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Title: The army behind the army
Author: E. Alexander Powell
Release date: September 8, 2025 [eBook #76843]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: C. Scribner's sons, 1919
Credits: Peter Becker and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARMY BEHIND THE ARMY ***
_BY E. ALEXANDER POWELL_
THE ARMY BEHIND THE ARMY
THE LAST FRONTIER
GENTLEMEN ROVERS
THE END OF THE TRAIL
FIGHTING IN FLANDERS
THE ROAD TO GLORY
VIVE LA FRANCE!
ITALY AT WAR
_CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS_
THE ARMY BEHIND THE ARMY
[Illustration: THE BURNING OF AN OBSERVATION BALLOON AT FORT SILL,
OKLAHOMA.]
THE ARMY
BEHIND THE ARMY
BY
MAJOR E. ALEXANDER POWELL
U. S. A.
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published September, 1919
[Illustration]
TO
FIVE FRIENDS OF THE A. E. F.
LIEUT.-COL. N. J. WILEY
MAJOR HUGH B. ROWLAND
MAJOR HAMILTON FISH, JR.
LIEUT. WILFORD S. CONROW
LIEUT. KINGDON GOULD
IN MEMORY OF THE DAYS WE SPENT TOGETHER
ON THE BANKS OF THE MARNE
AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT
For the interest they have shown and the assistance they have given me
in the preparation of this book, I am indebted to many persons. Each
chapter was written with the co-operation of the chief and subchiefs
of the branch of the army with which it deals, and upon its completion
it was by them carefully read and revised. The statements and figures
are as nearly accurate, therefore, as extreme care can make them. The
Honorable Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War, authorized the writing
of the book and issued orders that every facility was to be afforded
me for obtaining the necessary material, and the Honorable Benedict
Crowell, Assistant Secretary of War, who from the beginning took a
lively personal interest in the work, placed at my disposal the great
mass of material which he had collected for his Official Report. To
Major-General William S. Seibert, Director of the Chemical Warfare
Service, to Colonel William S. Walker, in command of Edgewood Arsenal,
and to Colonel Bradley Dewey, in command of the Gas Defense Division,
I am particularly indebted, as it was due to their efforts that I was
able to undertake the writing of the book. Major-General William M.
Black, Chief of Engineers, Lieutenant-Colonel Chenoweth, and Major Evarts
Tracy of the Corps of Engineers; Major-General C. T. Menoher, Director
of Military Aeronautics, Colonel S. M. Davis, Lieutenant-Colonel H.
B. Hersey, and Major H. M. Hickam of the Air Service; Colonel James
L. Walsh, to whose generosity I am indebted for much of the material
relating to Army Ordnance, Colonel E. M. Shinkle and Major A. B. Quinton,
Jr., of the Ordnance Department; Major-General George S. Squier, Chief
Signal Officer of the Army, Brigadier-General C. McK. Saltzman and
Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph O. Mauborgne of the Signal Corps; Major-General
M. W. Ireland, Surgeon-General, and Colonel M. A. De Laney of the Medical
Corps; Brigadier-General Marlborough Churchill, Director of Military
Intelligence, Captain R. G. Martin, Captain A. R. Townsend, Captain H.
M. Dargan, and Captain J. Stanley Moore, of the Military Intelligence
Division; Major-General Rogers, Quartermaster-General of the Army;
Colonel I. C. Welborn, Director of the Tank Corps; Brigadier-General
Drake, Director of the Motor Transport Corps; Captain W. K. Wheatley,
Chief of the Historical Section of the Motor Transport Corps, and
W. L. Pollard, Esq., Chief of the Historical Branch of Purchase and
Storage, all showed me exceptional courtesy and afforded me every
possible assistance. I welcome this opportunity to express to them my
appreciation. To the _Bulletin of the Spruce Production Division_,
published by the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, I am indebted for
a considerable portion of the account of spruce production in the Pacific
Northwest.
E. ALEXANDER POWELL.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE EARS OF THE ARMY 1
“ESSAYONS” 47
THE GAS-MAKERS 101
THE “Q. M. C.” 140
ORDNANCE 197
FIGHTERS OF THE SKY 259
“M. I.” 328
“TREAT ’EM ROUGH” 409
“GET THERE!” 424
MENDERS OF MEN 437
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Burning of an Observation Balloon at Fort Sill,
Oklahoma _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Laying a Field Telegraph Line 8
Signal-Corps Men Erecting a Field Telephone 8
Signal-Corps Men at Work Repairing the Tangle of Copper Wires Which
Link the Infantry in the Front-Line Trenches with the Guns 9
Communication by Use of Panels 14
A Member of the Signal Corps Sending Messages by Means of a Lamp 15
Motion-Picture Operators of the Photographic Section of the Signal
Corps Going into Action on a Tank 34
An Officer of the Signal Corps Operating a Telephone at the Front 35
New Type of Search-Light Used in the American Army 80
Camouflaging a Divisional Headquarters in the Toul Sector 81
Suits Known as Cagoules 94
The Work of the Camouflage Corps 95
Man and Horse Completely Protected Against Poisonous Gas 132
Types of Gas Masks Used by American and European Armies 133
1,500 Tons of Peach-Pits Used for the Manufacture of Charcoal for
Use in Gas Masks 134
Testing Respirators Outside the Gas Chamber 135
Testing Gas Masks Inside the Gas Chamber 135
Advancing Under Gas 138
Training for Gas Warfare 139
Cutting Their Way through Barbed-Wire Entanglements while Training
with Gas Masks 139
American Salvage Dump in France 192
A Workroom in an American Salvage Depot in France 192
An American Delousing Station 193
An American Laundry in Operation Near the Front 193
A 16-Inch Howitzer 202
A 16-Inch Howitzer on a Railway Mount 203
A Scene in an American Arsenal 214
Filling a Powder-Bag for a 16-Inch Gun 215
An American 75-mm in Action 232
The 37-mm Gun in Action 233
An American 75-mm Field Gun, Tractor Mounted 234
A 12-Inch Railway Gun in Operation 235
A 12-Inch Seacoast Mortar on a Railway Mount 236
6-Inch Seacoast Rifles Taken from Coast Fortifications and Mounted
for Field Use in France 237
John M Browning, the Inventor of the Pistol, Rifle, and Machine
Gun Which Bears His Name 242
The Browning Heavy Machine Gun 242
A Rifle Grenadier 243
Bombing Practice 288
Eggs of Death 288
Pigeons Have Been Repeatedly Used with Success from Both Airplanes
and Balloons 289
The Eye in the Sky; an Airplane Camera in Operation 289
Radio Telephone Apparatus in Operation on an Airplane 300
President Wilson Talking with an Aviator in the Clouds by Means of
the Radio Telephone 300
A Range-Finder for Ascertaining the Altitude and Speed of Airplanes 301
A Sentinel of the Skies 306
An American Observation Balloon Leaving Its “Bed” Behind the
Western Front 307
A Balloon Company Manœuvring a Caquot from Winch Position to
Its Bed 307
An American Kite Balloon About to Ascend 310
Planes in Battle Formation 311
A Basket Parachute Drop 316
Balloonist Making a Parachute Jump from an Altitude of 7,900 Feet 316
Training the Student Aviator 317
The American Whippet Tank 418
The Mark V Tank 418
A Squadron of Whippet Tanks Advancing in Battle Formation 419
A Squadron of Whippet Tanks Parked and Camouflaged to Conceal
Them from Enemy Observation 419
Mobile Machine-Shop Operating in a Village Under Shell Fire 434
Supply of Motor Tires 434
A Motor-Car Wrecked Returning from the Front Lines 435
Field-Hospital 454
An Infectious Ward 454
Clear, Filtered, Disinfected Water 455
Water Station on the Western Front 455
THE ARMY BEHIND THE ARMY
I
THE EARS OF THE ARMY
Before the war made most Americans as conversant with the functions of
the various branches of the army as they are with the duties of the
gardener and the cook, the work of the Signal Corps troops was popularly
supposed to consist, in the main, of standing in full view of the enemy
and frantically waving little red-and-white flags. Don’t you remember
those gaudily colored recruiting posters which depicted a slender youth
in khaki standing on a parapet, a signal-flag in either outstretched
hand, in superb defiance of the shells which were bursting all about
him? This popular and picturesque conception was still further fostered
at the officers’ training-camps, where the harassed candidates spent
many unhappy hours attempting to master the technic of semaphore and
wig-wag. Yet, as a matter of fact, during more than four years of war
I do not recall ever having seen a soldier of any nation attempt to
signal by means of flags, save, perhaps, in the back areas. Had such an
attempt been made under battle conditions the signaler probably would
have provided, in the words of the poet, “more work for the undertaker,
another little job for the casket-maker.”
By this I do not mean to imply that the changed conditions brought about
by the Great War made the army signaler a good life-insurance risk. Far
from it! But they did have the effect of making him a trifle less dashing
and picturesque. Instead of recklessly exposing himself on the parapet
of a trench in order to dash-dot a message which the enemy could have
read with the greatest ease, he dragged himself, foot by foot, across the
steel-swept terrain, a mud-caked and disreputable figure, on his task
of repairing the tangle of copper strands which linked the infantrymen
in the front-line trenches with the eager guns; crouching in the meagre
shelter afforded by a shell-hole, with receivers strapped to his ears, he
sent his radio messages into space; carrying on his back a wicker hamper
filled with pigeons, he went forward with the second wave of an attack;
or, by means of a military edition of the dictaphone device so familiar
to readers of detective stories, he eavesdropped on the enemy’s strictly
private conversations. Even though he had no opportunity to wave his
little flags, the Signal Corps man never lacked for action and excitement.
If the Air Service is, as it has frequently been termed, “the eyes
of the army,” then the Signal Corps constitutes the army’s entire
nerve-system. Under the conditions imposed by modern warfare, an
army without aviators would be at least partially blind, but without
signalers it would be bereft of touch, speech, and hearing. It is the
business of the Signal Corps to operate and maintain all the various
systems of message transmission—telegraphs, telephones, radios, buzzers,
Fullerphones, flags, lamps, panels, heliographs, pyrotechnics,
despatch-riders, pigeons, even dogs—which enable the Commander-in-Chief
to keep in constant communication with the various units of his army
and which permit of those units keeping in touch with each other. It
was imperative that General Pershing should be able to pick up his
telephone-receiver in his private car, sidetracked hundreds of miles
away from the battle-front, perhaps, and talk, if he so desired, with a
subaltern of infantry crouching in his dugout on the edge of No Man’s
Land. The Secretary of War, seated at his desk in Washington, must be
enabled to talk to the commander of a camp on the Rio Grande or of a
cantonment in the Far Northwest. Though every strand of wire leading to
the advanced positions was cut by the periodic shell-storms, means had to
be provided for the commanders of the troops holding those positions to
call for artillery support, for reinforcements, for ammunition, or for
food. It was essential to the proper working of the great war-machine
that the chiefs of the Services of Supply at Tours should be in constant
telegraphic and telephonic communication with the officers in charge of
the unloading of troops and supplies at Bordeaux and Marseilles, at Brest
and St. Nazaire. It was vital that the Chief of Staff should be kept
constantly informed of conditions at the various ports of embarkation.
All this was made possible by the Signal Corps. But it was also necessary
that these various conversations should be so safeguarded that there was
no possibility of them being overheard by enemy spies. And the Signal
Corps saw to that too.
When Count von Bernstorff was handed his passports in the spring of
1917, the Signal Corps consisted of barely 50 officers and about 2,500
men. When, nineteen months later, the German delegates, standing about a
table in Marshal Foch’s private car, sullenly affixed their signatures to
the Armistice, the corps had grown to nearly 2,800 officers and upward
of 53,000 men. It comprised at the close of the war seventy-one field
signal battalions, thirty-four telegraph battalions, twenty replacement
and training battalions, and fifty-two service companies, together with
several pigeon and army radio companies, a photographic section, and a
meteorological section.
Not many people are aware, I imagine, that nearly a third of the officers
and men who wore on their collars the little crossed flags of the Signal
Corps were recruited from the employees of the two great rival telephone
systems of the United States—the Bell and the Independent. The former
raised and sent to France twelve complete telegraph battalions; the
latter ten field signal battalions—to say nothing of the great number of
experts, specialists, and telephone-girls who left the employ of those
systems to embark on the Great Adventure. So you need not be surprised
if, the next time your telephone gets out of order, your trouble call
is answered by a bronzed and wiry youth who wears in the buttonhole
of his rather shabby coat the tricolored ribbon of the D. S. C.—won,
perhaps, while keeping the communications open at Château-Thierry. And
the operator who says, “Number, please,” so sweetly, may have been—who
knows?—one of those alert young women in trim blue serge who sat before
the switchboard at Great Headquarters and handled the messages of the
Commander-in-Chief himself.
For a number of years before the war it was recognized in Washington
that should the United States ever become involved in a conflict with
a first-class Power, the handful of officers and men who composed the
personnel of the Signal Corps would be utterly incapable of handling,
unaided, the enormous system of communications which is so essential
to the success of a modern army. It was perfectly evident, moreover,
that should the country suddenly find itself confronting an emergency,
there would be no time to train officers and men in the highly technical
requirements of the Signal Corps. To insure the success of the great
citizen armies which we would be compelled to raise with the utmost
speed in case of war, it was essential that there should be available
an adequate supply of men who were already thoroughly trained in
the installation and operation of the two chief forms of military
communication—telegraphs and telephones. And this trained personnel was
at hand in the employees of the great telephone and telegraph companies.
It was not, however, until June, 1916, when Congress, tardily awakening
to the imminent danger of sparks falling on our own roof from the
great conflagration in Europe, passed the National Defense Act, which
authorized, among other things, the creation of the Signal Officers’
Reserve Corps and the Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps, that the way was
opened for definite action. Shortly thereafter the Bell Telephone System
was approached by the Signal Corps with the suggestion that a number
of reserve Signal Corps units be recruited from its various subsidiary
organizations. The suggestion met with the hearty approval of the Bell
officials and the work of organization was turned over to the Bell’s
chief engineer, Mr. J. J. Carty, the foremost telephone expert in the
world. In accordance with the plans drawn up by Mr. Carty, there were
organized from the employees of the New York, New England, Pennsylvania,
Chesapeake and Potomac, Central Union, Cincinnati, Northwestern,
Southwestern, Southern, Mountain States, and Pacific telephone companies
twelve reserve telegraph battalions. I might mention, in passing, that
Mr. Carty was given a commission as major, was later promoted to colonel,
was made chief of the telegraphs and telephones of the A. E. F., and for
his invaluable work was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.
While the Bell System was devoting its efforts to the raising of the
telegraph battalions, the Chief Signal Officer of the Army asked the
co-operation of the Bell’s great rival, the United States Independent
Telephone Association, in the organization of a number of field signal
battalions for front-line work. Mr. F. B. McKinnon, vice-president
of the association, assumed charge of the work and enthusiastically
threw himself and all the agencies at his disposal into the business
of recruiting, ten field battalions eventually being raised by the
Independent System.
But the demand for trained personnel from the telegraph and telephone
companies did not end with the formation of the units I have just
mentioned. With the declaration of war and the despatch to France of the
first American contingents, it was realized that their work had only
begun. Though the telegraph and field battalions contained many experts
on telegraphy and telephony, they were formed primarily as constructive
and operative units for comparatively short lines. But the lines in the
A. E. F. did not remain short, and as they grew in length and in number,
new equipment and different types of technicians had to be employed. In
August, 1917, there came from France the first call for specialists,
to include telephone-repeater experts, printer-telegraph mechanicians,
printing-telegraph traffic supervisors, and similar highly trained men.
Almost at the same time there was received a cablegram from General
Pershing requesting the immediate organization in Paris of a Research and
Inspection Department, in order that the best, latest, and most reliable
signal equipment might be assured for the American troops. To Colonel
Carty was assigned the task of selecting the twelve scientists to be the
officers of the new division and the fifty enlisted assistants who were
necessary to commence the work. He found them in the remarkable Research
Department of the Western Electric Company, which is closely allied
with the Bell System, Mr. Herbert Shreeve of the Western Electric being
given a commission as lieutenant-colonel and placed in charge of the
work. The improvements made and the devices introduced by this division
made the signal system of the A. E. F. one of the marvels of the war.
So wide-spread and reliable were the American communications, and so
efficient the American operators, that on more than one occasion Marshal
Foch, during his tours of inspection along the battle-front, went many
miles out of his way in order to use the American wires for important
conversations. But so rapid was the growth of the telegraph and telephone
lines in France that hardly had one requisition for additional personnel
been filled before another was received. Yet always the great systems of
the United States answered the call, and this despite their crying need
for such personnel at home, where war conditions had enormously increased
their business, and the difficulty which they were experiencing in
making replacements in their own forces. In fact, of the 2,800 officers
commissioned in the Signal Corps during the war, fully 30 per cent had
been trained with the telegraph and telephone systems, and the percentage
of enlisted men was equally high. The response made by these great
corporations to the nation’s call constitutes, indeed, one of the most
gratifying incidents of the war.
When the history of the great conflict comes to be written, the story
of the achievements of the telegraph and field battalions of the Signal
Corps will form one of its most fascinating chapters. Working under the
most trying conditions, in a land with whose customs they were unfamiliar
and whose language they did not understand, with equipment and material
frequently improvised from whatever was at hand, they covered France
from the seaboard to the Rhine with the network of their wires; they made
it as easy for Great Headquarters to communicate with a remote outpost in
Alsace or the Argonne as it is for a brokerage house in Wall Street to
communicate with the manager of its Chicago branch, and it established a
standard of speed and efficiency which will make the French dissatisfied
with their own services for years to come. Their work was, in the words
of General Pershing, “a striking example of the wisdom of placing highly
skilled technical men in the places where their experience and skill will
count the most.”
[Illustration: LAYING A FIELD TELEGRAPH LINE.
They established a standard of speed and efficiency.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: SIGNAL CORPS MEN ERECTING A FIELD TELEPHONE.
Working under the most trying conditions, these men covered France with
the network of wires.]
[Illustration: SIGNAL CORPS MEN AT WORK REPAIRING THE TANGLE OF COPPER
WIRES WHICH LINK THE INFANTRY IN THE FRONT-LINE TRENCHES WITH THE GUNS.]
Despite the unending stream of men which constantly flowed Europeward
for work on the “A. E. F. Tel. & Tel. Co.,” as our military telegraphs
and telephones were familiarly known, more were ever needed, and it
was finally decided, though, I believe, with considerable reluctance
on the part of certain old-fashioned officers in the War Department,
to replace the men operators, wherever possible, with girls. Again the
American systems were called upon, this time to furnish young women who
possessed the necessary technical experience, and to give them a working
knowledge of French. Imagine the furor of excitement that swept through
every telephone-exchange in the country when it was learned that girls
were wanted for service in the A. E. F.! Where was the red-blooded,
adventure-loving American girl who could resist such a call? Soon the
company officials as well as the Signal Corps itself were almost swamped
by the flood of applications that poured in. Then the Signal Corps found
itself confronted by the necessity of educating the applicants; to do
this it had to operate a whole system of boarding-schools for girls.
Such schools were established in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San
Francisco, Jersey City, Atlantic City, and Lancaster, Pa., the candidates
for overseas duty being given intensive courses in military telephony,
French, and European geography, together with lectures on French manners
and customs, and, I might add (this in a whisper), on their own behavior,
particular emphasis being laid on the evils of flirting, impertinence,
and gum-chewing. Upward of 200 girls were finally selected, provided with
uniforms and overseas caps of navy serge—which looked as though they
might have been designed by the technical experts of the Signal Corps—and
sent to France as full-fledged members of the A. E. F. No pupils at a
fashionable girls’ boarding-school were ever more strictly chaperoned. At
Tours quarters were built for them on an island in the Loire, which was
connected with the mainland by a narrow foot-bridge, the military police
on duty at the end of the bridge only permitting the girls to “go ashore”
when they were accompanied by a matron or were in pairs. Notwithstanding
the strictness of the regulations under which they lived and worked, it
was a girl’s own fault if she came home unengaged. Though it goes without
saying that the military authorities took every precaution against
exposing the girls to danger, those who were on duty in towns near the
front, such as Toul, on numerous occasions tasted the excitement of
German air-raids, one of them being cited in army orders for remaining
at her post and coolly continuing to operate her switchboard “whence all
but she had fled.”
I always liked the true story of the telephone-girl who, upon her arrival
at an American port of debarkation, informed the landing officer that she
was a second lieutenant.
“But why do you call yourself a second lieutenant?” he inquired. “No
commissions have been given to telephone-girls.”
“I don’t see what that’s got to do with it,” she retorted, tossing her
head. “I get more pay than a second lieutenant, and I’ve been of more use
to the army than any second lieutenant that I know.”
In order to assess at their true worth the achievements of the Signal
Corps during the war, it is essential to realize the amazing number,
variety, and magnitude of the tasks the corps was called upon to perform.
The Signal Corps is a staff department charged with providing means of
communication for the army, both at home and overseas. According to the
present tables of organization, one field signal battalion is usually
attached to each division, the telegraph battalions being used as corps
or army troops. Generally speaking, the telegraph battalion maintains
communications in the rear; the field battalion usually operates with
the combat troops at the front. In addition to these troops, there are
numerous special units, such as pigeon companies, radio companies,
photographic and meteorological sections, which are attached to corps,
armies, or to General Headquarters. In France where hundreds of miles
separated our base ports from our troops on the firing-line, there
devolved upon the Signal Corps an enormous amount of work in the area
known as the Services of Supply. The magnitude of the telegraph and
telephone systems in the S. O. S. is illustrated by the fact that when
the Armistice was signed, the Signal Corps in France was operating 96,000
miles of circuits known as “long lines,” with 282 telephone-exchanges,
and a total of nearly 9,000 stations. The requirements for wire in the
field were even greater. When our operations were at their height in the
summer of 1918, it was estimated that the Signal Corps would require
68,000 miles of “outpost wire” a month for use at the front in connecting
telegraph and telephone systems. Outpost wire is, I ought to explain, a
development of the war. It is composed of seven fine wires, four of them
bronze and three of them of hard carbon steel, stranded together and
coated first with rubber, then with cotton yarn, and finally paraffined.
This wire is produced in six colors—red, yellow, green, brown, black, and
gray—in order that it may readily be identified in the field, the red
wire running, for example, to the artillery, the yellow to regimental
headquarters, green to brigade headquarters, and so on. The enormous
amount of this wire required is explained by the fact that very little
of it was saved, it being out of the question to pick it up during the
hurry and excitement of an advance, while hundreds of miles of it were
destroyed during the heavy bombardments which usually preceded an attack.
Within the memory of many of us the size of combat armies was largely
determined by the efficiency and scope of their signal systems, it being
essential that the forces in the field should be kept within a size which
permitted of communication being maintained between all units by means of
runners, riders, or visual signals. Those were the days when messengers,
often chosen by lot, crawled through the enemy’s lines at night in order
to bring reinforcements to beleaguered garrisons; when stories of ambush
and massacre or urgent appeals for ammunition and food were brought to
headquarters by weary riders clinging to the manes of reeking ponies;
or when, in the Indian country, cavalry columns communicated with each
other by means of heliograph messages flashed from mountain-top to
mountain-top, or signal-fires curling slowly skyward.
But all this changed with the introduction of the telegraph and the
telephone, the communications of an army thereafter being limited only
by the amount of its wire. A far greater change came, however, with
the introduction of the radio or wireless, whose area of operations is
limited only by the power of the sending apparatus. Now it should be kept
in mind that each of the systems of military signalling which I have
already enumerated—telegraphs, telephones, radios, panels, lamps, flags,
pigeons, runners, dogs, and the rest—is an adjunct to the others—when
one fails, another is employed to get the message through. If the wires
of the field telegraph and telephone are cut by a barrage, the radio is
employed; if a shell knocks out the radio set, the message is intrusted
to a pigeon; should the pigeon fail, a runner attempts to take it
through; and if the runner is killed, the message can be communicated,
either by means of rockets or by cloth panels spread upon the ground, to
the aviators circling overhead.
Despite the new methods of transmitting messages produced by the war,
the telephone remains the backbone of the military signal system. Though
the portable telephone instrument used by all front-line troops was
manufactured in the United States for commercial purposes prior to the
war, the switchboard in most general use by mobile troops was originally
developed by the French, being the only telephone equipment used by the
American forces which was not of American design. This switchboard,
which was built in units so that it could be expanded from four to
twelve lines, was the “Central” of the front-line dugout, being so
compact that it could be carried as part of the equipment of a soldier
and quickly put into operation. For the use of the larger field units
there was designed a camp switchboard, with provision for forty wires,
which when in transit resembled a commercial traveller’s sample-trunk.
A third type of switchboard, for use at headquarters in the zone of
combat, but where extreme portability was not essential, was designed
in units, like a certain popular style of sectional bookcase, and could
readily be increased to any size required. An important auxiliary to the
field-telephone lines was the buzzerphone, an American device for use
where extraordinary secrecy was imperative, it being impossible for the
German Listening-in Service to eavesdrop on messages sent by this method.
[Illustration: COMMUNICATION BY USE OF PANELS.
When other means of communication is found impracticable, the infantry
can communicate with aviators by means of panels of cloth cut in various
shapes spread upon the ground.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: A MEMBER OF THE SIGNAL CORPS SENDING MESSAGES BY MEANS OF
A LAMP.]
Prior to the war the “lance-pole” was used exclusively by American troops
in the field, as it permitted of rapid line construction and served its
purpose admirably in open warfare. The conditions prevailing in Europe
made the use of this pole impracticable, however, and where poles were
used at all they consisted of very short stakes with special cross-arms,
miniature copies, in fact, of the commercial equipment commonly used in
the United States. The enormous mileage of the trench-lines called for
vast quantities of insulators, cross-arms, and other special fittings, in
all of which there was great wastage, for though the instruments used on
the military lines usually had a certain degree of protection, the lines
themselves were constantly exposed to artillery and airplane bombardment.
A factor which greatly complicated the supply of the front-line forces
with wire was the necessity for maintaining two-way or twisted-pair lines
in order to avoid giving information to the enemy, for the detectors used
in the German listening-posts were so highly developed that a telegraph
or telephone message sent over a “grounded” or single-conductor line was
to all intents and purposes sent direct to Berlin. This necessity for a
double-conductor line relegated the old field-wire of open warfare to
the scrap-heap, a long series of experiments being required to produce a
twisted-pair wire which was light enough to permit of easy portability
and rapid laying, strong enough to stand the strain of heavy traffic and
shell-shock, and withal so well insulated that “leaks” to the ground
might not reveal to the enemy listeners-in facts intended to be strictly
confidential. The enormous demands for all types of wire and cables which
came both from the A. E. F. and from our allies necessitated the United
States being combed for every foot of available material and the speeding
up of production until every wire-mill in America was working twenty-four
hours a day. Yet, in spite of labor troubles, housing problems, and the
difficulties of obtaining material and transportation, the wire-makers at
home filled every requirement of the soldiers overseas.
Of all the varied activities of the Signal Corps, none was more
fascinating or mysterious in its operation than the work of the Radio
Intelligence Sections, particularly the so-called listening-stations,
which, by means of supersensitive receiving and amplifying instruments
electrically connected with ground-plates placed as close as possible
to the enemy positions, were enabled to overhear the ground-telegraph
operations of the Germans and the conversation leaking from defective
or non-metallic telephone and telegraph circuits. This remarkable
service, some of whose achievements would seem to the layman to verge
on the miraculous, combined the discoveries of Ohm, Volta, and Galvani
with the methods of LeCoq and Sherlock Holmes. These stations could, of
course, operate successfully only under favorable conditions, the chief
requisites being that the enemy’s trenches should not be too far away
and that the intervening terrain should be free of creeks, gullies, or
other features which might sidetrack the currents which it was desired
to intercept. The listening-stations were usually situated in the
second line of trenches, the ground-plates being placed about 300 yards
apart. In order to obtain satisfactory results it was necessary that
the ground-plates should be placed as close to the enemy as possible,
the work of installing them, almost under the noses of the Huns, being
one of the most hazardous duties which the signal troops were called
upon to perform. The men operating the listening-stations had to remain
on duty for a week at a time—a considerably longer tour of duty than
was required, under ordinary conditions, of the infantrymen. They were
expected to possess a fluent knowledge of German and to be able to
both speak and understand it as well as they did English, though this
requirement was not always fulfilled toward the end. They were thoroughly
coached, moreover, in German military phrases and colloquialisms and had
to be proficient in recording ground-telegraphy code, which, though slow,
is extremely difficult to master. It will be seen, therefore, that the
Listening-In Service demanded of its operators continuous interest and
constant vigilance, together with a sufficiently active imagination to
enable them to piece together the broken or garbled fragments of messages
which their instruments might pick up, and to deduce from these messages
what the enemy was doing or what he intended to do. Listening-in was
very far from being a one-sided game, however, for the Germans, who were
thoroughly conversant with its possibilities and limitations, maintained
a service which was nearly, if not fully, equal to our own. The real
superiority of our service lay, not in its equipment, but in the boyish
enthusiasm of its personnel, many of whom were university undergraduates
when the war began. With them the work never assumed the aspect of a
daily task which had to be performed whether they liked it or not: they
regarded it rather as a game, interesting, fascinating, exciting. The
quickness with which they grasped the technicalities of the service was
amazing. I knew of one case where a soldier of a Listening-In Section,
wholly without previous experience in the work, overhearing a telephone
conversation in the enemy’s lines which indicated that the watches in
that sector were being synchronized, deduced that a raid on the American
trenches was being planned. He promptly acquainted the divisional
intelligence officer with his conclusions, and when the Germans launched
their attack, expecting to take the _verdamte_ Yankees completely by
surprise, they were greeted by a burst of rifle and machine-gun fire
which almost annihilated them. After the moving warfare began it was, of
course, extremely difficult to maintain these listening-stations, but
when the advance halted, even for a night, listening-stations were always
established if conditions permitted.
A far-fetched but, as it proved, entirely correct deduction was made
by the operator of a listening-post whose curiosity was aroused by the
sudden change in the nature of the conversation taking place over the
enemy’s lines, familiarity interspersed with profanity abruptly giving
way to studied politeness. From this he reasoned that a new division had
moved in during the night. Prisoners captured the next day verified his
deduction. Just before the St. Mihiel offensive one of our operators
noted that the telephone conversations between the enemy units opposite
his station had almost ceased, presumably because a troop movement was in
progress which they did not dare to discuss for fear of being overheard,
the truth being that the Germans were quietly withdrawing. Though he had
practically no conversation to guide him, this by no means discouraged
the American listener, who, by comparing the intensity of the T. P.
S. (_telegraphie par sol_) signals he overheard, deduced with amazing
accuracy the movements of the retiring troops. In comparison with such
feats of deduction, Sherlock Holmes’s ability to deduce a stranger’s
occupation from the condition of his finger-nails or the soles of his
boots seems absurdly commonplace, doesn’t it?
A youth in search of excitement beyond that usually provided by battle
could always find it by joining the Listening-In Service. In March,
1918, the American troops holding a certain sector were suddenly ordered
to retire to a second line of resistance, but through an oversight the
orders for withdrawal were not passed on to the Signal Corps men who were
operating the listening-stations out in front. Serenely unconscious,
therefore, of the fact that their comrades had fallen back and that
German raiding-parties were prowling all about them in the darkness,
they remained at their post throughout the night. It was not until the
American infantry reoccupied their original position in the morning that
the men in the listening-station learned that for eight hours they had
been the only occupants of the sector.
While crawling over No Man’s Land to repair a break in a line connecting
his station with a ground-plate, a Signal Corps man discovered a wire
leading straight toward the enemy’s position. Being of an inquiring
turn of mind, he followed it up on hands and knees until he actually
penetrated the German trenches, where he made the interesting discovery
that the enemy’s listening-station had tapped the same ground which
we were using. Needless to say, he lost no time in crawling back and
changing his ground-plates. This feat was paralleled by a soldier who
followed an American raid into the German trenches, and, unobserved
during the excitement, succeeded in attaching a wire to one of their
ground-plates which was well within their lines, and, therefore,
presumably in no danger of being tampered with. By this means he
listened-in on the enemy’s conversations for several days before his wire
was discovered and cut.
Though the work of the Radio-Intercept and Goniometric Direction-Finding
stations lacked in some measure the danger connected with that of the
ground listening-posts, it nevertheless provided many interesting
incidents in the life of the Signal Corps man. The function of
radio-intercept stations is, as their name implies, the interception of
enemy radio messages. Goniometric stations are used, on the other hand,
for locating enemy radio-stations, the work being carried on on much the
same principles as flash-ranging, which I have described at some length
in another chapter. By placing a goniometer—an instrument for measuring
angles—at each end of a base line of known length, it is a comparatively
simple matter to ascertain the angle of direction of an enemy
radio-station, and, by prolonging the lines of these angles until they
intersect, the location of the station can be approximately determined.
That done, the information was sent to the artillery, which proceeded
to sweep the vicinity in which the radio-station was known to be with
a hurricane of shell. So highly was this system of radio detection
developed that, after the salient at St. Mihiel had been cleared of
Germans, every radio-station which our Goniometric Service had located
previous to the attack was verified, the greatest error in location
being approximately 500 yards. In many cases some of the German wireless
equipment was still in the dugouts, and much interesting printed matter
was picked up. This was the first corroboration of the effectiveness of
our Radio Intelligence work.
Just as the naturalists can reconstruct from a few bones a prehistoric
monster which they have never seen, so the goniometric experts are able
to gain an amazingly accurate idea of the organization of an army by
locating its radio-stations, for the lines of radio communication which
spread fan-wise from army headquarters form a sort of skeleton, as it
were, of the army’s organization, the location of the various stations
and their distance from headquarters indicating quite accurately the
position of the corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, and battalions.
This fact was, of course, as well known to the Germans as to ourselves,
and consequently extraordinary precautions were taken to prevent the
stations from being located. Such a system of communications is known
in military parlance as a “net,” that serving an army being called an
“army net” and that of a corps a “corps net.” Just before the American
offensive was launched at St. Mihiel a false corps net was set up
considerably to the east of the point selected for the attack, this net
being operated in as close imitation as possible of the real thing.
Thousands of faked messages were sent in code, precisely as though
the movements of an army corps depended upon them, and, to add to the
verisimilitude of the proceeding, they were strongly seasoned with the
profane and violent English with which American radio operators are
accustomed to interlard their conversations. The German goniometric
operators promptly located this network of radio-stations, and as the
messages which were being transmitted appeared to be perfectly genuine,
they naturally concluded that they had discovered the unsuspected
presence of an American army corps, whereupon the German High Command
took steps to move its reserves to the area which apparently was
threatened. There is no means of knowing how effective this ingenious
stratagem really proved, but the best answer would seem to be the
surprisingly slight resistance which we encountered at St. Mihiel.
The operation of the mobile radio-stations which accompanied the
smaller infantry units was always a most hazardous and trying business,
requiring not only courage but a very high degree of resourcefulness
and self-possession. In one case that I know of a Signal Corps unit
received orders to have a trench radio-station installed at a certain
exposed point by a certain time. They followed their instructions to the
letter, but when their instruments were set up and they were ready for
business, they discovered, to their extreme annoyance, that the infantry
which was scheduled to occupy the position had failed to materialize and
that they and their radio set were well in advance of our lines. From
their position in a shell-hole they called up the regimental commander,
reported that they were located according to instructions, and inquired
what they were expected to do. Whereupon the infantry lost no time in
moving up and occupying the position which, as the signalers mockingly
asserted, they had been holding for them.
The exigencies of the Great War wrought many strange and startling
transformations. Scientists who had devoted their entire lives to
discovering methods for prolonging life turned their genius to finding
new and effective ways of taking it; the tractor of the Western
wheat-fields became the tank of the battle-fields in Flanders; the
machinery and chemicals used for the manufacture of dyestuffs were
converted to the manufacture of poisonous gases—and the dove became the
army carrier-pigeon, bearing, instead of the olive-branch of peace,
messages of battle. Though I find that many Americans seem to be under
the impression that pigeons were unreliable and comparatively little
used, they were, as a matter of fact, the most trustworthy of all the
systems of message transmission employed by the fighting armies. When
everything else failed, when the wires of the field telegraph and
telephone had been destroyed by the German shell-storms, when the radio
installations had been demolished, when the runners had been killed and
the aviators driven back by the air-barrages, it was the pigeons which
took the messages through. The official accounts of their exploits read
like the wildest fiction. Over 500 birds were used by our troops in the
St. Mihiel offensive alone. Through the messages brought by pigeons,
American Headquarters learned of the whereabout of Major Whittlesey and
his “Lost Battalion.” How trustworthy were these winged messengers is
proved by the carefully kept records of the Allied Armies, which show
that of the thousands of messages intrusted to pigeons during the four
years of the war, _96 per cent were delivered_.
The use of pigeons as messengers is as old as recorded history, the
Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all having used birds for this
purpose. Word of the victory at Waterloo was brought to England by
pigeons, and pigeons carried from New York to Washington the news that
Napoleon had signed the treaty which added Louisiana to the Union. Among
the oldest and most successful pigeon-trainers are the Belgians, many of
the best flying strains used by the French, British, and American armies
having been developed from Belgian stock. When the Hunnish hordes swept
across Belgium, one of their first measures was to confiscate or kill
all pigeons. For a Belgian to have in his possession a carrier-pigeon
was for him to risk a court martial and death before a firing-party.
Many of the pigeons taken from the Belgians were sent back to Germany
for breeding purposes, producing birds which served against their
former masters, but when the Americans established their watch on the
Rhine, they ordered the immediate release of all pigeons in the area of
occupation, thus giving thousands of feathered exiles a chance to fly
back to their old homes in Flanders.
The Carrier-Pigeon Service of the American Army is a part of the Signal
Corps, being composed of officers and men who are expert pigeon breeders
and handlers, and who have the ability to impart their knowledge to
others. The pigeon section, which was organized shortly after our entry
into the war, consisted of two companies with a personnel of 24 officers
and about 650 men. The birds used by the army are known to the fancier
as “homers” and are really not carrier-pigeons at all, the latter being
a large, ungainly show-bird that cannot fly a city block. But our allies
persist in calling homers “carrier-pigeons,” and our military authorities
have adopted the term. The homer has all the qualities required of a
military messenger. He is a strong, well-built, racy-looking bird,
possessed of indomitable courage. His most characteristic trait is, of
course, his remarkable ability to find his home when released at great
distances from it. This power, which has been developed by scientific
breeding to an almost uncanny degree, is the asset which makes the
bird of enormous value to the army. Though scientists have attempted
to explain the homing instinct, they have arrived at different and
frequently contradictory conclusions, it being enough to know that it is
an instinct with which all birds are endowed to a greater or less degree,
and which has been developed in the homer to a stage where it is limited
only by the bird’s physical endurance. Nature has equipped the pigeon
with numerous air-sacs adjoining the lungs, in which a reserve supply of
warm air is carried and supplied to the lungs as needed during flight.
Over the eye is a transparent lid, called a “blinder,” which protects the
eye while in flight, and is at the same time transparent, thus providing
a sort of natural goggle. Well-trained homers have frequently flown 1,000
and even 1,500 miles, while pigeon-fanciers think no more of a 500-mile
flight than horsemen do of a mile trotted in 2:30. On clear days a homer
pigeon will fly distances up to 300 miles at a speed close to a mile a
minute, though longer distances are usually covered at a somewhat lower
rate of speed, the birds instinctively taking advantage of the favoring
air-currents and increasing or decreasing their altitude in order to
obtain the benefit of them.
Long before the Great War it was discovered that pigeons would “home” to
movable lofts as unerringly as to stationary ones, this being of great
importance from the military point of view because it made it possible to
move the cotes up to within a few miles of the firing-line. It also made
it comparatively easy to supply the advanced posts with fresh pigeons.
It was found that a week or ten days was usually sufficient to acquaint
the birds with the new location of the loft and with the surrounding
country, moves of twenty-five miles without the loss of any birds
being not at all uncommon. Each of these mobile lofts was stocked with
seventy-five young birds, six to eight weeks old, of the best pedigreed
stock obtainable. Clasped about the leg of each bird was a seamless
aluminum band bearing a serial number, the year of birth, and the letters
“U. S. A.” These bands are put on soon after birth and cannot be removed
except by destroying them. As the birds had never been outside a loft,
it was a comparatively easy matter to settle them in their new homes.
Their early training was devoted to the development of their flying
strength and stamina and to the habit of quick “trapping,” by which is
meant the entrance of the bird into the loft immediately upon reaching
it, a pigeon that alights on the ground or roosts on the roof of the
loft being considered most imperfectly trained. They soon learn to trap
without hesitation, a flock of seventy-five birds entering a loft in from
ten to twenty seconds after pitching on the roof. To overcome the habit
of loafing, birds are fed in the loft after alighting with their favorite
grain. After a month or two of this preliminary training the birds are
“tossed,” to use the phraseology of the fancier, at increasing distances
from the loft, so that by the time they are five or six months old they
are flying from fifty to seventy-five miles with speed and certainty.
They are then ready for service in the trenches. Not all, however,
are assigned to the infantry. Every tank crew carries a complement of
pigeons, men from the Pigeon Service are frequently attached to cavalry
units, and birds have been used successfully from balloons and airplanes.
The infantryman carries his pigeons in a light wicker hamper strapped
to his back, each bird wearing a corselet made of crinoline stiffened
with whalebone and with strings running to the sides of the basket, thus
preventing it from being tossed about and injured.
As long as the ordinary means of communication are working
satisfactorily, birds are not used. But when a barrage is laid down and
the telephone-wires are destroyed, resort is had to the pigeons. When
an advance-party has pushed far ahead of the main force it, too, relies
on this method of liaison. In short, when every other method of liaison
has failed or is unavailable, important messages are intrusted to the
birds. The messages are written on fine tissue-paper, folded into a small
wad, and inserted in the aluminum holder which is attached to the leg
of each pigeon. The bird is then released, and in spite of the terrific
din and confusion of battle, in spite of the enemy shotgun squads,
composed of expert shots, whose duty it is to pick off carrier-pigeons,
it wings its way through shell and gas barrages to its loft in the
rear of the lines. I might mention in passing that though birds are
frequently killed while in their baskets by exploding shells, and others
die from long confinement without food or care in the trenches, those
that survive become accustomed to the roar of cannon and never suffer
from shell-shock. On reaching his loft the bird hurries into it through
an opening which permits of entry but not of exit, the dropping back of
the little door ringing a bell which announces the arrival of a message
from the front, whereupon eager hands strip the cylinder from the leg of
the bird, the message which it contains being relayed to headquarters by
telephone or despatch-rider.
The pigeons were not always fortunate enough, however, to pass through
the battle area unscathed, many birds having succeeded in reaching
their lofts with their messages only to succumb to their wounds. During
the offensive in the Argonne an American pigeon reached its loft with
the leg to which the message was attached severed and dangling by
the ligaments, the missile that severed the leg having also passed
through the breast-bone. In spite of these injuries and the great loss
of blood the heroic bird flew twenty-five miles with a message of
vital importance. I am glad to say that the pigeon recovered and was
recommended in due form for the D. S. C. An English bird was struck by a
piece of shrapnel while homeward bound with a message. Both of its legs
were broken and the aluminum message-holder was embedded in the flesh
by the force of the bullet. But its spirit never faltered. It struggled
on and on, blood dripping from it in an ever-increasing stream, to fall
dead at the feet of the loft attendants. Another bird was released from
a seaplane which had fallen and was being shelled by a German destroyer.
It rose quickly and circled once to get its bearings. Shots resounded
from the deck of the destroyer, the bird stopped short in its flight,
and a flurry of falling feathers told their tale, but, after a short
fall, it recovered and valiantly struggled on. Within thirty minutes
after its release three British destroyers, white waves curling from
their prows and clouds of smoke belching from their funnels, came racing
toward the scene, whereupon the German turned and fled and the aviators
were saved. With wings and body terribly lacerated the plucky bird had
flown thirteen miles to a naval air-station and given the alarm. Here is
another incident in which a feathered messenger played a hero’s rôle. A
detachment of French infantry was ordered to hold a certain strategic
position at all costs, thereby affording their main body time to retire
to another position. The Germans, realizing that the stubborn little
band of Frenchmen was balking them of their prey, launched attack after
attack, until, borne down by sheer weight of numbers, the defenders were
literally engulfed by the wave of men in gray. Just as all that remained
of the detachment were making their last stand, a blood-stained pigeon
fell exhausted in a French loft behind the lines. The message which it
bore read:
“The Boche are upon us. We are lost, but we have done good work. Have the
artillery open on our position.”
Little has been said about the work of pigeons in this country. Over a
hundred lofts were established at the various camps and cantonments,
the thousands of birds which they housed proving of no inconsiderable
value in the training of the troops for fighting overseas. Everywhere
that they were used the birds showed a dependability which won for
them the enthusiastic admiration of all who were familiar with their
work. Indomitable courage, a gameness which ends only with death,
and a burning love of home are among the qualities most cherished by
Americans, and nothing possesses them to a greater degree than the army
carrier-pigeon.
Though the Belgians made extensive use of dogs for hauling machine-guns,
and though the French used them to a certain extent for liaison work
and the British for locating the wounded, they were not utilized by
the American forces overseas. A considerable number of dogs, most of
them police-dogs and Airedales, were trained at the various camps and
cantonments in this country, however, and had the war continued they
would undoubtedly have proved of real service in certain forms of work
in France. The attitude of the American soldier toward the subject of
dogs is best expressed by a story which I heard in France. An American
officer, lost at night in No Man’s Land, sought refuge in a shell-hole.
He found, however, that it already had an occupant, an American
doughboy—from his accent evidently a product of the Bowery—who, it
appeared, was lost like himself. In the periodic bursts of light afforded
by the star-shells the officer noticed that the man had strapped to his
back what appeared to be a large basket.
“What have you in there?” he inquired curiously.
“Boids, cap’n, boids,” the soldier answered in a hoarse whisper, adding
disgustedly: “An’ that ain’t the woist of it, cap’n. I hear they’s goin’
to give us dawgs!”
