as chief of staff of the American Relief Administration.
Between the wars Ulio attended the Command and General Staff College and Army War College, and was a junior military aide-de-camp on the staff of the President of the United States, Herbert Hoover, and then on that of his successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
On 1 March 1942, Ulio became the Adjutant General with the rank of major general. As Adjutant General, one of his most important roles was notifying families when their loved ones became casualties. Thousands of telegrams went out under his name every day. He also oversaw the Army Postal Service, the National Service Life Insurance scheme, and the military penal system.
Early life and career James Alexander Ulio was born at Fort Walla Walla in what was then the Washington Territory on 29 June 1882, the son of First Lieutenant James Ulio, an immigrant from Ireland, whose birth name was James Graham, and his wife Caroline Kohlhauf. He had a sister, Anna. His father had enlisted in the US Army in 1855 and had been commissioned during the American Civil War, in which he had risen to the rank of captain and was breveted as a major. He had briefly left the army after the war but had rejoined as a second lieutenant in 1866. Ulio's middle name was that of his paternal grandfather. He attended Custer County High School in Miles City, Montana, but in those days it went only to year eleven, so he completed high school at Washington School.
Ulio decided to join the Army, so he traveled with his mother to Butte, Montana, to sit the entrance examination. He passed, but only secured an alternative nomination. The nomination went to George V. Strong. Ulio then enlisted in the 10th Infantry Regiment on 1 September 1900. He was appointed a battalion sergeant major at Fort Keogh, Montana, and passed a competitive examination at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for a commission. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the infantry on 5 October 1904.
For his first posting, Ulio was sent to Fort Brady, Michigan. He was then assigned to the 1st Infantry Regiment and served in the Philippines from 1906 to 1908. When he returned to the United States, he was assigned to the Vancouver Barracks in Washington State. Following his promotion to first lieutenant on 11 March 1911, he served in the Territory of Hawaii at the Schofield Barracks and Fort Shafter from 1912 to 1916. He was promoted to captain on 1 July 1916 and served with the 23rd Infantry Regiment. He served at El Paso, Texas, during the Pancho Villa Expedition.
World War I
After the American entry into World War I in April 1917, Ulio moved to Camp McClellan, Alabama, where he received a temporary promotion to major on 5 August 1917 and was assigned on 15 August as the division adjutant of the 29th Division until 26 February 1918. The following month, he embarked for France, where he attended the Army General Staff College of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) until 31 May. He was then assigned to the headquarters (HQ) of the 35th Division as its assistant chief of staff for personnel (G-1). In June, he was assigned to the newly organized IV Corps as its G-1 until 14 December, over a month after the armistice of 11 November 1918 that ended the fighting. He was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel on 9 September.
In 1919 he received the Distinguished Service Medal for his service in this last assignment as well as honors from several allied governments. His citation read: He was also awarded the French Legion of Honor and the Order of the Crown of Italy.
Ulio served with the Army of Occupation in Germany until August 1919. He then went to Armenia as chief of staff of Colonel William N. Haskell's American Relief Administration there. Ulio felt the Armenian people were opposed to communism, and the communist takeover in neighboring Azerbaijan was not a popular uprising but one engineered by Enver Pasha.
Between the wars
Ulio reverted to his permanent rank of captain on 19 April 1920 but was promoted to major, the highest rank his father had held, on 1 July. He served in the Office of the Adjutant General of the Army in Washington, D.C., and transferred from the infantry to the Adjutant General's Department on 1 May 1922. His duties concerned assisting the Veterans Bureau in reducing delays and ensuring that veterans received their vocational and health benefits.
In 1923, Ulio went to Greece for six months, where he served as chief of the administrative division of the American Red Cross. He was awarded the Greek Order of the Redeemer, Montenegrin Order of Prince Danilo I, Serbian Order of the White Eagle and the Panama Medal of Solidarity. He was then assigned as assistant to the G-1 on the headquarters staff of the II Corps Area at Fort Jay on Governors Island in New York City. In 1926, he returned to the Office of the Adjutant General of the Army. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on 13 November 1927. From 8 September 1930 to 19 June 1931 he attended the Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth. Fellow students included his boyhood friend Jonathan M. Wainwright.
