Letter from General Enoch H. Crowder to Major General Leonard Wood - July 13, 1918

Transcript

July 13, 1918. Major-General Leonard Wood, Camp Funston, Kansas. My dear General Wood: There has come to me by reference of The Adjutant General of the Army your letter of July 3rd, giving the results of the examination of between five and six thousand drafted negroes from Louisiana, Oklahoma and Missouri and sent to your camp. It fits in very well with a similar report from Camp Grant, where 23.7% of the negro draft coming from the State of Mississippi was sent back to their homes. I cannot tell you with what mortification I have received these two reports. You know in the first draft we relied upon the judgment of the medical member of the Local Board and we attained better results than we have under the new system which provides not only for that kind of an examination, but an additional examination conducted by a Medical Advisory Board in each jurisdiction and organized with the aid of the Medical Section of the Council of National Defense and the American Medical Association through a Medical Reserve Corps officer commissioned by the Surgeon General of the Army. These Boards are supervised in their work by a Medical Aide on the Staff of each Governor, designated by the Surgeon General with the aid of the Medical Section of the Council of National Defense. Since we instituted this we have had the deplorable results given in your letter. How to meet them I do not know. I have a Medical Aide on my Staff, a Major Work, and I have directed him to make a tour of all the Southern States for conference with the Governors and their Medical Aides with a view to finding out if there is any remedy for these conditions. You are right in your inquiry. I wanted you to know, by this direct letter, how keenly I feel the situation and what we have done and are doing to remedy it. With best wishes, I am E. H. Crowder, Provost Marshal General. EHC-vbr