* * * * *
Though Americans have always been the greatest photographers in the
world, the Yankee abroad being readily distinguishable by his ever-ready
kodak, it is a rather surprising fact that it needed the World War to
convince the American military authorities of the vital importance to
the army of the camera. Upon our entry into the war, however, the War
Department, following the example of the European armies, established a
photographic section, with a personnel of forty-odd officers and nearly
800 men, as a part of the Signal Corps. The duty of this section was
to take pictures, both still and motion, of every phase of America’s
participation in the war, both on the fighting front in Europe and in the
training-camps at home; for the information of the intelligence officers
of the A. E. F., for the guidance of the artillery, for purposes of
instruction in the schools and cantonments, for propaganda use at home
and in foreign countries, and for illustrating the official history of
the great conflict.
The photographic section was divided into two branches, land and
air, the latter being, perhaps, from a military standpoint, the more
important of the two for the reason that airplanes were used primarily
for reconnaissance work and were, when equipped with cameras, literally
the eyes of the army. The airplane being the eye of the army, the camera
may be said to have been the pupil of the eye. In order to provide the
large and highly trained personnel required for this service, there was
established at Rochester, New York, a School of Aerial Photography—the
largest in the world—where candidates received, in addition to a thorough
military training, a course of instruction in everything relating to
modern photography, from the manufacture of plates and films through
the selection and use of lenses, shutters, and light-filters, to the
printing of the picture itself. In addition to becoming familiar with
these details of commercial photography, they were instructed in all
the special phases of military photography, such as map-plotting,
mosaics, enlargements, and the study of topography from a negative made
many thousands of feet in the air. As in that chapter dealing with the
Air Service I have described in considerable detail the methods and
instruments used in aerial photography, it is enough to say here that
the aerial branch of our Photographic Service attained such a degree of
efficiency that, in the closing months of the war, it became virtually
impossible for the Germans to dig a dozen yards of new trench, to
transfer a platoon, to change the position of a machine-gun, without
being detected by the all-seeing eyes of our cameras.
The mother school for land photography was located at Columbia
University, in New York, where the students received the same thorough
training which was given to the aerial operators at Rochester, with
instruction in motion-picture photography added. The students at this
school were the pick of the newspaper photographers and motion-picture
operators of America. Among them were men who had “snapped” presidents
and potentates, celebrities and notorieties, prize-fighters, reformers,
murderers, prelates, politicians and statesmen, leaders of society,
Society and near-society; who had “filmed” presidential inaugurations,
Newport weddings, railway disasters, yacht-races, South Sea cannibals,
Mexican revolutions, and Heaven knows what besides. Their courage and
resourcefulness were precisely the qualities which were required of army
photographers, for there was nowhere that they would not go, nothing
that they would not do, and the more danger there was in their work
the more it appealed to them. When a new type of gun was being fired
for the first time and the gun crew took refuge in the bomb-proofs as
a precaution against accident, the army movie-men moved their machines
up close in the hope that if the gun exploded they would get a picture
of the explosion. One of the Signal Corps operators, Captain Edward N.
Cooper, with his assistant, Sergeant Adrian Duff, while attached to the
Twenty-Sixth Division, crawled out into No Man’s Land just before an
attack was scheduled to take place, and, though exposed to both German
and American fire, set up their machine in order that the people at home,
seated comfortably in motion-picture theatres, might actually see the
boys going “over the top.” On another occasion this same young officer
became separated from the troops to which he was attached and found
himself under the fire of a German machine-gun, but in spite of the hail
of bullets he stuck to his work, made his pictures, and returned to the
American lines herding in front of him a group of Germans whom he had
captured single-handed at the point of an empty revolver. A camera-man
whom the French Government detailed to accompany me along the Western
Front in 1916 was seriously wounded by a German shell just as we were
leaving Verdun. His assistant helped me to give first aid to his chief
and then, though the road was being heavily bombarded, coolly set up his
machine and turned the crank while the wounded man was being lifted into
an ambulance. It is a striking commentary on the scepticism of American
audiences that, when I showed that picture in the United States, fully
half of the people who saw it insisted that it had been faked. Another
officer of the photographic section who, before our entry into the war,
as the representative of a Chicago newspaper had accompanied the German
Armies during the invasion of Poland, was present at the capture of
Warsaw. When the Kaiser reviewed the troops after his triumphal entry
into the captured city, the American pushed his way through the cordon
of soldiers and police agents which surrounded the imperial motor-car,
set up his machine within six feet of the astonished Emperor, and
proceeded to take a “close-up” of the All Highest, who was so amused
by the effrontery of the performance that he insisted on shaking the
photographer’s hand!
[Illustration: MOTION-PICTURE OPERATORS OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC SECTION OF
THE SIGNAL CORPS GOING INTO ACTION ON A TANK
There was nowhere they would not go, nothing that they would not do, and
the more danger there was in their work the more it appealed to them.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: AN OFFICER OF THE SIGNAL CORPS OPERATING A TELEPHONE AT
THE FRONT.
This instrument was so compact that it could be carried as part of the
equipment of a soldier and quickly put into operation.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
Motion-pictures were used in the training of troops far more generally
than the public realized. A series of pictures taken at the Military
Academy at West Point and exhibited at every camp and cantonment in
the United States did more in a few hours to acquaint the troops with
military etiquette and the evolutions of the squad, the platoon, and the
company than any number of drills and lectures could have done. “Animated
drawings,” as they are called—like those of Mutt and Jeff and the
Katzenjammer Kids—were made under the direction of the Signal Corps for
the purpose of familiarizing the men with the mechanism of the service
rifle, the automatic pistol, and the various types of machine-guns. By
running these pictures slowly, every stage of the operation of loading
and firing was made clear, from the insertion of the cartridge into
the clip or belt to the bullet leaving the muzzle. But the greatest
value of the motion-picture, when all is said and done, was in keeping
up the morale of the American people by combating the insidious and
undeniably clever propaganda which was carried on in this country by
the Germans. Enemy agents spread reports that the drafted troops were
being ill-treated in the camps, that they lived in wretched quarters,
were poorly fed, and suffered from lack of proper clothing. To answer
these charges a score of movie-men were despatched to the various camps,
the pictures which they took and which were exhibited throughout the
country showing the clean and comfortable barracks, the men seated at
their bountiful and appetizing meals in the mess-halls, the football and
baseball games, the camp theatres, and the other features of cantonment
life, thus providing a convincing refutation of the German insinuations.
Parents who had heard the widely circulated tales of the unsanitary and
immoral conditions to which their boys were exposed in France could go
to their local motion-picture houses and see for themselves the clean
dormitories, the Y. M. C. A. and Knights of Columbus huts, the social
gatherings, the splendidly equipped hospitals, incidents of life in the
back areas and in the trenches, and not infrequently the faces of their
loved ones themselves, sun-bronzed and happy, wearing “the smile that
won’t come off.” If the photographic section of the army had accomplished
nothing else, its existence would have been justified a thousand times
over by the service which it performed in fighting the propaganda of
the Hun and in bringing cheer and comfort to the parents, wives, and
sweethearts whom the boys had left behind them.
* * * * *
As a result of the researches and experiments which it carried on during
the war, the Signal Corps has, in addition to its countless other
achievements, produced several devices which are of such an astounding
nature as to strain almost to the breaking-point the credulity of
the layman. I am not permitting myself to indulge in the slightest
exaggeration when I assert that these devices place in the hands of
the United States weapons which would render this country wellnigh
invulnerable in the event of our ever becoming involved in another war.
But—and herein lies their greatest significance and interest—they are,
beyond all question, the most important inventions, so far as their
effect on the peaceful interests of the nation are concerned, which
have been produced since Morse invented the telegraph, Bell perfected
the telephone, and Marconi amazed us with the wireless. Imagine the
value of a device which permits of a conversation being carried on
between a person on the ground and an aviator in the clouds as easily
as though they were seated opposite each other at a dinner-table! Such
is the radiotelephone, which I have described in detail in the chapter
on the Air Service but which was suggested and brought to a state of
perfection by officers of the Signal Corps. Conceive, if you can, of
another device which permits of nineteen separate and distinct telephone
and telegraph messages being transmitted simultaneously over a single
copper wire! Picture the advance in world-communication made possible by
the discovery, made by General Squier, the Chief Signal Officer of the
Army, that growing trees can be used as natural antennæ for both sending
and receiving radio messages! And, as a climax to this amazing list of
achievements, let your imagination attempt to grasp the military and
commercial significance of a device for the sending over telegraph wires
or cables of cipher messages which, though they can defy any system of
deciphering known to science, appear in plain language at the other end!
You may think, perhaps, that I am overenthusiastic; that I have used
too many adjectives and exclamation-marks. But suppose that I tell you
something about these inventions. Then, unless I am greatly mistaken, you
will be guilty of adjectives and exclamations yourself.
Owing to the difficulty of constructing in France enough telegraph and
telephone lines to meet the constantly increasing requirements of the
American Expeditionary Forces, as well as to relieve the great congestion
which prevailed on all of the existing lines, the scientists of the
Signal Corps turned their attention early in the war to the possibility
of sending several messages simultaneously over a single wire. Without
entering into the details of the long series of experiments which were
conducted by the Signal Corps, in conjunction with the American Telephone
and Telegraph Company at Camp Alfred Vail, New Jersey, or attempting to
describe in terms which would be intelligible to the non-technical reader
the device which was finally perfected, it may be said that the result
is accomplished through the application of radio, the wire serving as a
guide for the radio currents and conducting them with a minimum of power
and with a minimum of interference with other radio communications. This
device has now been brought to such a state of perfection that eight
telegraph messages and eleven telephone messages can be carried over a
single wire at the same time, the Morse messages being transmitted by
means of the multiplex telegraph apparatus—a system which was discovered
as early as 1910 and is now in general use by the large telegraph
companies—while the telephone conversations are guided by wireless
waves, which serve as carriers for the voice currents. By placing on
ordinary telegraph-wires wireless waves of very short length or of
very great frequency, officers of the Signal Corps have successfully
conversed over a line from Washington to Baltimore which was being used
at the same time for the transmission of duplex telegraph messages.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the performance was its extreme
simplicity, the feat being accomplished merely by placing on the line,
through proper connecting condensers, a pair of radiotelephone sets such
as are used for communicating between ground-stations and airplanes.
Whereas it was believed, until very recently, that it was impracticable
to hold more than four wired-wireless conversations over one wire or one
pair of wires, in addition to whatever ordinary telephone or telegraph
conversation might be on that wire, the Signal Corps has now demonstrated
that it is not only possible but entirely practicable to hold ten or more
extra telephone conversations without their interfering with each other.
Had this system been perfected while the war was in progress it would
have meant that ten telephone and two or more telegraph conversations
could have been carried on simultaneously with a point served only by a
single wire. In other words, by the application of this system one wire
will take the place of ten.
Another phase of science uncovered by the Signal Corps which figuratively
makes the mind of the layman stand still and gasp is the discovery,
due to the experiments of the Chief Signal Officer, General Squier,
that trees can be used as instruments in the receipt and transmission
of electrical messages, both telegraph and telephone, both by wire and
wireless. Think of it, my friends! The commonplace tree possesses those
very qualities that men have spent centuries of effort to embody in a
frail spider’s web of wire!
“From the moment an acorn is planted in fertile soil,” to quote the words
of General Squier himself, “it becomes a ‘detector’ and a ‘receiver’ of
electromagnetic waves, and the marvellous properties of this receiver,
through agencies at present entirely unknown to us, are such as to
vitalize the acorn and to produce in time the giant oak. In the power
of multiplying plant-cells it may, indeed, be called an incomparable
‘amplifier.’ From this angle of view we may consider that trees have
been pieces of electrical apparatus from their beginning, and with their
manifold chains of living cells are absorbers, conductors, and radiators
of the long electromagnetic waves as used in the radio art. For our
present purpose we may consider, therefore, a growing tree as a highly
organized piece of living earth, to be used in the same manner as we now
use the earth as a universal conductor for telephony and telegraphy and
other electrical purposes.”
Not only have telephone conversations, in which the voice is transmitted
just as clearly as by the ordinary metallic circuit telephone, been
carried on from tree to tree, up to a distance of three miles, in the
outskirts of Washington, but while the war was still in progress the
signal officers, using tree-tops as antennæ, read messages from ships at
sea, from aviators in the sky, and from the great radio-stations in South
America and Europe. As a result of this discovery, the lofty and costly
towers which are now used for the sending and receipt of radio messages
will no longer be a necessity. All that will be necessary is to drive a
spike in a tree, attach a wire to the spike, and run the wire to a radio
apparatus, whereupon messages can be received and sent, the distance
covered depending upon the power of the instrument. The tree telegraph
has been dubbed by General Squier a “floragraph” and the tree telephone
a “floraphone,” while the messages transmitted over this arboreal
system are to be known as “floragrams.” Though this discovery will in
all likelihood result in an amazing expansion of the world’s system of
communication, and though it will give radio-towers, thousands of them,
in fact, to every village and to every farm, it does not necessarily mean
that every man who possesses a vine and fig-tree will be able to sit on
his front porch and gossip with his neighbors.
During the war the offices of the Chief Signal Officer were literally
besieged by persons who claimed to have invented various systems of
message transmission which could not be tapped, or which, if they
were tapped, could not be understood. It was perfectly well known to
us, of course, that the German Listening-In Service, particularly in
the front-line trenches, was well organized and extremely efficient,
and that telephone and buzzer conversations held over our wires were
frequently intercepted. It was known, moreover, that Germany had spies,
both in France and the United States, whose sole duty it was to tap
the governmental telephone and telegraph systems for the purpose of
obtaining military information. Scores of devices designed to secure the
inviolability of the vitally important messages which were constantly
passing over the wires were submitted to the Signal Corps. Anxious as
they were to obtain a system of message transmission which could jeer
at the efforts of the enemy’s spies, the experts of the Signal Corps
steadily maintained that such a thing did not exist, for, as they said
with truth, if an instrument could be devised which could transmit and
decode a message, there was no reason why the Germans could not in
time manufacture one like it, put it on the line, and thus obtain the
information desired.
One of the inventors who approached the Signal Corps asserted that,
though he did not claim to have a device which would render a message
indecipherable, he had a system which made it impossible for an enemy
agent to tap the wire over which messages were being transmitted without
the sender and receiver being instantly notified that some one was
eavesdropping upon them, whereupon their conversation would, of course,
cease. “Prove it to us,” said the Signal Corps, and provided the inventor
with an opportunity to demonstrate his system over a miniature line.
Without the slightest difficulty the military experts tapped the line
and, with the aid of a stenographer, recorded every message which was
sent over it, the quantity of energy which they withdrew for the purpose
being so minute that the delicate detectors failed to record the fact
that the line had been tampered with.
Another system had as its basic principle the breaking up of the groups
of Morse dots and dashes which represented the letters of the message,
and routing these mangled fragments over widely separated wires to the
receiving-station, where they were automatically joined together again
so as to form the message as originally sent. If, for example, it was
desired to send from Hoboken to Washington the message “_Transport
Leviathan sails June twenty-fifth_,” it was proposed to make use of
two lines, one running, let us say, through Harrisburg, the other via
Wilmington. The message sent over the Harrisburg wire would be broken up
something after this fashion: “t-a-s-o-t-e-i-t-a-s-i-s-u-e-w-n-y-i-t,”
while the portion going by way of Wilmington would read:
“r-n-p-r-l-v-a-h-n-a-l-j-n-t-e-t-f-f-h.” To create still further
confusion in the mind of any one who might succeed in intercepting one of
these sets of fragments, it was proposed to superimpose a “camouflage”
message upon the disconnected letters, the characters of the camouflage
message to occupy the spaces between the characters of the real message.
By an exceedingly ingenious device, these apparently inextricably
intermixed and unrelated letters were automatically sorted out at the
receiving-station and pieced together, like a jigsaw puzzle, so that the
message appeared precisely as it was sent. Going a step further, the
inventors of this system proposed by the same means to install a system
of telephone communication whereby the spoken words would be broken
up just as the Morse characters were divided, certain sounds in each
word going over one wire and the remaining sounds over another, to be
joined together at the receiving-station into a perfectly intelligible
conversation. Here again a wholly separate and extraneous conversation
was superimposed over the sounds proceeding by each route, so that
were either of the lines tapped the listener-in would be rewarded for
his pains by hearing a torrent of sound which would convince him that
he was listening to a combination of Choctaw, Chinese, the ravings of
John McCullough, and the symptoms of a severe cold. Notwithstanding
the undeniable ingenuity of this system, the Signal Corps experts
demonstrated, to the unconcealed astonishment of the inventors, that they
could overhear and understand these crazy-quilt conversations as readily
as though they were being held across a dinner-table in plain English.
Early in 1918, however, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company,
becoming interested in the solution of this apparently insoluble problem,
produced a device whereby a message could be transmitted over a wire in
such a form that it was absolutely indecipherable to any one save the
person for whom it was intended. As originally developed, this system was
unable to do all that was claimed for it, but, thanks to the co-operation
of the Signal Corps, there was finally produced an electrical device
which will transform an ordinary message into cipher, transmit it with
absolute secrecy, and decode it at the other end—all at the rate of from
forty to seventy words a minute. This may be said to be the only cipher
in existence which is absolutely indecipherable and at the same time
practicable. As universal peace is not yet within sight, even with the
aid of a telescope, and as this invention would prove of incalculable
value to the United States in the event of our again becoming involved
in war, it is obviously out of the question to discuss the principle
on which it is based, much less the details of its construction and
operation. It is enough to say that this nation is now the possessor
of a system of code transmission which can defy all the experts in the
world, a message sent by its means being absolutely indecipherable to the
inventor himself.
Though before the signing of the Armistice this device was operating
between several points in the United States with complete satisfaction,
the apparatus could not be manufactured in time to permit of its use
overseas before the end of the war. The engineers of the Signal Corps
assert that this device will eventually be perfected to a degree of
commercial practicability which will make it possible to transmit cipher
messages over cables as well as land lines without the necessity of
manual transmission and without the use of a recorder. As the machine
codes and decodes messages automatically, the large code-room forces
which were used in Washington during the war, and which are employed by
many of the great banking and commercial institutions, would no longer be
required, thus doing away entirely with the labor at present involved in
coding and decoding messages and cutting down the time required for their
transmission by many hours.
II
“ESSAYONS”
If, the next time you meet an officer of Engineers, you will observe his
uniform closely, you will perceive that the buttons of his tunic, instead
of being embossed with the arms of the United States, like all other
branches of the service, bear a device consisting of an eagle, a castle,
a rising sun, and the motto “_Essayons_.” Like the bow of black velvet,
called a “flash,” which the Royal Welsh Fusiliers have sewn at the back
of their collars to commemorate the fact that they were the last regiment
in the British Army to wear the pigtail, so the buttons of the Engineers
serve to remind their wearers that the famous organization is as old as
the nation, tracing its history back to the Corps of Artillerists and
Engineers of the Continental Army.
“_Essayons_”—“Let us try.” One likes the quiet confidence of the motto.
“Can you make roads for my guns through the swamps of the Wilderness?”
asked Grant.
“Let us try,” replied the Engineers—and the roads were built.
“Can you build docks for disembarking ten thousand men a day and railways
to carry those men to the front?” asked Pershing.
“Let us try,” the Engineers responded—and almost overnight miles
of docks and networks of rails appeared as though at the wave of a
magician’s wand.
“Can you locate the enemy’s guns by their sound? Can you keep our troops
supplied with water? Can you print maps? Can you make dugouts? Can you
operate search-lights? Can you dredge harbors for the entrance of our
transports? Can you build highways and keep them in repair? Can you
quarry the stone for those highways? Can you cut a million feet of lumber
a day? Can you design better types of armored cars, sound-detectors,
mobile cranes, portable sawmills, listening apparatus, mapping cameras,
steel bridges, barbed-wire entanglements, than any in existence? And, if
the necessity arises, can you fight?”
“_Essayons_,” answered the Engineers—whereupon all these things were done.
Whenever the army has had work to be done which no one else knew how to
do, they have sent for the Engineers. Who designed, built, and operated
our tanks before the organization of the Tank Corps? The Engineers. Who
organized the Gas and Flame Regiment? The Engineers. The Camouflage
Corps? The Engineers, of course. Who did the mining, quarrying,
timber-cutting, well-driving, dock, bridge, road, railway, and camp
building for our armies overseas? Again, the Engineers. Indeed, I doubt
if any organization of any army in the Great War can show such a record
of varied activities and successful accomplishments as the Corps of
Engineers. One can say of the American Engineer, as Kipling said of the
British Marine:
“There isn’t a job on the top o’ the earth the beggar don’t know nor do—
You can leave ’im at night on a bald man’s ’ead to paddle ’is own canoe;
...
They think for ’emselves, an’ they steal for ’emselves, an’ they never
ask what’s to do,
But they’re camped an’ fed, an’ they’re up an’ fed, before our bugle’s
blew.”
The immense importance attached to the work of the Engineers is
strikingly illustrated by the fact that, whereas the army was increased
to 19½ times its pre-war size, the enormous problems of field
fortification, construction, and transportation, both with and behind the
fighting forces, as well as the direction of many entirely new phases of
warfare, necessitated an increase of the Corps of Engineers to 131½ times
its strength at the beginning of the war. Prior to July, 1916, the corps
consisted of only three battalions, with a total strength of not over
1,900 men, but when the Armistice was signed there had been organized, or
were in process of organization, 500 Engineer units, with a strength of
some 312,000 men, or more than 10 per cent of the entire army.
Now it must be kept in mind that in the original corps of pre-war days
the men were trained only as sappers and not in the countless specialist
branches which were developed by the great conflict. The fundamental
use of sapper troops is, theoretically, at least, the supervision of
technical work during tactical operations. One regiment of sappers is
normally assigned to each division, is under the immediate command of
the divisional commander, and operates as directed by him. To this
regiment is given the work of organizing positions for defense, which
includes the construction of trenches, gun-positions, ammunition-dumps,
and dugouts, the repair and maintenance of roads in the divisional area,
the construction of shelters where required, and the general direction of
the work necessary to keep open the lines of communication and supply.
In open warfare it is customary for the divisional commander to hold his
sapper regiment in reserve to be used for applying the decisive pressure
or resistance at the moment when it is most needed. When going forward
with the infantry, sapper troops usually have a definite technical
mission, such as the organization of captured ground, the destruction of
obstacles and the bridging of streams. During a retreat they are attached
to the rear-guard, being charged with the demolition of bridges, the
obstruction of roads, and the cutting of railway communications. Though
the ranks of the Engineers were filled, for the most part, with men who
were experts and specialists in certain trades and professions, they
were time after time thrown into the line as combat troops, fighting
shoulder to shoulder with the infantry. On more than one occasion they
showed that, destitute of combat training though many of them were, they
could handle a rifle or a machine-gun as well as an axe or a spade. At
Cambrai the 11th (railway) Engineers, caught in the German counter-push,
offered a stubborn and heroic resistance against overwhelming numbers.
At Amiens another railway regiment, the 11th Engineers, formed a part
of the little force with which General Sandeman Carey blocked the gap in
the British line and thereby prevented the Germans from breaking through
to the Channel ports. For its behavior on that occasion the regiment was
cited by the British and its commander was decorated. Perhaps you were
not aware that two companies of Engineers fought alongside the Marines in
the Bois de Belleau. And, when the gray hordes of Hindenburg were reeling
back from the Marne, a report from the Rainbow Division ended: “Our
advance troops, the 117th Engineers, are pressing the enemy closely.” But
the story that will live longest in the annals of the famous corps is
that of the sergeant of the railway regiment at Cambrai, who, surrounded
by the enemy, refused to surrender and defended himself with his only
weapon, a crowbar. When they found him, hours later, the crowbar was
still clutched in his dead hand. About him, with crushed skulls, lay
seven Germans.
The innumerable new devices produced by the Great War, however, required
for their operation great numbers of specially trained men, so that
the Corps of Engineers, from an organization consisting solely of
sapper troops, found itself called upon to do more and more work in
almost every branch of engineering. To meet these demands men were
accordingly trained as specialists and assigned to specialist regiments
and battalions, so that, when the war ended, the Corps of Engineers
consisted of camouflage, car-repair, crane-operator, dock-construction,
dredging, electrical and mechanical, forestry, general-construction,
highway, inland-waterway, light-railway construction, shop, and
operation, locomotive-repair, military-mapping, mining, pontoon park
and train, quarry, railway-transportation, road, sapper, search-light
(including antiaircraft), sound-and-flash-ranging, standard-gauge
railway-construction, operation, shop and maintenance-of-way, supply,
surveying and printing, trades and storekeepers, transportation and
water-supply troops, organized as needed into companies, battalions, or
regiments.
Now it was realized, from the very beginning, that the success of
our armies in France would depend upon transportation. And, thanks
to the threats of Pancho Villa, we had at least the framework of a
transportation organization, for when it became necessary to send
troops to the Mexican border in 1916, the War Department had organized
a transportation service of sorts and had placed Samuel M. Felton,
president of the Chicago Great Western Railway, at the head of it.
Thus it came about that upon our entrance into the Great War there
devolved upon Mr. Felton and his staff the gigantic task of obtaining
in the United States and shipping to Europe the enormous quantity of
transportation equipment and supplies required for the use of our forces
overseas. In order to ascertain just what was required in equipment
and supplies, a commission, headed by Colonel William Barclay Parsons,
president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and Colonel (then
Major) W. J. Wilgus, formerly vice-president of the New York Central
system, was sent to Europe within less than thirty days after the
declaration of war. Upon the completion of its preliminary survey of
the situation the commission dispersed, leaving Colonel Wilgus as the
sole nucleus of the American Transportation Service in France, with
Captain L. A. Jenney, formerly chief draftsman of the New York Central,
as his assistant. Sitting on soap-boxes in an office in the Boulevard
Haussman in Paris, with packing-cases for desks, these two officers
outlined the general policy with respect to military transportation for
the A. E. F. which the conditions seemed to warrant, and which General
Pershing later adopted, and drew up the first requisition for railway
and port equipment, materials, and tools. Colonel Wilgus, himself a
veteran railroad man, quickly realized the vastness of the problem
which confronted us and the gravity of the situation resulting from the
dilapidated condition of the French railways and the appalling shortage
of French rolling-stock. He accordingly informed the War Department that
the American Army must prepare to operate its own trains, made up of
its own locomotives and cars, from the seaports to the front, over the
French railways under trackage rights. I might add that the principle of
trackage rights, so familiar in America, was entirely unknown in France,
and at first the French railway officials did not know what Colonel
Wilgus was talking about, for they found it difficult to understand how
it was possible to operate two systems of transportation over the same
tracks at the same time.
The story of how the Engineers, under the direction of Brigadier-General
W. W. Atterbury, formerly vice-president of the Pennsylvania,
Director-General of Transportation, with Colonel Wilgus as his deputy and
Chief of Staff, built up in France a transportation system which was one
of the marvels of the war, is outside the province of this narrative,
while the story of the production of railway material in America and its
shipment overseas would require, for its proper telling, a chapter to
itself. It is enough to say that, when the Armistice was signed, 60,000
men were engaged on railroad work of various kinds in France; more than
a thousand miles of standard-gauge railway (equal to the distance by the
Pennsylvania from New York to Chicago) had been laid; upward of 1,300
locomotives (300 more than are owned by the Atchison system) had been
shipped overseas, and, had the war continued, we would have had in France
by July, 1919, enough American cars to make up a train the caboose of
which would have been leaving Paris when the engine was entering Berlin.
The Transportation Department had in operation between Tours, which was
the headquarters of the Services of Supply, and Chaumont, which was
the Great Headquarters, an all-American train, drawn by an American
locomotive, driven by an American engineer, and, as a final touch, with
its sleeping-cars in charge of former Pullman porters, in khaki, it
is true, but retaining their grins and their whisk-brushes. Every one
in the A. E. F. was inordinately proud of that train, which stood as
a sort of visible proof of American accomplishment in France. It had
been officially christened the “Atterbury Special” in honor of the
Director-General of Transportation, but the soldiers had disrespectfully
dubbed it the “Attaboy Special.” One morning, as a group of American
congressmen, on their way up to the front, were standing on the platform
of the Tours station, the special came roaring in.
“There’s an example of American energy and promptness for you!” exclaimed
one of the politicians proudly. “What a contrast to those wretched French
trains! Not an hour or so late, as they are, but on time to the very
minute.”
“Pardon me, sir,” said a military policeman who had overheard the
conversation, “that is _yesterday’s_ train.”
* * * * *
When it was first proposed by the Transportation Department that
locomotives should be shipped to Europe without being knocked down,
the Ship-Building Board vigorously protested. There were no ships in
existence, the board said, which could stand up under such an immense
concentrated load. But the Engineers proved that they knew more about the
strength of ships than did the ship-builders, and the locomotives—533
in all—were run out onto the wharves on their own wheels, picked up as
easily as though they were baby-carriages by the giant gantry cranes,
deposited in the hold—35 to a ship—together with their tenders, packed in
baled hay, and upon arrival at the French ports were lifted out by the
same method, lowered gently onto the rails, and a few hours later rolled
off for the front under their own steam. The success with which the
Engineers utilized business methods and revised specifications to meet
American manufacturing conditions is strikingly illustrated by the fact
that the cost of these locomotives, for which the French had been paying
$51,000 each, was brought down to $37,000, thus saving to the American
taxpayer some seven millions of dollars—a very tidy sum.
And, apropos of rolling-stock, here is a bit of secret history hitherto
unpublished. When Villa’s raiders were threatening to destroy the
railway-lines paralleling the Mexican border, the Engineer Corps designed
and built a number of self-propelling armored railway-cars armed
with 3-inch rifles, machine-guns, and search-lights. When the German
submarines began their piratical operations along the Atlantic seaboard
in the spring of 1918, these moving fortresses were secretly rushed up
from the Rio Grande in order to afford protection to the undefended
Jersey coast towns. It was well for the U-boat commanders that they
did not attempt to shell Long Branch and Atlantic City as they shelled
Scarborough and Broadstairs. If they had, the Engineers and their armored
cars would have given them the surprise of their lives.
* * * * *
The non-military person does not ordinarily associate with war such
prosaic occupations as lumbering, quarrying, and highway building.
They seem, at least at first thought, to be in character essentially
industrial. But it must be remembered that the workman played fully
as great a part as the soldier in winning the Great War. In fact, the
combat troops could not have held the line for a day had it not been
for the labor battalions, which, without incentive or excitement, glory
or reward, and in most cases without public appreciation, toiled so
faithfully and unceasingly to build the wharves, to unload the ships,
to lay the railways, to construct the roads, and to hurry forward, in
an unending stream, the food for the men and the food for the guns. It
is quite understandable, once you stop to think about it, that in order
to maintain our great armies in the field, there were required immense
quantities of lumber for building wharves, barracks, storehouses,
hangars, and hospitals, and enormous amounts of stone, crushed rock, and
gravel for metalling the roads, ballasting the railways, buttressing the
bridges, and making concrete for the fortifications. When we entered
the war the supply of lumber was not nearly equal to the demands of the
Allied Armies, to say nothing of our own. And, though there was, of
course, plenty of rock and gravel in this country, we could not spare the
tonnage to ship it overseas, even had such a course been practicable.
(Perhaps it has never occurred to you how vitally important an item
gravel is in military operations. Yet at one time the Germans threatened
the Dutch with war if the latter persisted in their refusal to permit
German gravel to be shipped across Holland for the construction of
concrete fortifications in Belgium.) In view of these conditions, it
devolved upon the Engineers to organize and equip special forestry,
quarry, and highway regiments, as well as numerous labor battalions, and
hurry them overseas with orders to obtain the urgently needed materials
from the forests and quarries of France.
Though Engineer officers of the regular establishment were, of course,
given command of these specialist regiments, the other officers as
well as the soldiers themselves were recruited from men trained in the
particular sort of work which each regiment was expected to perform.
How to obtain officers of sufficient experience in these various lines
of industry, and in sufficient numbers, promised at first to be a
serious problem, but it was quickly solved by the Personnel Division of
the Engineers, which had had on file, ever since the war-clouds first
appeared on America’s horizon, tens of thousands of letters from men
trained in every branch of the engineering profession, offering their
services to the government in case of war. Hence, when it was decided to
raise a forestry regiment, it was a simple matter to turn to the files
and find the names of thousands of men—mill-owners, forest-rangers,
lumbermen—with their experience and qualifications carefully listed, who
were intimately familiar with every phase of the industry, from tree
to finished board. The best qualified of these applicants were offered
commissions by telegraph and instructed to go out into the lumber country
and recruit their companies and battalions from men who had worked under
them or whom they knew. Soon the walls of every employment-office,
bunk-house, and cook-shack from the pine woods of Maine to the spruce
forests of Washington blossomed with posters calling for axemen,
sawyers, log-drivers, timber-cruisers, mill-operators, cookees,
teamsters, for immediate service overseas. The response was prompt
and startling. From their camps on the Kennebec and the Androscoggin,
from the Adirondacks, from the pine-clad shores of Superior and Huron,
from the Michigan Peninsula and the North Woods of Minnesota, from the
forested slopes of the Wind River, the Bitter Roots, and the Cascades,
from the big timber of the Far Nor’west the lumbermen came pouring in,
in mackinaws and parkas, in moccasins and shoepacks, in knitted toques
and caps of fur, their scanty belongings wrapped in the blanket-rolls
slung across their backs and often with their axes on their shoulders.
Sinewy-limbed, saddle-colored, horny-handed, tough as the timber of the
forests whence they came, these were the real pioneers, the conquerors
of the wilderness, the last of the frontiersmen, and Europe will, in all
likelihood, never see their picturesque like again.
The first of the forestry regiments, the 10th Engineers, sailed for
Europe five months after the declaration of war, followed at short
intervals by several similar organizations. Immediately upon their
arrival in France lumbering operations were begun in the Vosges and
the Pyrenees (so do not be surprised if the next time you go shooting
in Maine or fishing in Michigan your guide interlards his conversation
with French or Spanish phrases), using French mills at first but later
installing plants of the American type. The enlisted men of the forestry
outfits were, as I have said, for the most part lumbermen by trade,
officered by men familiar with lumbering in all its details. The result
was a striking illustration of what American energy and American methods
can do, for the official reports show that mills which, under French
management, were yielding 500 board feet a day, were made to yield ten
times that quantity when operated by Yankee lumbermen. In the Vosges
this work was carried on so close to the front that the plants were
repeatedly bombed by enemy aircraft and shelled by enemy artillery, the
forestry troops, though listed as non-combatants, frequently suffering
heavy casualties. It took a high order of courage for these men to go
unconcernedly about their business of tree-felling, hauling, and sawing
with German shells yowling through the branches and bursting all about
them. The sawmills were of the portable type, however, and when the
fire of the German guns became too accurate and heavy, the whole plant
was packed up and shifted to a new location. I don’t believe in letting
loose upon my defenseless readers swarms of figures, but it will serve
to give those of them who are familiar with lumbering some idea of what
our forestry regiments accomplished when I mention that during the month
of October, 1918, alone, they produced 50,000,000 board feet of sawed
lumber, 80,000 cords of firewood, and enough standard-gauge ties to build
a single-track railway from the Great Lakes to the Gulf.
In raising the quarry, highway, and inland waterway regiments, the same
method was adopted as in the organization of the forestry battalions.
Enormous quantities of crushed rock were required for concrete and for
the construction and repair of roads, but though numerous quarries were
available in the American areas, experienced quarrymen and quarrying
equipment were lacking. Accordingly a special quarry regiment, the 28th
Engineers, was organized in the United States in November, 1917, with
a strength of 60 officers and some 1,500 men. A skeleton organization
was formed by transferring a few officers and a small detachment of men
from a road regiment, the new unit being raised to strength by giving
commissions to quarry managers and superintendents and filling up the
ranks with drafted quarrymen.
Spreading over almost the whole of France is a veritable network of
navigable rivers and canals, of which the Engineers availed themselves to
the utmost in the transportation of material and supplies. Transportation
by the inland waterways was in charge of the 57th Engineers, this
regiment being largely recruited from men who had had experience on the
canals and rivers of the United States. In the days to come many are the
tales that will be told by skippers of stern-wheelers on the Mississippi
and captains on the Erie Canal of the days when they and their huskies of
the Inland Waterways battalions moved the supplies for Pershing’s men up
the Seine and through the canals of the Marne and the Rhône.
To the dredging, dock construction, and stevedore regiments was assigned
the gigantic task of dredging the channels and harbors of the seaports
which the French placed at our disposal, of building wharves and berths
for the reception of American ships, and of the transferring of the
cargoes from ship to shore. The magnitude of their task is shown by
the fact that cargo shipments grew from 20,000 tons in July, 1917,
to 1,000,000 tons in November of the following year, while the 23
ship-berths which the French Government originally assigned to us had
nearly quadrupled when the Armistice was signed.
* * * * *
Unless you have marched with armies or trekked across hot and arid
lands, you cannot know what it is to be thirsty—really thirsty, I mean;
so thirsty that your tongue swells until it all but chokes you or lolls
from your mouth like that of a panting dog. Water is infinitely more
important to the success of a military operation than arms or ammunition;
to a certain extent it is more important than food; for, though troops
can fight for an amazingly long time on short rations, or even on no
rations at all, they cannot fight without water. The vital importance
of providing an adequate water-supply was learned by the French in
Algeria and Morocco, by the British in India and the Sudan, where the
deserts were strewn for miles with the bodies of soldiers who had died
from thirst. In the Cuban campaign our armies had far more deaths from
impure water than from Spanish bullets. During the Italian offensive on
the Carso, that terrible plateau of sun-scorched rock which lies beyond
the Isonzo, hundreds of men, Italians and Austrians alike, died from
thirst, the Austrians being eventually compelled to retreat because the
Italian artillery had destroyed the pipe-lines which supplied them with
water. During the fighting on the Western Front during the last summer
of the war, when the semitropic sun of eastern France beat down on the
heavy-laden backs of the panting, sweating men, when millions of feet
and hoofs ground the roads to powder and filled eyes, ears, throats, and
nostrils with the yellow, choking dust, when the air reeked with the
mingled stenches of leather, gasoline, sweating horse-flesh, and human
perspiration, and when, as the canteens emptied, the men peered anxiously
over their shoulders for the company water-carts, thousands realized as
never before the truth of Kipling’s words:
“When it comes to slaughter,
You must do your work on water.”
Now, when a hundred thousand men and thirty-five thousand animals are
crowded into a sector perhaps three miles wide and seven miles deep,
the problem of keeping those men and animals supplied with water
becomes tremendous. The responsibility for supplying with water the
troops in the field fell upon the Army Water-Supply Service, which,
as might be expected, was a branch of the Corps of Engineers. The
Water-Supply Service was really a wholesaler of water, delivery being
made at “water-points,” from which water was drawn directly by men and
animals, the largest customers being, however, the ubiquitous two-wheel
water-carts of the infantry and artillery. To supply these “water-points”
every available source was utilized, springs developed, deep wells
bored, village wells and cisterns cleaned out, streams purified and
pumping-stations established, the aim being to provide water within a
mile and a half of every consumer at the front. Ordinarily two gallons
of water per man per day were furnished at the front, this quantity
being sufficient for drinking, cooking, and lavatory purposes, but
during the enormous troop concentrations incident to the St. Mihiel and
Argonne offensives this quantity had to be materially reduced, during
those periods of stress and action the men having scant opportunity for
either cooking or bathing. It was impossible, however, to reduce the
quantity for the animals, for each of which eight to ten gallons had to
be provided daily.
Even under battle conditions the purity of the water was the first
consideration, for impure water can work far more havoc with an army
than enemy shell. In order to provide against this contingency, mobile
laboratories for water-testing purposes moved in the van of the armies,
and during the drives the Water-Supply troops were provided with
poison-testing kits, for, warned by the experiences of the British in
German Southwest Africa, where wells were systematically poisoned by the
enemy, we took no chances. Sources of supply were, wherever possible,
protected, it being considered almost as serious an offense for a soldier
to contaminate a water-supply as for him to sleep on post. Where water
was found to be polluted, the troops, no matter how thirsty, were under
no circumstances permitted to use it until it had been filtered and
sterilized. It is a curious fact that the chlorine used in gas-shell to
kill Germans was used by the Water-Supply Service in minute quantities
to kill an equally dangerous and far more insidious enemy—the microbic
disease-carriers in the water. Special motor-trucks, equipped with
pumping, filtering, sterilizing, and testing apparatus, time after time
demonstrated that they were able to get into action and deliver pure
water from a polluted supply _within thirty minutes_ after their arrival.
In many cases the position of the troops and the nature of the terrain
made it possible to deliver water only by hauling. This was done by means
of trains of motorized water-tanks and by special tank-cars operating
over the narrow-gauge railway systems, the tank trucks and cars being
emptied into reservoirs built in strategic positions near the front. A
common and quickly built reservoir consisted of a hole in the ground,
a waterproof canvas lining, and a camouflaged cover. The lives of the
tank-train truck-drivers were hard and exciting, for though the roads
over which they had to pass in approaching the front were nearly always
subjected to heavy shell-fire, there could be no let-up in supplying
water for the troops on the firing-line. Most of the activities of the
Water-Supply troops were between the locations of the light artillery and
the heavy artillery, the men consequently working almost continuously
within the areas under enemy bombardment. On one occasion, during the
open warfare incident to the St. Mihiel offensive, the driver of a
water-truck ventured so close to a German machine-gun nest that when he
came back his tank was found to be better adapted for road-sprinkling
than for water-transportation purposes.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that enormous quantities of material
were required for the work of the Water-Supply Service, 60 miles of
pipe and 300 gas-driven pumps being used during the St. Mihiel and
Argonne-Meuse operations alone. As there were not enough Water-Supply
troops—the 26th Engineers—for the needs of the army, it was found
necessary to supplement their numbers with other Engineer units,
motor-truck companies, and pioneer infantry, the Water-Supply Service of
the First Army reaching a maximum of 3,500 officers and men.
One does not usually associate intelligence work with water-supply, yet
the American Water-Supply Service had an intelligence section which was
as efficient as that of any branch of the army. Information regarding
the water-supply in the territory behind the enemy lines was gathered
from all available sources, the _Wasserversorgung_ maps captured from
the Germans affording much valuable data, and the information thus
obtained was published at frequent intervals, together with maps. The
production of these water-maps finally became so highly developed that
it was possible for the intelligence section of the Water-Supply Service
to place full information at the disposal of the divisional intelligence
officers within twenty-four hours after it had been received. So rapid
was the American advance in certain sectors that scores of Boche
pumping-plants were captured while still in operation, and turned to the
task of supplying the thirsty Yanks. I might add that German prisoners,
particularly of the corresponding enemy service, frequently were as
successfully pumped for information as the wells sunk by the enemy were
pumped for water.
* * * * *
One of the most picturesque and interesting developments of the war—and,
because of the secrecy which surrounded it, one of the least known—is the
work of the flash and sound ranging section of the Engineer Corps. For
the benefit of the uninitiated—and most people are uninitiated, so far
as this phase of warfare is concerned—I might explain that flash-ranging
means the location of an enemy gun or battery by the detection of the
flash, and sound-ranging by the location of the sound. Flash-reading, as
it is called, is carried on by means of two or more observers provided
with powerful telescopes, who are stationed at known distances apart. By
“spotting” the flashes of an enemy battery and reporting them, together
with the exact direction at which they occur, and by using these readings
as a basis, a simple calculation in triangulation will give the location
of the gun. So highly has this flash-ranging been developed that a gun
can now be located within five yards, when the “core” of the flash can
be seen. In principle the process is extremely simple, but in practice
it is complicated by the fact that the observers may not train their
telescopes on the same flash, in which case the gun position calculated
at headquarters from their telephoned reports will be in error. This
difficulty is met, however, by providing each observer with an outpost
switch-set, by means of which he can flash a miniature light at the
headquarters station at the instant he makes an observation, just as
a light glows on a hotel telephone switchboard when a guest up-stairs
rings for ice-water. When several of the observers flash their light
simultaneously, it is assumed that they all probably caught the same
flash, and their observations are then plotted. In other words, the line
of sight of each observer is prolonged on a map until they intersect, the
point of intersection corresponding with the location of the German gun.
Flash-ranging was also found to be of great value in checking the ranges
of our own guns. If we were firing at a hidden target, a shell was timed
so that it would burst when at the top of its trajectory. Observers would
“spot” this burst, and if it was reported as being at the spot where
calculations showed that it should occur, the gunners knew that they had
the correct range.
Sound-ranging was carried on along much the same lines as flash-ranging,
except that the readings were made by instruments instead of by
observers. Large guns may be camouflaged so that their detection, either
by aerial observation or by the flash of the gun when fired, is extremely
difficult, but there is no known way to conceal the location of the gun
from sound-ranging instruments, suitably placed and properly operated.
This method became so highly developed that it was reported that during
the latter months of the war over 80 per cent of the work of locating gun
positions on the British Front was done by sound-ranging. The instruments
used for this work are of a highly technical nature and for their
successful operation require a skilled personnel. Recording instruments,
so delicate that their use heretofore had not been dreamed of outside of
experimental laboratories and then only in the hands of men carefully
trained in their operation, were set up on the firing-line and operated
successfully under battle conditions, even when the air was quivering
from heavy bombardments and the earth was shaking from the deluge of
steel. The sound-receivers, or detecting instruments, are located well
to the front, whereas the recording instruments are several miles in
the rear. A sound disturbance due to the firing of a gun somewhere
behind the enemy lines is transmitted through several miles of wire to
the recording instrument in the rear, and the sound records received
almost simultaneously from several detecting instruments are traced on
a sensitized ribbon, or tape of photographic paper, or on a ribbon of
smoked paper, depending on the type of instrument used. The intervals of
time elapsing between the arrival of the various sound disturbances is
used as a basis for determining the origin of sound which produced the
records. By this means over 100 new German gun positions were located
in a single day on the British Front. In fact, before the assault on
Messines Ridge the British sound-rangers had located practically every
German battery, so that the British gunners had their exact range when
the attack was launched. When the Armistice put an end to hostilities
there were in operation along the American Front some twelve complete
American sound-ranging sections, each covering a front of approximately
five miles.
