of the redeployment of units from Europe to the Pacific, where the war with Japan continued until it also surrendered on 14 August 1945. Devers hired a civilian secretary, Dorothy Benn, a widow whose husband, an Army Air Forces pilot, had been listed as missing in action in New Guinea in 1943 and was presumed dead until his body was found in 1957. The Army Service Forces were abolished on 14 May 1946 on the recommendation of War Department's Simpson Board, but the Army Ground Forces remained. Devers's November 1945 testimony before the board had urged for the Army Service Forces to be retained. Army Ground Forces was given control of the six armies in the United States, but as demobilization continued, the strength of the army shrank dramatically. Devers was faced with the unpleasant task of informing many officers that they were being demoted. One reform that he achieved was to reduce the number of combat branches to three: infantry, armor, and artillery. McNair had established Army Ground Forces headquarters at the Army War College campus, where Devers lived, but Stilwell had moved the headquarters into the Pentagon. Eisenhower, as the new Chief of Staff of the Army, decided that the Army Ground Forces headquarters should be co-located with the Army Air Forces' Tactical Air Command at Fort Monroe, Virginia, not far from Langley Field. Devers opened his headquarters there on 1 October 1946. Further reorganization occurred on 10 March 1948, when Army Ground Forces was renamed Army Field Forces. Control of the armies was transferred to the Department of the Army, and Army Field Forces were reduced to a coordinating staff agency. As a member of the Joint Research and Development Committee with Spaatz, Devers took an interest in the development of helicopters and took rides in different machines. He met with Larry Bell, the founder of Bell Aircraft. The company was in a poor financial situation, and Bell hoped the army would buy fifty of his new Bell 47 helicopters. Devers was impressed with the aircraft and agreed to do so but for $25,000 each, rather than the $35,000 asked for by Bell; Devers found the money from Army Ground Forces funds. The Bell H-13 Sioux would go on to become one of the world's most recognizable helicopters. Retirement and post-military career Devers was given mandatory retirement on his 62nd birthday, 30 September 1949. Devers and his