Replacement depot

A replacement depot in United States military terminology is a unit containing reserves or replacements for large front-line formations, such as field armies. As such, the term refers to formations similar to, but larger than, march battalions in other countries. The slang term "repple depple" came into common use in the US Army during World War II.[1]

These depots were used by the US Army in Europe in World War II, but were found to be ineffective as the men assigned from these large pools had poor esprit de corps and were unfamiliar with the fighting formations to which they were subsequently assigned.[2] The handling of the replacements in a bulk, impersonal way by permanent depot staff tended to cause psychological trauma so that they were weakened by the experience.[3] The Oxford English Dictionary notes, in a citation from The New York Times Magazine, 9 December 1945, that "repple depples, in short, are dreary places."[1]