The black-and-white Wilding Pictures Production’s “Army on Wheels” is “a film report of full scale peacetime maneuvers of the United States Army — Fort Benning-Fort Sam Houston and in the Sabine River area of Texas (in) May 1940. Made in cooperation between the US War Department and the Dodge division of the Chrysler Corporation, the film opens with news of how Dodge factories in Detroit have been churning out trucks for use by Uncle Sam. “Fresh from the truck production lines,” vehicles come off train cars starting at mark 02:34 — one of 7,000 new units. The uses for such vehicles are seemingly endless, the viewer is told, as soldiers are shown unloading food supplies from the back of a truck (mark 04:07), and those trucks allow everyone from private to general to travel as far as 300 miles a day if necessary. A convoy pulls out while the narrator continues to stress the importance of the mobility of an army beginning at mark 06:43. From troop transports to artillery carriers, the narrator cites the various types of vehicles supplied to the military as they pass by on the screen, “rolling to the war games 800 miles away” as is noted at mark 09:00. Later, we see how that equipment can be concealed “from marauding eyes in the sky” (mark 12:43). Officers employ portable desks in their command cars to study maps and plot strategies (mark 13:00) and troops use a new technology — the “walkie-talkie” — to keep in touch. Scenes from the maneuvers play out over the next few minutes and the Army Corps of Engineers complete a bridge that allows the “army on wheels” to cross at mark 18:18 and anti-aircraft guns are set up at a new location. Additional scenes feature a dirigible talking to the sky (mark 21:08) as infantrymen march along roadways. Anti-aircraft guns repel an “aerial attack” at mark 23:43 and also “experiments with a mechanized attack” as tanks race across the countryside at mark 24:24. “Vital to our national defense is this ability of a motorized army…,” says the narrator at mark 27:46. “We still feel as George Washington felt — that we want no enormous military establishment but we must be able to defend ourselves and safeguard our still free democracy.”

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