A sound-ranging section on an active sector of the American front usually
consisted of four officers and from eighty to a hundred men, one-half of
whom were specially trained in the care of instruments, observation work,
and mathematical computations. On a stable sector the personnel of the
section could, of course, be considerably reduced.
The principles, methods, and instruments employed by the sound-ranging
section of the Engineers for locating active enemy batteries or for
ranging the friendly artillery on any objective whose map-location was
known were of an extremely technical nature and not easy of comprehension
by a lay mind. So for the information of those readers who are
technically inclined I have asked the Engineer officer who was in charge
of sound-ranging in the A. E. F. to explain in the simplest possible
language how the work was done. Here is his explanation. Make the most of
it.
The principle employed by the sound-ranging section of the Engineers for
locating active enemy batteries or for ranging the friendly artillery
on any objective whose map co-ordinates are known is the following:
The time of arrival of the sound from an enemy gun (or from the burst
of the shells from the friendly artillery) at three surveyed stations
inside the friendly lines determines the position of the source of the
sound if simple corrections are applied for the temperature of the air
and the direction and velocity of the wind. For example, if the three
surveyed stations are on an arc of a circle and the sound of the
enemy gun arrives at all three stations at the same time, then the gun
must be at the centre of the circle. If the sound arrives first at the
westernmost station and last at the easternmost, then the gun must lie to
the westward of the centre. If the sound arrives earliest at the middle
station and later at the flank stations, then the gun must lie between
the centre of the circle and the stations. In practice six stations are
used to insure greater accuracy, and graphical methods of computation are
employed to shorten the time of calculation. Accuracies of fifty yards
are regarded as average, and from one to two minutes for calculation are
usually needed.
A somewhat different form of sound-ranging is used for the detection
of aircraft at night. The apparatus for this aerial sound-ranging
consists of large sound-gathering instruments which are used to
direct search-lights in the location of approaching airplanes. When a
bombing-plane approaches at night the hum of the motor can be heard at a
distance of from one to three miles or more, depending upon the direction
of the sound and the atmospheric conditions. The direction of sound,
however, particularly when it originates in the sky, is illusive to the
naked ear and search-lights were obliged to sweep the heavens in the
general direction from which the airplane was believed to be approaching,
in an endeavor to locate it. By the use of these detectors, however, the
sound of an airplane can be detected at a considerably greater distance
than by the naked ear, and, what is even more important, its direction
can be determined within a very small angle—less than five degrees. In
this way the area over which the search-light has to sweep is greatly
reduced, and the chances of locating the aerial marauder are enormously
increased.
Extensive experiments have been conducted in this country by the Engineer
Corps in the development of these aerial sound-detectors. One form
consists of four horns, two in a vertical and two in a horizontal plant,
with listening-tubes leading from the small ends to the receivers of the
observer’s head-set. These horns are mounted so as to permit rotation
on a horizontal shaft and turning on a plane-table, the whole being
supported on a sort of steel tower which, owing to its height and the
fact that it cannot easily be moved, affords a rather conspicuous target
for the enemy. The obvious disadvantage of this type is recompensed in
a measure, however, by its accuracy and by the fact that it will so
magnify a sound that the operators can hear the tick of a watch a hundred
and fifty yards away. This apparatus is, however, large and cumbersome,
and though excellent for seacoast and fortress defense, is not adapted
for use in the field, where extreme mobility is required. For this
latter purpose paraboloid sound-reflectors have been developed. These
paraboloids are about nine feet in diameter, made in sectors of material
similar to beaver board, and look like enormous editions of kettles used
for boiling soap. They can be taken down and packed into small space for
transportation, and are easily set up; being mounted on Ford chassis,
they can go anywhere that a “flivver” can go. The paraboloids, like the
horns, are directed by balancing the sound so that it is equally audible
in both ears. These instruments have a sensitiveness double that of the
unaided ear and by means of them a sound can be located to within three
degrees.
When the officer in charge of one of these sound-detectors hears
through the receivers of his head-set the rhythmic hum which denotes
an approaching airplane—and I might mention, parenthetically, that
experienced observers can tell with almost absolute certainty not only
the nationality of the approaching machine but even the type and power
of its engines—he orders several sound-readings to be taken at definite
intervals of time. With these readings as a basis for the calculation,
the probable location of the airplane at the end of the next time
interval is plotted and the search-light is flashed in that direction
just long enough to locate the machine. Quick work is required, however,
for the airplane often travels at a hundred miles or more an hour and may
abruptly change its course at any moment. Then, the plane once spotted,
the beam of the search-light never leaves it, and the waiting crews of
the antiaircraft guns get to work. Experiments are now being conducted
to enable these listening devices to be used in synchronization with
search-lights, so that, when the light is flashed, the airplane will be
within the beam and no indication of the presence of the search-light
will be given the aviator until he finds himself illuminated as a
spot-light follows the movements of a dancer on a darkened stage.
In the autumn of 1917 the National Research Council, at the request of
the Chief of Engineers, inaugurated an extensive series of search-light
investigations, which, thanks to the enthusiastic co-operation of
scientists, manufacturers, and certain government bureaus, resulted
in a number of remarkable developments. Eighteen different kinds of
search-lights were developed during these experiments, the first being
placed in operation in France in October, 1918. This represented an
entirely new form of light, more powerful than any heretofore produced
by any nation. It weighs about one-eighth as much as the most powerful
search-light theretofore produced, costs only about one-third as much,
and has about one-quarter the cubage. Other improvements now in progress
give assurance that its range will be doubled, its cost still further
reduced, and its mobility greatly increased. And, what is of almost equal
importance, the designs are now becoming so simplified that production
need no longer be confined to highly specialized shops, but may be
distributed over the country to all classes of machine manufacturers,
thus making it possible to produce a large quantity in a relatively
short time. With this new equipment the United States will possess a
search-light having an effective range approximately twice that of the
best search-light produced before the war, with four times as great a
field. Two features of the latest types of lamps are particularly worthy
of notice. These are, first, the “dish-pan” type of light, the chief
characteristic of which is that it has no lens; and, second, the metal
mirror, which is much more easily manufactured, is far less fragile,
costs only a third as much, and possesses almost as great reflecting
qualities as the glass ones.
The search-light used by the American forces for antiaircraft work is
the heavy 60-inch seacoast type—the largest light known—lightened and
modified for use in the field, with a range of practically 30,000 feet.
As the result of recent experiments it has been found that the visibility
at 12,000 feet was 85 per cent, while at 15,000 feet, or nearly 3 miles,
it was 43 per cent. In order to obtain these standards of comparison for
visibility for search-lights, an aviator was directed to fly back and
forth through the beam a certain number of times. If the observers on the
ground recorded the full number of passages across the beam, 100 per cent
was registered, this occurring regularly at 5,000 feet, and in most cases
during tests at 8,000 feet. The percentage of visibility was, in other
words, the number of times the airplane was seen to the number of times
it crossed the beam.
* * * * *
When warfare of movement becomes stabilized into position or trench
warfare, it is almost certain that, sooner or later, one side or the
other will resort to some form of underground attack. To permit of this
subterranean warfare, certain conditions are requisite: the lines must be
fairly close together, the level of the ground-water must be deep, and
the ground itself must not be too hard. These obstacles to successful
mining are not insuperable, however, for, preparatory to their assault on
Messines Ridge, the British drove a tunnel which was a mile in length,
and on the Carso I saw Italian engineers driving their galleries through
solid rock. France and England early recognized the importance of this
form of warfare and organized their miners accordingly, and, upon our
entrance into the war, we too organized and sent to France a mining
regiment—the 27th Engineers. It is estimated that by the summer of 1918
there were upward of 40,000 skilled miners on the Western Front, these
soldiers of the pick and drill having been brought from the remotest
corners of the earth—from the Yukon, the Rand, and the Congo, from
Mexico, Australia, and California. In my “Vive la France!” I told, if I
remember rightly, of the Cornish miners, known as “kickers,” who lay on
their backs, as they do in the tin mines in Cornwall, where the galleries
are so low that there is no room to swing a pick, and kicked away the
earth by means of a sort of spur attached to their heels.
The officers of the American mining regiment were engineers who had
had practical experience in all those far-off regions where men seek
their fortunes in the earth. One of them, a young lieutenant, was
diamond-mining in the Katanga district of the Congo when word reached him
by native runner that the United States had decided to take a hand in
the Great War. It took him four months of uninterrupted travel by horse,
wagon, rail, and boat to reach the United States and offer his services
to the Chief of Engineers. Another of our mining officers was a prisoner
of the revolutionists in Mexico when the rumor penetrated to his prison
cell that the United States had gone to war. That night he overpowered
his guards, scaled the prison wall, made his way on foot across northern
Mexico, the journey being relieved from monotony by several hairbreadth
escapes from bandit bands, and reached the border in time to join the
Engineers and go to France with one of the first contingents.
In former wars military mining was almost wholly confined to siege
operations; that is, driving galleries under fortified positions and
blowing them up. But the Great War developed an entirely new system
of mining tactics, which included frontal and flank attacks, raids,
enveloping movements, and other phases of war as fought on the surface
of the earth. “Unlike the soldier who fights above ground,” explained
a mining officer, “the miner has to be prepared for attacks not only
against his front and flanks, but for assaults which may come from
overhead or from underneath. In other words, he has four flanks to defend
instead of two.”
A typical mining position, such as would be prepared on an active sector
of the front, would consist of an upper level having a series of forked
galleries, known as “feelers,” with geophone listening-posts at their
extremities, and a deeper level, with numerous “fighting branches”
projecting from it, to protect the lower flank. Just as the sentries
in the trenches strained their eyes to detect any ominous figures in
the darkness of No Man’s Land, so the mining sentinels, crouching over
their geophones in the headings of dim-lit galleries, strained their
ears to catch the faint sounds which gave warning that the enemy was
approaching underground. The geophone, which has proved of incalculable
value in mining warfare, is an instrument for augmenting small sounds
coming through the ground. The American geophone, which is a highly
sensitive, extremely simple, and easily portable instrument, is in no
sense an electrical device, resembling, rather, the stethoscope used by
physicians for testing the lungs. In mining operations two geophones
are used, one for each ear, the instruments being so sensitive that the
sounds caused by a fly walking on the wooden support of the geophone
appear as loud as the tramp of a horse on the floor of a stable. If a
sentinel on duty in an underground listening-post caught through his
geophone a sound which was more distinct in, say, his right ear than
in his left, he gently shifted one of the instruments, inch by inch,
until the sound was the same in both ears. Then, by means of a compass,
he took the magnetic bearing of a line perpendicular to that passing
through the two geophones, which would give the direction from which the
sound came. Meanwhile sentries in the other listening-posts were doing
the same thing, so that, by the co-ordination of their reports and by
triangulation, the enemy’s gallery could be located within a few yards.
If the mining officer was convinced that the enemy was driving a gallery
for the purpose of putting a mine under his position, two courses of
action would be open to him. He could remain on the defensive and check
the enemy’s advance by the use of “camouflets,” this being the name
applied to explosive charges which expend their force laterally, thus
destroying the enemy’s gallery without causing a crater; or he could
resort to strategy and engage the enemy’s attention at one point by
exploding camouflets or by working noisily, and under cover of this
diversion drive a fighting gallery toward his flank elsewhere. If,
instead of being content to remain on the defensive, the officer in
charge of mining operations decided to assume the offensive, he would
engage the enemy’s attention at one point, either by exploding camouflets
or by working noisily, and at the same time drive a fighting gallery
toward his adversary’s flank. In this latter case the most profound
silence had, of course, to be enforced in the fighting branch if the
enemy’s geophones were not to give warning of its approach. No talking
was permitted, the men wore felt-soled shoes and worked with trowels
instead of picks, and the earth was carried out in cars with rubber
tires. So silently were the operations in the fighting branches conducted
that they would frequently break into the enemy galleries without the
slightest warning, whereupon would ensue a struggle fought scores of
feet beneath the surface of the earth, by combatants armed with picks,
pistols, bombs, and knives, and illuminated only by flickering miners’
lamps—a battle so weird and strange in its character and setting that it
seemed like the creation of a motion-picture writer’s brain.
One of the essentials for the success of a mining operation is the
concealment of the spoil—_i. e._, the excavated earth—which, if piled
in a heap at the entrance to the workings, would almost certainly
be photographed by aerial observers, thus informing the enemy, as
unmistakably as though it were announced on a placard, that a mining
gallery was being driven. The French, in order to hide the spoil from
their mining operations, conceived the ingenious plan of digging a
shallow trench, usually only a few inches deep, and lining it with black
paper, so that when photographed from an airplane it produced the effect
of the black shadow cast by a trench of customary depth. They would then
distribute the spoil from their subterranean galleries along the sides
of this false trench, so that it appeared in the photograph to have been
thrown up from it.
* * * * *
Dugouts have become such a commonplace in the past four years that
few, save the miners themselves, gave much thought to or had more than
the haziest ideas of the time, skill, and labor required in their
construction. Take yourself, for example. You have read about dugouts
and seen pictures of dugouts and have probably had relatives or friends
living in dugouts. How long, then, think you, would it take a force
of skilled miners to complete a front-line dugout large enough to
accommodate a half-platoon? (For your information I might explain that
such a dugout is 35 feet long, 9 feet wide, and 6 feet high, with 17
feet of overhead cover.) Using all the men that could be employed, and
working from nightfall until dawn, it would require at least three months
to complete such a dugout. If in the rear area, where the men could be
worked continuously in shifts, it could be completed in about thirty days.
[Illustration: NEW TYPE OF SEARCH-LIGHT USED IN THE AMERICAN ARMY.
The steel tower is collapsible and light and, being mounted on a
motor-truck, is extremely mobile.]
[Illustration: CAMOUFLAGING A DIVISIONAL HEADQUARTERS IN THE TOUL SECTOR.
Constructing the screen.
The screen as it appeared upon completion.]
A recent and little-advertised development of trench warfare was the
introduction of “mobile charges.” These consisted of packages of high
explosive in ten, twenty, or thirty pound sizes, which were used by
assaulting troops for destroying dugouts, much as depth bombs were used
by the navy to destroy submarines. With the increasing use of mobile
charges it became necessary to design dugouts which would be proof
against them. In this work, which was carried on by the Mining School,
extensive use was made of dogs, experiments having shown that explosions
which will rupture the lung-tissues of a dog will similarly affect those
of a human being. Thanks to the knowledge thus obtained at the cost of
canine lives, a type of dugout construction was perfected which afforded
the occupants comparative immunity from mobile charges and hand-grenades.
An ingenious receptacle for this latter form of enemy visiting-card was
the “bomb-pit,” which was a sort of small cistern, built at the foot
of the dugout stairs, into which a hand-grenade would fall and explode
harmlessly.
Though it has no direct relation to the work of the American Mining
School, I might mention, as an illustration of the part played by miners
in the great conflict, that when the British in 1917 blew off the entire
top of Messines Ridge prior to their assault on that position, 19 mines,
containing a total of 950,000 pounds of ammonal—equivalent to 1,580,000
pounds of dynamite—were exploded simultaneously. A single one of these
mines contained 95,000 pounds of ammonal and made a crater 186 feet wide
and 125 feet deep.
* * * * *
Though few activities of the Engineers were more important than the work
of the Camouflage Section, and though certainly none was more picturesque
or interesting, it is with some diffidence that I introduce the subject,
for I am perfectly aware that American readers have been, to make use of
a British colloquialism, “jolly well fed-up” on everything pertaining to
camouflage. The point is, however, that they have been largely “fed-up”
on misinformation. They have read hundreds of magazine articles and
newspaper stories about fake trees and papier-maché horses and the like,
but of the real work of the Camouflage Corps—which, as an American
general remarked, was “as practical as machine-guns and as necessary
as ammunition”—they have heretofore been permitted, for quite obvious
reasons, to know next to nothing. Certain camouflage operations on the
American Front were of such vital importance to the success of our armies
that, far from acquainting the public with them, they were veiled in the
profoundest mystery.
Military camouflage is a development of the Great War and has, therefore,
no history and little literature. It differs from the purely scientific
work of engineering, which has few variants and in which nearly all
problems can be worked out by formula, in that it has countless variants
of light, color, and position, and each problem of concealment is an
individual one. Upon the entry of the United States into the war, much
study was devoted to French and British camouflage methods, both in the
factory and in the field. The British, it was found, did nothing without
the most careful scientific investigation, which included aerophotography
of all materials, while the more careless and temperamental French relied
rather on their innate artistic sense of form and color. By combining the
best features of both systems and strongly tincturing them with American
energy, ingenuity, and manufacturing methods, our Camouflage Service
soon came to be recognized as the best equipped and most efficient in
the Allied Armies. At Dijon, in the Department of the Haute-Marne, we
established a huge plant, known as the Central Camouflage Factory, where
a hundred soldiers and some nine hundred Frenchwomen were employed in the
production of materials, while at the Army Camouflage School of Fort St.
Menge, near Langres, practical instruction was given in the use of these
materials in the field.
When the war ended, the American Camouflage Service consisted of a
battalion of the 40th Engineers—which was on the point of being expanded
into a regiment—under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel H. S. Bennison,
with Evarts Tracy, one of the foremost architects in America, as major.
Captain Homer Saint-Gaudens, a son of the famous sculptor, was in charge
of the camouflage work of the Second Army, and Captain John Root, whose
father was architect of the Colombian Exposition, was in charge of all
camouflage work for the army artillery, he being largely responsible for
the remarkable developments in this branch of warfare. The director of
the Camouflage School at Fort St. Menge was Lieutenant Wilford S. Conrow,
the noted portrait-painter. Another officer of the battalion, Lieutenant
Harry Thrasher, a graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and a winner of
the Prix de Rome, was killed while doing camouflage work at Fismes, as
was Sergeant Everett Herter, a son of Albert Herter, the artist. Because
of the exacting nature of its requirements, the Camouflage Service
had, perhaps, a more highly educated enlisted personnel than any other
organization in the army. Among the men wearing the uniforms of privates
in the corps was the landscape-architect who laid out the grounds of
the San Diego Exposition, the stage-manager for Maude Adams, the head
property-man of the Universal Film Company, and Louis Tiffany’s chief
designer. One of the instructors at the school was a successful osteopath
who in his younger days had been a scene-painter; another was a sculptor
whose statues may be seen in many American museums and parks.
Figures are, as a rule, dry reading, but they provide the best means I
know of giving some idea of the magnitude of our camofleurs’ operations.
During the summer of 1918 the Camouflage Section used materials _per
month_ as follows:
12,000 fish-nets.
50,000 pounds of wire.
700,000 gallons of paint.
2,160,000 square yards of poultry-netting and approximately
1,000 acres of burlap.
The best and most concise rules which I have seen for the erection
of camouflage and for the enforcement of camouflage discipline are
contained in secret instructions issued in July, 1918, by the commander
of the German First Army. They read as follows:
CAMOUFLAGE
Translation of a German Document (from French IV Army Bulletin,
August 8, 1918)
1st Army
Command of the Aviation Service
Ia-Ib
ARMY HEADQUARTERS,
July 1, 1918.
I. ESSENTIAL POINTS IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF POSITIONS.
(_a_) _General._
1. Camouflage will be completed before undertaking the
work.
2. Camouflage will be sufficiently extensive in order
that all the work required may be carried out under
its protection.
3. Faulty installation will be left in place as dummy
work and be begun over again at another point with
the necessary prudence.
(_b_) _Tracks._
1. Tracks must be as few as possible and have a natural
appearance. It is best to avoid all tracks by building
the position on roads already in existence.
2. Provide fixed access for everybody. If necessary, stake
the paths out by means of wire.
3. Extend indispensable tracks beyond the position as far
as the dummy work.
4. Use furrows as paths, do not go across fields.
5. Do not dump materials in the immediate neighborhood of
the position.
(_c_) _Color of the Camouflage._
1. Harmonize the color of the camouflage with the terrain.
Green camouflage in meadows, brown in ploughed fields,
white in quarries.
2. The upper surface of the camouflage will be alternate
light and dark tones; grass, reeds, hay, or branches
fixed in iron wire, etc.
3. Renew the camouflage in proper time; the grass and
branches fade quickly and appear light and not dark
on the photographs.
4. The position must not extend partly over one field and
partly over another, as two fields are seldom of the same
color. The furrows will be reproduced in the camouflage.
5. Camouflage materials, such as the sod removed and small
trees, will be taken at a distance of at least three to
four hundred meters from the position; place a dummy work
at a sufficient distance in order that it does not reveal
the true position.
(_d_) _Forms of Camouflage._
1. Do not raise the height of the camouflage needlessly;
the higher it is the more shadow it throws. Raise it by
means of posts during the work; bring it down by day and
lay it flat if possible; cover mainly the entries and exits.
2. Do not make a heap of the earth removed but scatter it
immediately.
3. There must be no fresh cuts visible, as marked contrasts
result from it between the light and dark surfaces, the
latter appearing as deep shadows on the ground.
4. Avoid regular shapes and rectangular outlines.
5. Do not change natural shapes. Positions in fills and
embankments must not change the form of the fill or
embankment.
6. Use the roads, fills, embankments, slopes, sunken roads,
edges of woods to greater extent. Deceive the enemy by
false tracks ending in woods.
II. MAIN INSTRUCTIONS FOR COLUMNS.
(_a_) Resting columns, location, and nature of halting-places.
The most important thing is that the halting-places be
of irregular form.
1. It is best to distribute the columns irregularly under
trees of gardens, avenues, roads, and courtyards, even
if not very dense.
2. The camouflage of wagons or artillery pieces by means
of branches does not secure them from reconnaissance by
airplanes, when the column is in the open on light-colored
ground, as, for example, on dry roads. Shadows enlarge in
a surprising manner.
3. In villages, keep close to the houses, walls, enclosures
of gardens and hedges, but, if possible, with irregular
distribution. The best side is always the north side of
houses, walls, etc., on account of the shadow.
4. In small courtyards the wagons are lined up one beside
the other and the tarpaulins joined in order to make a
roof. This appears as a smooth and very natural surface
on the photograph, which does not attract the enemy’s
attention.
5. Lessen the tracks, if possible. Do not widen the
roads of approach uselessly. Follow the track. Mark out
footpaths, staking them out, if necessary, by wire.
(_b_) Troops on foot, wagons, and artillery columns on the
march.
1. Even at night make more use of tracks which are
generally dark; the columns can then with difficulty
be observed by airplanes; on the other hand, columns
on roads which appear light can be seen even at night.
2. Infantry columns will be divided into small groups
distributed in depth and advance along the shady side of
roads.
3. When airplanes use light projectors at night keep in the
shade of trees or buildings.
III. GENERAL RULE.
When surprised by airplanes, either by day or by night, use
all natural shade provided by trees, embankments, houses,
etc., and remain motionless.
By Order of the General Commanding the Army.
CHIEF OF STAFF.
(Signed) FAUPEL, _Lieutenant-Colonel_.
So great, indeed, was the importance attached to camouflage by the
German High Command that, during the last year of the war, there was
attached to every German division a “security officer” whose duty it was
to enforce the rigid observance of camouflage discipline. In many cases
these security officers kept a watch on their respective division from
observation-balloons. They were answerable only to Great Headquarters and
were empowered, I understand, to recommend the removal of all officers
up to and including generals of division for infraction of the rules for
camouflage discipline as laid down by Ludendorff.
Camouflage, it should be kept in mind, is of two kinds—negative and
positive. Negative camouflage consists in the concealment of troops,
trenches, mine-shafts, battery positions, ammunition-dumps, hangars, or
other objects, knowledge of whose location must be kept, if possible,
from the enemy. Positive camouflage, on the contrary, consists in the
imitation or suggestion of troops, trenches, batteries, etc., in certain
locations, when, in reality, there is nothing of the sort there, in order
to deceive and bewilder the enemy. It occasionally became necessary,
for example, to convince the Germans that a large troop movement was in
progress behind a certain sector of the front, whereas the real movement
was taking place scores of miles away. If it was desired to suggest a
movement by rail, smoke-pots with clouds of dense black smoke bellying
from them were placed on flat cars and moved about from point to point on
the military railways. German aviators, observing these columns of smoke
at numerous points along the railways, naturally assumed that they came
from locomotives hauling troop-laden trains and promptly reported that
large bodies of troops were apparently being moved by rail behind the
American lines. Thereupon the German commander would rush up his reserves
to resist the attack which he believed to be impending. Or, if it was
desired to imitate a troop movement by road, the camouflage officer would
requisition large numbers of Fords, which would be driven madly along the
roads, dragging bundles of brush behind them. The great clouds of dust
which thus suddenly appeared on the highways naturally suggested to the
German observers that the _verdamte_ Yankees were rushing large bodies of
troops to the front by bus or motor-truck. Fooling Fritz was an amusing
game while it lasted.
This latter ruse, I might mention parenthetically, was not original with
the Americans, for President Diaz, of Mexico, once related to me how,
when he and his little band of patriots were being hotly pursued by the
French forces sent to Mexico to keep Maximilian on his unstable throne,
he ordered his vaqueros to cut bundles of mesquite and drag them behind
them by their lariats. It was in the dry season, and the dense clouds
of yellow dust thus stirred up convinced the French commander that
the Mexican force was far stronger than it really was. He thereupon
precipitately abandoned the pursuit and a few weeks later General Diaz,
having gained the breathing-spell necessary to augment his forces, fought
and won the decisive battle of Puebla.
It has frequently been said that the camera does not lie, but such
assertions were made before the Camouflage Corps commenced its
operations. Thereafter the negatives brought in by the German airmen
began to prove so unreliable that the officers whose business it was to
interpret them never knew whether they were telling the truth or not. For
example, it frequently became necessary after heavy bombardments in which
long stretches of entanglements had been destroyed, to convince the enemy
that the wire had been repaired. This illusion was accomplished by the
simple stratagem of driving stakes into the ground and festooning them
with fish-nets, for, in a photograph taken from the sky, fish-nets thus
arranged are indistinguishable from wire. If such ruses are to deceive
the enemy, however, as much attention must be paid to detail in their
execution as David Belasco pays to detail in the production of a play.
On a certain British sector a not overintelligent subaltern was ordered
by his battalion commander to take a working party and put out some 500
yards of this imitation wire, as there was reason to believe that the
Huns, thinking the sector unprotected by entanglements, were preparing
to make an attack. Now it is some job, even for a large and well-trained
working party, to put out 500 yards of wire in much under a day. Heedless
of such minor details, however, the lieutenant gayly slammed in his
stakes and spread his fish-nets as fast as his men could work, “wiring”
the 500 yards of front in little more than an hour. From high in the blue
German airmen photographed the proceeding. When one set of photographs
showed a sector destitute of wire and another set of pictures, taken
an hour later, showed the same area with a complete system of wire
entanglements, the suspicions of Von Hindenburg’s intelligence officers
were naturally aroused, and the next morning at dawn the Germans launched
their attack. In camouflage work one can’t afford to be slipshod.
The most elaborate camouflage works can be rendered utterly useless,
however, by the carelessness of a single soldier, for there is little
that escapes the eye of the airman’s camera, particularly when it was
fitted, as during the latter days of the war, with a stereoscopic
attachment. I remember that in one of the Champagne sectors the Germans
had installed a battery of heavy guns which were so ingeniously concealed
that the French were unable to locate them. It was believed that they
were hidden somewhere in a fringe of woods along a stream, but though
there was a considerable area of cultivated land beyond the woods, the
aerophotographs of it showed nothing which would suggest a path such as
would be made by artillerymen going to and from their guns. One day,
however, a new batch of plates, upon being developed, showed a dim gray
line, faint as the shadow of a hair, leading across this cultivated
area to a small wood on the bank of the stream, where a battery might
easily be concealed. Upon studying an enlargement of the picture the
intelligence officers became convinced that the shadowy line on the
negative really represented the trail left by a soldier crossing the
field. Proceeding on the surmise that the soldier was an artilleryman
going up to his gun-position, the French gunners registered on that
particular patch of woods the following morning, whereupon the fire
from the concealed battery abruptly ceased. German prisoners captured a
few days later explained how the secret of the battery’s position had
been kept so long. The German security officer had issued orders that
the artillerymen must under no considerations walk across the fields in
order to reach their guns, but that they must instead follow a much-used
highroad until they reached a bridge over the stream, drop from the
bridge into the water, and wade up the stream until opposite their
position. But one night an artilleryman, in a hurry to reach his battery
and confident that the tracks left by a single man could do no harm, took
a chance and a short cut across the forbidden field. I have told you
what happened to his battery as a result of his carelessness. Knowing
something of German discipline, I can imagine what happened to him.
But it was not often that the Germans were caught napping, and so
ingenious were some of their ruses and stratagems, that it required an
intelligence officer with the imagination of a Sherlock Holmes to keep up
with them. During the operations on the Flanders front a British aviator
brought in some photographs of a certain area behind the German lines.
The intelligence officer whose duty it was to scrutinize them detected
a suspicious something which he was convinced was a cleverly camouflaged
German battery, but though it was in the midst of open country there was
no suggestion of a path leading to it. After studying the photographs for
several hours he suddenly exclaimed:
“I have it! They get up to the guns on the covers of biscuit-boxes.”
“What do you mean?” his chief asked curiously.
“It’s as plain as the nose on your face,” explained the youngster. “The
Boche knows jolly well that if he walked across that open ground his
tracks would show up in our air photos. So when he wants to get up to his
battery he gets a couple of wooden biscuit-box covers and ties strings
to them. He stands on one cover and throws the other ahead of him, then
stands on that and drags up the first cover by means of the string and
repeats the operation. Deuced clever of the beggars, I call it.”
And, as subsequent events proved, the intelligence officer was right in
his deduction. That was precisely what the Germans had done.
By far the most important work of the Camouflage Corps was the
construction of “flat-tops” and “false contours.” A flat-top, I should
perhaps explain, is a screen for concealing a gun from enemy observation.
It consists of a fish-net, usually 37 feet square, into the mesh of which
are woven and knotted narrow strips of burlap of colors to blend with the
vegetation of the region where the flat-top is to be used. The interwoven
burlap becomes gradually thinner as the edges of the net are approached,
so that no sharply defined shadow may be cast. Every piece of artillery,
large and small, in the A. E. F. had its own flat-top, which accompanied
the gun everywhere, being stretched above it, like a canopy, when the
piece was in action, at other times being rolled up and carried on the
limber. A somewhat similar device was also provided for the concealment
of machine-guns. It resembled one of those huge umbrellas used in summer
on delivery-wagons, and, like an umbrella, it could be quickly raised
or lowered. It was the intention of the Camouflage Corps, had the war
continued, to provide one for every machine-gun.
A false contour can best be described as the prolongation, by means
of burlap spread over a sort of wire trellis, of a ridge, promontory,
or hill. It being desired to place a battery at the foot of a hill
and at the same time conceal it from enemy observation—which included
photographs taken from enemy airplanes—the Camouflage Corps would first
of all erect a light wooden framework, something like that of a grape
or rose arbor, but conforming to the general contour of the hill. Over
this framework was stretched wire netting, which supported, in turn, a
finer mesh of chicken-wire, into which were woven strips of burlap dyed
so as to exactly match the color of the hill itself. The space beneath
this burlap screen provided perfect concealment for anything up to a
battery or a battalion, while so closely was nature imitated in the
shaping and coloring of the false contour that photographs taken by enemy
flyers would show only an innocent hillside, with not enough vegetation
to provide cover for a sniper. The burlap used in the construction of
these false contours was frequently “slashed,” after the fashion of
foliage-drops in theatres, and was dyed in a great variety of shades,
all of which were standardized and could be ordered by number. There
were burlaps slashed and dyed to imitate ploughed fields, grain-fields,
roads, lawns, quarries, water, rocks, and spring, summer, autumn, and
winter foliage; in short, every phase of nature as found in the zone of
operations.
[Illustration: SUITS KNOWN AS CAGOULES.
These suits are made of burlap and painted to match the vegetation and
were frequently used by American snipers and raiding-parties.]
[Illustration: THE WORK OF THE CAMOUFLAGE CORPS.
As the enemy had this road under direct observation, traffic along it was
concealed by means of burlap screens.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._
An overhead road screen made of burlap strips and chicken wire.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
The first time I visited the big warehouse of the Camouflage School
at Fort St. Menge, I thought for a moment that I was back in the old
Eden Musée which used to stand in West 23d Street, for stacked against
the walls were scores of lifelike silhouettes of soldiers charging
with fixed bayonets, while the shelves were lined with soldiers’ heads
beautifully executed in papier-maché. The silhouettes, which were of
painted canvas mounted on light wooden frames, were used in the so-called
“Chinese attacks”—an idea which we borrowed from the British. When it
was necessary to ascertain how quickly the enemy could switch on his
artillery-fire in a certain sector, or the location of his batteries or
machine-guns, a hundred or more of these silhouettes would be carried out
into No Man’s Land under cover of darkness and laid down in front of our
wire in such a manner that they could be pulled upright by means of cords
running back to our trenches. Just at daybreak, at that hour when objects
are still indistinct and when the nerves of the men in the trenches are
at the greatest tension, a signal would be given, the cords pulled, and
a long line of what appeared to the startled Germans to be charging
Yankees would suddenly appear in the mist overhanging No Man’s Land.
Instantly the German trenches would crackle and blaze with musketry, the
concealed batteries and machine-gun nests would betray their positions by
going into action, and by the time the Huns discovered the hoax that had
been played upon them, our observers had obtained the information which
they required. Sometimes, in order to further chagrin the Boche, the
silhouettes would be left standing.
The papier-maché heads to which I have already referred were used for the
purpose of locating German snipers. When a sniper became particularly
annoying and defied all attempts to locate him, the camouflage officer
attached to the division would be summoned. Under his direction a
papier-maché effigy of a soldier’s head, steel helmet and all, made so
as to move up and down in wooden guides, would be set up in that part
of the trench which the sniper had been annoying. At intervals the
head would be slowly raised and lowered, so that from the outside of
the trench it looked precisely like a soldier peering cautiously over
the parapet. Sooner or later the hidden marksman would send a bullet
through the careless Yankee’s brain. The neat hole drilled through the
papier-maché showed the exact direction from which the bullet came, and
by inserting in the hole a tiny telescope, no larger than a pencil, and
looking through it by means of a periscope, the loophole from which the
sniper was firing could be located. In one case a sniper was found to be
firing through a hole bored in the heel of an old boot, apparently thrown
carelessly onto the glacis.
Though I have described at some length the use of silhouettes and
papier-maché heads because they are picturesque and interesting phases
of modern war, it should be borne in mind that they were designed to
meet exceptional conditions, that they were used infrequently, and that
they were in no sense typical of the enormously important work of the
Camouflage Service.
* * * * *
In the foregoing pages I have sketched the multitudinous activities of
the Engineers only in the barest outline. To attempt to compress the
story of their achievements into the limits of a single chapter would
be absurd, so I have dwelt only on the most picturesque and unusual
phases of their work—the high spots, as it were. There is much that I
have left unsaid, not because it is not worth saying, but because I
have no space in which to set it down. The stories which I have had,
perforce, to leave untold would in themselves fill a volume. Among their
other accomplishments the Engineers designed a portable steel bridge,
made up in sections so that it could be transported on trucks, and so
designed that it could be bolted together, which could sustain a load
of thirty tons over a span of ninety feet. These bridges were used all
along the fighting front, as our forces advanced, to replace the bridges
destroyed by the retreating Germans. They had under construction, when
the war ended, a raft designed for the transportation of the heaviest
pieces of mobile artillery in existence—by means of which, had necessity
required it, we could have ferried our giant howitzers across the Rhine.
The portable floating foot-bridges—passarelles—which our troops used in
crossing the Meuse and the adjacent canals under fire were invented by an
officer of Engineers. The Engineers threw one of them across the Canal de
l’Est, near Dun-sur-Meuse, under a shell and machine-gun fire so heavy
that it was twenty-six hours before the infantry could cross it. The
Engineers have invented a very ingenious and remarkable device whereby
search-lights can be operated from a distance, thus making it possible
for an officer to control a battery of scattered search-lights just as
the man in a signal-tower controls, by means of levers, the switches in a
railway yard. The corps has perfected a blasting machine for demolition
work which destroyed ruins faster than the Huns could make them. Military
operations are absolutely dependent upon maps and plenty of them. The
Engineers met the demand by erecting and operating in France a larger
map-producing plant than was possessed by France herself or any of the
Allies. In order to provide a more rapid means of obtaining topographical
information, Major James W. Bagley, of the Engineers, invented an aerial
cartograph or mapping camera, which takes three pictures at a time from
an airplane, mapping a strip of territory three and a half miles wide at
5,000 feet elevation, the series of pictures thus taken forming a mosaic
map of the country over which the airplane has flown which is as accurate
and far more detailed than a map drawn from surveys. This invention
opens up an entirely new field for the use of airplanes and a possible
revolution in former methods of mapping. The Engineers likewise produced
portable machine, blacksmith, and lithographic shops, the capacity of
the portable lithographic truck-sets furnished the 29th Engineers—the
Surveying and Printing Regiment—being greater than that of the permanent
map-reproduction plant of the Geological Survey in Washington. Mobile
sterilizers, water-tanks, job-presses, photographic laboratories,
derricks, pile-drivers, road-sprinklers, and oilers were all asked for by
the A. E. F., whereupon the Engineers designed them and shipped them to
France.
I fully realize that what I have written in the preceding pages contains
no mention of the supply work performed by the corps in the United
States, which was so enormous that 27 per cent of all the tonnage
shipped to France up to the signing of the Armistice was from or for
the Engineers. Furthermore, I have touched only here and there upon the
activities of the corps oversea, where in addition to the enormous amount
of engineering work which had to be done with the armies, including
fighting, the construction of fortifications, and the building of roads,
railways, and bridges, it executed an incredible amount of general
construction, such as docks and warehouses, railroad yards and railroad
bridges, camps and hospitals, balloon sheds and airplane hangars, not
to mention the installation of water, heating, lighting, and sanitary
systems. And, bear in mind, the oversea activities of the Engineers
were not confined to France, but extended to England, Italy, Russia, and
Siberia.
* * * * *
“_Essayons!_” The more I have seen of the work of the Engineers, the more
appropriate seems their motto.
“_Essayons!_” There is apparently nothing that these men with the
castles on their collars will not essay. And everything they essay they
accomplish.
III
THE GAS-MAKERS
Were you to grow up with a boy who eventually became widely talked about,
watching him pass from knickerbockers to trousers and from youthful
shyness to burly aggressiveness, the chances are that you would follow
his career with an almost proprietary interest, and that when you came
upon his picture in _The World’s Work_ or _The Police Gazette_, according
to whether he had become famous or notorious, you would display it to
your friends, explaining proudly: “Why, I’ve known him ever since he was
a youngster. I always felt sure that he would attract attention some day.”
Such, in a manner of speaking, has been my acquaintance with poison-gas,
or toxic-gas, as the chemists call it. I was in the Ypres salient, on
the British front, when the first gas attack in the history of warfare
was launched against the Africans and Canadians on April 22, 1915, and
that night, in the hospitals, I saw the earliest victims of gas warfare,
gasping on their cots like fish thrown on the bank to die. On several
occasions during the months which followed I again encountered the malign
creature—on the Yser, in the Champagne, in Alsace, and on the Isonzo—and
on each succeeding occasion it was more threatening and was causing
greater concern. So that when, after the United States had been at war a
year or more, I visited the great arsenal at Edgewood, on the shores of
Chesapeake Bay, and was shown the vast plants devoted to the production
of chlorine, chlorpicrin, phosgene, mustard, and other deadly gases, and
caught the familiar nauseous odor, I felt as though I were renewing an
old and undesirable acquaintance.
I doubt if the Germans started the war with the intention of utilizing
poison-gas, for they did not introduce it until nine months after the
beginning of hostilities, and even then they apparently failed to realize
the terrible potency of their new weapon, for they waited twenty-four
hours before following it up with a bayonet attack, evidently fearful
that the gas had not dissipated. As a matter of fact, the gas dissipated
within thirty-five or forty minutes after its release, though in that
time it annihilated 80 per cent of the French, Canadians, and Senegalese
opposing it. Had the Germans taken instant and vigorous advantage of the
confusion and dismay created by their unexpected use of chlorine, they
could unquestionably have broken the Allied front, pushed through to
the Channel ports, and changed the entire course of the war. (I might
mention, parenthetically, that the British had been warned by a deserter,
a week before, that the Germans were making preparations for a gas
attack, but they did not believe him.) But the men in the spiked helmets
failed to take advantage of the Allies’ temporary panic; the latter had
time to improvise a means of defense, and the opportunity of the Germans
to win the war by the use of gas was gone. So effectively, indeed, did
the Allies turn the new weapon to their own uses that, before the close
of 1916, the Germans were putting out feelers for the purpose of bringing
about a cessation of this form of warfare. Then the United States
entered the war, whereupon all the resources of American laboratories
and chemical manufactories were directed toward the production of gas in
quantities of which the Germans had never dreamed.
But, even had the Allies been aware of Germany’s intention to make use
of toxic-gases for military purposes, they would still have been at an
enormous disadvantage, because, as a direct result of her policy of
giving government assistance to certain industries, Germany had several
huge gas-plants, connected with her dye manufactories, in operation when
the war began. Now phosgene, which is comparatively easy to produce,
is used extensively in the manufacture of dyes, which explains why the
Germans had a virtual monopoly of it when they decided to utilize it
for the promotion of dying instead of dyeing. The German Government,
it should be remembered, had for years subsidized the entire chemical
industry of the empire, so that when the war began it had at its
disposal scores of establishments devoted to the production of dyestuffs
and pharmaceutical preparations, in the production of which certain
toxic-gases are an important factor, which were converted, literally
overnight, to military purposes. Though there is no data regarding the
German gas production available, it was probably in the neighborhood
of 30 tons a day. It may have reached 50 tons, but certainly not
more. Though the English, realizing how desperate was the situation,
utilized every facility they could command, their total daily output
of toxic-gases never went above 30 tons. The best the French could do
was much below this. Yet at Edgewood, during the months of September
and October, 1918, when the plant had been in operation only a few
months, the output averaged 140 tons a day and would have gone much
higher had the war continued. In other words, _Edgewood Arsenal alone
produced nearly twice as much gas per day as Germany, France, and England
together_.
Now I wish to lay special emphasis on the fact that when the United
States decided to manufacture gas, and to manufacture it in hitherto
undreamed-of quantities, we were embarking on strange and uncharted
seas. We manufactured almost everything else under the sun, but of the
production of these toxic-gases we knew little save in theory, because
virtually their only commercial value was in the making of certain dyes
and chemicals, for which we had depended almost wholly on Germany. It
was a new game which we had to learn—and to learn quickly. We found
ourselves in the position of a baseball-player who is unexpectedly called
upon to bowl in a game of cricket on which the championship depends. But
when word went out from Washington that chemists were needed to beat the
Germans at their own game, the masters of the retort and the test-tube
left their classrooms and closed their laboratories and from every corner
of the republic came flocking to the colors. I am using no mere figure
of speech when I assert that the mammoth gas industry which was built
up from nothing in less than a twelvemonth, knowledge of which was
without question largely contributory to breaking down the German morale,
was the work of American college professors. Some one, an Englishman,
if I remember rightly, once referred to Germany as “the land of damned
professors.” When their batteries and battalions were sent reeling back
by American-made gas, the Germans must have felt like applying the same
term to the United States.
Notwithstanding the remarkable standard of efficiency which it ultimately
attained, the Chemical Warfare Service, or the Gas Service, as it was
originally called, passed through a checkered and stormy formative
period. By the close of 1917, when we had already been at war for nine
months, there was hardly a branch of the American Army which did not have
a finger in the affairs of gas warfare. The manufacture of masks was
under the direction of the Medical Corps. Gas and shell production was
in the hands of the Ordnance Department. Alarm devices were produced by
the Signal Corps. The gas and flame troops formed the 30th Regiment of
Engineers. Field-training was directed by the Sanitary Corps. Research
work, an extremely important phase, was carried out by the Bureau of
Mines, a branch of the Department of the Interior. And, to complete the
decentralization, arrangements were being made to form a chemical service
section of the National Army for the purpose of conducting gas operations
overseas.
There is nothing to be gained by describing the long series of
misunderstandings, controversies, and recriminations which constituted
the history of gas warfare during the early months of 1918. It is not
pleasant reading. It is enough to say that the demoralization resulting
from this divided authority, taken in conjunction with the introduction
by the Germans of mustard and other new gases, and the difficulty which
the English were experiencing in obtaining a sufficient supply of
chlorine, brought about a situation which caused grave alarm to all who
were familiar with the situation in Europe. The two chief obstacles in
the way of a complete reorganization of the service were the Ordnance
Department, the chief of which was unwilling to permit all of the gas
activities of Ordnance to be controlled by an external authority, and
the Bureau of Mines, which refused to permit its chemists and its
organization to be absorbed by the War Department. Though at that time
it was impossible to modify the attitude of the Bureau of Mines in
regard to its control of research, the Chief of Ordnance did his best to
improve conditions within his own department by placing Colonel William
H. Walker, assistant director of the Gas Service and former professor of
chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in
complete control of gas production, including the operation of the great
plant at Edgewood, the branch factories throughout the country, and the
experimental field at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The manner in which this
college professor brought order out of chaos at Edgewood and its related
plants, directed the activities of 7,000 soldiers and 8,000 civilian
workmen, settled labor troubles, obtained material, completed and put
into operation the largest toxic-gas plant in existence, and, by his
insistence on manufacturing at Edgewood all types of gases, including a
large proportion of the basic chlorine, made the government independent
of manufacturers and contractors, was one of the most remarkable
accomplishments of the war.
In May, 1918, Major-General William L. Sibert, Corps of Engineers,
who had commanded the First Division in France, was appointed by the
President as director of the Gas Service for the express purpose of
reorganizing that service and placing it on a footing commensurate with
the importance it was now realized to have. General Sibert promptly took
the position that, if he was to assume this responsibility, there could
be no further divided control; all gas production and all research work
must be in his hands. Ensued then lengthy discussions between the War
Department and the Department of the Interior, enlivened by newspaper
articles and speeches in Congress, as to whether the research chemists
of the Bureau of Mines should pass under military control, but General
Sibert’s attitude remained unshaken and, on July 13, 1918, all branches
of the work connected with gas warfare were placed under his control
as chief of the Chemical Warfare Service, henceforward a complete and
separate branch of the army.
