Lt. Col., A C of S, G-2 means what?

Can anyone help me with the meaning of the letters after Lt. Col. Lawson's name below:

WWII. U.S. Army, Richard Lawson, Lt. Col., A C of S, G-2

Thanks!

 

Wow Slipdigit u r good. How about the meaning of the S C after the attached signature of Lt. Col. Mashbir?

 

Sorry, I meant. Col. Didn't mean to demote him.

 

The "C" stands for commanding. Any officer that is in command of a company, battalion, brigade, etc... will sign his orders/documents with usually the name of the branch (armor, infantry, military police, etc...), then commanding.

However, I'm not to sure what the "S" means.

 

On other documents, S.C. is the acronym for Signal Corps. Looks like it could be the case here also, but I wouldn't make a very large wager.

 

Because of his rank, it would most likely mean Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2 (Intelligence). At Division headquarters or higher, the five general staff positions (or G-sections) were: G-1 (Personnel), G-2 (Intelligence), G-3 (Operations & Training), G-4 (Logistics & Supply), and G-5 (Military Government). These were overseen by the headquarters Chief of Staff. The officer in charge of each G-section were all officially titled "Assistant Chief of Staff" with either G-1, G-2 etc following. A Lt. Colonel, or full Colonel is the appropreate rank for such a position. To put it simply, he was the officer in charge of the G-2 Intelligence section of that particular headquarters. Hope this helps.

Greg C.

 

Great information Greg, always wondered what the other G- numbers represented.
What I was refering to was the S.C. behind Colonel Sidney F Mashbir's name (see the thumbnail with webfoot's post). I think you nailed the AC of S, and G-2.

 

Yes, after I posted this, I thought that I should have quoted the original post, as not to get confused with the other "S.C." that you replied to. Sorry 'bout that. I was replying to the original post. I wonder if officers and staff would have known how much their mountain of daily paperwork would have someday been used for historical research, would they have been more careful with, or eliminated some of their many abbreviations.

Greg C.

 

The big problem is there seems to be no official index or list for all the different abbreviations. For the most part, the Army documents can be figured out, but the Navy really gets outlandish. There is another post about understanding Navy records and I can't even guess.

 

Sidney Mashbir started out as a Lieutenant in the Arizona National Guard, branched Artillery. He received a federal commission during WWI in the Coast Artillery. He eventually was branched Signal Corps and was a Japanese language expert. Ended up on MacArthur's staff for most of the war.