After graduation, Ulio was again assigned to the Office of the Adjutant General of the Army until 1935. During this assignment, he served as a junior military aide-de-camp on the staff of the President of the United States, Herbert Hoover, and then on that of his successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The role was a largely ceremonial one; military aides had no input into policy. Ulio attended the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, from 1933 to 1934. Fellow students included Omar Bradley, Ulysses S. Grant III, Ernest N. Harmon, Lewis Hershey, Courtney Hodges and Jonathan Wainwright, all of whom subsequently achieved general officer rank.
In June 1934, Ulio returned to the Office of the Adjutant General of the Army. He was assigned to the Hawaiian Department in February 1935 as aide-de-camp to the commanding general, Major General Hugh A. Drum. From June to September he headed the service command section responsible for planning for the contingency of a blockade of the islands, with the rank of colonel from 1 August. He then became chief of staff of the Hawaiian Department. He returned to Governors Island as G-1 of the II Corps Area, and, in May 1938, to the Office of the Adjutant General of the Army as an Assistant Adjutant General, one of three reporting to the Adjutant General, Major General Emory Sherwood Adams. Ulio was promoted to brigadier general on 28 December 1939.
World War II On 1 March 1942, Ulio became the Adjutant General with the rank of major general. As Adjutant General, he had overall responsibility for the classification and assignment of soldiers in an Army that would grow to 8.2 million by March 1945. The Office of the Adjutant General had 12,574 personnel assigned in June 1943, of whom about 9,000 were in Washington, D.C.
Induction At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 that brought the United States into the war, the Army, after fifteen months of peacetime mobilization, had 1.6 million soldiers. By 30 June 1942, it was already 162,505 men short. An early accomplishment was lowering the draft age from twenty to eighteen. Ulio began his push for this in October 1942. Advice from Major General Lewis B. Hershey, the Director of the Selective Service System, indicated that the country would run out of single and childless married men by 1 October 1943. In November 1942, Congress lowered the draft age to 18.
In May 1943, the chief of Army Ground Force, Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair, foresaw the possibility of unfavorable public reaction if 18-year-olds were sent into combat with just 13 weeks' training, and suggested they be assigned to units training in the United States which were not scheduled to move overseas in the near future rather than to replacement training centers. The postponement of plans for an invasion of northwest Europe had created large numbers of such units. Ulio did not think this was practical, as the Army was nearly at its maximum size, and almost all new inductees were being sent to replacement training centers. As casualties mounted though, the War Department ordered in June 1944 that no 18-year-olds be sent overseas as infantry or armor replacements. This was also extended to men who had children conceived before the US declaration of war. Rising casualties soon forced this restriction to be dropped.
Classification Soldiers inducted into the Army received a physical examination. One of Ulio's first directives was that every one would get a chest X-ray. Experience had shown that many inductees had tuberculosis, but the Army had previously not required X-rays on account of the cost, which had proven to be a false economy. The Army initially also rejected inductees with venereal diseases, but improved methods of treatment led to this being relaxed in 1943. Ulio personally signed an order on 21 May 1945 transferring Lieutenant Colonel Albert Sabin from the Army Medical Corps, where he had helped develop a vaccine against Japanese encephalitis, to the Cincinnati Children's Hospital, where he developed the oral polio vaccine.
Inductees were given mechanical, technical and clerical aptitude tests, and interviewed by personnel staff. Initially, attempts were made to place new recruits in roles depending on their skills, and nearly four in five were placed in a role similar to their civilian work. As the war went on this was seen as draining the best personnel away from the combat arms. In February 1944, the Army began to adopt the Physical Profile Plan, under which inductees were assessed on stamina, upper limbs, lower limbs, hearing, eyesight and emotional stability. In each category they were given a rating of 1 to 4. Grades 1 and 2 were considered qualified for general service; grade 3 as qualified for limited service; and grade 4 as unfit for service. The six numbers (in that order) together gave a personal profile serial. Those with serials of 211211 or better were Profile A, qualified for strenuous combat duty; those below 211211 down to 322231 were Profile B, qualified for service in combat areas; those below 322231 down to 333231 were Profile C, qualified for base duties. A 4 anywhere meant below the minimum standard. Different branches were assigned their own mix of the profile; the infantry, 86 percent of its recruits would be Profile A, 7 percent Profile B and 7 percent Profile C.
Casualty notification