When the United States entered the war, none of the toxic-gases used by
the warring nations, with the exception of chlorine, had been prepared in
this country except on a very small scale and as laboratory experiments.
The War Department was faced, therefore, with the immediate problem,
not only of developing methods for the manufacture of these gases on a
large scale, but also of putting these methods into execution. Gases, the
preparation of which even in very small quantities was prohibited in many
laboratories on account of their highly dangerous character and which,
for the same reason, the Railroad Administration refused to transport
except by special trains, were now to be produced by the thousands of
tons. But how? There was no suitable machinery for the purpose to be had
in the United States; everything must be designed and built to order. And
where were the thousands of workmen who would be required to come from?
Why should a man exchange the safety of a shipyard, where he was getting
undreamed-of wages, for the perils of making poison-gas? It was indeed
a stupendous problem which the government was facing. Yet there was no
time to mull the question over, as a judge mulls over a point of law, for
every day brought word of an increasing use of gas by the Germans.
It was the original intention to interest existing chemical firms in
the manufacture of the required gases, with the hope of obtaining from
them the entire supply required. As the project developed, however,
difficulties arose which prevented the carrying out of this programme.
The director-general of railroads ruled, as I have just said, that the
gases could only be transported by special train movement, and this would
entail great difficulty, delay, and expense. More serious objections were
encountered, however, in the efforts to enlist the co-operation of the
chemical manufacturers. The methods for the production of toxic-gases on
a large scale were quite unknown, the manufacturers explained, and to
discover and develop satisfactory processes would necessarily require
extended investigations. The companies also realized that there would be
great danger to the lives of those employed in the work, that fatalities
were almost certain to result, and they were unwilling to run the
risk of the interminable lawsuits which are usually incidental to the
settlement of such cases. Moreover, only a limited number of firms had
the personnel and the experience necessary to undertake the difficult
problems involved, and these firms were already crowded with war work
and were unwilling to assume additional responsibility, particularly of
such a character. And, finally, it was recognized that the manufacture
of toxic-gases would be limited to the duration of the war, and that the
processes involved, as well as the plants necessary for carrying out
these processes, would have little value after the war was over.
Meanwhile the Ordnance Department had approved of a plan to utilize a
portion of a tract comprising 35,000 acres, near Aberdeen, Maryland,
on Chesapeake Bay, which had just been acquired by the government for
a proving-ground, for erecting a suitable plant for filling shell with
poison-gas—though at that time it had not been determined where the
gas itself was to come from. As soon as it became evident that the
necessary quantities of gas could not be obtained from private firms,
the War Department decided to erect and operate its own gas-plants on
a peninsula of the Aberdeen Reservation, known as Gunpowder Neck. This
peninsula, consisting of about 3,500 acres, which was admirably suited
for the purpose by reason of its remoteness from centres of population,
its security, and its facilities for rail and water transportation, was
named Edgewood Arsenal.
Only those who saw the low-lying, swamp-lined shores of Gunpowder Neck
during the winter and spring of 1917-1918 can fully picture the obstacles
with which our gas-makers were confronted. Have you ever seen a Virginia
road after the spring rains? Yes? Imagine, then, this Virginian clay
mixed with Mexican adobe and diluted with New Orleans molasses and you
will have a slight idea of the nature of the soil over which enormous
quantities of material had to be hauled and on which was erected the
greatest manufactory of poison-gas in the world. It may be recalled,
moreover, that the winter of 1917-1918 was the severest in the memory
of the oldest inhabitant. For weeks on end the shores of the Chesapeake
resembled the shores of Greenland, but, in spite of cold and mud and
rain, in spite of apparently insurmountable difficulties in obtaining
building materials and in securing transportation for those materials on
the congested railways, in spite of strikes and labor troubles of every
kind, the work forged steadily ahead, officers and men working themselves
as a negro teamster works his mules. Scores of miles of roads were built
and metalled, a network of railways was laid down, and over them snorted
panting locomotives hauling endless caravans of freight-cars. The
building sites were illuminated by hundreds of arc-lights, the working
force was divided into shifts, and the reservation resounded both night
and day to the creak of derricks, the clatter of riveters, and the rasp
of saws. A total of 558 buildings were constructed on the grounds of
the arsenal, including, in addition to the huge structures of steel and
concrete which comprised the filling and the various chemical plants,
36 cantonments with quarters for 8,400 men, 3 field-hospitals, a base
hospital with more than 400 beds, bunk-houses for civilian workmen,
officers’ barracks, Y. M. C. A. and Knights of Columbus huts, and one of
the most completely equipped laboratories in the country. Edgewood is,
in reality, a collection of great manufacturing plants, with all that
implies in housing, sanitation, heating, storage, hospitalization, and
other agencies. And the work was done by men every one of whom, from
the commanding officer down, was in civil life when the war began. Not
a single officer or man of the Regular Army had any responsibility for
the construction or operation of Edgewood Arsenal from the day that the
ex-professor of chemistry, Colonel Walker, assumed command, until its
operations were terminated by the Armistice.
Any one who has had practical experience in manufacturing well knows that
it is usually a long step from laboratory experimentation to factory
production, a step which it often takes months and sometimes years to
make and which is frequently beset with all manner of difficulties and
problems. But there was no such time at the disposal of the Edgewood
gas-makers. In all their experiments they were never permitted to
slack up on production. The need was too vital. Our armies in France
were clamoring for gas, gas, gas. There were no existing models for
much of the machinery needed, but the corps of brilliant young men
with whom Colonel Walker had surrounded himself invented as they went
along. Yet, as a result of the experiments at Edgewood, numerous new
and more economical processes were discovered. The slow and dangerous
water-cooling method of producing phosgene, as followed in Europe, was
supplanted by an entirely new system and a plant was perfected which
could turn out forty tons of this gas every twenty-four hours. When the
Edgewood plant was put into operation the government was paying one
dollar and fifty cents a pound for phosgene, but when the Armistice was
signed we were manufacturing it at the theretofore unheard-of price of
ten cents per pound and would have brought it to an even lower figure
had the production been continued. The systems devised for filling,
painting, and marking the shell were marvels of mechanical ingenuity.
These discoveries were not intended for commerce. They were the result
of patriotic effort on the part of the workmen to see the nation excel
in the particular thing in which it was then engaged—war. They were the
outgrowth of impatience over slow and dangerous methods, or a desire to
do the work in hand a little better or a little more quickly than it had
been done before—a quality inherent in the American character.
It is a remarkable commentary on the efficiency of the Edgewood
organization that notwithstanding the fact that the manufacture of
poison-gases in quantity was a new industry in the United States, that
the machinery was improvised or designed from the ground up, that the
workmen were without previous experience—many of the drafted men, mind
you, were fresh from offices, stores, and farms—and that they were
engaged in a peculiarly hazardous occupation, only four fatalities were
directly traceable to poisoning by gas. This should not be construed as
minimizing the peril attached to the work, however, for, though every
possible precaution was observed in the construction and operation of the
plants, there were 925 casualties between June and December, 1918, of
which 674 were due to mustard-gas. During the month of August, when the
gases were most volatile as a result of the excessive heat (during that
month the mercury stood at 106 degrees for three days in succession), and
when the weather caused the soldiers to somewhat relax their precautions,
the hospitals were on several days filled at the rate of 3½ per cent of
the entire force of the mustard-gas plant, though this rate of casualties
was not maintained, of course, throughout the entire month. I might add
that several of the divisions which took part in the St. Mihiel offensive
sustained a considerably smaller percentage of losses, which shows that
the dangers of the war were not entirely monopolized by the men who
served in France.
Long before the chemical plants were completed it became evident that
civilian labor could not be utilized in their operation. Not only was
such labor difficult to obtain, but the wages were abnormally high,
the work was, as a whole, extremely inefficient, and it was virtually
impossible to maintain the discipline and secrecy imperative to the
success of the undertaking. Moreover, it was found that such civilian
labor as was available could not be depended upon to work in the chemical
plants because of the danger attending the manufacture of such highly
poisonous materials. It was decided, therefore, to utilize enlisted
men. As the project progressed, increasing numbers of soldiers from
the National Army were detailed to the arsenal, the force reaching a
strength of 7,400 at one time. The soldiers, no matter how much they
disliked the work, could not quit like the civilian laborers; they had
no option but to obey orders, and so, morning after morning, they rose
at the summons of the bugles in the dim light of early dawn, hurried
through their breakfasts at the long tables in the mess-halls, and
marched to their respective tasks, whether making chlorine, chlorpicrin,
phosgene, or mustard gas, filling or painting shell, working in the
great refrigerating-plants through which the shell were passed to be
chilled before filling, loading trains and boats, building roads, digging
ditches, or firing boilers—all for thirty dollars a month. To the men who
wore the blue-and-yellow hat-cords of the Chemical Warfare Service, the
men who performed their dangerous work without advertisement and without
public recognition, is due the gratitude of the nation.
The chief activities of the great arsenal on the Chesapeake consisted, as
I believe I have already mentioned, of the manufacture of four types of
toxic-gas—chlorine, chlorpicrin, phosgene, and mustard—and the filling
of shell with these gases. Now I have not the slightest intention of
entering upon a technical account of the complicated processes by which
these gases were produced. Though no doubt interesting to chemists, it
would make dry reading for others. It will suffice for the purposes of
this book to sketch in briefest outline, and in simple words, the chief
characteristics of the principal toxic-gases and the methods followed in
their manufacture.
Chlorine, which is the first gas the Germans used and which is an
important constituent of nearly all the other toxic-gases, is derived
from ordinary table-salt. It is prepared by passing a current of
electricity through a solution of salt, by which process chlorine is
liberated and caustic soda formed. At ordinary temperatures chlorine is a
greenish-yellow gas of strong, suffocating odor, but by means of cold and
pressure it can be readily condensed to a liquid and is usually shipped
in that form, stored in strong cylinders. The apparatus in which the salt
is decomposed by the electric current is known as a cell. The salt, upon
arrival at the arsenal, was taken to the brine building and dumped into
large concrete tanks kept partially filled with water, the resulting
brine being drawn off, purified, and pumped to the cell-house as needed.
The interior of this building was filled with cells, nearly 4,000 in all,
through which was passed a direct current of approximately 260 volts.
The chlorine thus extracted from the brine was liquefied by compressing
it through the agency of a falling column of sulphuric acid and then
cooling the compressed gas by refrigeration. Though chlorine has long
been manufactured in the United States for chemical purposes, a constant
supply of it was so essential for the preparation of the other gases that
Colonel Walker insisted that it should be produced at Edgewood, thus
making the government independent of private manufacturers.
Chlorpicrin, while not so poisonous as some of the other gases, is,
nevertheless, an active poison and has, in addition, pronounced lachrymal
(tear-producing) and nauseating qualities. Though chlorpicrin is fatal
when taken in large quantities, it is almost impossible to inhale much
of it because of its terribly nauseating effect. The inhalation of four
cubic inches of it causes violent vomiting. Chlorpicrin is produced by
the action of picric acid upon chlorine in the form of bleaching-powder.
The bleaching-powder, after being diluted with water to the consistency
of thick cream, is mixed with a solution of calcium picrate in large
stills holding 5,000 or more gallons. A jet of live steam is introduced
at the bottom of the still and the reaction begins at once, the resulting
chlorpicrin passing out of the still into condensers. This mixture of
chlorpicrin and water is then run into tanks. As chlorpicrin does not
dissolve in water, it gradually settles to the bottom and is drawn off
and loaded directly into the shell.
Phosgene, the next member of the poison-gas family, is the deadliest of
the lung-gases, killing almost as quickly as cyanogen. It is produced
by the combination of two other gases, chlorine and carbon monoxide.
The reaction is effected in iron boxes, lined with lead and filled with
charcoal, into which a stream of chlorine and carbon monoxide, mixed in
proper proportion, is introduced. The colorless gas which results is
phosgene. It is condensed to a liquid by passing it through a condenser
surrounded by brine kept cold by refrigeration and is then either
stored in strong steel containers or run directly into the thirty-pound
cylinders known as Livens’ drums. These drums are fired from a sort of
mortar, called a projector, and are extremely effective for producing
heavy concentrations of gas up to a range of 1,500 yards.
The compound commonly referred to in chemical warfare as “mustard-gas” is
known to chemists as dichlorethylsulphide. Its nature is as formidable as
its name. It has a distinctive smell, like garlic rather than mustard.
It has no immediate effect on the eyes, beyond a slight irritation, but
after several hours the eyes begin to swell and inflame and practically
blister, causing the most intense pain; the nose discharges freely,
and severe coughing and even vomiting ensue. Direct contact with the
spray causes blistering of the skin so severe that it is virtually
burned. Even when protected by masks and specially made clothing, it is
impossible for troops to remain for more than eight hours in an area
which has been bombarded with mustard-gas. Dichlorethylsulphide, to use
its correct name, is produced by blowing ethylene-gas into liquid sulphur
monochloride in large iron reaction vessels. Contrary to the popular
impression, this gas contains no mustard. The details of devices and
methods for introducing the ethylene and sulphur monochloride into the
vessels, the removal of the product, the necessary agitation and cooling
of the mass, and the like, were frequently changed during the development
of the process and had not reached a final form even when the Armistice
was signed. Nevertheless, when the war ended, Edgewood was producing 30
tons of mustard-gas a day and a rapid increase up to 100 tons daily was
practically assured.
Though the Germans began their use of gas by releasing it from cylinders,
depending upon the wind to carry it over the enemy’s lines, these
“cloud attacks,” as they were called, did not prove satisfactory and
were eventually discontinued, for great difficulty was experienced in
getting the heavy cylinders up to the front and installing them in the
trenches, and favorable winds could not be depended upon. It seems
likely, indeed, that the Germans failed to recognize the significance of
the meteorological records and charts of northern France, which show that
75 per cent of the prevailing winds are from a southerly or southeasterly
direction, thus leaving the Germans only 25 per cent of the time in
which they could use their gas without danger of its being blown back
over their own lines. It was in order to overcome these meteorological
conditions that the Germans evolved the idea of loading the gas into
shell, usually in the form of liquid, which turned into gas when it came
into contact with the air upon the explosion of the shell, and firing
these shell from guns or mortars, thus enabling them to place the gas
wherever they desired without reference to the weather. During the last
two years of the war, barring a few isolated instances, gas was used in
no other way.
The filling of shell was, therefore, one of the most important of
Edgewood’s many activities. Let me explain to you, as simply and briefly
as possible, how the shell were filled with phosgene.
The empty shell, after inspection, were loaded on trucks together
with the required number of loaded boosters. (A booster, it should be
explained, is the cap or stopper containing a charge of high explosive,
usually TNT or dynamite, which is screwed on the nose of the shell after
it has been filled with gas, much as a metal top is screwed onto a
bottle. Just before firing, a fuse is inserted in the booster, igniting
the explosive, which in turn shatters the shell, thus releasing the gas.)
The trucks with the empty shell were then run by electric locomotives to
the filling buildings. Here the shell were transferred to a conveyer,
a sort of moving platform, which slowly moved through a room kept cold
by refrigeration. About thirty minutes was required for this operation,
during which time the shell were cooled to a temperature of about zero.
This chilling of the shell was made necessary because phosgene has a low
boiling-point. It was imperative, therefore, that the temperature of the
shell be kept considerably below the boiling-point of phosgene in order
that the latter should remain in liquid form while the filling was taking
place. The chilled shell were then transferred to trucks and hauled
by motor through the filling-tunnel to the filling-machines. Here the
phosgene, kept in liquid state by refrigeration, was run into the shell
by automatic machines. The truck then carried the filled shell forward
a few feet, at which point the boosters were screwed into the noses of
the shell by hand. The final closing of the shell was then effected by
motors operated by compressed air. The filled shell were next conveyed
to the shell-dump, where they were classified and stored for twenty-four
hours, nose down on skids, in order to test them for leaks. The following
day the shell were again placed on conveyers which carried them through
a painting-machine, where air-brushes gave them a coat of elephant gray
and striped them with the distinctive bands of color which denoted the
type of gas they contained. The methods followed in filling shell with
chlorpicrin were similar to those for phosgene except that refrigeration
was unnecessary. The peculiar properties of mustard-gas, however,
required an entirely different filling system. Edgewood Arsenal also had
separate plants for filling the stannic-chloride hand-grenades used for
“mopping up” trenches; for filling both shell and grenades with white
phosphorus for use in forming smoke-screens to conceal the movements of
advancing troops, and for loading the incendiary drop-bombs used by the
Air Service.
The various plants which I have just described by no means comprised
the whole of Edgewood’s activities, however, for, in order to obtain a
sufficient supply of bromine, certain compounds of which are excellent
tear-producing materials, a series of brine-wells was sunk at Midland,
Michigan; a plant for the production of another lachrymator, brombenzyl
cyanide, was erected at Kingsport, Tennessee; and an establishment for
the manufacture of diphenychlorarsine—an arsenical material used in gas
warfare because it produces violent sneezing, thus causing the troops
to remove their gas-masks and thereby exposing them to the effects of
the toxic-gases used in combination with the arsenicals—was started at
Croyland, Pennsylvania.
As a matter of fact, the great mother-plant on Chesapeake Bay had
branches and ramifications of which the public had scarcely an inkling,
so carefully were the details of our gas production guarded. I have
already pointed out that it was the original intention to secure the
entire supply of toxic materials from existing chemical plants, and
that it was only after this plan was found to be unfeasible that the
decision to build government plants was reached. This decision did not
signify, however, that no such material would be obtained from existing
firms. On the contrary, it was decided to utilize such firms whenever it
was possible to secure their co-operation. But as the products desired
had never been prepared on a commercial scale in this country, it was
impossible to forecast with accuracy the cost of their manufacture. As
a result, the co-operation of the existing chemical concerns could be
secured only on the condition that the government would finance the
work. These plants, therefore, though they continued to be operated by
their owners, became in fact government plants, being financed by the
government, representatives of the War Department being stationed at
each establishment to supervise their administration and look after the
government’s interests. At first they were under the direction of the
trench warfare section of the Ordnance Department, but, under a later
order, they were made a part of Edgewood Arsenal and placed under the
administration of its commanding officer. The list of these outside
plants, with their official designation and the product manufactured in
each, is as follows:
Edgewood Arsenal, Niagara Falls Plant: Manufacture of phosgene.
Edgewood Arsenal, Midland (Mich.) Plant: Sinking of brine-wells
for the purpose of securing adequate supplies of bromine.
Edgewood Arsenal, Buffalo Plant: Manufacture of mustard-gas.
Edgewood Arsenal, Bound Brook (N. J.) Plant: Manufacture of
phosgene.
In addition to the above, the following outside plants were not only
built (or were in process of construction at the date of the Armistice)
but were operated as well by the government. Their location at points
other than Edgewood was decided upon partly because of the fact that
it was thought wise to have at least two plants for the manufacture of
each important material located at different places, since an accident
at one would in no way interfere with production at the other. These
government-owned establishments were:
Edgewood Arsenal, Stamford (Conn.) Plant: Manufacture of
chlorpicrin.
Edgewood Arsenal, Hastings (N. Y.) Plant: Manufacture of
mustard-gas.
Edgewood Arsenal, Kingsport (Tenn.) Plant: Manufacture of
brombenzyl cyanide.
Edgewood Arsenal, Croyland (Pa.) Plant: Manufacture of
diphenychlorarsine.
In addition to these nine great outlying plants, with their thousands
of workmen, there was the splendidly equipped Research Department at
American University, on the outskirts of Washington; the Experimental
Field and Proving-Ground near Lakehurst, New Jersey; and the Army Gas
Schools at Camp Kendrick, New Jersey, and Camp A. A. Humphreys, Virginia.
The tract of land near Lakehurst taken over for experimental purposes was
5 miles long and 4 wide and had an area of nearly 14,000 acres. As the
nearest habitation was 2½ miles away no difficulty was experienced in
conducting the highly important experiments with the necessary secrecy.
The camp included quarters for 50 officers and barracks for 800 men, a
completely equipped chemical laboratory, the staff of which included
expert glass-blowers who could make every kind of apparatus required, a
meteorological station, commanded by a former official of the Government
Weather Bureau, equipped with the latest apparatus necessary for making
and recording meteorological observations, a mechanical shop containing
lathes, drills, and tools for making repairs of every description, an
ice-making plant, a post hospital, a goat hospital, a dog hospital,
a dog kitchen, and enclosures for animals which had to be kept under
observation for long periods. In order to determine the effects of the
various gases on living subjects a large stock of animals—goats, dogs,
cats, rats, mice, guinea-pigs, and monkeys—had to be kept constantly on
hand. These animals were not obtainable in the necessary numbers without
considerable difficulty, it being necessary, on one occasion, to send
an officer to Mexico to purchase 1,500 Angora goats, experiments having
shown that the goat possesses powers of resistance to gas which more
nearly approximate those of a human being than does any other common
animal. Representatives of these various animal types were placed in
trenches modelled after those on the Western Front and bombarded with
different forms of gas-shell, those which remained alive being subjected
to close observation, sometimes for many days, by the experts of the
Pathological and Physiological Department. A human note enters into
this grim business of preparing for war in the fact that those animals,
particularly the dogs, which survived such an experiment were not
subjected to it again. I imagine, however, that the officials of the S.
P. C. A. would have entered a vigorous protest had they been permitted to
lift the veil of secrecy which for many months enveloped the operations
of the Chemical Warfare Service at Lakehurst.
The new methods and devices in gas warfare which were developed by
the great corps of scientists and laboratory experts attached to the
American University Experiment Station were given practical trials at
Lakehurst, where they were tested under conditions approximating as
nearly as possible those of actual warfare. Here experiments were carried
out to determine the value of gas-shells bursting in the air instead of
by impact, the value of mixing toxic or lachrymatory gas with shrapnel,
the value of 14-inch naval shell filled with a combination of high
explosive and toxic substance, and the value of clouds of poison-smoke.
Had the war continued, I imagine that the results of some of these
experiments would have given the Germans the surprise of their lives.
Though the gas production of Edgewood Arsenal from August to November,
1918, increased from 450 to 675 tons a week, and though the filling-plant
had a weekly capacity of nearly 1,000 tons, less than 100 tons of gas
was actually filled into shell weekly. This unfortunate state of affairs
was due to the failure of the Ordnance Department to supply enough, or
nearly enough, shell and boosters to keep pace with the production of
gas. In other words, there was far more gas than there were shell to
put it in, and far more shell than there were boosters for them. During
the early summer of 1918, large quantities of this surplus gas were
shipped overseas and there loaded into shell, but later instructions
were received to stop all shipments in bulk except a limited amount of
chlorine. From that time on, the production of gas was limited by the
number of shell and booster available, because it is impossible to store
toxic-gases in any large quantities. In fact, at all times after the
manufacture of poison-gases began in the United States, the supply of
such materials was not only in excess of the supply of shell and booster,
but the gas-plants could not be operated to their full capacity because
there was no way of utilizing the maximum output.
Do you remember how often, during the months immediately following our
entrance into the great conflict, one heard the assertion made that
American inventive genius would eventually produce a weapon so dreadful,
so potent, that it would end the war because flesh and blood would be
unable to withstand it? It was asserted, with a wealth of circumstantial
detail, that Mr. Edison had been locked up for weeks in his New Jersey
laboratory perfecting a device for the wholesale slaughter of the Huns
which would startle the world. But, as the war continued on its bloody
course, the public faith in inventors gradually waned and the American
people settled down to a realization that victory could be achieved only
by man-power, munitions, and food. Yet the persons who talked so glibly
of some startling discovery which would paralyze the efforts of the enemy
and abruptly end the war little realized how near to the truth their
imaginations led them—_for the government actually had in its possession
the secret of a weapon so terrible that, had it been used, it would
probably have ended the war_.
The story of how the secret came into the possession of the government
is a curious one. Years ago a student of chemistry, then living in a
foreign country, while carrying on a series of laboratory experiments,
stumbled upon a chemical combination which almost cost him his life.
It was a compound never before made, or, at least, never recorded.
Later the chemist came to the United States, but it was not until he
read of the use of toxic-gases by the Germans that he recalled his all
but fatal experiment of many years before. He kept silence, however,
until America’s entry into the war, when he imparted his formula to
the government. The chemist’s assertions of what his compound could
accomplish were at first received with considerable scepticism, but
this scepticism abruptly disappeared when the reports from the Research
Division of the Chemical Warfare Service at American University, where
the formula was developed, were received. So appalling was its nature,
indeed, that the War Department at first refused to permit the use of the
weapon thus strangely placed in its hand on the ground that the nation
using it would be guilty of inhumanity. But in July, 1918, following
the wholesale use of mustard-gas against our troops by the Germans,
the scruples of those in power disappeared and orders were given that
quantity production of the new toxic material should immediately be begun.
This super-gas, as it has been termed, was known to the Chemical Warfare
Service as G-34, though it was more commonly referred to as methyl,
a name which was given it because it in no way suggested the true
character of this newest and deadliest of poisons. It has also been
dubbed “Lewisite” because it was developed from the original formula to
a stage which made it practicable for military use by Professor W. Lee
Lewis, chief of the Defense Department of the Research Division of the
Chemical Warfare Service. Methyl, or Lewisite, is an oily, amber-colored
liquid, with an odor which vaguely suggests that of the geranium. It is
somewhat more volatile than mustard-gas, being comparable in that respect
to benzol. Instead of being inoffensive at first contact, like mustard,
it starts an acute pain which quickly becomes unendurable. A single drop
spilled on the hand will penetrate to the blood, attacking first the
kidneys, then the heart and lungs. It hardens the cell-tissues of the
lungs and causes simultaneously strangulation and a weakening of the
heart which result in speedy and violent death. If taken into the lungs
by inhalation in any perceptible quantity it kills almost instantly, the
victim dying in terrible agony. _It is estimated to be seventy-two times
deadlier than mustard-gas._
The manufacture of methyl was carried on in an abandoned motor-car
plant at Willoughby, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, the work being in
charge of Colonel F. M. Dorsey, who, before the war, was a chemical
engineer in the employ of the General Electric Company. Every step in
the process of manufacture was enveloped in the most profound secrecy.
Every workman who entered the stockade surrounding the plant did so
under a voluntary agreement not to leave the eleven-acre space until
the war was won, though this arrangement was later modified upon the
men promising upon their honor not to divulge the nature of the product
or even the existence of the plant. All mail was censored and even the
use of the word Willoughby in correspondence was forbidden, letters
for the officers and men connected with the plant being addressed to
a lock-box in Cleveland. There was no recreation, the work was hard
and danger was always present, the men working with their gas-masks
constantly at the “alert” position. Though none of the masks designed
for protection against chlorpicrin, phosgene, or mustard were of the
slightest avail against methyl, the safety of the workers was ensured by
specially designed masks and clothing. Had we used methyl against the
Germans, however, it is extremely unlikely that they would have succeeded
in devising a means of protection against it—at least in time to save
themselves.
The methyl, as manufactured, was loaded into both shell and drums. The
shell, of 155mm. calibre, contained about ten pounds of the liquid, which
becomes a gas upon contact with the air; the drums, which held from 350
to 400 pounds each, were to be dropped from airplanes. It is estimated
that half a hundred of these drums, judiciously distributed, would
exterminate the entire population of Manhattan Island. When the Armistice
was signed methyl was being produced at the rate of approximately ten
tons a day and the plant at Willoughby was two months ahead of its
schedule, orders having been given that 3,000 tons should be in France,
ready for use, by March 1, 1919. It was well for Germany that she quit
when she did. Had methyl been turned loose against the Huns, civilization
would have had its revenge on the assassins of the _Lusitania_, on the
fiends who ravaged France and raped Belgium.
Within forty-eight hours after the signing of the Armistice the work
of dismantling the plant at Willoughby had begun, and ten weeks later
its demolition was complete. A special train, running at night under
heavy guard, carried the hundreds of tons of methyl which had already
been produced, in iron containers, to Edgewood Arsenal, where it was
transferred to a steamer, taken out to sea, and lowered into three miles
of salt water. But the formulæ and processes for manufacture still exist,
locked away in the great vaults of the War College in Washington, so, if
the nation is ever again forced to take up arms, it has at hand the most
terrible weapon ever devised for the purpose of wholesale slaughter.
Notwithstanding the fact that toxic-gases had been in almost constant
use by the European belligerents for two years before the United States
entered the conflict, the declaration of war found us totally unprepared
to commence the manufacture of the gas-defense equipment with which every
soldier going overseas must be provided. Such an article as a gas-mask
had never been produced in this country, the sum total of American
knowledge on the subject having been obtained from the masks brought
back as souvenirs by war correspondents and displayed in shop-windows
and from the pictures in the illustrated papers. Incredible as it may
seem, in view of the enormously important rôle which gas was playing
on the European battle-fields, only a single American army officer,
Major L. P. Williamson of the Medical Corps, had studied the subject
of gas defense, and he had done so on his own initiative. Thus it came
about that within a few days after the declaration of war, the military
authorities, confronted by the imperative necessity of providing our
expeditionary forces with gas-defense equipment, were conducting a
frantic search among the various scientific departments of the government
to discover one possessing the necessary facilities for handling the
problem. The Bureau of Chemistry did not have the personnel to carry on
the work and the Department of Agriculture did not have the necessary
apparatus, but the Bureau of Mines at Pittsburg possessed some experience
in kindred problems arising from mine-rescue work, and it also had
adequate facilities for handling the experimental work involved. It
was, therefore, selected for the purpose. The research facilities at
Pittsburg soon proved inadequate, however, and in the summer of 1917
there was taken over the American University Experiment Station, near
Washington, where virtually all of the research work connected with the
numerous branches of the Chemical Warfare Service was conducted. The
Research Division, instead of being dismissed with passing mention, is
deserving of a chapter to itself, the services which it performed in the
development of gases, protective equipment, and manufacturing processes
having been of enormous assistance in the prosecution of the war.
When, in May, 1917, the need arose for providing masks for the first
contingent of the American Expeditionary Forces, the War Department
appealed to the Bureau of Mines to provide 25,000 masks within three
weeks. Emboldened by the valor of ignorance, the officials of the bureau
jauntily undertook the task, making arrangements for the fabric to be
produced by a rubber company at Akron, Ohio, and for the masks to be
assembled at a factory in Brooklyn. Instead of producing 25,000 masks in
three weeks, however, the best they could do was to produce 20,000 in
two months. These were immediately shipped overseas. But the rubberized
fabric of which they were made was easily penetrated by chlorpicrin
vapor, therefore affording very little protection, and they were returned
unused. “The only thing about them which is satisfactory,” General
Pershing is said to have remarked, “is the strap around the neck.” But
the experience thus gained opened the eyes of the authorities to the
gravity of the problem, so that when, in July, 1917, the army itself took
up the manufacture of gas-masks, it was with a more complete realization
of the magnitude of the task by which it was confronted. One of the
first steps taken by the War Department, upon assuming charge of mask
production, was to give a colonel’s commission to Mr. Bradley Dewey,
an officer of the American Can Company, and to place him in command of
the Gas Defense Service, as it was then called, but which, upon the
organization of the Chemical Warfare Service, became the Gas Defense
Division. Thanks to the energy, resourcefulness, and business ability
of Colonel Dewey, backed by the efficiency and enthusiasm of the great
organization which he created, the American forces in France were
protected against gas by masks which, as proved by actual field tests,
_gave twenty times the protection afforded by those worn by the Germans_.
[Illustration: MAN AND HORSE COMPLETELY PROTECTED AGAINST POISONOUS GAS.
In addition to the mask, the man is wearing an anti-mustard gas suit,
gloves, and boots. The horse is provided with boots and a gas mask.]
[Illustration: TYPES OF GAS MASKS USED BY AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN ARMIES.
U. S. Navy Mask (obsolete).
U. S. Navy Mask.
U. S. C. E. Respirator.
U. S. R. F. H. Respirator.
U. S. H. T. Respirator.
U. S. H. T. Respirator.
U. S. Model 1919 Respirator.
British Black Veil Mask.
British P. H. Helmet.
British Box Respirator.
French M. 2 Mask.
French Tissot Art. Mask.
French A. R. S. Mask.
German Late-type Mask.
Russian Mask.
Italian Mask.
British Motor-Corps Mask.
U. S. Rear Area Emergency Respirator.
U. S. Connell Mask.]
It is essential that a mask, or respirator, to use its correct name,
should remove all traces of gas or smoke from the air before it reaches
the eyes, nose, or mouth of the wearer. The principal features of the
mask of the “Box Respirator” type, as used by the American forces
throughout the war were:
(_a_) A canister of metal containing both neutralizing and absorptive
chemicals and a smoke filter. The air to be breathed passes in through an
inlet check valve and through chemicals and smoke filter.
(_b_) A flexible rubber-hose through which the purified air passes from
the canister to the face-piece.
(_c_) A face-piece, effectively covering the eyes, cheeks, lower
forehead, nose, mouth, and chin, provided with eye-pieces permitting
vision and a harness to hold the face-piece in place.
(_d_) An exhalation valve which affords easy discharge of exhaled air and
at the same time instantly closes upon inspiration.
(_e_) A knapsack slung from the neck or shoulder, in which the mask and
canister are carried.
In the box respirator type, the inhaled air, passing through the canister
and hose, went directly into the mouth through a rubber mouth-piece,
which in this manner offered protection to the lungs in the event of the
face-piece being damaged or not fitting. The mask was also provided with
a spring and rubber clamp which closed the nostrils and compelled the
wearer to breathe entirely through the mouth.
While the box respirator was in process of manufacture, much thought
and effort was devoted to developing a mask which would combine with
its safety and good vision a greater measure of comfort, it being
particularly desired to eliminate the nose-clip and the mouth-piece,
which are the box respirator’s most uncomfortable features. The
starting-point in these attempts was the French Tissot mask, several
modifications of which were put into production. The best mask of this
type was designed, curiously enough, by a New York corset manufacturer,
Major Waldemar Kops, whose name was given to his invention, which is
known as the K.T. or Kops-Tissot mask. One hundred and eighty-nine
thousand of the K.T. masks, which were radically different and far more
comfortable than the box respirator type, had been manufactured when
the Armistice was signed. The total number of masks produced by the Gas
Defense Division was more than three and a half million.
The mask-makers were confronted at an early period with the problem of
finding a charcoal of sufficient density to absorb the toxic fumes, the
wood-charcoal which was used in most of the French and British masks
being very far from satisfactory. After considerable experimentation
it was discovered that a charcoal having sufficient absorptivity could
be produced from the shell of the cocoanut, whereupon officers were
despatched to the Hawaiian Islands and the British West Indies to arrange
for large shipments of cocoanut-shells to the United States. The supply
thus obtained proved entirely inadequate, however, whereupon the Chemical
Warfare Service issued an appeal to the American public to save the
shells of Brazil nuts, hickory-nuts, and walnuts, the pits of peaches,
prunes, apricots, and cherries, and the seeds of dates, the collection of
the pits and shells being undertaken by the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts,
and kindred organizations. Placards and receptacles were put in public
places throughout the country and almost immediately fruit-pits began to
pour in by the ton, every family making it a point of honor to save its
pits “for the boys fighting overseas,” as they proudly put it. There were
numberless cases of old ladies who sent in by mail a few peach-pits which
they had conscientiously saved and which they had cleaned as carefully as
though they were jewels. As it required 7 pounds of pits and shells to
make the charcoal for a single mask, 3,500 tons were used in the million
masks which we sent overseas.
[Illustration: 1,500 TONS OF PEACH-PITS USED FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF
CHARCOAL FOR USE IN GAS MASKS.
The result of the appeal of the Gas Defense Division for nutshells and
fruit-pits.]
[Illustration: TESTING RESPIRATORS OUTSIDE THE GAS CHAMBER.]
[Illustration: TESTING GAS MASKS INSIDE THE GAS CHAMBER.]
Because it was realized that the slightest flaw or imperfection in a
finished mask might well mean the death in agony of an American soldier,
an extremely rigid system of inspection was devised. It was discovered,
for example, that all thread holes must be filled with gelatine, in
order to prevent the gas from being carried through by the thread; that
wrinkles in the band around the face and head permitted gas to leak
inside the face-piece; that the mouth-piece must be reinforced with
bushings so that the soldier would not bite it in the excitement of a gas
attack and thereby cut off his own breath. Only the most painstaking
and conscientious women—usually those having husbands or sons at the
front—were chosen for the work of final inspection, and, even after they
had examined each mask in every detail it was again inspected over a
bright light in a dark booth for small pinholes which might have escaped
the ordinary visual inspection. And, in order to make the inspectors
doubly careful, they were frequently required to go into the gas-chambers
wearing masks chosen at random from those they themselves had passed. To
obtain absolute results as to the protection afforded by a mask, however,
breathing tests in a gas-chamber had to be employed. This testing was
done by enlisted men of the Gas Defense Division, who spent many hours
each day testing masks and canisters in the gas-chambers, sometimes
working in a concentration of phosgene as high as 1 per cent. Without
hope of glory or promotion, without the lure of decorations, these men
day after day, month after month, risked their lives in order that their
fellows at the front might have a better chance to live. Though they wore
silver instead of gold chevrons, they are as deserving of thanks and
admiration as the men who broke the Hindenburg line or battled in the
Forest of the Argonne.
Though the earlier gas-masks were manufactured in Brooklyn, and later in
Philadelphia, the operations of the division expanded so rapidly that
by November, 1917, it became evident that it was no longer practicable
for a commercial organization to carry on the manufacture of this new
and vitally important article of equipment in the quantities demanded
by the new army programme, and it was consequently deemed advisable to
establish a government-owned and controlled organization. In pursuance
of this policy, the work of mask manufacture was transferred in November
to Long Island City, the plant expanding in seven months from a floor
space of 157,000 square feet to 1,000,000 square feet, or 23 acres.
When the Armistice was signed the Gas Defense Division had a personnel
of 274 officers, 2,353 enlisted men, and 13,000 civilians. Much of the
work was done by women, and, as a traitor could have worked irreparable
damage by tampering with the masks, the employees were selected only
after the closest investigation by the Military Intelligence Division of
their antecedents and affiliations. From the very outset the officers in
charge of mask production conducted a campaign for efficiency based on
patriotism. The walls of the factory were hung with copies of a poster
depicting a soldier dying from gas as the result of a defective mask; it
bore the grim and suggestive title “The Last Inspection.” Lectures and
motion-pictures were used to emphasize the horrors of death by gas. And
everywhere were placards bearing the admonition: “Remember that _your_
carelessness may cost the life of _your_ husband, _your_ son, _your_
brother.”
* * * * *
It is not generally appreciated, I think, that gas warfare has tactics
all its own. For example: In preparing for an infantry attack the Germans
were accustomed to first concentrate all their guns on our batteries.
After a brief but intensive bombardment of our artillery positions a
portion of the German batteries would abruptly switch their fire onto our
infantry, using, of course, a large proportion of gas-shell. Meanwhile
the German infantry officers had been notified as to the kinds of gas
their batteries were using, and where. Hence, when the German storming
troops swept forward they did not wear masks, for their officers knew
that a non-persistent gas had been used against the point which was to
be attacked. Our troops, being ignorant of this, however, had donned
their masks when the first gas-shell came over, and were, therefore, both
fatigued and hampered when they were called upon to resist the assault.
And here is another example of gas tactics: Word having reached the
French that the Germans were planning to attack a certain sector near
Rheims, the troops holding this portion of the line were quietly
withdrawn from the front trenches the night before the attack was to
take place, a few autoriflemen being left to simulate a defense. Before
the troops departed, however, they placed mustard-gas shells, which had
been fitted by the artillery with electrically controlled fuses, in the
dugouts. The French gunners had, meanwhile, ascertained to a foot the
range of the trenches which were being evacuated. At daybreak came the
expected German attack. As the helmeted figures came swarming across No
Man’s Land in the dim light of early dawn the few remaining Frenchmen set
off green rockets as a signal to the artillery and took to their heels.
No sooner had the Germans occupied the evacuated trenches, therefore,
than the French batteries turned loose on them a hurricane of steel,
putting down a barrage which completely cut them off from their own
lines. The Germans naturally sought shelter from this shell-storm in the
deserted dugouts. At about the same moment a French artillery officer
pressed his finger upon a button, an electric current leaped along a
buried wire, the shells in the dugouts were blown asunder, liberating the
poison-gas—and the Germans perished almost to a man.
[Illustration: ADVANCING UNDER GAS.
This photograph was not taken in real action but at the Army Gas School
in France.]
[Illustration: TRAINING FOR GAS WARFARE.
Troops wearing gas masks charging in open order in practice at Long
Island City.]
[Illustration: CUTTING THEIR WAY THROUGH BARBED-WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS WHILE
TRAINING WITH GAS MASKS.]
As the result of the experiments at American University, Lakehurst, and
Edgewood, and the experiences of our troops in the field, several new
gases of incredible deadliness were invented as well as numerous new
methods of using them, many of which would certainly have been utilized
had the war continued. But the League of Nations being still confined
to paper, and universal disarmament being still in the distant future,
it is as well, I feel, not to particularize about them. It is enough
to say that, thanks to the work of the Chemical Warfare Service, there
are stored away in the vaults of the War Department certain plans and
formulas which, in the event of another war—which God forbid!—would give
us a weapon of undreamed-of potency and terror. Speaking from first-hand
knowledge, I can assure any potential enemies of the United States that
the chemical warfare which we are prepared to wage should the necessity
ever arise again would make our recent gas activities, vast as they were,
seem like a joke.
IV
THE “Q. M. C.”
Some years ago there was exhibited at the Grand Salon in Paris an immense
mural painting, intended, if I remember rightly, for one of the walls of
the Panthéon. I think it was by Détaille, but of that I am not certain
nor does it matter. The canvas, which reached from floor to ceiling, was
of such vast dimensions that the gallery, huge as it is, did not permit
of a satisfactory perspective; it was characterized, moreover, by such a
wealth of detail that one might look at it from dawn to dusk and yet not
grasp it all. So in attempting to depict, even in the sketchiest fashion,
the operations and activities of the Quartermaster Corps, I find myself
embarrassed by the same limitations. The composition is too vast for
proper perspective, too rich in variety and detail to be grasped by the
imagination. The best that I can hope to do, therefore, in the limited
space at my disposal, is to hurry you along, like the guides who used
to conduct visitors through the galleries of the Vatican in an hour,
pointing out a picturesque feature here and calling your attention to
something of interest there—touching only on the high spots, as it were.
To begin with, let me give you some conception of the subject’s magnitude
and importance. The total cost of the war to the United States, plus
the estimate of the amount which would be required to carry it on to
July 1, 1919, was approximately $16,500,000,000, while the total
expenditures and estimates of the Quartermaster Corps for the same
period were something over $8,500,000,000. Thus it will be seen that
_the expenditures and requirements of the Quartermaster Corps comprised
more than half of the total expenditures and requirements of the entire
army_. The purchases which it made were remarkable not only for their
unprecedented volume but for their amazing variety. It supplied the
armies of the United States with practically everything they required,
save only ordnance, its purchases running all the way from coal to
needles, from lemon-drops to rolling kitchens, from sheet-music to beef
and mutton on the hoof. At one time it constituted the entire wool trade
of the United States, if not, indeed, of the whole Western Hemisphere,
for it optioned every pound of wool in sight and sent its agents out
with orders to buy up the excess wool of the earth. It purchased enough
cotton goods to make a sheet which would cover the District of Columbia
four times over. It controlled the leather trade of the nation. It
operated the largest shirt-factory in existence. It developed the most
highly specialized shoe ever made, purchased 33,000,000 pairs of them,
carried them in 120 sizes, and opened schools to teach its officers
the science of shoe-fitting. By enlisting the co-operation of a score
of universities it established a great correspondence school for the
education of quartermaster officers. It had other schools, a whole
system of them, where training was given in cooking, baking, butchery,
and coffee-roasting. It purchased every stock of rubber boots and
rain-coats in the United States. It established and operated farms and
truck-gardens at the various camps and cantonments. By organizing a
Salvage Service for the reclamation of articles which would otherwise
have been thrown away it saved 151,000,000 of the taxpayers’ dollars. The
army needed horses and mules—thousands and thousands of them—whereupon
the Quartermaster Corps gave commissions to half a hundred of America’s
best-known sportsmen and gentlemen riders and sent them to the West, to
Spain, to the Argentine, to purchase animals. General Pershing cabled
that he wanted sheet-music for the 390 bands of the A. E. F., whereupon
the Quartermaster Corps, not being itself musically inclined, looked
about for a man who was. It was discovered that the most successful
composer of popular music in America had enlisted in the Coast Guard,
but the Quartermaster Corps borrowed him, told him to select the sort
of music that he thought the boys in France would like, and send it to
Pershing. He did. It cheered up the army overseas and cost the government
$50,000. It was cheap at the price. The Quartermaster Corps educated
manufacturers in the production of articles strange to their experience,
and in some cases it developed entirely new industries. It was a
shipmaster, a wool-grower, a coal-operator, a clothier, a builder of
vehicles, a school-teacher, a reformer of labor conditions, an inventor
of new products, and an originator of new methods. To the miners of
Pennsylvania, quarrying coal in the low-roofed galleries by the light of
their flickering lamps, to the fruit-pickers in the sun-drenched orchards
of Hood River and the Santa Clara, to the pallid clothing-workers,
bending over their machines in the stifling sweat-shops of the New York
Ghetto, to the great manufacturers of New England, and to the beef barons
of the Middle West, “Quartermaster Corps, United States Army,” was a
phrase to conjure with.
