“Whatever the shortages of equipment that may have remained in the Pacific by the fall of 1944, none was so serious as the shortage of troop labor to perform the thousand and one tasks involved in the operation of a supply line in territory where facilities were primitive and native labor either nonexistent or totally unskilled. The shortage of service troops in the Pacific was a chronic condition—one that began with the arrival of the first American troops and endured until the end of the war. It was a contributing factor to practically every other problem of Pacific logistics. The shortage of port battalions contributed to every instance of ship congestion, the shortage of Quartermaster troops to every instance of spoiled rations, that of Engineer construction battalions to every instance of failure to build airfields, roads, and other facilities on time. The inadequate supply of service troops imposed far more severe limitations on the pace of the Pacific advance than did the supply of combat units. As General Somervell wrote from the South Pacific in September 1943, it was not ‘a case of “frills”—but one of getting beans, shoes and bullets to the men who are fighting and to save those fighting from being laid out with pestilence,’ of building facilities at primitive bases which the Japanese did not have the resources or ability to match. ‘It would be a great mistake,’ he said, not to supply service troops ‘in full measure and make the most of this advantage.’” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The War Against Japan, 1943-44,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945