James Alexander Ulio

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 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.

Dates of rank