* * * * *
In those casual, comfortable, easy-going days before the Great War
startled us out of our national complacency, when the work of the
army consisted in garrisoning many small and widely scattered posts
and in doing police duty on the Canal Zone or in “the Islands,” the
Quartermaster Corps, the “Q. M.,” as it was familiarly called, occupied
much the same relation to our little military establishment that a
“general store” does to a village. By this I mean that it supplied most
of the army’s wants. It was charged, to put it briefly, with clothing,
feeding, housing, and paying the army, supplying it with horses, harness,
vehicles, and, in short, virtually everything else save only the actual
tools of war. It also manned and operated the steamers of the Army
Transport Service, was charged with the movement of troops on land, and
had jurisdiction to a large extent over motor transportation, especially
the movement of supplies. Though its business methods were as antiquated
as the quill pen and the copying-press, like the mules which drew its
wagons it jogged unconcernedly along. If the colonel’s wife needed some
shelves in her kitchen she sent for the quartermaster and they were put
up with neatness and despatch. When the junior officers at a post wanted
to attend a dance in town the quartermaster could always be depended upon
to provide a conveyance. The quartermaster ran the post exchanges and
canteens. If there was a delay in the delivery of the winter’s coal, if
the bread was poorly baked, if the milk was sour, if the men’s shoes did
not fit, if there was a leak in a barracks roof, if a horse developed
a spavin, if the pay-checks were not received on time, it was the
quartermaster who had to take the blame. He was all things to all men,
and if he did not do all things as well as they might have been done, it
was not his fault so much as the fault of the antiquated and cumbersome
system in which he had been trained.
But upon the outbreak of war this state of affairs underwent a sudden
change. It was no more possible for the Quartermaster Corps, as it
was then organized, to feed and clothe and transport overseas an army
of 5,000,000 men than it would be for a village merchant to meet
the demands which would be made upon him if oil were discovered in
the vicinity and the village expanded into a city overnight. At the
outbreak of the war the Office of the Quartermaster-General consisted
of five divisions—Administrative, Finance, Supplies, Construction, and
Transportation—but when our stupendous military programme began to assume
definite form it became increasingly apparent that no single department
could successfully direct so many and varied activities, and that the
Quartermaster Corps must confine itself to the huge task of purchase and
supply. The first step toward its reorganization along these lines was
the divorce of the Construction Division, which was made a separate
branch of the War Department under Colonel (later Brigadier-General) I.
W. Littell, who reported directly to the secretary of war. Though the
officers of this division, to which was assigned the tremendous task of
constructing the camps and cantonments for our new armies, continued
to wear the insignia of the Quartermaster Corps, and though they were
known as construction quartermasters, they had no connection with the
Office of the Quartermaster-General. During the first year of the war the
Transportation Division operated a considerable fleet of vessels engaged
in the transport of troops, animals, and supplies, but in April, 1918,
this division was abolished, the entire transportation service being
taken from the Quartermaster Corps and placed with the Purchase, Storage,
and Traffic Division of the General Staff. The next branch to be lopped
off was the Finance Division, the functions of which were transferred to
the newly organized Office of the Director of Finance, who assumed charge
of all financial matters for the army. In response to the constantly
increasing demands for motor transport, a Motor Transport Service was
added to the Quartermaster Corps in April, 1918, but was taken away from
it three months later and established as a separate branch of the army
under the title of the Motor Transport Corps. This is, however, strictly
an operating unit and should not be confused with the Motor and Vehicles
Division of the Quartermaster Corps. By this time the “Q. M.” had been
so completely transformed as to be almost unrecognizable to men who
had grown old in the service. Little remained of the old organization,
indeed, save the name, and even that all but disappeared when, in
October, 1918, the Office of the Quartermaster-General was merged in
the newly organized Office of the Director of Purchase and Storage. By
the concluding month of the war, therefore, the old Quartermaster Corps
had lost all control over construction, finance, and transportation, so
that of its original five divisions only the Administrative and Supplies
remained. The latter had been expanded, however, into nine purchasing
divisions and there had also been added to the organization—now commonly
referred to as “Purchase and Storage”—five storage divisions and a
Salvage Division. At the same time that the Office of the Director of
Purchase and Storage assumed the functions of the Quartermaster Corps it
also took over the procurement activities of the Medical Corps and of the
Corps of Engineers, as well as procuring certain standardized articles
for the Signal Corps and the Ordnance Department, thus bringing under a
single head all the purchase, storage, and distribution agencies of the
army. In order to make this extremely involved relationship a little
clearer, I ought to explain, perhaps, that the Office of the Director
of Purchase and Storage is one of the three chief operating branches of
the Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Division of the General Staff, the
others being the Office of the Director of Traffic and the Office of the
Director of Finance.
In the old days the procurement activities of the army were decentralized
to such an extent that every depot, camp, and post, wherever situated,
had charge of procuring practically everything it used except uniforms,
the procurement being under the direction of the camp or post
quartermaster, as the case might be. The new organization has produced
a system, however, whereby everything required by the army is purchased
either by the officers in charge of the thirteen General Supply Zones
into which the United States has been divided, or direct from Washington.
It is scarcely necessary to comment on the enormous saving in time,
money, and labor thus effected. We will now say “Amen” to this little
sermon on organization, which is a dry subject at best, and turn to more
interesting topics.
* * * * *
Of the countless problems which confronted the Quartermaster Corps at
the outbreak of the war, by far the most important was that of feeding
the army, for an army, as Napoleon inelegantly but truthfully put it,
travels upon its belly. The American soldier, like the American small
boy, is a prodigious eater and he is always hungry. He is, moreover,
extremely finical about the quality and variety of his food. He has been
accustomed from boyhood to have unrestricted access to the cooky jar and
the cake-box, and things were wrong, indeed, when there were not at least
three kinds of mother’s pies on the top shelf in the pantry. He laughed
at danger and jeered at hardships, but in return he expected a grateful
Uncle Sam, as represented by the Quartermaster Corps, to show the same
consideration for him when it came to a question of food that his mother
had always done. And Uncle Sam measured up to his expectations. Not only
was the American soldier given all the food that he required—at the time
of the Armistice approximately 10,000,000 pounds of food were being sent
every day to the troops in France—but he had the best food in Europe.
In those lean days of 1918, when it was impossible to obtain a spoonful
of sugar in the smartest restaurants in Paris, and when the manufacture
of pastries of every description had been prohibited by law, the Yankee
doughboys always had full sugar-bowls and unlimited quantities of pies,
cake, and puddings. Indeed, it is not the slightest exaggeration to say
that the American enlisted man had a considerably better mess than most
French generals. I know, for I have eaten with both.
Never before has an army been called upon to send subsistence so great
a distance to so many men. It was obviously impossible to ask France
and England to provide for our rapidly increasing armies from their
own scanty stores, for those countries were already rationing their
civilian populations. The food had, therefore, to be obtained in the
United States, some of it being transported 6,000 miles before reaching
the mess-tables of the A. E. F. Moreover, in order to provide against
the possibility of the food-ships being torpedoed or the capture of the
base depots, it was necessary to send two pounds of food where one would
ordinarily have answered. To make things worse, as the demands for food
increased, the available tonnage decreased. The utmost economy in space
became so imperative, indeed, that inspectors from the Packing Service
Branch were stationed at the various depots with instructions to pay
particular attention to the thickness of lumber used in the packing-cases
and to insist on the utilization of every cubic foot of spare space, as,
for example, the boilers in rolling kitchens, which were filled with
various articles of subsistence supplies. Even the marmites—the camp
cooking-pots—were filled with beans, peas, and other dry stores. When,
in the spring of 1918, the Germans launched that tremendous offensive
which has been so fittingly called “the charge of a nation,” and every
available ton of shipping was required for the transport of the troops
which we were rushing overseas to stem the Teutonic onslaught, all canned
fruits and vegetables—pears, apples, pineapple, peas, corn, asparagus,
sweet potatoes—were stricken from the lists, such space as was available
being filled with boneless beef, dried fruits, dehydrated vegetables—and
tomatoes! I do not mean to imply that such mainstays as the “four
B’s”—bread, bacon, beef, and beans—were sacrificed for the juicy fruit
of the tomato-vine, for they were not, but tomatoes were regarded as
such an important item of the soldier’s menu that, notwithstanding the
poverty of space, their shipments, instead of being diminished, were
increased. In addition to the customary ways of serving them, thousands
of cans were taken up to the line to relieve the soldier’s thirst, a
quart of tomato juice being more effective than a gallon of water. Lest
you should get the impression, from what I have just said, that there
was a shortage of beans, I might mention, in passing, that 75,000,000
cans of baked beans with tomato sauce were put in the hands of the
army cooks, and in order to provide against any possible lack of this
stand-by, there was purchased to supplement them 77,000,000 pounds of
dried beans. I have never heard an American soldier complain that he did
not have enough beans. Foreseeing the enormous demand which there would
be for prunes and dried apricots and apples, the quartermaster-general
summoned from his ranch in the Santa Clara Valley of California, where
he was living in pleasant retirement, the foremost authority on dried
fruits in America, informed him of the army’s needs, and gave him _carte
blanche_ to fill them. He sent overseas enough prunes to have supplied
all the boarding-houses in America for years to come. Coffee was another
important item. The British Army consumed enormous quantities of tea, the
Italians depended largely upon their cheap native wines, and the French
drank an alleged coffee which was really camouflaged chicory, but the
American troops were given real coffee—the best that money could buy.
Nothing better illustrates the quality of the food served to our men than
the following telegram, sent by the quartermaster-general of the A. E. F.
to Washington.
“Ship 2,000,000 reserve rations packed in hermetically sealed galvanized
iron cases, 25 to the case, meat to be substituted in lieu of bacon and
choice George Washington coffee or other similar substitute in lieu of
ground coffee.”
As even the best grades of coffee can be ruined if improperly prepared,
there were established at Camp Meade and Camp Johnston schools for
coffee-roasting. Here enlisted men were given a course of instruction in
coffee roasting, blending, grinding, and packing, and upon graduation
were sent to the various camps where coffee-roasting plants had been
installed. Thus the soldier received a fresher and a better cup of
coffee than ever before, and the government made a saving of from two to
three cents a pound, for as the green coffee was shipped to the camps by
the various Zone Supply officers and was roasted every day, there was
practically no overhead expense incurred.
Beef is, of course, the chief muscle and fat-producing food, the army
allowing 456 pounds of beef per year for each soldier. This does
not mean, however, that the soldier actually eats that amount of
beef annually, for, just as the currency of the country is based on
the gold standard, the meat ration of the army is based on the beef
standard. It is customary, therefore, to substitute pork, usually in
the form of bacon, for 30 per cent of the beef ration, twelve ounces
of bacon being equivalent to twenty ounces of beef. The balance of
the meat ration consists for the most part of fresh beef, when it is
procurable, supplemented by canned beef, corned beef, and canned hash.
The meat-cutting for the army is performed by Butchery Companies,
the personnel of which was trained at Camp Joseph E. Johnston, near
Jacksonville, Florida, where a practical course of instruction was given
in cutting meat by the so-called “natural-guide method.” By following
this method, which is an expanding rather than a cutting process,
inexperienced men who did not know a cleaver from a skewer were made
into practical meat-cutters in less than two months. The curriculum of
the School for Butchers also included a course of intensive training in
the boxing of boneless frozen beef by a method which saved about 32 per
cent storage and cargo space and was used extensively during the winter
months. With the return of peace, graduates of this unique educational
institution, many of them illiterate, find themselves as well qualified
to take up the butcher’s trade as though they had wielded a cleaver and
worn a white apron all their lives.
In spite of all that has been written by travellers and novelists
about certain American delicacies—the ham of Virginia, the chicken of
Maryland, the pies and doughnuts of New England, the pompano of New
Orleans—the fact remains that Americans, as a people, are not good cooks.
This assertion may be ridiculed by some of my readers, but, generally
speaking, it is true. Almost any Frenchman can prepare from the cheapest
materials a well-cooked and tempting meal; the ability of most Americans
in the culinary art is confined to boiling eggs. A man who spends his
days in an office can sit down to a breakfast consisting of soggy
biscuits, poorly prepared coffee, and an omelet that looks and tastes
as though it were made of chrome leather, and though it may affect his
disposition it will not seriously affect his work, for when the noon-hour
comes around he can go over to Delmonico’s or step into Childs’s, as his
tastes and pocketbook may dictate, and restore his balance of digestion
by a well-cooked meal. But the soldier had no such resource. There were
no Delmonicos or Childses at the front. He had to eat what was given
him. And as his vigor and staying powers depended on his food, it was
essential that that food should be well cooked. To tell the truth, the
Italian débâcle of 1917 was due as much to poor and insufficient food as
it was to Austrian propaganda, for nothing affects morale like an empty
stomach.
When war was declared the Regular Army and the National Guard already
had, of course, their complements of experienced cooks and bakers, though
in wholly insufficient numbers, but the huge National Army had nothing
of the sort. One of the earliest and most pressing problems of the
Quartermaster Corps, therefore, was to train sufficient numbers of men
for this work, which it did by expanding the fourteen Cooks’ and Bakers’
Schools of the regular establishment to twenty and by starting new
schools at the various National Army cantonments. Before these schools
could be successfully operated, however, it was necessary to obtain an
adequate staff of instructors, who themselves had to be trained, the
plan being to give at least one officer in each regiment or separate
battalion sufficient training to make him competent to conduct a school
for cooks and bakers in his own organization. As a result of this system
of culinary education, within a year after the first American troops set
foot in France the Quartermaster Corps had trained 1,200 instructors in
cooking, 16,000 mess sergeants, and 50,000 cooks, in addition to which
there were 40,000 others who, though they had not received sufficient
training to give them a cook’s rating, were nevertheless entirely
competent to prepare food. From the soldiers thus trained there were
organized about seven-score Bakery Companies, more than half of which saw
service overseas. Now that these hundred-odd thousand cooks and bakers
have returned to civil life, there is reason to hope that there will be
manifested a striking improvement in the quality of the national cooking.
It may be that, as a result of this war-enforced training, we will be
able to look forward to taking a meal in a railway restaurant or in a
small-town hotel without dread and, perhaps, even with pleasure.
The food for the troops in cantonments, camps, and rest billets was, of
course, prepared in permanent camp-kitchens, which usually possessed
all the facilities and sometimes a far greater serving capacity than
the kitchens of great hotels. As the front was approached, however, the
problem of preparing food became increasingly difficult, particularly
in the areas which were being systematically harassed by the enemy’s
artillery and airplanes. To have erected kitchens in such areas would
have been to invite their destruction. In order to provide hot food for
soldiers occupying these exposed positions, as well as for troops on the
march, recourse was had to rolling kitchens—_les cuisines roulantes_,
as the French called them. Each kitchen, which was drawn either by a
mule-team or by a tractor, consisted of a stove and limber. The stove
contained a bake-oven and three kettles, thus permitting of four kinds of
food being prepared simultaneously. The limber, which was a two-wheeled
cart to which the kitchen was attached, was fitted with four bread-boxes
which could also be used for water, a cook’s chest containing a set of
culinary utensils which would make a housewife envious, four kettles,
and four fireless cookers. The fireless cooker was, I think, first used
for military purposes on the Italian Front; at least that was where I
first saw it. It was an invaluable contrivance, as it permitted food to
be prepared many hours in advance in the back areas and yet served piping
hot to the men on the firing-line.
For use under heavy fire or other conditions which made it impossible to
serve the men with hot food from the rolling kitchens, the trench ration,
consisting of tinned meat, hard bread, and soluble coffee, together
with salt and sugar, was designed. The food was packed in hermetically
sealed, gas-proof, camouflaged iron containers, each of which held
twenty-five rations, each ration in turn consisting of enough food to
maintain a soldier for one day, sustaining his full strength and vigor.
The food used in the trench ration was the very best that money could
buy. Indeed, it became a matter of pride with the employees of the great
plants where the trench rations were prepared to use exceptional care in
selecting the ingredients for them, for it was realized what good food
meant to the tired and mud-caked men who were holding the Frontier of
Freedom. The office force of one of the big packing-houses learned from a
shipping-clerk that the interstices between the tins in the packing-cases
were being filled with excelsior, so they took up a collection, to which
every one from president to office-boy contributed, and used the money
to fill those interstices with tobacco and cigarettes. When the officers
of the Subsistence Division heard of this they thought so well of the
idea that orders were issued that the empty space in all trench-ration
containers should be filled with tobacco thereafter. Scores of such
incidents, trivial enough in themselves, showed how the hearts and
thoughts of the nation were with the boys who were fighting overseas.
Every American soldier when he went into action carried in the upper
left-hand pocket of his blouse a small flat tin—no larger than the
pocket Bible which the sob-story writers always place in that same
pocket to stop the fatal bullet—bearing on its lid the legend: “U. S.
Army Emergency Ration. Not to be opened except by order of an officer,
or in extremity.” This was the American equivalent of the “starvation
ration” of the European armies. To it many a man caught in a shell-hole
between the lines or lost in the Forest of the Argonne owed his life. Its
contents represented the results of many experiments and much experience
and the combined suggestions of scientists, food experts, and soldiers.
The emergency ration consists of three rather dubious-looking cakes of
prepared beef combined with a bread compound made of ground cooked wheat,
weighing three ounces each, three ounces of chocolate, three-quarters of
an ounce of fine salt, and a dram of black pepper. There are almost as
many ways of preparing the ration as there are of preparing an egg. The
bread-and-meat cakes can be eaten dry—provided one is sufficiently near
starvation. When boiled in three pints of water they make a palatable
soup, and when the water was obtained, as was frequently the case, from
shell-holes and ditches, the pepper and salt served to disguise the
muddy flavor. Where water was scarce, only a pint of it was needed to
transform the cake into a sort of porridge, something like cornmeal mush,
which could be eaten hot or cold or which could be sliced and fried,
circumstances and the Germans permitting. The chocolate could be made
into a drink by dissolving it in hot water, or it could be eaten as candy.
Candy, by the way, formed one of the most acceptable items of the
American soldier’s ration, half a pound being issued to each man every
ten days. In December, 1918, the Subsistence Division shipped to the A.
E. F. more than 10,000,000 pounds of candy—the largest exportation of its
kind on record. Don’t get the idea that this was “grocer’s candy”—the
kind that comes in wooden buckets. It was nothing of the sort. No society
girl, sitting in a box at a matinée, munched better chocolates than the
American soldier. Moreover, the same chocolates which sold for a dollar
a pound in the candy-stores of America could be bought for forty-eight
cents a pound in the canteens of the A. E. F. Stick-candy and lemon-drops
which ordinarily sold for seventy cents a pound at home were sold to the
soldiers for twenty-eight cents. I say _sold_, for the pound and a half
of candy which was a part of every soldier’s ration rarely satisfied
the sweet tooth of the doughboy. Though everything in the confectionery
line from peppermints to caramels was provided, lemon-drops were the
soldier’s favorite. They were to the Yankee doughboy what gum-drops were
to Doctor Cook’s Esquimaux. They devoured them at the rate of a hundred
tons a month! At the beginning of the war it was found that most of the
lemon-drops manufactured for the commercial market, being made of glucose
and inferior or imitation fruit flavors, were not of good enough quality
for the soldiers. So lemon-drops of the most expensive kind—the kind
that they sell in the smart shops on Fifth Avenue and Tremont Street and
Michigan Boulevard—were adopted as a standard, the recipes for making
them being distributed to a number of candy manufacturers. Now the
lemon-drops for the army are made from pure granulated sugar and flavored
with an emulsion made from the rind of the lemon. The sourer they are the
better, say the soldiers. So great became the demand for candy—which,
by the way, is of great value in rebuilding wasted tissues—that the
Chief Quartermaster of the A. E. F. took over a number of French candy
factories and, using American sugar, manufactured huge quantities of
candy for our troops in France.
Tobacco was a recognized item in the ration of the A. E. F., statistics
showing that 95 per cent of the men used it in one form or another—which
serves to show how the soldier vote would go should the reformers ever
attempt to saddle the Constitution with an antitobacco amendment. To men
enduring great physical hardships, obliged to live without the comforts
and frequently without the necessities of life, and always under the
terrific strain imposed by war, tobacco fills a need which nothing else
can satisfy. In view of this, it was decided to adopt the practice of
our allies and allow each soldier a certain amount of tobacco a day, the
ration being four cigarettes, four ounces of chewing-tobacco, or four
ounces of smoking-tobacco, and one hundred papers. Though cigars were not
included in the army ration, they could be purchased at the Quartermaster
stores in France at astonishingly low prices. Havana cigars were sold at
the same price which the government paid for them in Cuba, there being
no tax or import duty, no charge for transportation, and no middleman’s
profit. Smokers of cigars will appreciate how cheap they were when I
mention that at the commissaries in France I paid eighteen cents apiece
for Corona Coronas. In order to provide “smokes” for the army, the entire
stocks of several of the largest cigarette and tobacco manufacturers
were commandeered—a fact with which they quickly acquainted the public
in their advertising. A single purchase consisted of 3,000,000,000
cigarettes—enough to provide two “fags” for approximately every human
being on the globe. The difference between the old army and the new was
strikingly illustrated by the difference in their choice of tobacco. The
soldier of the old army was most strongly addicted to the use of that
unlovely article known as “plug”—thereby giving steady employment to
the spittoon-makers. The men of our new armies, however, expressed an
overwhelming preference for the cigarette. Thus does tobacco gauge the
progress of civilization!
A close third to tobacco and candy in the affections of the soldiers
was chewing-gum. Three and a half million packages of the shop-girl’s
delight were sent overseas during the month of January alone. Chewing-gum
has come, indeed, to be regarded as little short of a necessity for
the soldier, both because of its value as a substitute for water—it is
estimated that 250 pounds of chewing-gum will save 100 gallons of water
when it is needed most—and because it is a heat and energy producer.
During intensive drilling, practice firing, and on marches the more
gum a man chews the less water he drinks—obviously a highly important
consideration, for at the front water is usually scarce and difficult to
obtain. Curiously enough, the consumption of gum is heavier in winter
than in summer, this doubtless being due, as I have already mentioned, to
the fact that it is a heat-producer. It took the British, oddly enough,
to devise a novel and interesting use for chewing-gum which was later
adopted by certain of our own commanders. Just before an attack, when
the assaulting battalions were formed up on the tapes waiting for the
word which would send them over the top, the enemy’s scouts, prowling in
No Man’s Land, frequently detected the presence of the waiting troops
by their subdued chorus of coughing. A British officer who had been in
the United States evolved the idea of stopping these betraying coughs
by giving every man a stick of chewing-gum. So Messrs. Wrigley, Beeman,
White, and Adams may congratulate themselves on having “done their bit”
toward walloping the Hun.
My mention of a chorus of coughs naturally suggests the subject
of music, which was another of the multitudinous activities of the
Quartermaster Corps. By this I do not mean to imply that the “Q. M.”
furnished the army with bands, for it did not, but it did supply the
bands of the army with instruments and music. Music, you must understand,
was one of the most important factors in the maintenance of that
intangible something called morale. It was a curious characteristic
of the American psychology that when a homesick soldier heard a band
playing “Home, Sweet Home,” or “When You Come Back,” or “Keep the Home
Fires Burning,” it did not increase his homesickness. It had, instead,
precisely the opposite effect: it cheered him up! Recognizing this, the
military authorities saw to it that bands were stationed in every town
and hamlet in France where any considerable body of troops was billeted.
By the last summer of the war we had in France nearly 400 bands, to say
nothing of the musical organizations improvised by the various units.
As a result, the French inhabitants of the zones in which our armies
were operating became as familiar with “Over There,” “Good Morning, Mr.
Zip-zip-zip,” and particularly with “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the
Morning,” which was the soldier’s favorite because it so satisfyingly
expressed his feelings, as they were with the “Marseillaise.” The
American Army was, indeed, as noticeable for its musical proclivities as
the French Army was for its total absence of them. Ours was a whistling,
singing army, if ever there was one, though for some reason it seemed
to delight in plaintive, melancholy tunes. Many and many a time I have
heard a column coming down a road in the darkness, the softly whistled
chorus of “The Long, Long Trail” rising above the clink of accoutrements
and the _slog-slog-slog_ of marching feet.
In the early summer of 1918 the Quartermaster-General received a cable
from General Pershing requesting that $50,000 worth of sheet-music
for the bands of the A. E. F. be shipped without delay. As the chief
of the purchasing unit, to whom the order was turned over, did not
feel qualified to select the music for some 3,000,000 of his fighting
countrymen, he delegated the task to a committee consisting of Lieutenant
R. C. Deming, bandmaster at Camp Meigs, Mr. Ward Stephens, the noted
organist and authority on music, and Irving Berlin, the most famous
composer of popular music in America, who was at that time a sergeant
in the Coast Guard but who was borrowed from that organization by the
Quartermaster Corps. The selection and classification of this great mass
of music—the largest single order of its kind ever given—necessitated the
committee working almost night and day for weeks, it being enormously
assisted in its task by the enthusiastic co-operation of the various
music printers and publishers, both of these trades making great
financial sacrifices in order to promote the pleasure and inspiration of
the boys overseas.
Have you ever gone into one of those huge emporiums which make a
specialty of supplying equipment for sportsmen, to purchase an outfit
preparatory to a fishing-trip in Canada or a shooting expedition in
the Rockies? If so, you will remember how much time and thought you
devoted to comparing the merits of the various types of clothing and
other equipment which you were shown. It probably took you the better
part of an hour to decide whether you would be more comfortable wearing
Canadian shoepacks or hobnailed ankle-boots. You had a long discussion
with the salesman as to the relative merits of whipcord, Harris tweed,
and gabardine. Even making the choice between a slouch hat and a cloth
cap presented a perplexing problem. But this was only the beginning,
for you had to decide on a rain-coat, a tent, a cot, blankets, pillows,
cartridge-belts, fly-books, cooking utensils, and heaven knows what
besides. And after you had made your final decision you were probably
far from being satisfied with what you had selected. Yet this outfit,
over which you had spent so much thought, was, probably, to be used
only during a brief summer’s vacation. Picture, then, the task faced
by the Quartermaster Corps when it was suddenly called upon to provide
complete equipment for some 4,000,000 men for an indefinite period.
At first thought it might seem easy enough to purchase clothing for
soldiers—a coat, a pair of breeches, an overcoat, a hat, and a pair of
shoes for each man—until you are reminded that no one of these simple
articles of uniform was standard for civilian use, either in material,
pattern, or color. Everything had to be made to order. Everything had,
moreover, to be better made than if it were intended for civilian use,
for the men for whom these articles were intended were not going out to
shoot elk or catch trout; they were going to a country 3,000 miles away
for the purpose of killing Germans, and no one could say how long the
business would take them. It was a Titanic task, this equipping of the
men who took up arms against Germany. The organization which handled the
buying end of it was roughly as follows: in Washington the Clothing and
Equipage Division of the Office of the Director of Purchase, where all
the activities were centralized; in Philadelphia a purchasing office,
which was a branch of the great Quartermaster Depot in that city, and in
New York a procurement office which kept constantly in touch with the
raw-material markets of the world.
The innumerable special-service units which were constantly being
added to the rapidly expanding army required all sorts of strange,
new equipment and special clothing. The cooks and bakers had to have
cotton aprons and the blacksmiths leather ones. The linemen of the
telegraph battalions had to have special gloves. Hoods were needed for
the motorcycle despatch-riders, overalls for the men of the stevedore
battalions, helmets for the camp firemen, garments of fur and leather for
the flying-men. The prisoners began to come streaming in and for them
had to be designed clothing which would insure their speedy recognition
and recapture in case they attempted to escape. The convalescents at the
hospitals needed special suits. The expeditionary troops sent to Siberia
and the Murman Coast required outfits which would keep them warm through
the long arctic winters. And uniforms had to be provided for the army’s
women nurses. Besides this vast quantity of clothing there were tents
to be provided, cots, blankets, towels, shaving outfits, brown-canvas
bags for filtering water, and the blue-denim bags in which the soldiers
kept their personal belongings. These things were not in existence
anywhere; they had to be made from the outset. To produce them in the
enormous quantities required, not only took the maximum output of all the
factories and mills already engaged in the manufacture of such articles,
but hundreds of other plants had to change over their machinery in order
to meet the army’s needs, and the Quartermaster Corps had to send experts
to give instruction at these plants in the new manufacturing processes
and methods. Nor was it enough for the Quartermaster Corps to thus become
itself a manufacturer of clothing and equipment. It had to manufacture
the cloth used in the clothing, and, going still further, it had to
provide the raw cotton and wool used in making the cloth, as well as
the hides for the leather used in the shoes. And it had to produce this
staggering volume of equipment quickly, for the Germans would not wait.
It was compelled, moreover, to make its purchases in a market glutted
with orders from the Allied governments and from the domestic trade. And,
to increase the difficulties under which the corps labored, it had to buy
on credit, and to do so in the face of cash competition, for Congress
did not make sufficient funds available until twelve weeks after the
declaration of war. Nevertheless, the whole enormous undertaking was
successfully carried through, and, save in rare instances, the soldiers
never lacked for clothing or other Q. M. supplies.
Wool was the most important of the raw products to be procured, since
it entered into the composition of more items than any other material.
Soon after the declaration of war the Quartermaster Department estimated
that about 100,000,000 pounds of scoured wool would be required to meet
the initial demands of the army. An inventory of all wool supplies,
including wool ordered from abroad as well as the stocks on hand in
this country, revealed the startling fact that there was in sight only
about 35,000,000 pounds—barely more than a third of the amount needed.
To insure the procurement of this wool and to head off speculation in
domestic wool prices, for the American sheep were then about to be
sheared, the government itself, in July, 1917, entered the wool business.
It immediately optioned practically all the wool in the hands of all the
dealers in the United States; it fixed a price for the domestic supply
for the ensuing year; it arranged to procure the entire 1917 clip if
needed; it took over all wool under import licenses, and it sent its
buyers to South America and the other foreign markets. There was a wool
administrator to buy wool, a wool-purchasing quartermaster to pay for it,
and a wool distributor to sell it to the government contractors. Within
a year the Clothing and Equipage Division had absorbed the entire wool
trade of the United States. In fact, there was no wool market again and
no public sale of wool until after the signing of the Armistice.
The largest of the foreign markets which was available from the
standpoint of accessibility was the Argentine. Australia and New Zealand
were, of course, enormous markets, but the shortage of tonnage made it
impossible to spare many bottoms for the long voyage to the antipodes.
As a result of the shipping situation, when the fighting ceased there
was an appalling shortage of wool everywhere in the world except in
Australia and New Zealand. America was short of wool, there was a little
in England, France had practically none, and in Germany and Austria there
was none at all. But Australia and New Zealand had _a billion pounds_—and
no ships.
At first the better grades of wool appeared to be adequate to meet the
demands of the army, but later changes were made in the specifications
for various cloths—uniform cloth being increased from 16 to 20 ounces,
overcoating from 30 to 32 ounces, shirting flannel from 8½ to 9½ ounces,
and blankets from 3 to 4 pounds—which made it necessary to utilize
grades of wool which previously had been used only in coarse materials,
such as carpet. In order to obtain the necessary weight and warmth, the
lower grades of wool were blended with the higher grades, though this
frequently entailed a sacrifice of fineness of texture and appearance.
This explains why many of the uniforms worn by our returning soldiers
looked rough and uneven in color. But the necessary cloth was provided
and it was warm and it wore well. The trouble was that it was not
provided soon enough. During the autumn of 1917 and the succeeding winter
thousands of our soldiers, both in France and in the camps at home,
did not have sufficient clothing to keep them dry or warm. Hundreds of
American soldiers went into action wearing British uniforms—even to the
buttons bearing the royal cipher and crown!
The Quartermaster Corps introduced endless economies in order to save
wool. More economical patterns were made for uniforms. Originally 1.45
yards of cloth were required to make a pair of wool breeches. A cheaper
cutting pattern reduced this figure to 1.222 yards, thus saving nearly
a quarter of a yard of cloth on every pair. Since the purchases of wool
breeches amounted to 10,300,000 pairs, this single economy resulted in a
saving of over 2,300,000 yards of cloth on breeches alone. It was also
found that cotton linings could be substituted for the wool facings of
coats and overcoats without sacrificing either serviceability or warmth.
Another important cloth economy came when the designers of the Clothing
and Equipage Division eliminated the right-hand pocket of the “O. D.”
shirt on the ground that this pocket was not used enough to justify the
additional expense.
Americans have always believed, or pretended to believe, that, so far
as the uniforms of our fighting forces are concerned, smartness is not
essential. This is a mental attitude which we inherit, no doubt, from
our pioneering forefathers, and which was strengthened by those Civil
and Spanish War generals who tucked their trousers in their boots,
pulled their slouch hats over their eyes, and wore handkerchiefs instead
of collars. So, when the first contingents of the Expeditionary Forces
set sail for France, we excused the obvious shortcomings of their
uniforms by asserting that they “looked businesslike and American”—an
assertion which was, however, open to some doubt. If our soldiers looked
military—_and they did_—it was not because of their uniforms but in spite
of them. No one recognized more quickly than the Commander-in-Chief of
the A. E. F. that the uniform of the American soldier was lamentably
lacking in smartness, a lack which was made painfully apparent when it
was contrasted with those worn by the soldiers of the Allied nations.
When, therefore, General Pershing recommended the adoption of a
smarter-looking uniform, the Clothing and Equipage Division undertook to
design one, with, incidentally, an eye to the saving of cloth. The coat
of the uniform, formerly called the blouse—a ridiculous and inappropriate
designation which is now obsolete—was cut with new lines which made it
slimmer and more graceful while retaining all the warmth and comfort of
the old garment. As the soldiers usually filled the patch-pockets of
their old blouses with all sorts of articles they were usually unsightly
bulges, but on the new coat the patch-pocket is retained only in
appearance, the pocket actually being on the inside. It is not known to
most Americans that the breeches which had been worn by American soldiers
for twenty years or more have been replaced by trousers so far as the
A. E. F. is concerned. The soldiers themselves were not particularly
enamored of the breeches, which frequently caused chafing under the knee
and always caused a burst of expletives when a man tried to put them on
in a hurry. Moreover, it was often found impossible for the surgeons
to remove breeches from a man wounded in the legs without cutting the
cloth and thereby ruining the garment. All these objections have been
obviated, however, by the adoption of trousers, which have the added
value of increased warmth. Following General Pershing’s recommendations,
the overcoat, which was much too long to be worn in the trenches, was
redesigned, a new garment being evolved which was smarter and more
practical. Other changes are the adoption of the spiral woollen puttee in
place of the canvas legging and the substitution of the jaunty overseas
cap for the impractical and universally unbecoming campaign hat.
The redesigning of the uniform—which, by the way, never appeared in
the field—accomplished several surprising economies. Merely by the
substitution of trousers for breeches, the lacings, eyelets, tape, and
stays thus eliminated amounted to 95¼ cents on each garment, and had
the war lasted until July 1, 1919, would have saved the taxpayer nearly
$17,000,000 on orders placed or in sight. The change in the design of
the overcoat saved 62 cents per garment—an estimated saving, by July 1,
of nearly $900,000. It was found that the service coat could be made for
$1.60 less than the old blouse, which by July 1 would have effected an
economy of close to $5,000,000. The changes in these three garments not
only gave the American soldier a much better-looking uniform but it saved
the American Government enough money to build a first-class battleship,
and, what was most important of all, it effected an enormous economy
in the consumption of raw wool, which, once exhausted, could not be
replaced with all the money on earth.
In making its earlier clothing contracts the government paid the
contractor a percentage of the value of the yardage which he saved by his
economy in cutting and it also permitted him to keep his own clippings.
But later on, when the shortage in wool became more acute, the cloth
issued to the contractor was calculated more closely, he received no
credit for his savings, and all clippings had to be turned in. These
clippings were sent to the base sorting-plant in New York, where they
were baled and shipped to mills to be used as reworked wool, in blankets
and other articles. From September, 1917, to December, 1918, this plant
handled over 17,000,000 pounds of wool clippings, the total sales of
which produced $5,500,000.
Wool was not only made up into clothing but it went into such knit
goods as undershirts, drawers, stockings, gloves, and puttees. This
branch of the war woollen-goods industry found itself confronted with
a serious problem in the lack of suitable machinery, for though there
were numerous manufacturers of knit goods, their mills had been devoted
to the production of specialties, such as men’s union suits and women’s
underwear. These concerns had, therefore, to make great changes in their
machinery, and sometimes to remodel their plants, before they could knit
underclothing in the sizes required for the army. Toward the close of
the war every machine in the United States that could make hosiery was
knitting socks for soldiers.
At one time there was a serious shortage of needles, which we had
formerly obtained from Germany. When this source of supply was cut
off we turned to Japan, but the Japanese needles proved anything but
satisfactory: they were not properly tempered and their frequent
breakage caused much loss and delay. A rumor reached the ears of the
Quartermaster-General that there were 10,000,000 knitting-needles in
Sweden, whereupon purchasing agents were despatched to Scandinavia
post-haste. They returned a few weeks later bringing with them a
million needles, which helped to relieve the situation, the American
needle-makers meanwhile being pushed to the limit.
Though the production of the regulation service uniform constituted the
bulk of the Manufacturing Branch’s activities, it was by no means the
whole of them. It went into an entirely new field, for example, when
it bought uniforms for the women nurses of the army. There was a trim
little Norfolk suit of navy blue which cost the government about thirty
dollars; a cotton uniform for indoor wear that cost three dollars; a
long, belted ulster costing in the neighborhood of twenty-eight dollars;
to say nothing of blouses made from navy-blue silk, jaunty hats of blue
velour, stout tan walking-boots, and hospital shoes of white canvas. When
it came to lingerie, however, the “Q. M.” balked. It permitted the nurses
to purchase that for themselves.
Then there was the special clothing required for the soldiers fighting
on the Siberian steppes and the frozen wastes around Archangel. These
garments were designed by men who had had experience in the arctic and
were intimately familiar with the peculiar conditions existing on the
world’s remotest battle-line. Our soldiers in Russia were supplied with
caps and mittens made from muskrat fur, overcoats of moleskin or of duck
lined with sheepskin, Alaskan parkas with hoods lined with the fur of the
wolf, woodsmen’s heavy knee-length socks, Canadian shoepacks, such as the
trappers and _voyageurs_ wear in the Northern woods, and special heavy
underwear. These outfits, which cost about a hundred dollars each, were
supplied to approximately 15,000 men.
And, finally, there was the clothing for prisoners of war and interned
enemy aliens. This was not manufactured for the purpose but, instead,
the uniforms discarded by our own men were dry-cleaned, repaired, and
dyed a special shade of green—a glaring emerald-green—so that the wearer
could be distinguished as a prisoner as far as the eye could see him.
I remember watching a column of German prisoners leaving the prison
stockade near Atlanta one morning on their way to work. In the front
rank, his red mustache bristling fiercely, was a peculiarly haughty and
insolent head steward whom I had known in those days, now long past, when
self-respecting persons crossed the Atlantic on German liners. He was
fatter than when I had last seen him, and in his bright-green prisoner’s
uniform he looked for all the world like an animated cabbage. There is
a certain appropriateness in the fact that the uniforms with which we
supplied our captured Germans cost the government just thirty cents
apiece.
For more than forty years the woollen shirts worn by American soldiers
have been made at the great Quartermaster Depot at Jeffersonville, in
southern Indiana. In order to give employment to as many of those who
needed it as possible, it has always been the policy of the depot to
distribute the sewing of the shirts among the women of the community,
so, upon the outbreak of war, there were some 2,000 sewing operatives
working for the government in or near Jeffersonville. When word was
received from Washington that shirts were required in enormous quantities
and with the least possible delay, appeals were made by means of posters
and through the press to the women throughout that region to increase
the output of shirts for our soldiers. The response was as quick as it
was gratifying. Women who did not need the money gave up their duties or
their pleasures and turned to sewing. Soon there was scarcely a woman
along that portion of the Ohio who was not, like the industrious Sister
Susie, sewing shirts for soldiers. The number of operatives jumped from
2,000 to 20,000 almost overnight; the yearly output of shirts rose from
600,000 to 8,500,000. The operatives were required to call at the depot,
where unmade garments, which had already been cut, were issued to them,
together with the necessary trimmings and a completed shirt to be used
as a guide, the garments being sewn at home and returned to the depot
for inspection. In order to care for the thousands of women who came
flocking into Jeffersonville to secure shirts, first-aid stations had
to be established at the depot. A Sanitary Bureau was also organized
and a corps of sanitary inspectors were employed to visit the homes of
all the operatives to see that the shirts were being sewn under proper
sanitary conditions. As a further precaution, the shirts were fumigated
upon their return to the depot, thus insuring the soldier against any
risk of contagion from this source. When the Armistice, was signed the
Jeffersonville Depot was the largest shirt-manufacturing establishment in
the world, and “The Song of the Shirt” was heard for miles up and down
the banks of the Ohio.
* * * * *
In supplying the army with such articles as sheets, pillow-cases, towels,
gauze, denim, duck, and webbing, the Cotton Goods Branch of Purchase and
Storage procured over 800,000,000 square yards of cotton textiles—enough
to have covered an area four times the size of the District of Columbia.
It also purchased enormous quantities of burlap for packing, for bags,
and for the use of the Camouflage Service, as well as silk for flags,
hat-cords, and badges. Though it was never found necessary to resort to
the use of paper fabrics, the division had in its possession samples of
paper cloth and articles made from it which had been captured from the
enemy. These paper textiles were carefully analyzed and studied, and had
it become necessary to provide a substitute for cotton, we were prepared
to produce one which would have astonished the Germans.
One of the characteristics of the equipment of the European soldier
is the number of articles made of leather. He has leather belts,
cross-belts, cartridge-belts, bandoliers, gun-slings, map-cases,
knapsacks, sword and bayonet scabbards, chin-straps, and not infrequently
his head-gear is likewise made of leather. Not only is all this leather
costly, but it is stiff, heavy, cracks easily, and requires constant
work to keep it clean. Owing to the extreme scarcity and the almost
prohibitive cost of leather, its use was confined in the American
Army to saddles, bridles, harness, leggings, and Sam Browne belts,
virtually all other articles of equipment formerly made of leather,
such as cartridge-belts, packs, bandoliers, scabbards, gun-slings,
pistol-holsters, and the like, being made of cotton webbing. To supply
the army’s enormous demand for these articles it was necessary to
convert to the manufacture of this cotton webbing many plants which had
theretofore been engaged in the production of hose, cotton belting, and
asbestos brake linings. All the plants thus adapted to the emergency
manufacture of webbing were dependent on purchased yarns which they had
to secure in the open market. In the South, where most of this yarn
was produced, the securing of power was a very serious problem. Many
of the mills depended upon electricity generated by water-power, so
when this water-power ran very low it was necessary for the government
to step in and allocate the available power among the mills working on
army contracts according to the most pressing needs. Then there was the
inevitable question of labor. In many of the plants employees had to be
given special courses of instruction before they could produce the new
materials on which they were set to work. In the South, particularly,
much trouble and delay was caused by the question of child labor and
the working hours for women and minors, for in its later contracts the
government inserted clauses insisting on the observance of certain
regulations designed to benefit and protect the workers. In some
instances contracts were returned to the government because of this
child-labor clause, whereupon orders were issued virtually compelling the
mills to produce the goods called for, whether they wanted to or not. I
doubt if any government in the world, while engaged in a life-and-death
struggle, would have found time to show such solicitude for the weakest
and least influential of its people.
* * * * *
Next to wool, leather was the most essential of the raw materials
required for the equipment of our soldiers, the Quartermaster Corps
purchasing 33,000,000 pairs of shoes, 6,500,000 pairs of gloves, and
nearly 3,000,000 leather jerkins, in addition to enormous quantities
of harness, saddlery, and other equipment. It was early recognized,
therefore, that it was as vitally necessary to save every foot of
leather as it was to conserve every pound of wool, so, in pursuance of
this policy, the Hide and Leather Control Board was formed. This board
not only put a check on the use of leather for non-military purposes
by restricting the variety of styles in civilian shoes and by similar
measures, but it guaranteed an adequate supply of leather to those
manufacturers engaged on army contracts. It also maintained a small army
of inspectors to examine the leather at the tanneries as well as the
finished products of the shoe, clothing, and harness factories, thereby
guaranteeing the quality of the material and frequently improving it.
Generally speaking, no action was taken which affected the hide or
leather business without calling into consultation the members of the
particular trade concerned and coming to an agreement with them as to the
quality and price. This procedure, which was followed throughout the war,
did much to eliminate all friction and misunderstandings, and enormously
speeded up production.
Hanging always over the heads of the board was the menace of a leather
shortage, and its members lay awake nights devising plans by which
such a calamity could be averted. To illustrate the seriousness of the
situation, it was estimated in July, 1918, that in another twelvemonth
something like 13,000,000 hides would be required for the use of the
army alone. As this is the entire output of hides in the United States,
it was realized that were the war to continue through the winter,
there would be no leather left in the United States by spring. Faced
by this critical situation, the board called to its aid the foremost
tanners, shoe and harness manufacturers in the country, and it was due
to their services in checking up the figures submitted by the trade, in
keeping down the manufacture of non-essential articles, in unearthing
thitherto unsuspected sources of leather supply, and in introducing more
economical methods of cutting, that during the latter months of the war
the army rarely lacked for leather equipment. I have already told how
great economies in the consumption of leather were effected by the
substitution of cotton webbing in the manufacture of certain articles.
During the second spring of the war the women of America suddenly found
that they were no longer able to obtain the extremely high-topped boots
which were then the fashion, while men had to content themselves with
plain instead of “wing” tipped shoes. The leather thus saved was used in
the manufacture of footwear, gloves, and jerkins for the men who were
offering their lives in the trenches in order that the people at home
who wore the high-topped boots and the wing-tipped shoes might continue
to live in safety. Many persons have wondered why officers serving in
the United States were not authorized to wear the Sam Browne belt. I can
give them one of the reasons. It was because the necessary leather could
not be spared for a purpose which was, after all, purely ornamental.
As a result of this admirable system of supervision and control the
Quartermaster Corps was not only able to fill with reasonable promptness
the requirements of our troops overseas, but when the Armistice was
signed, it had enough leather equipment, either manufactured or in
process of manufacture, to supply an army of 5,000,000 men.
