S.L.A. Marshall decried (in The Soldier’s Load and the Mobilty of a Nation) the senseless competition between the armed services in arranging special privileges and comforts for their separate forces when engaged in joint operations:
Consider what happened all too frequently in Pacific operations during World War II! The Army went ashore relatively light even when setting up a garrison operation. Because of the shortage of shipping space the men slept on the ground, with a blanket or so and a shelter half; they cut foliage for bedding. This would all have been tolerable if a Navy or Seabee unit had not set up next door with cots for sleeping, good housing and a ship’s store, complete with free beer. (Though it may have happened the other way, with the Navy taking the spitty end of the stick, I never heard of it.) The soldier compared his own lack of luxury and skinned-down installations with the luck of the people next door. The result was the demoralization of the service which felt itself discriminated against by higher authority, and forced by the country to suffer unnecessary hardship. In the beginning the Army had stuck to the policy of shipping luxury goods only when there was stowage space beyond that required for essential military cargo. It was soon compelled to depart from this sound principle and give shipping priority to welfare goods. The load continued to increase as one service vied with another in trying to make its men feel especially favored. That we did not pay an exorbitant price for this encumbering weight was only because we were meeting an enemy already short of shipping and other resources.