In none of its innumerable forms of endeavor did the Quartermaster Corps
more strikingly demonstrate its genius as a manufacturer than in the
design and production of the army shoe. Before the war our soldiers wore
a machine-sewed shoe of russet calf lined with duck, very similar to
civilian footwear of the better grade. Shortly after the beginning of
hostilities, however, the War Department adopted a new and much stouter
shoe. This new model had a much heavier upper than the old one, with
the flesh or rough side out and the grain side in, and with no lining,
while, instead of a single sole, as in the old shoe, two heavy soles were
used, the bottoms of which were thickly studded with hobnails. But even
these, formidable in appearance as they were, did not prove stout enough
to stand up under the incredible wear of trench warfare, so there was
finally developed the so-called “Pershing shoe.” These really should have
been classified as tanks instead of shoes, for they could go anywhere,
they could withstand any amount of use or abuse, and they were, literally
speaking, armored. The “Pershing shoe” has three outer soles which are
fastened to an inner sole of outer-sole quality and thickness, first
by nailing, then by screws, and finally by stitching with heavy linen
thread; the toe is reinforced with a moulded steel plate; both sole and
heel bristle with hobnails, and, as a final touch, the heel has a heavy
steel horseshoe around its edge. It was by long odds the best shoe worn
by any army. In fact, no such footwear was ever produced before. The pity
was that it did not reach our troops sooner.
Before we had been at war a month a most troublesome fact came to light
in connection with the question of shoes. It was found that the old
schedule of sizes was entirely wrong and did not begin to meet the new
conditions. In the old army the individual men were carefully selected
according to a certain standard of measurement, and it was, therefore,
a simple matter to fit them with shoes from a comparatively restricted
range of sizes. But the millions of men who were called to the colors
by the draft represented all types except the physically defective. In
the ranks of the recruits a 250-pound policeman who had spent the better
part of his life on his feet would be found shoulder to shoulder with an
anæmic-looking little clerk who had spent most of his life perched on an
office-stool. A man whose feet had always been incased in the flexible
pumps of a professional dancer might find himself rubbing elbows with
a cow-puncher who wore high-heeled Mexican boots and who had always
lived in the saddle. As the raw levies began to round into shape at the
training-camps, it was found that clerks, professional men, and others
who had not been accustomed to working in the open air developed in size
with amazing rapidity. This was particularly true of the men’s feet, for
after a few long hikes with a full pack, a recruit could not squeeze his
feet into shoes of a size which he had theretofore worn with perfect
comfort. This meant that an entire new series of models and lasts had to
be made, running up to unheard-of sizes, as, for example, 17-EEE! The
standard sizes of the army shoe at present range in length from 5 to 15
and in width from A to EE, thus making it necessary to carry each style
of shoe in _one hundred and twenty sizes_.
Now, no article of clothing can cause such acute discomfort and so
quickly affect a man’s disposition, and consequently his morale, as
an ill-fitting shoe. The Germans were the first to appreciate the
importance to an army of caring for the men’s feet, and with their
customary thoroughness took steps to prevent foot-trouble from the
very beginning of the war. I remember remarking, when I was with the
Ninth German Army during the first weeks of the invasion in 1914, that
following each regiment of infantry was a huge motor-truck carrying a
complete pedicure establishment—a sort of chiropodist’s office on wheels.
Whenever a soldier developed a bunion or a corn or an ingrown nail,
whenever his boots pinched his toes or chafed his heel, he fell out of
the ranks and waited for the pedicure wagon—I don’t remember the German
name for it—to come along, climbed up, sat in a chair, and the attending
chiropodist tended his feet and, if necessary, issued him another pair
of boots. “The feet of the soldiers?” said a German general to whom I
mentioned the matter. “They no longer belong to them after the Empire
goes to war—they belong to the Emperor. A soldier is no more permitted
to abuse his feet than he is to abuse his rifle. They must always be in
condition for marching and for fighting the Emperor’s battles.”
Profiting by the example of our enemy, we exercised the utmost care in
fitting our men with footwear. As the result of examinations conducted at
a number of training-camps, it was found that out of nearly 60,000 men
examined, slightly more than 71 per cent were wearing shoes which were
too long and nearly 10 per cent shoes which were too short, only one man
in five having shoes of the proper size. These figures were sufficient
to demonstrate to the War Department the necessity for extraordinary care
in the fitting of soldiers’ shoes, and led to the establishment at Camp
Meigs, D. C., and Jefferson Barracks, Mo., of schools for foot-measuring
and shoe-fitting. Two officers from every camp and cantonment in the
United States were detailed to take this course of instruction, which
lasted five days and consisted of lectures, demonstrations of the various
appliances, and practical training, the latter being acquired by each
officer actually measuring and fitting a thousand men with army shoes
under the direction of competent instructors.
* * * * *
The coal which was required for heating and cooking in the various camps
and cantonments both in the United States and France, the coke which was
used at our arsenals in the production of ordnance, the gasoline which
drove our trucks, tractors, tanks, and airplanes, and the oils which
lubricated them, were all procured through the Fuel Branch of the Fuel
and Forage Division of the Office of the Quartermaster-General, which
in October, 1918, was converted into the Raw Materials Division of the
Office of the Director of Purchase and Storage, without, however, in
any way affecting its functions. From its creation by the President
in August, 1917, until the close of the war, the United States Fuel
Administration worked in closest harmony with the Fuel Branch of the
Quartermaster Department in supplying the enormous fuel requirements
of our fighting forces. The procedure was roughly as follows: The Fuel
Branch first ascertained the probable requirements of every camp, post,
and station for each month of the fiscal year, and upon receipt of these
estimates it would request the Fuel Administration to allocate to the
respective camps the tonnages required. Pursuant to these requests, the
Fuel Administration would instruct its District Representatives to place
the necessary orders with the various coal-shippers, the regulation of
shipments and similar matters thenceforth being handled by the District
Representatives directly with the Camp Quartermasters. With the abolition
of the Fuel Administration at the end of the war, the task of supplying
the army with coal and coke devolved upon the officers in charge of the
various General Supply Zones into which the United States is now divided.
The prime importance to the army of gasoline and lubricants was made
clear by General Pershing when he placed them, with food and forage,
in the first division of the automatic supply cable which governed and
controlled the movement of all supplies that had to go forward daily to
the combat troops on the line. To procure and maintain an adequate supply
of petroleum products, and to devise and standardize these products,
there was created the Oil Branch of the Fuel and Forage Division of
the Quartermaster Corps. Many interesting problems were successfully
solved by the Oil Branch, which received assistance of the greatest
value from the producers and refiners. Though the oil producing and
refining concerns of the United States have repeatedly been characterized
by politicians and by the press as “soulless corporations,” their
patriotism throughout the great emergency was shown by the fact that
their interest and efforts did not end with providing what the government
asked for, but every one connected with them, from their presidents down,
regarded the matter of supplying the army as a personal responsibility,
suggesting many valuable changes, improvements, and economies based on
their technical knowledge and experience.
For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the oil industry, I ought to
explain that there are many grades of gasoline, differing in character
or in method of production. Commercial gasoline, for automobile use,
included grades known as “straight-run,” “casing-head,” “blended,”
“pressure still,” and “cracked.” In order to standardize gasoline for
army use the Fuel and Forage Division worked out, with the co-operation
of the refiners, certain specifications, with the result that a gasoline
called “Quartermaster Specification” was adopted as a standard fuel. It
is known as “428° gasoline,” and is used for motor cars, trucks, tanks,
and cycles. For aviation purposes three other grades were produced;
two of which, 257° “Fighting Naphtha” and 302° “Export Aviation,” were
furnished only to the American Expeditionary Forces. “Fighting Naphtha”
is the highest refinement of gasoline ever produced in quantity, being
produced by “rerunning” Export Aviation and taking off the “cream”
of that extremely high-grade fuel. To distinguish it as the finest
motor-fuel in existence and to prevent its indiscriminate use, a small
amount of aniline dye was added to color it red. Its use was confined
to scout and battle planes, thus giving our flying-fighters an immense
superiority over those of our allies or of the enemy, and thereby lending
them the confidence which is required for daring deeds. Indeed, many a
Hun flier was brought to earth, many a D. S. C. was won, as much by the
qualities of the scarlet fuel as by the courage of the aviator. Who says
that there is no romance in gasoline?
* * * * *
Though this is the greatest horse-breeding nation in the world, and
though Americans fondly think of themselves as a nation of horsemen,
no one of the warring countries found itself so utterly unprepared in
respect to remounts as the United States. The importance with which the
War Department had regarded the question is best illustrated by the fact
that at the outbreak of the war remount matters were in charge of one
officer, with two civilian clerks, as a subsection of the Transportation
Branch of the Quartermaster-General’s Office. For a number of years prior
to the war repeated efforts had been made by enthusiastic horsemen, both
in the army and out of it, to induce the government to undertake the
breeding of cavalry and artillery mounts on a large scale, or at least to
encourage their breeding by farmers, as has been done for centuries by
certain of the European nations. But the parsimony of Congress, combined
with the lack of vision of officers high in the military councils of the
nation, blocked all these plans, and though one or two government studs
were established with animals presented by public-spirited breeders,
so little of real value was accomplished that of the 458,000 animals
purchased during the war by the Remount Service, only about 5,000 were
horses bred specially for military purposes.
Upon the outbreak of the war it became necessary, therefore, to scour the
country for suitable animals, which had, perforce, to be purchased in
the open market, which had already been gone over with a fine-tooth comb
by British, French, Italians, and Russians, all of whom had maintained
remount commissions in this country from the very beginning of the
conflict. Fortunately for us, under the circumstances, the requirements
of the Expeditionary Forces were confined to officers’ mounts, artillery
horses and mules, only one regiment of cavalry, in addition to the
headquarters troops of the various divisions, being sent overseas. There
were, however, demands for large numbers of horses for the use of the two
cavalry divisions which were in process of organization in this country,
and for the cavalry regiments which were kept on patrol duty along the
Mexican border.
As soon as it became apparent that it would be necessary for the
government to make large purchases of horses and mules, hundreds of
horse-breeders, racing and hunting men and polo-players offered their
services as purchasing agents. Some fifty of these gentlemen, as
shrewd judges of horse-flesh as the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, the
hunting-fields of Long Island and Virginia, and the show-rings and
race-courses of the great cities could produce, were given commissions as
captains in the Quartermaster Corps, and were sent to the headquarters
of the various purchasing zones for a short period of practical
instruction in the type of horse required by the army, and in army
methods generally, before being sent on the road to purchase animals. How
efficiently and conscientiously these officers, unaccustomed to military
methods, performed their duties is shown by the exceptionally high class
of animals which they purchased and shipped to the various auxiliary
remount depots, where they were trained and conditioned for army use. As
the dearth of tonnage placed a limit on the number of animals which could
be shipped overseas, a number of remount officers were sent to Europe,
where large purchases of live stock were made, about 110,000 horses and
10,000 mules being bought from the French, some 12,000 horses and 6,000
mules from the British, and upward of 12,000 mules—the big, 16-hand
Andalusians—in Spain.
At the beginning of the war there were only three remount depots in the
United States—at Front Royal, Virginia, Fort Keogh, Montana, and Fort
Reno, Oklahoma—together with auxiliary depots at Fort Bliss and Fort
Sam Houston in Texas, but with the rapid expansion of the forces it was
found necessary to establish an auxiliary remount depot adjacent to each
of the thirty-three camps and cantonments of the National Guard and the
National Army. This naturally necessitated an enormous increase in the
Remount Service personnel, which shortly before the Armistice numbered
400 officers and 19,000 enlisted men. As the war progressed it became
increasingly difficult for the Remount Service to meet the demands
made by the auxiliary depots for officers, for the available supply
of amateur horsemen who had volunteered their services quickly became
exhausted, many of them going into other branches of the army. In order
to meet this demand camps were organized at Camp Joseph E. Johnston, near
Jacksonville, Florida, and at Camp Shelby, Hattiesburg, Mississippi,
where enlisted men who possessed the necessary qualifications were
trained for commissions as officers. There was also established at Camp
Johnston a mobilization camp for the organization and training of Field
Remount Depots, but as this organization did not prove sufficiently
flexible, there was authorized a smaller unit, known as a Field Remount
Squadron, consisting of 6 officers and 157 enlisted men, it being
estimated that one squadron would be required for every replacement
of 400 animals. And replacements were, of necessity, frequent, it
having been estimated that the average life of a horse in France was
only sixteen days. There were organized at Camp Johnston a total of
sixty-three Field Remount Squadrons, three wagon companies, and twelve
pack-trains, of which all but seventeen squadrons saw service abroad.
The enlisted personnel of these squadrons consisted of drafted men who
were carefully selected because of their knowledge of horses, most of
them having been farmers, ranchmen, cow-punchers, and, in a few cases,
jockeys. Provision was also made for training the enlisted specialists
attached to each squadron, schools being established for horse-shoers,
saddlers, farriers, teamsters, and squadron clerks. Indeed, there was
no more interesting sight at a cantonment than the Remount Depot, where
bronco-busters, fresh from the ranges, could be seen breaking unruly
horses in the “bull-pens,” while veteran packers and plainsmen gave
instruction to classes of raw recruits in the art of harnessing and
driving a six-horse “swing” or of throwing the “diamond hitch.”
* * * * *
The chief function of the Quartermaster Corps might be described, I
suppose, as spending. It was, in fact, barring the Ordnance Department,
the greatest spending agency in America, if not in the world, during
the war. Not many persons are aware, however, I imagine, that it has a
division whose sole purpose is saving. I refer to the Salvage Division.
This was the only organization in the army which turned waste into
profit. It was a ragpicker, a garbage-collector, a junk-dealer, and an
ole-clothes man combined. While certain departments of the government
seized on the great emergency to spend money like a drunken sailor, as
the politicians put it, the Salvage Service was as systematic a saver as
the late Russell Sage. And, like that famous financier, it was able to
show something for its savings—to be exact, something over $100,000,000.
It had a perfect passion for economy. It saved everything, from the
pieces clipped from a soldier’s overcoat when it was shortened to the
food which he left on his plate. Nothing was too large or too small
to escape it. Indeed, the members of the Salvage Service should have
adopted for their shoulder-badge a design showing an ever-open eye.
If a locomotive was utterly demolished in a railway wreck the men of
the Salvage Service appeared on the scene almost before the wheels had
stopped turning and collected the splintered remnants. If a soldier
tossed a pair of worn-out socks into the garbage-barrel, the Salvage
Service fished them out and used them for something or other. In France
it saved and sorted the millions of sand-bags which lined the parapets
of the trenches; it untangled and rerolled for future use the millions
of feet of twisted, rusted barbed wire which formed the entanglements
in front of the trenches; it gathered and sorted and sent back for
reloading the empty shells from the field-guns; it fumigated and cleaned
and pressed the soldiers’ uniforms; it washed their shirts and socks and
underwear; it mended their shoes; it transformed their obsolete campaign
hats into felt slippers, and both in this country and abroad it collected
the waste from the mess-tables as well as introducing various methods of
food-saving; it operated hundreds of camp and mobile laundries, where for
a dollar a month a soldier could have washed all the clothing he wished;
it ran farms and truck-gardens at the camps and cantonments in order to
supply the troops with fresh vegetables; it maintained printing-shops,
wagon-repair shops, carpentry-shops, and paint-shops, and just as the
Treasury Department appealed to the country to “Buy! Buy! Buy!” so the
Salvage Service, by means of posters and placards, appealed to the army
to “Save! Save! Save!”
In the happy, careless, easy-going days before the war, the question of
repairing the worn shoes and clothing of the soldiers was not considered
of sufficient importance to merit even passing attention from the War
Department. The army was small, material was plentiful, and the clothing
belonged to the soldier. The government issued a man a uniform and out
of his pay required him to keep it clean and in repair; if his clothing
did not present a neat appearance, he received a reprimand or a court
martial. When his shoes wore out he had to have them mended at his own
expense—all out of the munificent salary of fifteen dollars a month!
But under the new system, introduced at the beginning of the war, the
soldier’s clothing is the property of the government, and the government
undertakes to keep it clean and in repair. And that is where the work of
the Salvage Service comes in.
[Illustration: AMERICAN SALVAGE DUMP IN FRANCE.
“The salvage service had a perfect passion for economy.”]
[Illustration: A WORKROOM IN AN AMERICAN SALVAGE DEPOT IN FRANCE.
The salvage service fumigated, cleaned, pressed the soldiers’ uniforms,
washed their shirts, socks, and underwear. It mended shoes and
transformed campaign hats into felt slippers.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: AN AMERICAN DELOUSING STATION.
The weary men returning from the trenches found the delousing and
fumigating stations set up and awaiting them.]
[Illustration: AN AMERICAN LAUNDRY IN OPERATION NEAR THE FRONT.
Each of these units can wash the clothing of 10,000 men, fresh from the
trenches, weekly.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
Within five months after its entry into the war the United States,
profiting by the experience of the Allies, took steps toward the
organization of a branch of the army which would devote itself to the
conservation and reclamation of articles and materials which would
otherwise be wasted. Pursuant to this policy there was established in
October, 1917, the Conservation Branch of the Supplies Division of the
Quartermaster-General’s Office with a personnel of two officers and a
stenographer. Within less than a year this little nucleus had expanded
into the huge Salvage Division of the Office of the Director of Purchase
and Storage, with 500 officers, 20,000 enlisted men, and 2,000 civilian
employees. The work of this division has consisted, generally speaking,
in cleaning, laundering, repairing, renovating, and otherwise looking
after the uniform and equipment of the American soldier, and in those
cases where the uniform or equipment was too badly damaged to be worth
repairing, the service has devised means of using the sound material
for other purposes. During the six months beginning April 1, 1918, the
service salvaged nearly 9,250,000 articles of clothing and equipment. The
value of these articles when new was something over $41,000,000. After
their repair it is estimated that their value was in the neighborhood
of $29,000,000. The total cost of repair was a little more than
$2,500,000, leaving a net saving due to this salvage operation of about
$23,500,000. Quite a tidy sum. During four months of 1918 the Salvage
Service collected approximately 43,000,000 pounds of junk, including old
metals, iron, rubber, cotton and woollen rags, rope, paper, leather, and
horsehair. About 3,000,000 pounds of this material, having an estimated
value of $769,000, was reissued for army use, while 19,000,000 pounds was
sold for $508,000, leaving 23,000,000 pounds still to be disposed of. Had
it not been for the Salvage Service, practically all this would have gone
to waste. In addition this division collected a great quantity of lumber,
mostly odds and ends, of which $25,000 worth was reissued for army use
and $475,000 worth was sold, leaving approximately 1,750,000 board feet
on hand. From May to November, 1918, the Salvage Division collected and
sold $300,000 worth of garbage, and nearly $200,000 worth of manure and
condemned hay and straw, to say nothing of dead animals to the value
of $5,000, thus netting upward of $500,000 from the swill-pail, the
manure-pile, and the bone-yard alone! The American soldier likes to sit
down to his meals with a heaping plate before him, and as he rarely eats
everything on his plate, an enormous amount of perfectly good material
finds its way to the garbage-barrel. It is estimated that prior to July,
1918, every man in the camps in the United States wasted approximately
two pounds of food per day in this fashion. Then the machinery of the
Salvage Service was set in operation, it being estimated that in five
months, on the basis of 1,000,000 men, it saved _nearly a quarter of a
billion pounds of foodstuffs_.
Another activity of the Salvage Corps was the operation of hundreds of
camp and mobile laundries. When war was declared the government owned
fourteen small steam-laundries which provided for the needs of the few
hundred men stationed at the posts where they were located. But with the
declaration of war and the concentration of hundreds of thousands of men
in the various cantonments, the laundry question assumed such serious
proportions that nineteen cantonment laundries were hastily erected and
placed in operation. The urgent need for these laundries is illustrated
by the fact that on September 1, 1918, nearly 6,000,000 pieces of
clothing were awaiting laundering. Quite a wash-basket, wasn’t it?
The Mobile Laundry Unit was one of the novelties introduced by the
Great War. Instead of the soldiers being compelled to take their soiled
clothing to the laundry, the laundry came to them. No matter how remote
the town in which their rest billets might be located, no matter how
exposed it might be to the fire of the enemy’s long-range guns, the
weary men, returning from the trenches, found the mobile laundry set up
and awaiting them. Each unit consists of a large steam-tractor and four
trailers. When erected for operation the trailers form a room thirty feet
long and twenty-eight feet wide, with power provided from outside by the
tractor. The trailers contain two large washing-machines, two extractors,
a drying tumbler, hot and cold water tanks, a pump to lift water from
wells and streams, a soap-tank, and a dynamo for electric lighting.
Each of these units, by operating twenty-four hours a day, can wash the
clothing of ten thousand men, fresh from the trenches, weekly. So rapidly
and systematically was the work done that when the men left the “wash-up”
and “delousing” stations, after having rid themselves of the filth and
vermin acquired at the front, they found clean clothing awaiting them.
And clean clothing—and this I say from experience—means more to the
soldier than anything save a bath and food.
The Salvage Service has been one of the least advertised, as it has been
one of the most efficient, branches of the army. Probably not one out of
a thousand readers of this book was previously aware of its existence.
Yet during the twelve months of 1918 it saved to the government, either
in articles repaired and reissued or in materials saved and sold, _one
hundred and one millions of dollars_. (If this does not impress you,
let me remind you that the entire appropriation for the support of the
army for 1898—the year of the Spanish-American War—was only a little
over $70,000,000.) It has developed what was formerly a liability into
a tremendous asset. It has conserved untold quantities of raw materials
at a time when those materials were most vitally needed and were most
difficult to obtain. By again and again repairing and using worn-out
clothing and equipment and thereby permitting the shipment of vital
necessities, it saved thousands of tons of shipping at a time when every
ton counted.
If, in this impressionistic sketch of the activities of the Salvage
Service, and of its parent, the Quartermaster Corps, I seem to have
indulged too freely in the use of figures, it is because those figures
are of vital concern to _you_. They represent _your_ dollars, Mr. Reader;
they show where the money from _your_ Liberty Bonds has gone.
V
ORDNANCE
The history of mankind is punctuated by a few examples of endeavor which,
by reason of their magnitude, cannot be fully comprehended by the human
mind. That phase of America’s part in the Great War comprised in the
work of the Ordnance Department of the Army is one of them. It has been
termed, and without exaggeration, the greatest effort, directed by a
single head, of all time. It was incomparably the greatest industrial
undertaking that the world has ever seen. Therein lies the difficulty of
writing an adequate story of ordnance—it is too big, too complex, for
any writer entirely to grasp, for any reader completely to comprehend.
It is like attempting to describe the grandeur of the Grand Canyon; so
stupendous a thing can neither be translated into words nor encompassed
by the mind. The best that I can hope to do is to sketch a few of the
most salient features of the great story in barest outline.
First of all, I would wish to convey to you some conception of the
vastness of the organization commonly referred to as Army Ordnance, the
immensity of the sums which it expended, and the enormous quantities in
which it dealt. It has been said that a billion is too huge a figure for
any one to comprehend. Scarcely a billion minutes have elapsed since
the birth of Christ. Yet the estimated cost of the ordnance required
to supply our first 5,000,000 men was nearly _thirteen billions of
dollars_. But that is, after all, merely an endless caravan of ciphers.
Here is another way of expressing it. Between the signing of the
Declaration of Independence and the declaration of war against Germany,
the sixty-four successive congresses of the United States appropriated
but twenty-six billion dollars for every purpose of government, including
the cost of five wars, the pensions resulting from those wars, the
upkeep of the Army and Navy, the activities of the State, Interior,
Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, and Post-Office Departments, the
control of immigration, the administration of justice, river and harbor
improvements, public buildings and public works of every description,
the salary of every government employee from the President of the United
States to the keeper of an obscure lighthouse in the Philippines, these
countless items representing in the aggregate the total expenditures,
over a period of more than seven-score years, of the richest nation
in the world. Thus it will be seen that, had the war continued for
another five months, a single branch of the army would have expended
approximately one-half as much as the nation expended from its foundation
to the date on which it entered the great conflict. Combine the wealth
of all of America’s millionaires, add the value of all of America’s
railways, throw in the Standard Oil, the Western Union, the Ford Motor
Company, and the United States Steel Corporation for good measure, and
you will still fall far short of the staggering total which the United
States had planned to invest in ordnance. Or, if these comparisons are
not sufficiently graphic, the Ordnance Department would have spent enough
in the first two years of war to have built twenty-four Panama Canals, to
have purchased the entire city of New York, at its assessed valuation,
twice over, or to have built 36,000,000 Ford cars—one for every third
person in the United States. That is the best that I can do to give you
a realization of the immensity of the task assigned to the Ordnance
Department.
Ordnance! No word in the whole lexicon of war held so much significance
for the fighters at the front—and so little for civilians at home. For
ordnance is the bed-plate of the whole military machine. If it breaks or
gives way the machine instantly stops running. An army can fight without
cavalry, without aircraft, without tanks, without machine-guns, yes, even
without artillery, but no army can fight, or ever has fought, without
ordnance. It is as essential to the functioning of an army as oil is to
the burning of a lamp. Behind the belching _soixante-quinze_, behind the
crackling musketry, behind the lumbering, elephantine tanks, behind the
_escadrilles_ of airplanes, was the huge organization, its head on the
Potomac and its tentacles reaching westward to the Pacific and eastward
to the Rhine, which provided the fighting-men with weapons and kept the
voracious maws of those weapons supplied with their steel food. The
combat troops up on the line knew that should the great Ordnance machine
break down, even for an hour, they would be compelled to retreat or
surrender. The generals knew it. The statesmen and politicians in Paris
knew it, too. And the Germans knew it best of all, as is testified to by
the labor troubles which they fomented and the fires and explosions which
they caused. You didn’t know that the work of the Ordnance Department was
so important, eh? Yet, if I remember rightly, you were always asking why
the Allies didn’t end the war by destroying a certain German ordnance
establishment called Krupps.
What is ordnance? It were easier to tell what it is not. It is artillery
of all types and calibres, with mounts, carriages, and ammunition; small
arms of every description; every kind of explosive used in warfare;
an endless variety of gas-driven, steam-driven, horse-drawn, and
hand-drawn transport; all harness and horse equipment, save that used by
the Quartermaster Corps; tools, machinery, and material for making or
repairing everything included in the term—in short, every tool used in
the fighter’s trade.
* * * * *
Dawn on the Western Front. Everything is in readiness for a great
infantry attack. For weeks past the preparations have been in progress.
The roads leading to the front have been ground to powder by the endless
processions of heavy-laden motor-lorries bringing up food, ammunition,
and supplies. The advanced dumps are piled high with cases of rifle and
machine-gun cartridges, trench-mortar ammunition, shell of every calibre
and kind, all stencilled with the flaming bomb which is the trade-mark
of the Army Ordnance. Up in the forward observation-posts intelligence
officers are peering anxiously through periscopes into the fog-hung
wastes of No Man’s Land. In the assembly trenches the storm troops are
waiting in silence on the tapes which mark the positions of the various
units, the faces of the men showing grim and determined under their steel
helmets. Each wears a belt containing a hundred cartridges in clips;
his bayonet is fixed. The men of the medical detachments, distinguished
by the broad-bladed bolos at their hips, lean against their up-ended
stretchers, waiting for the beginning of the bloody business which
will stain those stretchers red. The officers, a trifle nervous and
self-conscious, stroll up and down the ranks, examining their automatics
or glancing at the luminous dials of their wrist-watches to note the
approach of the zero hour. Rifles, bayonets, pistols, bolos, periscopes,
cartridges, together with the clips which hold them and the belts in
which they are carried—all are ordnance.
A mile or so in the rear the artillery is likewise waiting, every man
at his post. The slim steel projectiles have been shoved home and the
breech-blocks closed upon them; the barrage-tables have been worked out
to a second, the ranges to a yard; the lids of the caissons are raised,
revealing the brass heads of the shell waiting in their pigeonholes;
the gunners are grasping the lanyards. Each battery commander stands
motionless, one arm raised high, eyes glued to his carefully synchronized
watch. The minute-hand, creeping forward slowly—oh, so slowly—rests at
last upon the hour set for the beginning of the barrage. The upraised
arms drop like semaphores, the watching gunners pull their lanyards,
and the heavens seem to split asunder as tongues of flame leap from
the eager guns. An instant later thunder and lightning burst above the
distant German trenches. Steel falls upon them as water falls over the
precipice at Niagara. The earth shakes, the air quivers to the hell
of sound. The cannoneers, as though suddenly awakened from a trance,
leap into action. Bearing in their arms the steel messengers of death,
they dash between the caissons and the guns, sweating like stokers on a
record-breaking liner. Farther to the rear are the midcalibre pieces,
the “four-point-sevens,” the five and the six inch guns and howitzers,
whose great projectiles go shrieking Rhineward with a noise like giants
tearing mighty strips of linen. Huge howitzers, streaked like zebras and
spotted like giraffes by the camoufleurs, their ugly snouts pointing
toward the sky, some drawn by panting tractors, others mounted on the
tractors themselves, come plunging and rocking across the broken and all
but impassable terrain to take up new positions. The dusty roads are
lined for miles with columns of gray trucks laden with ammunition, for
the stream of shell between the dumps in the rear and the batteries at
the front must never, even for an instant, halt or check. So close are
the trucks that an active man could, it seems, travel for miles, without
ever setting foot to the ground, by leaping from the tail of one to the
hood of another. A fragment from a German shell shatters a gun and puts
it out of action. As though by magic two great trucks, tabloid factories
on wheels, one a mobile ordnance repair-shop, the other a storeroom of
spare parts, appear on the scene, and skilled mechanics, wearing on their
collars the bomb insignia of the Ordnance Department, repair the damaged
gun, heedless of the fact that death is raining all about them, and put
it into action again. From their cleverly camouflaged positions far in
the rear the great 8 inch and 9.2 inch howitzers, and the 8, 10, 12, and
14 inch guns on railway-mounts are methodically pounding the enemy’s back
areas, shelling his roads and bridges, destroying his ammunition-dumps
and railroad-stations, their monster projectiles cleaving the air with
a roar like invisible express-trains. Save only the men themselves,
everything—guns and howitzers, shrapnel and high explosive, carriages,
railway-mounts, tractors, trucks, limbers, caissons, even the harness on
the horses—is ordnance.
[Illustration: A 16-INCH HOWITZER.
Huge howitzers, streaked like zebras and spotted like giraffes, point
their ugly snouts toward the sky.]
[Illustration: A 16-INCH HOWITZER ON A RAILWAY MOUNT.
Camouflaged monsters on railway mounts which can drop a ton of explosives
on a given target twenty miles away.]
From out of the smoke, so close behind the rolling barrage that they seem
to be moving amid the bursting shell, a long line of tanks—elephantine
monsters of the Mark VIII type and little, agile, humpbacked
whippets—waddling forward across the welter of No Man’s Land, wading
through ooze and slime, clambering over heaps of débris, crushing wire
entanglements as easily as though they were made of string, rearing
themselves against the walls of concrete pill-boxes and then crashing
down upon them, straddling in their stride the yawning chasms of the
German trenches, but always pushing forward, like terrible and ruthless
prehistoric monsters, one-pounders and machine-guns spurting death from
the loopholes in their armored flanks. Tanks and tank-guns are ordnance,
of course.
The barrage abruptly lifts, and the eager infantry, pouring out of
the trenches, sweeps forward with a roar. Out in front, forming a
thin fringe to the leading wave of the assault, are the autoriflemen,
playing streams of lead on the enemy trenches from their Brownings and
Chauchats as a street-cleaner plays a stream of water upon the asphalt
from his hose. As the barrage lifts, the Germans, emerging from the
dugouts where they have taken shelter, man their parapets, but volleys
of hand-grenades drive them back again. Through the wire demolished
by the tanks and into the shell-shattered trenches swarm the cheering
Yanks. Parties of “moppers-up” hasten from dugout to dugout, calling
upon the occupants to come out and surrender, and when they do not
comply, tossing hand or gas grenades into the entrances or wrecking
the dugouts with mobile charges. The captured positions are quickly
organized. Machine-guns and trench-mortars are brought up and placed in
position. Carts and voiturettes, ammunition-laden, some drawn by mules,
others by hand, come forward at the double. An enemy machine-gun nest
is located and promptly demolished by a pair of Stokes mortars, which
send their bombs somersaulting through the air, as a juggler tosses
bottles, in an unending stream. Then the enemy launches a counter-attack,
the gray-clad hordes advancing doggedly while the rifle-fire crackles
along the trenches and the machine-guns go into action with a clatter
which sounds like a boy drawing a stick along the palings of a picket
fence. Rifle-grenades and shell from the little 37-mm. infantry cannon
burst amid the advancing Germans, gaps appearing here and there amid
their close-locked ranks as patches appear in a moth-eaten fur when
it is beaten. Before this hail of death the counter-attack falters,
checks, crumbles, and finally breaks, as an ocean roller dissipates
itself against a concrete pier in futile spray. Everything used in the
assault and in the repulse of the counter-attack—service and automatic
rifles, 37-mm. cannon, rifle, gas and hand grenades, machine-guns and
trench-mortars, ammunition-carts and voiturettes, mobile charges—is
furnished by the Ordnance Department.
Reports come in that the enemy is reforming his shattered columns in the
shelter of a ridge, preparatory to launching another attack, whereupon
the brigade commander orders a machine-gun company to open indirect
fire, the rain of bullets mowing down the unseen and now thoroughly
demoralized Germans as effectually as though they were advancing in
close order across the open. Not only the machine-guns themselves, the
tripods on which they are mounted, the ammunition, the belts in which it
is contained and the carts in which it is brought up, but the delicate
scientific instruments necessary for indirect fire—panoramic sights,
clinometers, transits, angle-of-sight instruments, alidades, squares,
protractors—are all provided by Army Ordnance.
Meanwhile, simultaneously with the conflict on the ground, an aerial
battle has been in progress high in the blue, the German airmen, clearly
distinguished by the huge black crosses painted on the under side of
their planes, attacking the American flyers who are engaged in locating
and photographing the enemy positions and in directing the fire of
the American guns. To the support of the slow-moving observation and
artillery planes speed the fighters of the _escadrilles de chasse_,
their stripped machine-guns, synchronized to fire between the blades
of their propellers, blazing away at the rate of 1,200 shots a minute.
Their machine-gun belts are loaded with tracer, armor-piercing, and
incendiary cartridges in rotation, the first permitting the gunner to
correct his aim by following the bullet’s flight, the second to pierce
the armored tanks of the enemy machines, the third to set them on fire
by igniting the leaking petrol or to destroy observation-balloons, while
the belts themselves, made of disintegrating steel links, fall apart
as they are fired. Giant bombing planes, keeping to the upper levels,
head for the German back areas to drop their ugly eggs, ranging in size
from the comparatively small bombs used against troops in the open to
the 1600-pound monsters which produce craters 100 feet in diameter
and 50 feet deep, upon the enemy’s dumps, warehouses, roads, bridges,
and railway-stations. Everything save only the airplane itself—the
synchronized machine-gun, the disintegrating belt and the special
ammunition, the bombs in all their varying sizes, the mechanisms for
suspending and releasing the bombs, the sights to determine the exact
moment for release, even the ingenious electrical heaters for preventing
the lubricating-oil in the guns from freezing at high altitudes—all these
are provided by Army Ordnance.
Down upon our own back areas swoop raiding enemy aircraft, tiny specks
against the blue, travelling at 140 miles an hour—the most difficult
targets in the world. But complicated instruments, designed by Ordnance,
are sighted upon them, determining their altitude, speed, and direction,
and taking into account the windage and the trajectory of the shell,
predicting the exact positions of the planes when our antiaircraft
artillery opens upon them. The slim barrels of a battery of antiaircraft
guns, mounted on motor-trucks for mobility, are raised to the indicated
elevation, and a salvo of shell goes whining skyward, each projectile
fitted with a special fuse so delicate in action that contact with the
thin fabric of an airplane’s wing is sufficient to explode it, and
yet so designed that it will not explode if, in loading, it should be
accidentally dropped upon the ground. Ordnance again.
Night falls. The guns are silent. From along the line of the captured
positions rise fireworks like those which delight the summer multitudes
at Coney Island. Star-shell, fired from Veriy pistols, make graceful
fiery arcs against the purple-velvet sky, bursting, as they descend, into
fountains of sparks which illumine the positions where the weary Germans
are. A night-bombing plane, prowling above the enemy’s lines, unable to
see its target in the darkness, releases a parachute-flare which slowly
sinks earthward, illuminating the ground for a radius of a mile as
brilliantly as though it were day. From the American positions colored
signal stars—red, green, white, or “caterpillar” combinations—fall slowly
across the sky, conveying all sorts of cryptic messages to regimental
and brigade headquarters in the rear, to the aircraft circling above, or
to the patrols scouting in No Man’s Land. All these pyrotechnics were
designed and made by Ordnance.
But the work of Ordnance does not end when the guns cease firing.
Far from it. The wear of battle on weapons of all kinds is enormous:
guns must be relined and fitted with new recoil mechanisms; shattered
wheels and trails must be replaced; broken rifles, pistols, bayonets,
machine-guns, scabbards, helmets, trench-knives, periscopes, caissons,
limbers, tractors, trucks, tanks, must be collected and transported to
the rear for repair or salvage. For the maintenance of its material
Army Ordnance had in the field many special facilities: mobile
repair-shops, miniature machine-shops mounted on trucks to accompany
each division; semiheavy repair-shops mounted on five-ton trailers to
accompany each corps; heavy semipermanent repair-shops for each army;
railway repair-shops for the railway artillery, each successively less
mobile but of greater capacity. In addition to this vast equipment for
repair work in the field there were the complete expeditionary base
repair-shops, requiring for their operation a personnel three times as
large as the peace-time organizations of all the arsenals in the United
States put together, capable of repairing each month 2,000 pistols, 7,000
machine-guns, 50,000 rifles, of overhauling 2,000 motor-vehicles, and of
relining a thousand cannon. Ordnance once more.
And back of all this was the mammoth organization created by Army
Ordnance in America itself: arsenals, gun-foundries, rifle and revolver
factories, wagon-plants, ammunition-plants, nitrate-plants, silk-mills,
tanneries, harness and leather-goods factories, 8,000 manufacturing
plants in all, in which nearly 4,000,000 workers toiled day and night
to produce the 100,000 separate Ordnance items required by our armies
oversea. Beyond the activities that I have just sketched, the Ordnance
Department didn’t do much in the war.
* * * * *
Now it must be kept constantly in mind that the Ordnance problem with
which America was confronted upon her entry into the war was essentially
a non-commercial one. By that I mean that the articles required by the
Ordnance Department had an extremely restricted use, in many cases,
indeed, no use at all, in the commercial life of the nation. In the
piping times of peace what use did we have for field-guns, howitzers,
machine-guns, automatic rifles, antiaircraft and railway artillery,
shell, caissons, limbers, synchronizing devices, steel helmets,
trench-mortars, periscopes, tanks, tracer, armor-piercing, and incendiary
ammunition? Unlike the nations of continental Europe, we not only did
not believe in war or anticipate war, but we deliberately blinded
ourselves to the possibility of becoming involved in war, so that we
were, consequently, wholly unprepared for war when it came. Hence, having
no use for the tools of war in the pursuits of peace, we had little,
if any, knowledge of how to manufacture them. The European Powers, on
the other hand, having for centuries sat on a powder-magazine which,
as they perfectly realized, might blow up at any moment, had prepared
themselves to meet the conditions which would inevitably result from
such an explosion by giving government support to private industry
in the manufacture of war material. Thus were developed such vast
ordnance industries as Krupp in Germany, Schneider-Creusot in France,
Skoda in Austria, Ansaldo in Italy, which, though operating as private
firms in time of peace, were always under government supervision, and
automatically passed into government control in time of war. But even the
great armaments maintained by Germany could not utilize in peace-time the
enormous volume of war material produced at Essen. Yet it was imperative
that the huge organization should be kept intact and ready for the war
which would one day come. In order to maintain its organization and, so
far as possible, its output, Krupp’s was encouraged, therefore, to seek
foreign markets for its surplus products, Germany’s diplomatic, consular,
and commercial representatives virtually becoming Krupp sales-agents in
every corner of the globe. Thus it came about that wherever there was
a promise of fighting, whether in China, in Mexico, in Abyssinia, in
Venezuela, or in the Balkans, war material bearing the trade-mark of
the great ironmaster of Essen was found in the hands of the prospective
belligerents. If they could not pay cash, they were given credit, often
long credit, and, when they did not possess credit, they usually were
given the arms anyway. In this manner the German ordnance-machine
was kept oiled and active, largely by foreign money, against the day
when Germany would have need for its maximum output herself. Thus the
government at Berlin had at hand, in time of peace, a tremendous and
highly trained industrial organization which fitted neatly into the
German war-machine in time of war. The same was true, though in lesser
measure, of the great French, Italian, and Austrian ordnance concerns.
We in the United States, however, had nothing of the sort. The Bethlehem
Steel Company manufactured a limited amount of artillery, it is true, and
the Colt, Winchester, Savage, and Remington corporations manufactured
small arms, though mainly for sporting purposes, but they made them
without any hope of government encouragement or co-operation, and they
marketed them in foreign countries without any save the most casual
assistance from our diplomatic and consular officials. In certain cases,
indeed, the government actively discouraged American arms manufacturers
from disposing of their wares to foreign belligerents.
By the assurance of steady employment and lucrative remuneration the
great European ordnance manufacturers attracted to their employ men of
exceptional technical ability, thus forming a large and highly trained
personnel with long experience in manufacturing the tools of war. The
traditional policy of the United States, on the contrary, was to maintain
in government employ a small, a very small, group of technically trained
officers who, according to our careless American theory, would be able
to design and produce enough ordnance to meet the needs of our army in
the remote and unlikely contingency that we should ever become involved
in war. How ridiculously inadequate was this personnel will be realized
when I say that there were but ninety-seven officers in the Ordnance
Department at the outbreak of the war. How enormous were the requirements
of the suddenly embattled nation is strikingly emphasized by the fact
that 11,000 Ordnance officers were required for our first 5,000,000
men. All other branches of the service underwent similar expansion to a
greater or less extent, it is true, but whereas Signal Corps officers
could be recruited from the telegraph and telephone companies, Motor
Transport officers from the automobile industry, Railway Transport
officers from the great railway systems, Medical officers from the ranks
of the country’s surgeons and physicians, Engineer officers from the
various branches of the engineering profession, Quartermaster officers
from the packing and produce concerns, the clothing manufacturers,
and the building trades, paymasters from the banks and financial
institutions, judge-advocates from the members of the bar, there was no
field of American endeavor to which the War Department could turn for
officers trained in the highly technical and specialized profession of
ordnance design and manufacture. How could there be? There had never
been any demand for tanks, for trench-mortars, for airplane drop-bombs.
Ergo, there was no one in this country who possessed other than a
vague and theoretical knowledge of how to design or manufacture them.
Therefore, we had to set about training men to do these things. And
we could not train these men in a week or a month. Ordnance designing,
remember, requires the very highest form of mechanical and chemical
engineering skill; its production is a highly specialized industry. A
knowledge of its requirements was confined, as I have explained, to
the ninety-seven Ordnance officers of the regular establishment and to
a handful of highly salaried experts in the employ of certain private
plants; the facilities for its production were limited to six government
arsenals and to two large private concerns. The initial problem of Army
Ordnance, therefore, was to disseminate on a nation-wide scale the
special knowledge possessed by this handful of officers and experts and
the special facilities possessed by these few arsenals and factories. In
our endeavor to acquaint the nation with the requirements of the Ordnance
Department we naturally turned to our Allies, who freely placed at our
disposal the great volume of special data on the subject which they had
collected during three years of war and which had resulted from the many
costly experiments and investigations which they had conducted prior to
the war—plans, specifications, working models, secret devices, jealously
guarded formulas, even complete manufacturing processes. But, even with
this great mass of detailed knowledge at our disposal, its translation
into terms comprehensible to American engineers and practicable for
American manufacturers was in itself a perplexing problem. The chief
obstacles to our use of foreign designs, specifications, and formulas
lay, in the case of French and Italian designs, in the fact that they
were written in different languages and expressed in different units of
measurement, the principal difficulty involved in the adoption of English
ideas being the radical differences in the manufacturing practices of the
two nations.
During the early days of the war it was repeatedly charged, both on
the floors of both houses of Congress and in the editorial columns of
newspapers and magazines, that, owing to a breakdown of the Ordnance
Department, we were compelled to beg from our Allies war material which
they could ill afford to spare. Let it be clear that I hold no brief for
the Ordnance Department, but, in view of the wide circulation given to
these unfounded assertions, I would like to disprove them by quotations
from two official communications. The first is a telegram from the
mission, headed by Colonel E. M. House and including Admiral Benson
of the navy and General Tasker H. Bliss of the army, which was sent
to Europe in the fall of 1917 for the purpose of ascertaining how the
American Expeditionary Forces could most quickly be rendered effective.
It reads:
“The representatives of Great Britain and France state that their
production of artillery, field, medium, and heavy, is now established
on so large a scale that they are able to equip complete all American
divisions as they arrive in France during the year 1918 with the best
make of British and French guns and howitzers. With a view, therefore,
to expediting and facilitating the equipment of the American armies in
France, and, second, securing the maximum ultimate development of the
munitions supply with the minimum strain upon available tonnage, the
representatives of Great Britain and France propose that the field,
medium, and heavy artillery be supplied during 1918, and as long as may
be convenient, from British and French gun factories.”
[Illustration: A SCENE IN AN AMERICAN ARSENAL.
The Ordnance Department effected the most complete mobilization of
science and industry the world has ever seen.]
[Illustration: FILLING A POWDER-BAG FOR A 16-INCH GUN.]
These offers were, of course, predicated on our continuing to furnish all
raw material, all rough-machined forgings, and all finished components
in quantities at least equal to those which we had been shipping to our
allies since our entry into the war for finishing or assembly abroad. By
our acceptance of these offers we not only obtained a breathing spell
which enabled us to plan an ordnance programme which would insure the
maximum production of artillery and artillery ammunition by the close of
1918, but the new arrangement, coming into effect at a period when the
submarine sinkings were at their height, insured us against the possible
loss of the raw material only and not also the time and labor which we
would have had to put into the finished article. In other words, by this
co-operative arrangement we increased our production to the maximum and
reduced our possible losses to the minimum. How the French regarded this
arrangement is shown by the words of M. André Tardieu, then French High
Commissioner in the United States:
“From the industrial view-point the unity of effort created will produce
happy results without precedent. From the financial standpoint it is
possible to hope that the purchase by the United States of French
artillery material will create an improvement in exchange, much to be
desired. From the military point of view it is evident that uniformity of
type of guns and munitions for armies fighting on the same battle-fields
is an appreciable guarantee of efficiency.”
The adoption for our own manufacturing programme of the British types of
heavy howitzers entailed no unusual complication, but the adoption of the
French types of field-guns and light howitzers introduced a factor whose
importance the lay mind had theretofore not fully realized. I refer to
the French use of the metric system, in which, of course, all the plans,
specifications, and drawings furnished us by the French were figured. One
inch = 2.54001 centimetres. The full significance of this difference in
the national units of measurement is not apparent until one reflects that
not a single standard American drill, reamer, tap, or die will accurately
produce the results demanded by the specifications on a French drawing.
Furthermore, the French standards for bar stock, for rolled sheets and
plates, for structural steel shapes such as angles and I-beams, even
for rivet-holes and rivet spacing, are far different from American
standards. Given complete, up-to-date drawings of French material (and
in many cases these were not obtainable), the Ordnance engineer was
immediately confronted with the necessity of either changing the American
shop equipment—drills, reamers, taps, dies, and the like—to conform
with French standards of measurement, thereby discarding the advantage
of quick procurement of standard rolled stock, bolts, nuts, rivets,
cotter-pins, or of doing what he did do—translating the centimetres
in which the French specifications were figured into inches. But this
was by no means all. French industrial practice develops the highly
skilled all-round machinist to whom is left considerable discretion
in determining finished dimensions and in fitting assembled parts;
American industrial practice develops the machine specialist who works
to tolerances—to maximum and minimum gauges—and whose output accordingly
requires little or no hand-fitting of assembled parts. The French
mechanic always sees the complete assembled unit; the American confines
his attention to the particular component on which he is engaged and
the gauges which check the accuracy of his work. So, in translating the
French drawings, they had to be adapted not only to the material phase of
American shop practice, but the personal equation of the American workman
had also to be considered. Tolerances had to be prescribed, limit gauges
had to be provided, jigs and fixtures, special milling cutters, and a
hundred other tools and instruments had to be designed and manufactured.
But our manufacturing difficulties did not end even there. Though the
French gave us the drawings of even their most jealously guarded secret
devices, they could not give us that intangible something which, for
want of a better term, I can best describe as innate mechanical skill
of so high an order that it approaches genius, which is so marked a
characteristic of the best French artisans and mechanics. Take, for
example, the problem involved in the manufacture of the hydropneumatic
recuperator for absorbing the shock of recoil when a gun is fired—the
recoil mechanism, as it is commonly called. This marvellous device
performs a task equivalent to quietly halting the flight of a shell from
a 75-mm. field-gun before it has travelled forty inches from the muzzle.
So intricate is the mechanism, so delicately adjusted, that although
it was introduced twenty years ago, it had never until recently been
successfully manufactured outside of France. Though the Germans captured
hundreds of these famous guns, the combined engineering skill of Krupp’s,
with the model before them, was never able to manufacture a single one.
The inherent difficulties encountered in producing these new types of
ordnance, great as they were, were dwarfed, however, by the vastness
and variety of the quantities involved. Let me see if I can make this
clear. Compare the question of ordnance supply with that of subsistence,
for example. A man eats no more in time of war than he does in peace.
Speaking roughly, it is fifty times as difficult to feed 5,000,000 men
as it is to feed 100,000 men, whether the smaller force represents peace
conditions and the larger one war conditions, or not. Consequently,
the strain thrown upon the organization charged with the feeding of
the army increased only in direct numerical proportion to the strength
of the army. But, though war did not increase the demand of the
individual infantryman for food, it enormously increased his demand for
small-arms ammunition. Before the war each infantryman in the United
States Army required 276 cartridges a year; during the war this jumped
to 2,372 cartridges, an increase of 1,040 per cent. In peace-time
each machine-gun used approximately 6,000 rounds of ammunition; after
the declaration of hostilities each of these voracious little weapons
required 228,875 rounds—an increase of 4,600 per cent. Likewise, the
needs of the 3-inch field-guns increased 18,200 per cent and those for
6-inch guns 73,400 per cent over their peace-time requirements. Here
is another way of stating the same thing. If a pound of bread a day
satisfies a man’s appetite in time of peace, a pound of bread per day
will satisfy it in time of war; but if a pound of metal represented the
ordnance which he required in time of peace, from 10 to 700 pounds of
metal would represent the ordnance which he will require upon going to
war.
The constantly increasing tendency toward employing mechanical and
chemical means of warfare produced another difficulty. Before the United
States entered the war, a total of 50 machine-guns was the standard
equipment of an infantry division. But when the Armistice was signed the
tables of organization gave each division 768 automatic rifles and 262
machine-guns, an increase in this type of equipment of more than 2,000
per cent. Furthermore, the General Staff of the A. E. F. was working on
plans for the reorganization of infantry units which would have increased
the number of automatic rifles in each company to 24—approximately one
for every ten men—and which would have established a new equipment of 192
automatic rifles for each artillery brigade. It is scarcely necessary
to point out that every additional automatic arm, with its insatiable
appetite for cartridges, necessitated a corresponding increase in the
requirements for ammunition and for ammunition supply.
Before the United States entered the war, practically all
field-artillery, including guns, howitzers, limbers, caissons,
repair-wagons, and the like, was drawn by horses or mules, the Ordnance
Department furnishing the harness and other horse equipment. The
difficulty in obtaining an adequate supply of animals, however, together
with the high rate of animal mortality, the constantly increasing weight
of the guns, and the nature of the terrain, made necessary the wholesale
motorization of the artillery, which was proceeding at an amazing rate
when hostilities ended. Guns are now hauled by tractors; caissons
and limbers have been displaced by motor ammunition-trucks; complete
machine-shops, mounted on motor-trucks, supplant the old forge-limbers
and battery and store wagons; machine-guns, instead of being packed on
mules or drawn by horses, are usually moved to the front by various forms
of motor transport and are often taken into action in tanks. Even the
large-calibre field-pieces are now mounted on caterpillar tractors, which
not only provide means of transportation for the guns but also the means
for aiming them. These changes naturally brought others in their wake.
The higher speed of motor-drawn artillery demanded rubber-tired wheels.
The substitution of the automatic rifle, with its terrific burst of fire,
for the ordinary shoulder rifle, entailed a tremendous increase in the
capacity of the ammunition-trains. So, as the tools of war became more
mechanically efficient, they became correspondingly more complicated to
manufacture.
Now there were no limitations imposed as to where these tools should
be procured. No one but a fool or an ignoramus would have insisted
that, engaged as we were in a life-and-death struggle with a savage
and ruthless enemy, we should only procure the weapons with which to
subdue that enemy within our own borders. If there is a marauder in your
grounds, your chief concern is to get a gun; you do not particularly
care whether it is your own gun or one loaned you by a neighbor, so
long as it will shoot and shoot straight. The problem of the Ordnance
Department, then, was to procure arms for our armies, to procure them in
sufficient quantities, and to procure them quickly—_not to procure them
in America only_. To have set any such limitations on our effort, no
matter how flattering it might have been to national pride, would have
cost untold lives, it would have greatly prolonged the war, and it might
well have produced a different and far less happy result. So, because
our allies were both able and glad to supply us from their surplus
store, and because it was the only way that we could obtain immediate
delivery of certain things without which our armies could not fight, we
purchased artillery abroad, as well as ammunition for that artillery;
we also purchased airplanes, automatic rifles, clothing, food, surgical
instruments, medicinal supplies; we sent our forestry battalions into the
French forests for lumber—they produced 50,000,000 feet in the month
of October, 1917, alone; we quarried their stone to build our roads; we
drew on their reservoirs for water—all highly proper courses of action,
adopted with the fullest approval of France and England, and, indeed,
at their express suggestion, for the purpose of utilizing the available
ship tonnage of the world to the best and quickest advantage in effecting
the defeat of our common enemy. Critics have brought the charge that we
purchased ordnance from our allies, intimating that it was a scandalous
proceeding for which the Ordnance Department should hang its head in
shame. Yet I do not recall that those critics ever completed the story
by stating that we sold to our allies ordnance and raw materials for
ordnance to a value _five times greater than our purchases from them_.
But even with free access to and unlimited credit in the markets of the
world, grave questions of priority had to be decided; the impending
exhaustion of the world’s resources in certain raw materials and certain
classes of skilled labor demanded constantly increasing consideration. It
was of paramount importance, of course, that our own preparations for war
should not in the slightest degree delay or lessen the assistance which
we had been rendering our allies, and which they had come to regard as
perhaps the most important factor in calculating their ability to hold
the enemy in check until our military effort could become effective.
Furthermore, there had to be taken into consideration the demands of
the American Navy, which required heavy forgings and other material, as
well as trained labor, of the very type so necessary for the solution of
the army ordnance problem. On the assumption that it would be of little
avail to build ordnance for use in the field in France unless there were
cargo-ships in which to transport it and war-ships to protect those
cargo-boats against submarine attack, the requirements of army ordnance
were made secondary to the demands of our allies, of our navy, and of our
merchant marine.
The supreme difficulty encountered in the solution of the ordnance
problem is best stated in the words of the Honorable Winston Churchill,
then British Minister of Munitions, in his report to the British War
Council for the year 1917:
“In the fourth year of the war we are no longer tapping the stored-up
resources of national industry or mobilizing them and applying them for
the first time to war. The magnitude of the effort and of achievement
approximates continually to the limits of possibility. Already in many
directions the frontiers are in sight. It is therefore not necessary
merely to expand, but to go back over the ground already covered and by
more economical processes, by closer organization, and by thrifty and
harmonious methods to glean and gather a further reinforcement of war
power.”
The situation in which the British found themselves in 1917, the critical
year of the war, as depicted by Mr. Churchill, was also, though to an
even greater degree, the situation of the French, and, to a lesser
degree, our own. Due to the gradual but increasing exhaustion of the
world’s resources of raw material and skilled labor, the production
of ordnance, at first merely a manufacturing problem, became more and
more, as the limit of expansion was produced, a problem of securing raw
materials, skilled labor, and transportation. The cumulative effect
of the difficulties which I have enumerated produced a task of such
magnitude as to be literally beyond the conception of the human mind. It
involved the mobilization of science and industry and their co-ordination
with the military establishment to an extent approaching the limits of
human endeavor. Indeed, I am indulging in no mere peroration, no idle
figure of speech, when I assert that the Army Ordnance effort represented
the application of a greater physical effort than was ever directed
toward the accomplishment of a single purpose in the history of mankind.
Just as a track meet consists of various events—dashes, distance
runs, broad jumps, high jumps, shot-putting, and pole-vaults—so
there were numerous elements comprised in the ordnance problem. For
Army Ordnance, the declaration of war was the starter’s pistol; the
meeting of requirements by actual deliveries the goal. In estimating
any accomplishment, whether it be the time in which a sprinter runs
a hundred yards or a horse trots a mile, the altitude reached by an
aviator or the speed of a transatlantic liner, it is necessary to take
some accomplishment along the same or similar lines as a standard of
comparison. It is generally admitted by athletes, for example, that for
a man to run a hundred yards in ten seconds is an excellent performance;
for him to run the same distance in nine seconds would be amazing.
If, in view of this generally accepted standard of what constitutes a
sprinter’s utmost exertion, a critic condemned a sprinter for not running
a hundred yards in eight seconds, or in seven seconds, that critic
would be branded by all intelligent persons as lacking in knowledge
and judgment. So, in criticising the degree of success attained by the
Ordnance Department during the war, it would be well for the critics to
be quite certain that they have chosen just standards of comparison,
and that they possess a sufficient knowledge of the problems involved
in ordnance production to enable them to recognize a record-breaking
performance if they saw one.
Generally speaking, it may be said that those phases of the ordnance
programme which had the shorter time limits were unqualifiedly
successful. There was never a time when the production of smokeless
powder and high explosives did not equal our own requirements and still
leave us with a surplus sufficient to provide large quantities for both
France and England.
During the nineteen months of our participation in the war we produced
over 2,500,000 rifles, a quantity greater than that produced during
the same period by France (1,400,000) or by England (1,970,000), and
this notwithstanding our handicap of a standing start. To use a fairer
method of comparison, the average monthly production of France during
July, August, and September, 1918, was 40,500; of England, 112,821; of
the United States, 233,562. In other words, to again make use of the
athletic simile, not only did America cover a greater total distance
during the same period of time, but when the race was called off by the
signing of the Armistice we were producing rifles at a rate double that
of England and five times that of France.
Of small-arms ammunition (for pistols, rifles, and machine-guns) there
were produced between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918, 2,879,148,000
rounds, a total equivalent to three cartridges for every minute which
has elapsed since the beginning of the Christian era! True, this total
fell slightly below that of England (3,486,127,000) and of France
(2,983,675,000) for the same period, but it must be remembered that
those nations had developed highly efficient manufacturing methods as
the result of the experience they had gained during their nearly three
years of war prior to our entry into the conflict. Notwithstanding
their running start, before the Armistice we attained a speed in the
manufacture of small-arms ammunition double that of France and 10 per
cent greater than England’s.
During that period that we were at war we produced 181,662 machine-guns,
a total slightly greater than that of England (181,404) and slightly
less than that of France (229,238), but here again a comparison of total
production is hardly a fair statement of relative accomplishment, for in
machine-gun manufacture an enormous length of time is required to build
factories, to equip them with machine tools, to design the necessary
jigs, fixtures, dies, millers, profiles, and the innumerable limit
gauges for testing the precision of the various parts. A fairer basis
of comparison—the average monthly rate of production during the months
immediately preceding the signing of the Armistice—shows that America
was producing 27,270 machine-guns and automatic rifles a month—more than
twice as many as France and nearly three times as many as England.
As to artillery ammunition, let us take the production of shell for the
75-mm. guns. Of this calibre we had produced 4,250,000 high-explosive
shell, more than 500,000 gas-shell, and over 7,250,000 shrapnel when the
Armistice was signed. From January 18, 1918, when the first complete
American division entered the line, until firing ceased ten months later,
our gunners used 6,250,000 rounds of 75-mm. ammunition. Prior to the
Armistice we had shipped to France about 8,500,000 shell of this same
calibre. Thus it will be seen that though American gunners admittedly
made use of French-made ammunition from the Franco-American pool (thereby
confirming the worst suspicions of the army’s critics), each round fired
was made good prior to the signing of the Armistice with 33⅓ per cent
margin.
Of the artillery programme proper, it is difficult to appraise the
performance, for the reason that the race was called off before it was
half run. It will be forever difficult to establish beyond question
whether the American artillery programme at the time of the signing of
the Armistice was as sufficiently far advanced as could be reasonably
expected under the circumstances. Any attempt to pass on Ordnance’s
accomplishment, or lack of accomplishment, in this respect must in
justice take into account the best previous performance along these
lines. Of all the countries engaged in the war the experience of England
affords the closest parallel to that of the United States in respect
to the initial stages of industrial and military preparation. In
determining a standard of performance in the equipping with artillery of
a hastily raised army by a peace-loving nation, permit me to quote a few
significant sentences from a statement made by the British Ministry of
Munitions:
“It is very difficult to say how long it was before the British Army was
thoroughly equipped with artillery and ammunition. The ultimate size
of the army aimed at was continually increased during the first three
years of the war, so that the ordnance requirements were continually
increasing. It is probably true to say that the equipment of the Army as
planned in the early summer of 1915 was completed by September, 1916. As
a result, however, of the battle of Verdun and the early stages of the
battle of the Somme, a great change was made in the standard of equipment
per division of the Army, followed by further increases in September,
1916. The Army was not completely equipped on this new scale until
spring, 1918.”
Thus it will be seen that it took England nearly four years to completely
equip her army with artillery and ammunition. On that basis we had
two years and five months to go before incomplete equipment with
American-made artillery could have been condemned, with justification,
as poor performance. The nineteen months which the war lasted after
America’s entry did not give sufficient time for our industrial power
to make itself fully felt. Even so, I don’t suppose that any one, save
perhaps the profiteers, would wish the war to have lasted long enough for
us to prove that we could produce artillery as rapidly as our allies.
It should be kept in mind that proper strategy demanded an ordnance
programme designed to insure an _ultimate_ overwhelming and continuous
rate of production rather than a lesser rate of production at an earlier
date. What I wish to get across to you (pardon the slang) is that the
primary object of Ordnance was not to obtain immediate production of
enough artillery and ammunition to equip our little First Contingent, but
to obtain a _rate of production_ which would provide for the equipment
of the army of 5,000,000 men which it had been decided to raise. Now it
is perfectly obvious to any one that a housewife could buy a stove and
bake a dozen loaves of bread in far less time than would be required to
build a bakery and bake enough bread to feed an entire city. But the rate
of production from the housewife’s oven would never feed the city. So it
was with ordnance. By the sacrifice of far more important considerations,
there is no doubt that enough guns could have been produced in a
comparatively short time to equip the first few divisions. In order to
do this, time was required for building plants capable of such a rate
of production. We had to obtain designs and even, in certain cases, to
discard existing designs, in order to get manufacturing plants on a
basis permitting such a rate of production. It would have been madness
to have sacrificed production in 1920 to force a quicker but far smaller
production in 1918. The Ordnance Department was not directing its efforts
to obtain for American arms an immediate but isolated success, gratifying
as such a success would have been to American pride; instead it was
building a machine which would make an ultimate and sweeping victory
absolutely certain.
No branch of the army took up its war-task under such discouraging
conditions as the Ordnance Department. It had 97 officers; it needed
10,000. But where were they to come from? It was and is impossible
to improvise ordnance experts, like those of pre-war times, who were
required to possess a thorough knowledge of all phases of ordnance
work from design and development through procurement, production, and
inspection to the supply of troops. But upon the outbreak of hostilities
thousands of engineers, graduates of the world’s most famous technical
institutions and many of them with wide experience in their respective
branches of the engineering profession, offered their services to the
Ordnance Department, and it is very largely due to their ability,
experience, and devotion that the solution of many of Ordnance’s most
perplexing problems is due. The industrial field, too, yielded a generous
contribution of its best ability. To these men were often given strange
tasks. They were called upon to procure materials with which they were
unfamiliar in markets where no readily available supply existed. They
had to design and erect complete manufacturing plants and to teach
manufacturing methods which they themselves often had first to learn.
Time after time they were ordered to manufacture articles of which they
had never so much as seen a specimen before they entered the army. A
huge personnel had to be organized to care for the inspection of this
enormous volume of varied material, to prove it by means of firing tests
at Aberdeen and elsewhere, and to develop it from the first rough model
through all the interminable stages to the point of successful quantity
production.
The advice, wishes, and requirements of our allies were given full
consideration, often at a sacrifice of natural national pride. On
their advice or at their formally expressed desire, we in many cases
undertook the manufacture of components instead of complete assembled
units: powder for propelling charges and high explosives for bursting
charges of ammunition, instead of assembled shell complete in smaller
quantity; black or rough-machined forgings for cannon, projectiles or
recuperators in place of the corresponding finished articles; motors and
structural steel work for standardized tanks for joint use in lieu of
a smaller number of complete units for the use of our armies alone. We
yielded priority on raw material sorely needed to make our own programme
a success, but even more desperately needed by our allies to stave off
defeat until we should arrive in force.
Every 15 pounds of finished smokeless powder requires 14 pounds of cotton
and 700 pounds of mixed acid for its nitration, so we made the gun-cotton
to the extent of more than 500,000,000 pounds on this side of the water,
thus saving the excess tonnage that would have been required for the
shipment of the raw materials. A similar condition obtained with regard
to high explosives. Guided by the same sound principle, we shipped in
bulk enough pierced shell blanks to keep the French and British factories
going to the limit of their capacity, and so on through the endless
list of articles or components required for our common use. For, be it
remembered, it was not our war alone.
[Illustration: AN AMERICAN 75-MM. IN ACTION.
The French admitted that the 75-mm. field gun as built in the United
States in several respects excelled their own famous Soixante-Quinze.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: THE 37-MM. GUN IN ACTION.
This vicious, hard-hitting, and extremely mobile little weapon proved of
enormous value in wiping out machine-gun nests.]
The quality of our product is attested by the almost pathetic eagerness
of the _poilu_ to acquire an American rifle with its beautifully adjusted
sights, its admirable breech mechanism, and its rimless, non-jamming
ammunition; by the universally acknowledged excellence of the American
automatic pistol; by the purchase by the French Government of 550 155-mm.
howitzers built in America from French designs; by the cabled request
of the French Government for a continuous supply of 3,000 Browning
machine-guns _every month_ and 50,000,000 cartridges for them, after
witnessing their performance under battle conditions; by the general
order from British General Headquarters directing that on account
of its greater uniformity, and consequent less danger to the troops
advancing under its protection, _only American-made powder_ be used for
artillery barrages—all these are tributes to American science, American
engineering, and American industry, as exemplified in American ordnance,
by qualified judges who were backing their opinions with their lives.
* * * * *
American artillery may be roughly divided into four classes: light,
medium, heavy, and railway. The light artillery consists of two types:
the little, hard-hitting 37-mm. infantry-accompanying cannon, operated by
two men, primarily designed for knocking out “pill-boxes” and machine-gun
nests and, with a shortened barrel, for use in tanks, and the 75-mm.
field-gun, an American adaptation of the famous French _soixante-quinze_,
which, according to the admission of the French themselves, it in
several respects excelled. Three types of weapons are included in the
medium-calibre class: the 4.7-inch field-gun, which we had adopted and
had manufactured in small quantities prior to our entrance into the
war; the 155-mm. G. P. F. (_Grand Puissance Filloux_), really a big
brother of the “seventy-five,” with correspondingly increased power and
range, designed for interdicting crossroads and harassing the enemy’s
middle areas, and the 155-mm. howitzer, which with its plunging fire
is admirably adapted for trench and dugout demolition. In mobile heavy
artillery we have the 8-inch and 9.2-inch howitzers, likewise designed
primarily for demolition purposes. And, finally, the great 8, 10, 12,
14, and 16 inch pieces—guns, howitzers, and mortars—mounted on and fired
from specially designed railway-trucks suited to the French road-beds—for
incessant pounding of the depots, dumps, headquarters, and railways far
behind the enemy’s lines. In addition to the above there are, of course,
the various types of antiaircraft artillery, mainly of 75-mm. calibre,
and the trench-mortars, ranging in size from the 3-inch Stokes, light
enough to go over the top with the first wave of an attack and simple
enough to be fired when supported only by the knees of a squatting
soldier, up to the 240-mm. trench-mortar of position, whose great shell
can blow the stoutest concrete fortification to smithereens. We also
had in use at various times small numbers of miscellaneous calibres and
types, but, as the result of the policy of reducing the number of types
in order to simplify the problem of ammunition supply, our artillery had
become fairly well standardized by the closing months of the war.
Years ago—though not nearly so long ago as it seems—when artillery was
still hauled into position by sweating gun-teams, a veteran ordnance
officer, addressing a scientific society, told his hearers that the
weight of artillery was governed by the limited power of the horse. As
a horse has a sustained pulling power of only 650 pounds, he explained,
it was obvious that a 6-horse gun-team could not pull a gun and limber
weighing more than 3,900 pounds. “If Divine Providence had given the
horse the speed of the deer and the power of an elephant,” he added,
“we might have had a far wider and more effective range for our mobile
artillery.” Could that officer have looked a few years into the future
he would have been astonished to see that, thanks largely to the genius
of a Californian named Holt, there would be substituted for the horse a
curious contrivance known as the caterpillar tractor, which possesses
many times the power of an elephant. Though the tractor cannot be
claimed, by any stretch of the imagination, to have the speed of a deer,
it nevertheless has sufficient speed to keep pace with the infantry,
or, indeed, should it become necessary, with cavalry. Few people appear
to realize how enormous were the savings in men, animals, feed,
railway facilities, and ocean tonnage effected by the motorization of
our artillery. The motorization of one 155-mm. howitzer regiment saved
1,440 horses. One tractor for this howitzer is the equivalent of sixteen
heavy draft-horses and three riding-horses, yet it is so compact that it
occupies in packing a space of but 360 cubic feet, and can be operated by
two men. Tractors are not only easier to conceal from enemy observation
than horses, but a shell-burst which would kill every horse in a battery,
would leave an armored tractor uninjured. Not long ago, at the Aberdeen
Proving-Ground, one of these tractors, on which was mounted an 8-inch
howitzer, sent through a dense wood, ran squarely into a live locust-tree
which was seventeen inches thick at the base. Before the onslaught of
the tractor the tree went down as though it were made of cardboard,
whereupon the amazing machine crawled over the fallen trunk, slid into
and clambered out of a ravine, emerged from the wood and took up its
firing position—all in scarcely more time than it takes to tell of it.
Before the war ended virtually every piece of American medium and heavy
artillery was either tractor-mounted or tractor-drawn, and we were on the
road toward motorizing the field-artillery—the “seventy-fives”—as well.
[Illustration: AN AMERICAN 75-MM. FIELD GUN. TRACTOR MOUNTED.
Thanks largely to the genius of a Californian named Holt, there has been
substituted for the horse a curious contrivance known us the caterpillar
tractor which possesses many times the power of an elephant.]
[Illustration: A 12-INCH RAILWAY GUN IN OPERATION.
Note the shell in flight.]
But, though the General Staff of the A. E. F. demanded mobility for
the artillery, it also demanded increased weight and range. To meet
this requirement there were devised various types of railway-artillery,
ranging in size from 7 to 16 inch, thereby making available for use on
the battle-front numerous guns from our seacoast fortifications which
could not have been used otherwise. Early in the war the Army borrowed
from the Navy a number of 7-inch naval rifles on pedestal mounts, for
which the Ordnance Department provided specially designed gun-cars,
thus affording a powerful and yet mobile form of defense for our coasts
in the event of submarine attack. The next performance worthy of note
was the mounting on railway-cars of ninety-six 8-inch guns taken from
various seacoast fortifications. Both of the above types of gun, as well
as the 12-inch mortars, were mounted on the so-called Barbette carriage,
which permits of all-round fire at any desired elevation. The 10-inch
seacoast rifle and all sizes above it were mounted on the Batignolles
type of carriage, which depends primarily on the track arrangement for
its direction of fire. Both the Barbette and Batignolles mounts had,
after the initial setting, all the characteristics of fixed emplacements,
but with the added advantage of being able to advance or retire with
a minimum loss of time. A third type of railway-mount, which was used
very successfully by the French and which was being adapted for certain
of our 10, 12, and 14 inch guns when the war ended, was the Schneider,
or sliding type of mount. Though this mount also depends upon the track
arrangement for its direction of fire, it has none of the features of a
fixed emplacement, the force of the recoil being taken up by permitting
the entire mount to slide back on the track during the recoil of the
gun. The “Chilean project,” as it was known, consisted in mounting
six 12-inch guns, which had been manufactured in the United States for
Chile and were on the point of delivery when they were commandeered
by our government, on special sliding mounts designed by the Ordnance
Department. Still another venture was the mounting for railway use of
a number of 14-inch guns loaned by the Navy to the War Department. But
the most ambitious project undertaken by Ordnance in connection with
railway-artillery was the production of the huge 16-inch howitzer, to
manufacture sixty-two of which an entirely new shop had to be erected by
the Midvale Steel Company. This, the heaviest railway-mount of American
design, weighs, with its gun, nearly a million pounds. The design and
production of a device which would absorb its recoil of _seven million
pounds_ was in itself no inconsiderable engineering problem. Each of
these monster railway-cannon has its own train, consisting of standard
and narrow-gauge ammunition-cars, as well as cars for tools, for spare
parts, for repair work, and for the crews. Huge as they are, rivalling in
range and power anything which the Germans had at Metz or the British at
Gibraltar, they are extremely mobile, any one of them being able to drop
its load of high explosive far behind the enemy’s lines, “pull stakes,”
and be miles away before the enemy could get its range.
[Illustration: A 12-INCH SEACOAST MORTAR ON A RAILWAY MOUNT.]
[Illustration: 6-INCH SEACOAST RIFLES TAKEN FROM COAST FORTIFICATIONS AND
MOUNTED FOR FIELD USE IN FRANCE.]
Speaking of the range of artillery, some truly amazing results in this
field were achieved by Major Forest Ray Moulton, one of America’s
foremost mathematicians, who was professor of astronomy in the University
of Chicago before he was given a commission in the Engineering Division
of Ordnance and turned his knowledge of ballistics to military account.
One usually thinks of a professor of astronomy as a highly impractical
person whose mind is absorbed in comets, meteors, and stars, yet no
individual in the armies of the United States did as much as Doctor
Moulton toward perfecting devices for killing Germans at long range. Here
is a sample of his achievements. As the result of a series of abstruse
calculations he made a change in the shape of the copper driving-band on
the 6-inch shell, whereby, _without adding to the powder charge and with
no modification whatever in the gun, he increased its range two and a
half miles_. What is even more remarkable and important, he so reduced
the variation between successive shots that a given number of shell will
fall into one-eighth the area formerly covered by their dispersion. Had
the war continued a year or so longer, there is no saying where Doctor
Moulton’s ballistic discoveries would have led. It was evidently of one
of the shell designed by him that the negro soldier remarked:
“Ah could staht runnin’ at brekfus’-time an’ that theah shell ’ud git me
jes’ when Ah got home foah suppah.”
Whereupon his companion exclaimed scornfully:
“All one of dem shells wants is jes’ yo’ address, niggah—jes’ yo’
address.”
* * * * *
No phase of the Ordnance Department’s work during the war came in for
such severe criticism as the adoption and production of machine-guns.
Now it so happens that I am thoroughly familiar with the details of
the long and bitter controversy which began with the original rejection
by the Ordnance Department of the Lewis gun and which ended with the
eventual adoption of the Browning. Many of the attacks made on the
War Department by the supporters of Colonel Lewis, as well as in the
editorial columns of the newspapers, were not justified by the facts and
showed an incomplete knowledge of the circumstances, yet, as an impartial
observer with some inside knowledge of the situation, I freely admit
that for certain of the criticisms there was ample justification. Let me
remind you, moreover, that the Lewis being considerably heavier than the
Browning machine-rifle and much lighter than the Browning machine-gun,
could not satisfactorily have taken the place of either. With which
passing comment we will let the machine-gun controversy rest.
Machine-guns of the so-called heavy type had been developed to a
serviceable stage at the time of the Spanish-American War, but neither
then nor in subsequent conflicts did they receive anything like the
attention which they attracted immediately after the outbreak of the war
in Europe. The Germans had apparently realized better than any one else
the value of machine-guns in the kind of fighting which they expected
to be engaged in, having had, it is reported, 50,000 machine-guns when
hostilities opened. American appreciation of the rôle destined to be
played in warfare by machine-guns is best evidenced by the fact that,
when we entered the war, our tables of organization gave to each
regiment four machine-guns!
When war was declared there were on hand in this country approximately
670 Benet-Mercie machine-rifles, 285 Maxim machine-guns, and 350 Lewis
guns chambered for British ammunition. The machine-gun manufacturing
facilities in the United States were also more limited than were the
facilities for rifle manufacture, by reason of the fact that England
and France had depended on their domestic resources to supply the bulk
of their machine-guns. As a result there were only two plants in the
United States which were actually producing machine-guns in quantity
when hostilities began. Six days after our entry into the war the War
Department ordered 1,300 Lewis guns (which order was subsequently
increased) and, in June, 2,500 Colt guns, which were to be used for
training purposes. The first division to be sent abroad was necessarily
armed with the all-but-obsolete Benet-Mercie machine-rifle, but upon its
arrival in France the French Government offered to equip the division
with Hotchkiss machine-guns and Chauchat machine-rifles—the same
automatic arms which the French had been using for three years. The offer
was thankfully accepted, not only for the first division but for a number
of succeeding divisions, thus insuring a supply of automatic weapons for
our troops until we were in a position to supply them ourselves.
The result of a series of machine-gun tests held by a board appointed
by the Secretary of War in May, 1917, proved conclusively that the gun
invented by John M. Browning, a Utah gunsmith who already possessed a
wide reputation as an inventor of automatic weapons, was the best type
of heavy machine-gun known to the board, and that the light automatic
rifle, also an invention of Browning, was likewise the most efficient
weapon of its type. The Lewis and the Vickers, both of which had been
extensively used by the British since the opening days of the war,
were also favorably reported upon and it was recommended that their
manufacture be continued. Acting on the recommendation of the board,
the Ordnance Department immediately increased its orders for Lewis
guns, placed orders with the Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing
Company for Browning machine-rifles and machine-guns, and began the
development of large manufacturing facilities for the last-named types
in order that the quantities required could be produced within the time
specified. Although the Colt Company was the owner of an exclusive
right to build machine-guns and automatic rifles under the Browning
patents, the Ordnance Department early recognized that no single plant
could hope to produce a sufficient number of these weapons to meet the
constantly increasing requirements of our armies. Arrangements were
therefore made with the Colt Company and with the inventor, Mr. Browning,
for the surrender of their exclusive rights, the United States being
granted authority to manufacture these weapons wherever it saw fit
during the period of the war. As a result of this energetic, action,
by the early part of 1918 the Savage Arms Company at Utica, New York,
was producing Lewis guns of the flexible type for use on aircraft (the
large orders for Lewis ground guns having been diverted to aircraft use
upon the cabled recommendation of General Pershing); the Marlin-Rockwell
Corporation at New Haven was manufacturing large quantities of Marlin
Aircraft machine-guns of the synchronized type; the Colt’s Company
was building Vickers machine-guns of the heavy mobile type, while
various factories selected by the Ordnance Department because of their
facilities were energetically tooling up for the immense production of
Browning machine-guns and automatic rifles which later followed. Early
in March, 1918, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, to whom, as the
result of the arrangement already referred to, the Browning plans and
specifications had been turned over, produced the first Browning rifles,
and two months later the New England Westinghouse Company turned out the
first Browning machine-guns. When the Armistice was signed, the American
Expeditionary Forces had been equipped with 41,348 Browning heavy
machine-guns and 48,082 Browning rifles.
As the Marlin Aircraft machine-gun was available and was giving a
considerable degree of satisfaction, no particular effort was made to
push the development of the Browning Aircraft machine-gun, as it was
feared that to do so might interfere with the production of the Browning
machine-gun for ground use. Only a few hundred Browning Aircraft guns
had, therefore, been produced up to the time of the Armistice. These had,
however, been satisfactorily synchronized so as to fire through the
airplane propellers, and had been speeded up to the amazing rate of fire
of _1,300 shots per minute_.
[Illustration: JOHN M. BROWNING, THE INVENTOR OF THE PISTOL, RIFLE, AND
MACHINE GUN WHICH BEARS HIS NAME.
Mr. Browning is holding the automatic rifle which he invented.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: THE BROWNING HEAVY MACHINE GUN.
This, the deadliest weapon of the war, can fire at the rate of 1,000
shots a minute.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: A RIFLE GRENADIER.
His rifle is fitted with a “tromblon” for firing rifle-grenades.]
Upon their arrival in Europe the two Browning weapons created a marked
sensation both in the armies of the Allies and in our own forces. Not
only were they exquisite examples of the gunsmith’s art but they could
pour lead into the enemy at an unheard-of rate, they were to all intents
and purposes fool-proof, and they proved themselves capable of standing
up under the most trying conditions. The Browning automatic rifle in
particular, as beautifully finished and balanced as a trap-shooter’s
double-barrel, formed a striking contrast to the clumsy French Chauchat,
which looked as though it had been made by a village blacksmith. During
the summer of 1918 our government was approached by representatives of
England, France, and Belgium with inquiries as to the possibility of
sufficient Brownings being produced to supply their armies as well as our
own.
The 79th was the first division to enter the line equipped with Browning
automatic rifles and machine-guns. In view of the various criticisms
of these weapons which have appeared from time to time in the American
press, it seems worth while to quote from the report of the Ordnance
Machine-Gun Officer of that division:
“The guns went into the front line for the first time in the night of
September 13th. The sector was quiet and the guns were practically not
used at all until the advance, starting September 26th. In the action
which followed, the guns were used on several occasions for overhead
fire, one company firing 10,000 rounds per gun into a wood in which there
were enemy machine-gun nests, at a range of 2,000 metres. Although the
conditions were extremely unfavorable for machine-guns on account of rain
and mud, the guns performed well. Machine-gun officers reported that
during the engagement the guns came up to the fullest expectations, and
even though covered with rust and using muddy ammunition, they functioned
whenever called upon to do so.”
The design and adoption of the Browning gun not only gave our armies
the most efficient and dependable weapon of its kind in the world, but
it saved the American taxpayer $75,000,000. This figure is based on the
difference in cost to the government of the Browning and its nearest
equivalent, the Vickers—the latter at a price representing its cost
after having been in war production for three years. The design and
adoption of the Browning automatic rifle gave us far and away the best
weapon of that type possessed by any army, and it saved the government
nearly $13,000,000—not a very large figure, it is true, compared with war
expenditures, but nevertheless worth saving.
When the war ended we had on hand 52,000 Browning automatic rifles and
29,000 Chauchats—a total sufficient to arm an army of approximately
3,500,000 men. On the same date there were completed 3,340 Hotchkiss,
9,337 Vickers, and 42,050 Browning guns, thus giving us enough heavy
machine-guns to equip over 200 divisions, or an army of approximately
7,000,000 men. Thus it will be seen that, no matter what the future has
in store for us, it will be a long time before we will have occasion to
worry about a shortage in machine-guns.
* * * * *
Though less novel and, therefore, less interesting than certain other
products of Ordnance, there were six items, all produced in stupendous
quantities, which rendered greater service than all the big guns,
tanks, and airplanes put together in nailing down the coffin-lid on
Germany’s dream of world domination. I refer to rifles, pistols,
revolvers, bayonets, helmets, and small-arms ammunition. They, with
the gas-respirator, the water-bottle, the cartridge-belt, and the
pack, constituted the equipment of the fighting Yank. They were the
infantryman’s tools of trade.
When the news of the sinking of the _Lusitania_ reached Paris, I heard
the then American Ambassador to France assert, in the words of Mr.
William Jennings Bryan, whose appointee he was, that were the United
States to enter the war, a million men would spring to arms overnight.
“I’ll admit, Mr. Ambassador,” said a sceptical listener, “that we might
get the million men. But where would we get the arms?”
“We’d stamp ’em out, sir,” replied the diplomat. “We’d stamp ’em out the
way we stamp out tin plates.”
But, unfortunately, the matter of supplying weapons for our fighting
forces was very far from being as simple as the ambassador seemed to
think, for the modern high-power service rifle is a delicately adjusted
and highly finished piece of mechanism, to manufacture which requires
the finest quality of materials and the highest grade of expert
workmanship. So, though we did not realize the dream of the ambassador by
producing arms for a million men overnight, American Ordnance performed
a feat almost as amazing by producing _enough rifles to equip an army of
seven million men in less than fifteen months_.
Some years before our entry into the war a parsimonious Congress reduced
the appropriations for the manufacture of small arms and small-arms
ammunition to such an extent that it was found necessary to shut down the
rifle-plant at the Rock Island Arsenal and to greatly reduce the output
of rifles at the Springfield Armory and of cartridges at the Frankford
Arsenal. This resulted, as might have been foreseen, in the dispersion
of the large force of highly skilled workmen who had been in government
employ, most of them seeking occupation with private concerns or turning
to other vocations. When, therefore, our entry into the Great War made
it necessary to take up the manufacture of small arms and ammunition on
an unprecedented scale, the War Department was dismayed to find that it
did not have nearly enough workmen, and that, owing to the enormous wages
which were then being paid in other industries, it could not get them.
Thus it became necessary, in order to obtain an immediate and adequate
supply of weapons for the great new armies which we were raising, to
enlist the co-operation of private manufacturers.
The three leading manufacturers of small arms in this country—the
Winchester Repeating Fire Arms Company of New Haven, Conn., the Remington
Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Company of Ilion, N. Y., and the Remington
Arms Company of Eddystone, Pa.—were devoting themselves at this time
to the manufacture of the British .303 rifle, the production of which,
however, due to the decrease in the requirements of the British
Government, was gradually slowing down. But, though these plants had
every facility for turning out in large quantities the British .303
Enfield, it would have required many months for them to alter their tools
and machinery for the manufacture of the .30-calibre Springfield, which
was the standard arm of the American service. The Ordnance Department
found itself confronted, therefore, by three alternatives. It could
change the equipment of these plants so as to permit of the manufacture
of Springfield rifles—a proceeding which would have involved a delay of
several months; it could adopt the British Enfield, which would also have
necessitated the adoption of another calibre of ammunition—an unthinkable
thing in time of war; or it could utilize the facilities of these three
great plants by modifying the British rifle so that it would take
American ammunition. The latter course was decided on.
The modification consisted in changing the magazine, chamber, and bore
of the Enfield rifle so that it would take the U. S. service .30-calibre
rimless cartridge instead of the British .303 rim cartridge. So rapidly
were the plans worked out, the drawings and specifications produced,
and sample rifles submitted and tested, that within less than eight
weeks after the declaration of war orders were given to Winchester and
the two Remington concerns for a million “modified Enfields,” as the
new weapons were called. Putting aside the keen trade rivalry which had
formerly existed, the three plants virtually operated as one mammoth
rifle factory, so that when one shop found itself short of parts it was
promptly supplied from another where there was a surplus. The combined
factories had so fully gotten into their stride by the fall of 1918 that,
when the Armistice was signed, they were turning out approximately 10,000
rifles a day, this being in addition, remember, to the spare parts which
were being manufactured at all three plants as well as in the government
establishments at Rock Island and Springfield. The records show that more
than 2,500,000 rifles had been accepted by November 9, 1918. Add to this
the 600,000 Springfields and the 160,000 Krag-Jorgensens which we had
on hand at the beginning of the war, the 280,000 rifles which had been
manufactured for Russia but which were taken over by the United States,
and the 20,000 Ross rifles purchased from Canada, and it will be seen
that we had a total of more than 3,500,000 rifles. As only about one-half
of the troops in an American division carry rifles, we had, therefore,
enough weapons to equip an army of 7,000,000 men.
In spite of the endless complications due to the use by our forces during
the early days of the war of French machine-guns and automatic rifles of
a calibre different from our own, and to the insistent demands of the
Air Service for special types of cartridges—tracer, armor-piercing, and
incendiary—there was never a time when we did not have enough small-arms
ammunition to supply our forces in the field. I might mention in this
connection that one of the most perplexing problems which had to be
solved by Ordnance was the manufacture of ammunition which would function
equally well in two rifles—the Springfield and the Enfield—and in seven
different types of machine-gun—the Benet-Mercie, the Lewis, the Vickers,
the Colt, the Marlin, and the light and heavy Brownings. In these
machine-guns the firing-pin points, or strikers, are different in shape
and size and function differently, each giving a different weight of blow
on the primers of the cartridge, yet, notwithstanding this handicap,
the success of the American ammunition in this respect was remarkable.
The daily average of small-arms ammunition manufactured in the United
States reached the enormous total of 14,900,000 completed rounds—a
production equal to that of England and France put together. The total
number of cartridges of all classes produced up to the end of the war was
3,500,000,000; enough, if placed tip to primer, to put a girdle of brass
and steel around the globe.
At the outbreak of the war the Colt automatic pistol, of .45 calibre,
was the standard arm of the American Army. This pistol was manufactured
by Colt’s at Hartford, Conn., and by the government at the Springfield
Armory. The Ordnance Department quickly realized, however, that even the
combined capacity of these two plants would prove wholly inadequate to
meet the demands of the new armies, whereupon it obtained permission
from the War Department to supplement the supply of automatics with
arms of other types, particularly Colt and Smith & Wesson .45-calibre
revolvers—the famous “six shooters” of the plains. These revolvers did
not take the rimless, or cannelured-head, cartridge used in the pistols,
but this difficulty was overcome by means of a loading-clip, which had
the additional advantage of enabling them to be loaded almost as quickly
as an automatic. The revolver, which is somewhat less accurate and less
powerful than the pistol, and which is considerably more tiring for the
user, was adopted as an emergency measure only, due to the imperative
necessity of supplying the troops. The demands of the A. E. F. increased
so rapidly, however, that in the summer of 1918 contracts were let to
eight other firms possessing equipment which could be converted to the
manufacture of pistols and revolvers. It is interesting to note that
among the concerns which turned from the manufacture of essentially
peace-time devices to the production of implements for killing the Hun
were the Burroughs Adding Machine Company and the National Cash Register
Company. At the signing of the Armistice, there had been produced a
grand total of 375,000 pistols and 268,000 revolvers, and the rate of
production was rapidly increasing, thereby bringing us within sight of
the day when, in accordance with the plans of the General Staff, it would
be possible to arm every American soldier with that characteristically
American weapon, the “shooting-
Transcriber’s Note: The end of this paragraph will remain a mystery, as
it was omitted from the original printing (multiple copies were checked
to ascertain this).
Another innovation introduced by the Great War was the steel helmet,
which, barring a few European heavy cavalry regiments, had not been used
by any civilized army since Cromwell’s time. The British helmet was
originally adopted by our forces as a temporary expedient, in order to
gain time until experiments would show whether it was possible to produce
a better one. After a lengthy series of tests, however, it was decided
to retain the British model, manufactured from steel with a considerable
manganese alloy, rolled by an American process. Any possibility of the
position of our troops being betrayed by the reflection of light from
the surfaces of their “tin hats,” as was occasionally the case with
the Germans’ steel head-gear, was eliminated by dipping the helmet in
olive-drab paint, scattering sawdust over the surface with a blast
of air, and then repainting after the first coat had hardened, thus
producing an extremely coarse sanded appearance. The netting used in the
lining of the American helmet was, however, a distinct improvement on
the British design, as it lessened the inconvenience caused by the very
considerable weight—slightly over two pounds—and the small pieces of
rubber around the edge of the lining served to keep the metal away from
the head, so that even relatively large dents caused by bullets or shell
splinters did not reach the wearer’s skull. The task of designing our
helmets and body armor was intrusted, fittingly enough, to Major Bashford
Dean, who was admirably fitted for the duty by reason of the fact that
he has been for many years curator of the armor collection in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is a curious fact, and indicative of the
extent to which Army Ordnance converted to war purposes countless peace
industries, that the steel for our helmets was furnished by the American
Tin Plate Company—no wonder that the soldiers called them “tin hats”!—the
linings were produced by various shoe manufacturers, and the helmets were
assembled and painted by the Ford Motor Car Company!
I tried to make it clear at the very outset of this chapter that the
story of Ordnance is so stupendous that the best I could hope to do in
such a narrative as this would be to dwell briefly on its most salient
points. This necessitates my passing by with a few words discoveries and
developments of the greatest interest and importance, and of dismissing
amazing achievements with a paragraph. Take the Nitrate Division of the
Ordnance Department, for example. Were it to receive its due, an entire
chapter should be devoted merely to outlining its problems, while a whole
book could be written on how it solved them.
Nitric acid is the basis of all modern explosives. A country possessing
no nitric acid would be virtually unable to fire a single shot. Before
our entry into the war we depended for our supply of this essential
ingredient upon the sodium-nitrate beds of Chile—the only country in the
world where nitrates have been found. Germany had done the same, having
had the foresight, moreover, to accumulate a reserve supply estimated
at 375,000 tons. Had she not taken steps, however, to replenish this
enormous stock by producing nitrates from the air by the so-called
“fixation method,” she would inevitably have been compelled to capitulate
when her supply became exhausted. It quickly became apparent that if
we continued to rely upon Chile for our supply of nitrates we would
be courting disaster, for Chile, though neutral, had decided German
leanings, and there was always the danger, therefore, that German
diplomacy or threats might cause her to place an embargo on nitrate
exports. Even had this danger not existed, our available tonnage was
extremely limited and a few torpedoings of nitrate ships would have
stopped our supply, thereby automatically paralyzing our manufacture
of explosives. It was determined, therefore, to make the United States
wholly independent of any outside source by the erection of four enormous
plants for the manufacture of nitrates by the synthetic ammonia and
cyanamide processes.
Two of these projects—U. S. Nitrate Plant No. 1, at Sheffield, Alabama,
and U. S. Nitrate Plant No. 2, on the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals,
Alabama—were both completed before the signing of the Armistice. Plant
No. 1, which has a capacity of about 22,000 tons of ammonium nitrate a
year, cost approximately $13,000,000. Plant No. 2 makes five times that
amount of ammonium nitrate and cost five times that sum. Plant No. 3, at
East Toledo, Ohio, and Plant No. 4, at Ancor, near Cincinnati, were about
one-quarter completed when the Armistice was signed, but, because of the
changed conditions governing the supply of Chilean nitrates as well as
the facilities which we now possess in Alabama for manufacturing them
ourselves, they have been discontinued. In addition to these enormous
projects, a chemical plant was erected at Saltville, Virginia, at a cost
of $2,750,000, for the manufacture of sodium cyanide to be used in the
production of poison-gas. Though no operations are now (May, 1919) being
carried on at any of these plants, it is believed that their products
will be in wide demand for farm fertilizers, a project being under
consideration whereby nitrates can be produced at these plants and sold
to farmers at about three-quarters of the price paid for the Chilean
product.
This chapter already so bristles with statistics that a few more can
do no harm. They may open your eyes, moreover, to the magnitude of our
preparations for producing nitrates—a project which has cost the American
people more than $120,000,000, but of which not 1 in 10,000 of them
has so much as heard. Take Plant No. 2, at Muscle Shoals, for example.
I would be willing to wager almost anything you please that you have
never heard of Muscle Shoals before. For your information it is on the
Tennessee River, in northern Alabama, about midway between Nashville and
Chattanooga. The power-house of this plant, with its capacity of 135,000
horse-power, has the largest annual output of any steam-power plant in
the world, developing two-thirds as much power as all the hydroelectric
plants at Niagara Falls put together. It contains a 90,000 horse-power
steam-turbine—the largest ever built. The ammonia-gas plant is the
largest in the world. The liquid-air plant is five times larger than
any other installation of its kind in existence. At its peak the camp
at Muscle Shoals had a total population of 21,000. One of its score or
more of mess-halls seats 4,000 persons at one time; in it 750 gallons
of soup have been prepared and 2 tons of meat have been roasted for a
single meal. More than a thousand hogs were raised on the waste from this
mess-hall alone. (Attention of Mr. Hoover!) The camp laundry washed 6,000
blankets in a single day. That may give you some idea of the labor and
money involved in preparing to make our own nitrates.
* * * * *
When it is considered that the personnel of the Ordnance Department,
at home and overseas, consisted of 6,000 officers and nearly 100,000
enlisted men—almost as many as we had in the entire Regular Army before
the war—and that these officers and men were called upon to perform
work of a highly technical and specialized nature, it will be seen how
important was the work of the Training Division. Among the innumerable
activities of this division was the Ordnance Engineering School, where
in three months a technically trained engineer was given an insight into
the design and manufacture of ordnance materials; the Powder School at
Carney’s Point; the Ordnance Supply School at Fort Hancock, and the
Machine-Gun School at Springfield. In addition to these there was a
school for tractor operators, a school for instruction in the repair and
maintenance of ordnance trucks, another for the repair and maintenance of
railway-artillery, and still another for training men in the repair of
optical and precision instruments. It is sufficient for an infantryman
to know how to use a pistol, a rifle, and a machine-gun, but the men who
wear on their collars the insignia of the Ordnance Department have to
know not only how to operate those weapons, and how to give instruction
in their operation to others, but they have to be familiar with every
detail of their manufacture and repair.
By far the most fascinating feature of Ordnance activities in America
is the great proving-ground at Aberdeen, Maryland, thirty miles from
Baltimore, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. On this remote and jealously
guarded reservation is tested every weapon and device, with the exception
of small arms, produced by the Ordnance Department. During the height of
our war preparations, more shots were fired here in a single day than
were fired at the old proving-grounds at Sandy Hook in a year. A far
greater quantity of explosive was expended daily than was used in many of
the important battles of the Civil War. Here can be seen in action every
type of American artillery from the vicious, hard-hitting little 37-mm.
infantry cannon to the camouflaged monsters on railway-mounts, streaked
like zebras and spotted like giraffes, which can drop a ton of explosive
on a given target thirty miles away. Giant tanks, looking for all the
world like some strange species of prehistoric monster, smash their way
through patches of woodland or take twelve-foot trenches in their stride;
field-guns of all calibres, camouflaged and tractor-mounted, go rocking
and reeling across the broken fields; airplanes, circling in the blue,
drop their half-ton bombs upon the targets marked out on the fields
below; showers of shrapnel from the antiaircraft guns burst about the
target parachutes in suddenly unfolding blossoms of white and scarlet.
In the recovery-fields hundreds of men are at work with pick and shovel
retrieving the fragments from the shell-bursts in order that they may
be studied by the experts in the laboratories. (In order to facilitate
this extremely important work, there has recently been built a huge
concrete reservoir, known as a “recovery-tank,” into which the shell
are fired, the fragments being recovered by means of giant magnets.) In
the powder-bag department one can see storerooms filled to the ceiling
with rolls of the heavy silk used for making the bags in which the
propelling charges are contained; in adjoining rooms—“sweat-shops” they
are jokingly called—scores of enlisted men, trained in the clothing-shops
of New York’s East Side, cut and stitch the silk into cylindrical sacks
in sizes to fit the various calibres of guns, and some distance away, in
small, isolated buildings, other men fill the sacks with greenish-yellow
granules which look like mildewed macaroni, but which is really smokeless
powder. Over _ten thousand miles_ of this silk was required for our war
programme. And it had to be the finest quality of silk, for no other
material could be depended upon not to leave smouldering fragments in the
barrel after its discharge, which would mean a burst gun and death to the
crew when the next charge was inserted. Everything considered, one can
get more thrills and see more things of interest at Aberdeen than at any
place I know.
When time has given it the justice of perspective, the war-effort of
Army Ordnance will be recognized as the greatest industrial achievement
in the history of mankind. The more one learns of it the more it staggers
the imagination. In nineteen months the Ordnance Department effected
the most complete mobilization of science and industry the world has
ever seen; it produced munitions of certain classes in unprecedented
quantities; it developed and supplied material of such superior design
and workmanship as to win the praise of our allies and the grudging
admiration of our enemies; it designed, manufactured, and sent overseas
the best service rifle, the best automatic rifle, the best pistol, the
best machine-gun, the best field-gun, the best railway-artillery, the
best tractor, and the best motor-truck possessed by any army in the
world, and it stood ready, when the Armistice was signed, to turn loose
on Europe such an avalanche of munitions as the world had never dreamed
of. The American people seem to have completely overlooked the fact
that we had in full swing, after we had been at war less than forty
weeks, a mightier munitions programme than Germany could attempt after
preparations which took forty years. But, though the American people did
not realize the stupendous magnitude of their own effort, the Germans
did. It was the news of the programme adopted by Army Ordnance, and the
realization _that it was going through_, which, more than any single
factor, perhaps, convinced Germany of the utter futility of further
resistance. The Ordnance Department, like the biblical prophet, was not
without honor save in its own country.
VI
FIGHTERS OF THE SKY
At about the time that the German War Lord, resplendent in the
eagle-crowned helmet and silver cuirass of the Guard Cuirassiers, was
haranguing in sonorous phrases the punitive expedition which was about
to depart for China, two young mechanics in greasy overalls were at work
in an obscure machine-shop in an Ohio city on a strange invention which
was destined to prove a far more potent weapon than the Kaiser’s boasted
“shining sword.” Now it is certain that at this period the All Highest
had never heard of these young mechanics, and though they, of course,
had heard of him, I imagine that to the accounts of his spectacular
doings which appeared almost daily in the newspapers they paid about
as much attention as they did to the gaudy lithographs on the local
bill-boards which heralded the annual visit of the circus. Yet, could
William of Hohenzollern have looked a dozen years into the future, he
would have seen that these two silent, earnest, unassuming brothers from
the Middle Western town were destined to have a profounder effect on the
future of the great empire which he ruled, and, indeed, on the history
of the world, than he and all the princes, soldiers, and statesmen who
surrounded him.
Notwithstanding the jibes and forebodings of the professional critics,
the ponderous sarcasms of senators and congressmen, and the sensational
stories of failure which have appeared in the press, there are few
more brilliant chapters in our national history than the story of the
airplane. Do you realize, I wonder, that the airplane is the development
of barely a decade? Had a life-insurance company, ten years ago,
learned that one of its policy-holders was planning to take a ride in a
“flying-machine,” it would promptly have cancelled his policy. Yet to-day
planes carrying the air-post between the cities of the Eastern seaboard
go booming down the air-lanes as regularly as express-trains and without
attracting much more attention.
The story of the airplane, so far as its relation to the American Army
is concerned, begins on the little flying-field of Fort Myer, on the
Virginia side of the Potomac, opposite Washington. In the late winter
of 1907 the Signal Corps had issued an advertisement and specifications
for a heavier-than-air flying-machine, the chief requirement being that
it must remain in the air for an hour without landing. Most of us will
remember the world-wide interest which was aroused by this promised
realization of the dream of the ages. During the trials the eyes of the
world were centred on the parade-ground at Fort Myer. The President
and the members of his cabinet were in frequent attendance and even
Congress adjourned when it was announced that a flight would take place.
The story of how the strange contrivance, looking like a combination
of a box-kite, a baby-carriage, and a windmill, which had been brought
on from Dayton by the two sober-faced brothers, was trundled out onto
the field; how, after skimming along the ground, it rose into the air
as gracefully as a swallow, and how, after fulfilling every condition
imposed by the War Department, the first machine was purchased by the
government, needs no elaboration here. The most amazing feature of the
affair, barring only the performance of the airplane itself, was the fact
that during the eight years following the demonstration at Fort Myer
_the entire appropriations by the government for military aeronautics
amounted to less than a million dollars_. Think of it, my friends!
With the secret of aerial navigation in our hands—a secret which had
been sought for by scientists all down the ages—Congress devoted less
money to its development during the first eight years than it spent on
many a post-office or government building. But the astounding apathy
which characterized our attitude toward this epoch-making invention
did not extend to the great European nations. They, always seeking to
obtain military superiority, instantly recognized the significance and
the potentialities of those early flights at Fort Myer. France, in
particular, during the next few years making marked advances in aircraft
design and construction. Thus it came about that when the war-cloud burst
over Europe in the summer of 1914 the United States, where the airplane
had its birth and where it had first demonstrated its practicability,
possessed only a few decrepit and almost obsolete training-machines,
while our fliers could almost have been numbered on the fingers of one’s
two hands. Whose was the fault for this deplorable and inexcusable
condition? A certain amount of blame undeniably attaches to the army,
for in those days many of our higher officers were graduates of the
old Indian-fighting school, who regarded with doubt and scepticism the
claim that these new-fangled flying-machines could have any real military
value. I think, however, that the real cause of the neglect in developing
the airplane could have been found in the building with the great white
dome which stands at the far end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
As a direct consequence of our systematic discouragement of airplane
development, when we entered the war there was no such thing as an
aviation industry in the United States and the number of aeronautical
engineers and designers was so small as to be practically negligible.
In this respect the problem of developing an air-fleet was unique. The
United States had built ships before, it had manufactured cannon, rifles,
ammunition, it had fed and clothed and housed armies, and it had at its
command thousands of men qualified to do these things and do them well,
but, barring a handful of experts in Dayton and Buffalo, there was no one
in this country with experience in the designing or building of either
training or fighting planes. In short, the government was faced with the
problem not merely of developing a new industry, but of _creating_ it.
* * * * *
In April, 1917, there were being built in the United States only four
makes of aircraft engines that were sufficiently developed to be of any
military value, and even these were useful only for primary training.
We had no engines suited for service on the battle-front, or, indeed,
even for the advanced training of pilots. Though the largest engine
manufactured in the United States at this time developed about 220
horse-power, it had not measured up to the exacting requirements
of combat. The other American-built engines ranged from 90 to 135
horse-power. It being evident, therefore, that the existing American
engines could be used only for purposes of preliminary instruction,
it was accordingly decided that their further manufacture should be
limited to the training requirements. As a result of this decision,
by far the greater part of the primary training of pilots has been
conducted with the Curtis 90 horse-power engine, a quantity production
of which was obtained early in the war, this engine being particularly
valuable owing to the very satisfactory training-plane which had been
designed around it. Considerable use was also made of the Hall-Scott
100 horse-power engine until the Curtiss motor could be manufactured
in sufficient numbers to meet all demands for primary training. Two
European engines, the Gnome 100 horse-power and the Hispano-Suiza 150
horse-power, were also being put into production in the United States
at this time. These engines represented the highest product of European
design and engineering skill, and were in a perfected and standardized
state, at least according to European ideas, when their manufacture was
undertaken in this country. But the changes involved in adapting them to
manufacture by American methods required so much time, and the advances
made in aeronautical engineering were so rapid, that before they could
be produced in sufficient numbers they were almost obsolete for service
on the front. These two engines were, however, of unquestioned value
for advanced training purposes, the Hispano-Suiza in particular playing
an important part in this work. Later another European engine, the 80
horse-power Rhone, was also put into production.
* * * * *
One of the serious mistakes into which the Allies had fallen at the
time the United States entered the war was the development of such a
multiplicity of types of engines and planes that it was impossible to
have a large number of any one of them. Indeed, by the spring of 1917,
there were almost as many types of planes skimming over the Western Front
as there were types of motor-cars skimming over American roads. As a
direct consequence of this condition, the trained personnel had grown to
such proportions that it was estimated that from thirty to fifty men were
required on the ground to keep each plane in the air. It was obvious,
therefore, that unless this large number of trained attendants could
be materially reduced, it would be hopeless to expect to put thousands
of fighting planes into the air within a reasonable time, for, on this
basis, 1,000 planes would require from 30,000 to 50,000 men to take care
of them. It was realized, moreover, that copies of foreign designs could
not be made available in time to answer the insistent demand that America
should put on the front an air force of overwhelming proportions.
Although, immediately upon the declaration of war, an aircraft commission
had been sent to Europe for the purpose of gathering first-hand
information, public sentiment would not have permitted the government
to sit idly by and wait with folded hands for this commission to make
its report. What the country demanded was action with a capital A. Now
it is not generally known, perhaps, that, instead of engines being
designed for certain types of aircraft, the most successful airplanes are
designed around specific engines. And, as the development of the engine
requires the greatest expenditure of effort and time, some one suggested
that, instead of waiting for the members of the commission to come home
and tell about the European engines they had seen, to manufacture which
under American conditions might well prove impracticable, an all-American
engine, combining the best features of the various European types but
particularly adapted for manufacture under domestic conditions, be
designed by the best engineering talent in the country and immediately
placed in production. At a meeting of representatives of the Signal
Corps—which then had charge of military aeronautics—and the Aircraft
Production Board it was decided to put this suggestion into immediate
execution, at the same time purchasing in Europe whatever equipment might
be available in order to tide over the period while the all-American
engine was being put into production.
At noon on May 29, Lieutenant-Colonel J. G. Vincent and
Lieutenant-Colonel E. J. Hall, two of the most brilliant automotive
engineers in America, shut themselves in a room of the New Willard Hotel
in Washington. When they left that room again on the afternoon of the
31st, though haggard from lack of sleep, they had in their hands the
completed assembly drawings of an entirely new airplane engine. Thus was
born the famous Liberty engine, about which hundreds of speeches have
been made and thousands of columns have been written in scepticism, in
criticism, and in praise. As the result of the enthusiastic co-operation
of some ten manufacturers, each of whom produced those parts for which
his factory was best fitted, the first Liberty, an 8-cylinder, was built
in thirty days. The first 12-cylinder engine completed its official
endurance test eighty-two days from the time the order for samples was
given, the unqualified success of this test removing the Liberty from the
realm of experimentation to that of established reputation. In just one
year from the day that Lieutenant-Colonels Hall and Vincent pushed the
thumb-tacks into their drawing-boards in the hotel room, 1,100 Liberty
“twelves” were produced—a remarkable illustration of the ability and
ingenuity of American engineers and the energy and resourcefulness of
American manufacturers. Thanks to the energetic co-operation of many
manufacturers, more than 14,000 Liberty engines had been completed
when the Armistice was signed. There are few finer passages in the
history of America’s participation in the war than the story of how our
manufacturers put aside their private interests and their commercial
rivalries and threw themselves and their organizations, heart and soul,
into the work of building an airplane that would make America mistress of
the skies.
When the signing of the Armistice brought our efforts to an abrupt
conclusion, there had been developed, tested, and adopted by the army
four types of airplanes, production of which would have started early
in 1919. They were the Lepere, or L. U. S. A. C. II, a two-seated
fighting-plane equipped with a Liberty engine; the U. S. De Havilland
9-A, a day-bombing and reconnaissance plane also fitted with the Liberty
engine; the huge Martin bomber, with a gross weight of nearly 5 tons,
driven by two Liberty engines; and the Loening, a two-seated combat plane
fitted with the 300 horse-power Hispano-Suiza engine.
A striking illustration of the new problems and extraordinary
ramifications incident to this great new industry which so suddenly
came into existence in the United States is the fact that it was found
necessary to despatch an agricultural expert post-haste to India to
purchase enormous quantities of castor-beans, as it was at first believed
that castor-oil was the only satisfactory lubricant for these new types
of high-speed, high-power engines. India’s stock of castor-beans being
quickly exhausted by the immensity of our demands, more than 100,000
acres of the bean were planted in the United States. Meanwhile, research
work with mineral oils was carried on intensively, a lubricant eventually
being developed which proved satisfactory in practically every airplane
engine except the rotary type, for which castor-oil is still preferred.
But the aircraft problem was by no means solved with the development
and production of the Liberty engine. Far from it. To build airplanes
requires wood; the best timber in the world is none too good; and of
suitable timber there was a comparatively limited supply. The best wood
known for airplane construction is the Sitka spruce, which combines the
required qualities of strength, resiliency, and lightness. This spruce
grows mostly in the Pacific Northwest, along the tide-lands of Washington
and Oregon, at a low elevation. But not all the planes were built of
spruce, fir, as it grows in the Northwest, being largely used for the
heavier wing-beams. Port Orford cedar was eagerly utilized whenever it
could be obtained. It is of somewhat smaller growth than spruce or fir,
but a straighter-grained wood, harder and more dense than either of the
others. Of this splendid wood there is, however, only a comparatively
small quantity, 2,000,000,000 feet, perhaps, anywhere in the world,
mostly near Coos Bay, on the coast of Oregon. Being less affected by
water than any of the other woods, it was reserved for use in seaplanes.
The government commandeered the entire supply of Port Orford cedar for
aircraft production, but released it upon the signing of the armistice.
There is plenty of suitable airplane timber—spruce, cedar, and fir—in the
Far Nor’west—miles and miles and miles of it. The mountain-slopes are
as solid a black with the evergreens as though a giant had painted them
with soot. “Massed in their black battalions stand the bleak, barbarian
pines.” Foolish men have tried to destroy these forests. Twenty years
ago a colony of Poles settled amid the virgin forests of the Olympic
Peninsula—a portion of the United States which to this day remains
virtually unexplored. Timber was not worth a dollar a million feet
then. On the chance that the ground might be tilled if the timber could
be cleared off, the settlers started a fire that burned over ten square
miles and destroyed timber which, at prevailing prices, would be worth
close to half a million dollars. The great area of blackened waste which
remains is still known as “The Polander Burn.”
Now spruce, curiously enough, had not been considered a valuable wood
for the ordinary lumber trade; the lumbermen held it a doubtful asset
that was hardly worth the cutting. As a result of this condition, the
commercial supply was neither large enough nor well enough selected and
prepared to meet our aircraft requirements when the declaration of war
suddenly made it one of the most desired and most valuable woods in
existence. Thus it came about that, the lumbermen being unable to supply
the demand, the army had to go instantly into the business of producing
this wood in theretofore undreamed-of quantities. The work of getting out
the spruce fell, rather oddly, to the men who had been among the first
to volunteer for extrahazardous service in France. Before the war, when
airplanes were looked on merely as toys of the rich, the supervision of
military aeronautics was assigned to the Signal Corps, on the assumption
that if flying had any part in warfare it would probably be that of
signalling, for which reason, and the more potent one that no other
branch of the service knew what to do with it, it had to be wished on
some one. And of all the branches of the army, possibly none save the
Flying Section of the Signal Corps—as the Air Service was then known—had
a more adventurous and devil-may-care personnel. The Signal Corps made
its original appeal to the men who wanted to get out and do things: to
be in front, to wave the little red-and-white flags under shell-fire,
to sound the long yell, to see the enemy first, to be the eyes and ears
and nerves of the whole army. But, as I have already explained, the army
had to have the spruce in order to carry out its aviation programme,
and aviation was under the Signal Corps, and it was from the Signal
Corps, therefore, that the men were drawn to go out to the Northwest and
get the spruce. Thus it came about that the boys who enlisted at the
very beginning in order that they might have the danger and excitement
of laying the field telegraphs and telephones, of dashing madly along
shell-swept roads on roaring motorcycles, of wig-wagging and semaphoring
word of the enemy’s movements from in front of the armies, were shipped
westward instead of eastward, were given axes instead of Enfields and
peaveys instead of pistols, and fought their share of the war in the
gloomy depths of the primeval forest, or on the logging railroads and in
the sawmills which they built in bitter cold and driving rain.
Labor conditions were undeniably bad in the Northwest at the beginning
of the war. There is an old proverb that “A farm lease is a conspiracy
on the part of the tenant and the absentee landlord to rob the land.”
Lumbering was almost as bad. The owners were avaricious and arrogant, the
men stubborn and defiant. The owners would not make camp improvements
because “the men would not stay on the job,” and the men would not stay
because “the owners didn’t make things decent.” And, to make things
worse, the paid German propaganda was rampant, unchecked in the woods,
for the Wilhelmstrasse fully realized how vital it was to cripple
the American air programme. Germany knew better than we did the war
possibilities of the Pacific Northwest. She couldn’t buy spruce there
for her planes, but she could mobilize her spies and trouble-makers and
hinder the production for and the delivery of spruce to the United States
and her allies. And she did her worst. Some day there will be told the
story, the “inside” story, of the campaign waged in the Great Woods by
the secret forces of Germany—a campaign consisting of strikes, I. W. W.
demonstrations, forest-fires, railway wrecks, dynamited bridges, damaged
machinery, infernal machines, shootings, systematic intimidation, and
all the other deviltries of a vicious and unscrupulous enemy. The spies
and secret agents which Germany planted in the forests of the Northwest
formed a part of the vast army of which the Kaiser boasted to Ambassador
Gerard. But the Hun made a miscalculation. There were not enough spies;
there were too many Americans.
The War Department has rarely shown greater wisdom than when it gave
a colonel’s commission to Brice P. Disque, an ex-captain of Regulars
who had left the army to accept the wardenship of the Michigan State
Prison, and put him in charge of spruce production. Captain Disque had
his blanket-roll packed and aboard ship for service in France when he
was called to Washington, just as the transport was setting sail, and
ordered to go to the Northwest and investigate lumbering conditions. His
report showed that the right man had been found to direct the Titanic
job of getting out the spruce; he was commissioned a colonel and later a
brigadier-general, and the story of the spruce production tells the rest.
To the tact and vision of General Disque is due the creation of that
remarkable organization known as the Loyal Legion of Loggers and
Lumbermen, an association conceived to bring capital and labor together
in one mighty machine driven solely by patriotism. Under the inspiration
thus provided, both sides agreed to submit their differences to the
United States Army, as represented in the person of General Disque,
as final arbiter. The eight-hour day was agreed to; camp sanitation
and better living conditions of every kind were demanded; a uniformly
liberal wage-scale for all classes of labor was adopted; a standard mess
was arranged to check the inordinate waste of food in the lumber-camps;
the owners were given profitable prices for their output under the new
conditions, and the small men were assured of receiving a square deal
from their powerful corporate rivals. Some of these questions were
settled through regular military channels, but most of them through the
medium of the L. L. L. L. Once a matter could be shown to be reasonable
and fair to every one concerned, it was officially adopted, as by a
majority vote, and business as well as patriotic reasons demanded that
every one should cheerfully acquiesce in the decision. The Loyal Legion
works—for it has been made permanent—through its local assemblies; any
local disagreement is taken to the district council—which is formed
from local representatives of both employer and employees, there being
eight of these district councils in the Coast Division and four in the
Inland Empire. Any question which cannot be settled by a district council
goes to the Central Council, composed of one employer and one employee
from each district; while General Disque, as the head of the Legion,
has been the final arbitrator in such questions as the Central Council
could not settle. Since this plan was definitely adopted, however, so
strong a spirit of patriotic fairness has been developed on both sides
that nothing has gone to him for settlement or revision. Nothing could
more strongly emphasize the success of the Legion, which now has a
membership of nearly 130,000, than the fact that at a mass convention,
held shortly after the signing of the Armistice, at which more than 900
local councils were represented, it was voted almost unanimously to
perpetuate the organization, to continue the publication of its official
bulletin, and to invite General Disque to continue as the Legion’s head.
Were the people of the Pacific Northwest to receive no other reward
for their sacrifices in the war, they have reason to feel amply repaid
by the creation of the Loyal Legion and the resultant ending of the
long-standing feud between capital and labor, the expulsion of the I. W.
W.’s and similar discordant and dangerous elements, the betterment of
working and living conditions for the lumbermen, and the commencement of
an era of peace and prosperity in the Great Woods.
* * * * *
Unless you have been in the Northwest during the rainy season you can
have no adequate conception of the difficulties under which the spruce
squadrons labored. The coastal districts of Oregon and Washington have
one of the heaviest rainfalls recorded anywhere on earth. Unkind people
have said of the Pacific Northwest that it has but two seasons—the rainy
season and August. But that is an exaggeration. The local newspapers
alternately boast of and apologize for the reputed 180 inches, or
15 feet, of annual precipitation. With that as a basis for one’s
calculations, the old man who sold the town site of Simescarey, the
terminus of the spruce road which the government has built into the
Olympic Peninsula, has had 450 feet of water descend upon his head—for
the inhabitants of that region scorn umbrellas—in the thirty years that
he has resided there. After a winter spent in the Northwest—and having
passed one there, I know whereof I speak—one might easily believe that
the sentry at an Oregon spruce-camp was not joking when he came in to the
commanding officer to report the damages done by the rain.
“Sir,” he apologized, “I don’t like to be a pessimist, but things
ain’t going right to-day. Most of the fish in the lake are dead since
last night’s rain. The lake raised so fast that some of ’em got beyond
their depth and was just naturally drowned; the rest couldn’t swim up
fast enough, and bein’ surface fish and not used to much depth, their
bladders busted and there ain’t a fit fish left in the whole bunch. Every
duck but one is dead, too; the rain beat their heads into a mush—all but
the one that got caught in a steel trap set for a muskrat and that saved
his life—he stayed under water where it was dry. Believe me, sir, that
was the wettest rain last night I ever see.”
* * * * *
Because, as I have already explained, the lumbermen did not consider
spruce a profitable wood to handle, few of the spruce forests had been
penetrated by railroads. So Disque and his Legionaries set out to build
railways themselves—13 lines with more than 300 miles of trackage.
The forests tapped by these new lines and their branches have, it is
estimated, an ultimate production of 33,000,000,000 feet of lumber, a
quantity almost beyond the comprehension of the human brain. In order to
visualize it, it must be translated into commonplace, every-day terms.
Let us assume that it requires 20,000 feet of lumber to build an average
5 or 6 room house. Taking this as a basis, the railways built by Disque
and his spruce squadrons have brought within the reach of commerce enough
timber to build almost 2,000,000 of these comfortable American homes,
with sufficient waste wood to keep them heated for a generation. When
the war ended, 174,000,000 feet of aircraft lumber had been cut and
shipped—enough to build dwellings for the inhabitants of a good-sized
city.
The government planned to have all the airplane stock from the Northwest
cut at the one great cut-up plant at Vancouver, near Portland. This
huge mill, the largest in the world, was built by the army in forty-five
days and has handled more than a million and a half feet of lumber in
twenty-four hours. But with the extension of the airplane programme,
whereby the Spruce Division was called upon to furnish stock for all
the Allies, more capacity was required and three other great plants of
almost equal size were planned, one being ready for opening, one almost
completed, and one projected when the Armistice was signed. These four
huge mills would, it is estimated, have furnished the United States and
her allies with close to 100,000,000 feet of airplane lumber a month.
The silent, peaceful forests of the Northwest seemed separated from the
war by a million miles, a score of generations. But when the word was
flashed from Washington to Disque to “Go ahead,” the primeval silence
of the woods was suddenly shattered by a million bellowing echoes of
battle. The war had come to America. Almost overnight the battle-front
moved 6,000 miles westward—from the forests of the Argonne to the forests
of Oregon. The trucks were brought in—endless caravans of grunting,
straining monsters; the soldiers came, 30,000 in all; the loggers,
graders, hard-rock men, sawyers, surveyors, engineers; the pile-drivers,
the donkey-engines, the steam-shovels perched on wheels, the train-loads
of food and tools and powder; the patient, sweating horses and the
creaking wagons, thousands upon thousands of them. The wood roads were
black with traffic; they fairly smoked with the fierce fight for speed.
The highways were dust in the early fall, where the 5 or 15 ton loads
ground the roads to powder. Then the wet weather came—fogs, mists,
drizzles, showers, floods—the rainy season that grows the incomparable
forests of the Northwest.
They splashed through it all, soldiers and Legionaries alike; they waded,
they swam, they shivered and swore, and beat their hands over the brush
fires—but the stream of supplies never stopped nor checked. The railway
gangs, following close on the heels of the axemen, laid their twin lines
of steel through the dripping forest faster than Kitchener laid down his
desert railway to Khartoum, the locomotives crawling one mile, two miles,
deeper into the wilderness each night. Night and day the forest trails
were busy. Shuttling back and forth, loaded both ways with materials
and men, teams and trucks and trains struggled for speed. Headlights,
lanterns, shouted warnings, guided the night traffic along the sombre,
shut-in ways. Clankings, clatterings, gasoline coughings, the honk of
horns and the hoot of locomotives filled the air. The silent forest
became a bedlam of sound, of action.
The spruce! The fir! The wings of victory! Berlin heard it, saw it first.
The splitting blasts that showered the forest lakes with stones, the
shouting, heaving din of the construction-camps, the crash of the trees
as they fell before the axe and saw of the woodsmen, the whine of the
cables through the sheaves as the huge logs were snaked into position for
loading, the rumble and roar of the heavy-laden log-trains, the shriek
of the giant saws in the mills—all these sounds fell upon the listening
ears at German Great Headquarters with a growing menace, as ominous as
the tattoo of the machine-guns, as the thunderous blast of the great
Allied cannon, as the victorious cheers of the charging Yanks. They meant
that the spruce was coming! The planes were coming! A few months more and
the boasted Hindenburg Line would be a joke. The Germans knew that they
could not build trenches in the clouds. That was the real reason why they
were attacked by yellow fever in the fall of 1918.
* * * * *
The engines and the planes themselves being in production, the next
problem to be solved by the War Department was to provide our new aerial
navy with armament in the form of machine-guns. Fighting in the air,
it should be remembered, is entirely a development of the Great War,
the adaptation of machine-guns for airplane use having practically all
taken place since 1914. Though the records show that a machine-gun was
successfully fired from an airplane in this country in 1912, and though
the French had a few heavy planes fitted with mitrailleuses at the
outbreak of the war, it was not until 1915 that machine-guns were carried
by planes on active service. Prior to that time aviators depended on
service and automatic rifles, pistols, shotguns shooting large shot held
together by wires—miniature editions of the chain-shot used by early
sea-fighters—and also carried darts and grenades to drop on the enemy.
As a matter of fact, in one of the first aerial combats of the war,
which took place on the Eastern Front between a Russian aviator and an
Austrian, weapons were not used at all. The Russian determined to wreck
his adversary and, in pursuance of this plan, so manœuvred his plane
that the tips of his wings were just beneath the wings of the Austrian.
He then suddenly elevated that end of his plane, hoping to upset the
Austrian, but the result was that both machines collided and fell to
the ground. Major Eric T. Bradley, formerly in the British Army but now
an officer of the American Air Service, tells of having flown over the
lines in 1915 armed with a twelve-gauge double-barrel shotgun loaded with
buckshot tied together with wire, which swished through the air like the
lash of a whip and occasionally hit something—usually by chance.
The development of methods for controlling machine-guns so that they
can be fired through the area traversed by the propeller has had a vast
effect on aerial combat, and an understanding of the problems involved
is necessary in order to appreciate the difficulties which had to be
overcome. The various devices which have been developed for controlling
the fire of a machine-gun so as to cause the bullets to miss the blades
of the propeller are commonly known as synchronizing or interrupter
gears. These terms are, however, somewhat inaccurate, as it is only
occasionally that the speed of the propeller is equal to the rate of fire
of the gun, which is the condition of synchronization; moreover, the gun
is not interrupted, but is caused to fire at the proper moment so that
the bullet will miss the propeller-blade. “Gun control” would be a more
descriptive name for the device.
Tractor airplanes—those which have the engine and propeller in front—were
early found to be better suited to combat work than planes of the
“pusher” type, which have the propeller behind, because they possess
greater manœuvring powers and are better able to defend themselves. With
these planes was developed the fixed aircraft machine-gun. This gun is
fixed rigidly to the plane, pointing straight ahead, parallel to the
line of flight. The first fixed guns were mounted on the upper plane so
as to shoot over the arc described by the propeller, but these were not
satisfactory owing to the difficulty in reloading the gun. To overcome
this very obvious disadvantage the gun was lowered, which brought its
line of fire inside the arc described by the propeller blades. Thus arose
the difficulty caused by shooting into the propeller, to solve which
countless experiments were made and numerous expedients tried. At first
the blades were armored at the points where the bullets would strike,
with steel of a shape calculated to cause the bullets to glance off,
but this system was never satisfactory. Then the experiment was tried
of wrapping the propeller with linen to keep it from splintering, as it
was found that several bullets could be fired through a propeller thus
treated without causing it to break. Throughout the summer of 1915 all of
the Nieuport fighting-planes used by the French were fitted with fixed
guns shooting through the propeller—if a bullet hit the propeller it
either went through it or it wrecked it.
There is considerable disagreement as to who invented the device for
controlling the fire of a machine-gun so as not to strike the blade of
the propeller, but it is admitted that the Germans were the first to
make any extensive use of it, introducing it on the Fokker monoplanes,
which caused so much damage on the Western Front in 1915. Shortly
thereafter the Allies adopted similar devices. When the United States
entered the war neither the Ordnance Department nor the Aviation Section
of the Signal Corps had had any experience worthy of the name with
aircraft guns. And if they were ill-informed on the subject of guns,
they were appallingly ignorant on the subject of gun controls. A few
months of study and experiments served to materially increase the War
Department’s knowledge along these lines, however, and by the time the
planes were ready to receive the guns we had adopted a device known
as the Constantinisco control. I should explain, perhaps, that there
are two distinct types of gun control, both of which were in use when
hostilities ceased. One is hydraulic, the other mechanical. The operation
of both types is somewhat similar. In each case a cam mounted on the
shaft of the engine actuates a plunger which in turn operates the rest
of the mechanism. In the mechanical gun control the impulse of the cam
is transmitted to the gun through a series of rods, causing the gun to
fire at the exact moment when there is no propeller-blade in front of
the muzzle. In the hydraulic type the impulse of the cam is transmitted
to the gun through a system of copper tubes containing oil under high
pressure. The hydraulic control, known as the Constantinisco, was adopted
for use on American planes, particularly the De Havilland 4, which
carries two fixed Marlins, each firing at the rate of 650 shots a minute.
By employing the maximum rate of fire, 1,300 shots could be fired in
a minute through the blades of the propeller, which would make 1,600
revolutions in the same space of time—without the blades being struck by
a single bullet.
A machine-gun intended for aerial use must be absolutely reliable in
operation. If a gun jams on the ground there is usually time to overhaul
it or to replace it. Not so in the air. There a jam or a malfunction
is almost certain to prove disastrous, if not fatal, to the gunner,
who is left completely at the mercy of his adversary. An aircraft gun
must also function properly in any position in which it is likely to be
placed by the manœuvres of the plane. Likewise, an intensely high rate
of fire is essential. For groundwork 500 shots per minute is reckoned
as sufficient for the machine-gun, for a higher rate of fire would only
result in several bullets hitting the same man. But a considerably higher
rate of fire—up to 1,000 shots a minute, in fact—is demanded of aircraft
guns, this being necessitated by the great speed at which airplanes
move. The gunner, remember, can train on his target for only a few
seconds, sometimes for only a fraction of a second, at a time, and it is
essential, therefore, that he should have at his command the greatest
possible volume of fire. Do you appreciate that, were an airplane flying
parallel to, say, a high board fence, at a speed of 100 miles an hour,
and shooting at right angles at that fence with a gun firing 880 shots a
minute, _the bullet-marks on the fence would be ten feet apart_?
Single-seater machines carry only fixed guns, which are mounted with
the barrel parallel to the axis of the airplane. These guns, which are
synchronized so as to shoot through the propeller, are put into action by
a trigger on the “joy-stick” of the plane and are aimed by pointing the
entire airplane at the enemy. Flexible guns are used only on two-place
machines, being operated by the observer or gunner. They are carried
on the Universal mount, which permits of the gun being pointed in any
direction. All of the flexible aircraft guns used by the Allies were
based on the principle of the Lewis gun, the invention of a retired
American army officer, Colonel Isaac Lewis. The chief difference between
the ground and aircraft models is that in the latter the cooling radiator
is eliminated, as aircraft guns are never fired continuously for any
length of time.
When the United States entered the war the Vickers was the only type
of fixed gun in use on either English or French planes and was used
on all the planes which General Pershing bought in France. When the
Equipment Division of the Signal Corps faced the machine-gun situation
in September, 1917, it was alarmed to find that the entire production of
Vickers in the United States had already been contracted for to supply
the imperative requirements of the infantry. There was another gun on the
market at this time, however—the Marlin—and toward its development for
aircraft use the officers of the Signal Corps bent all their energies.
Though the Marlin was adopted in the face of violent opposition, it
resulted in providing sufficient fixed guns to arm the American planes,
the wisdom of the action being proved by the fact that up to the time of
the Armistice no other fixed guns were ready for delivery. The Marlin
has been adapted to all American-built planes which carry fixed or
synchronized guns, over 37,000 having been produced up to December, 1918.
This gun shoots .30-calibre ammunition at the rate of 600 to 650 shots a
minute and is fed from a belt of the disintegrating metal-link type. In
December, 1917, the first order was placed for Lewis aircraft guns, over
39,000 of them being delivered to the American Air Service within the
following twelvemonth. A notable improvement in the aircraft model of the
Lewis gun was an increase in the depth of the magazine pan, so that each
magazine holds 97 cartridges instead of 47 as previously. The Browning
aircraft machine-gun was just coming into production when the war ended.
This weapon embodies the best features of every known machine-gun and
would probably have replaced all other types in use. It is a belt-fed gun
of the recoil type—both the Marlin and Lewis are gas-operated—is as near
fool-proof as a machine-gun can be made, and has the amazing rate of fire
of 950 shots a minute. Of it the inventor is said to have remarked: “If
it had four more parts it could play a tune; if it had seven more parts
it could talk.”
The ammunition for fixed aircraft guns, such as the Marlin and Browning,
is carried in belts containing a maximum of 500 rounds. In the earlier
days of the war these belts were of woven web, but it was found that
taking care of them, when empty, in the limited space of the fuselage,
was always a source of annoyance and not infrequently a source of danger
to the aviator. To remedy this a belt was designed and furnished to
the American Expeditionary Forces which consisted of small metallic
links held together by the cartridges themselves. As the gun fires, the
links drop apart, chutes being provided so that they fall clear of the
airplane. Another minor though interesting feature of aircraft armament
is the small electric heater which is now provided for the purpose of
keeping the gun warm and thus preventing the oil from congealing in high
altitudes.
Efforts to make the bursts of fire from aircraft guns of maximum
effectiveness have led to the development of three distinct types of
ammunition—tracer, armor-piercing, and incendiary. The tracer type of
ammunition was developed to assist the gunner in correcting his aim, and
is equally useful by night or day, as the course of the bullet can be
traced by a trail of white smoke in the daytime and by a bright spark at
night. Armor-piercing ammunition has a projectile consisting of a hard
steel core with a soft nickel casing. The object of this ammunition, as
its name implies, is to pierce any of the metallic parts of an enemy
plane, particularly the gasoline-tanks or the engine, the soft nickel
casing acting as a lubricant and preventing the steel core from glancing
off. Incendiary ammunition is loaded with yellow phosphorus. When the
cartridge is fired the rifling in the barrel of the machine-gun opens a
small hole in the case of the projectile, thus permitting the phosphorus
to come in contact with the air, whereupon it immediately ignites and
sets fire to any inflammable part of a plane which it may hit. It is
customary to load the belts or pans of aircraft machine-guns with these
three types of special ammunition in a certain sequence, depending upon
the notions of the pilot himself. A sequence commonly used was, first,
the tracer cartridge, which assisted the gunner in correcting his aim;
next, two or three armor-piercing cartridges, in the hope that they would
pierce the enemy’s gasoline-tank or damage his engine; and then one or
two incendiary cartridges, which if the gasoline-tank was pierced would
ignite the leaking gasoline and set fire to the machine. This sequence
was continued throughout the loading of the belt or pan.
Another branch of sky warfare which was being rapidly developed was
aerial bombing. Though bombs of a sort were used by Italian aviators
against the Arabs during the Libyan campaign, and by American soldiers
of fortune serving with the Villista forces in northern Mexico, these
attempts were so amateurish and ineffective as to merit no serious
consideration. It may be said that the first bombs dropped from an
aircraft in the history of warfare were those loosed from the German
Zeppelin which raided Antwerp in August, 1914. I speak with a certain
personal knowledge of my subject, for the first bomb dropped on the night
in question exploded less than a hundred yards from the window in which
I was sitting, demolishing a house and killing three persons.
Many people seem to be under the impression that bomb-dropping is about
as simple as dropping a brick out of an upper-story window onto the head
of a man beneath. This is not so. As a matter of fact, it is extremely
difficult to drop a bomb from an airplane so that it will hit a desired
target, for, owing to the speed at which the plane travels, the bomb when
released does not drop to the ground vertically, but falls in a parabolic
curve, something like that described by a man who jumps from a street-car
when it is in motion. For this reason the bomb must be released some
moments before the airplane is directly over the target, the ability of
an aviator to determine the exact moment to pull his release mechanism
being acquired only through long experience. Bomb-sights have recently
been perfected, however, which have largely eliminated this element of
chance. These sights have numerical scales mathematically calculated,
so that when adjusted for height, air-speed as shown by the air-speed
indicator, and calculated speed of the wind with or against the airplane,
two sighting points are moved into such a position that if the bomb is
dropped when the desired target comes in line with them, it will reach
its objective—provided, of course, the aviator has made his calculations
and set his sights correctly. All this sounds rather complicated, I
know, and it _is_ complicated, but if the pilot uses the sight correctly
his chances of hitting his target are enormously increased. All bombing
planes are fitted with quick-release mechanisms, which hold the bombs
firmly in a vertical or horizontal position, according to the type and
size carried. On the smaller bombing planes, such as the De Havilland
4, the release mechanisms are placed underneath the fuselage or the
lower wings, but on the large types, such as the Handley-Page, the bombs
are carried inside the fuselage. By a quick jerk of a lever the pilot
releases his bomb precisely as a hangman, by jerking a lever, drops the
trap on which the condemned man stands. And the consequences are usually
much the same in both cases.
[Illustration: BOMBING PRACTICE.
An illustration of how the enemy’s lines of communication can be
destroyed by bombs dropped from airplanes.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: EGGS OF DEATH.
Attaching dummy bombs to the rack of a bombing plane.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: PIGEONS HAVE BEEN REPEATEDLY USED WITH SUCCESS FROM BOTH
AIRPLANES AND BALLOONS.]
[Illustration: THE EYE IN THE SKY; AN AIRPLANE CAMERA IN OPERATION.
During the offensive in the Argonne the American Photographic Sections
made 100,000 aerophotographs of battle lines in four days.
_Photograph by U. S. Air Service._]
There were three distinct types of bombs—demolition, fragmentation,
and incendiary—in use by the American Air Service when the war ended.
American demolition bombs are made in 50, 100, 250, 500, and 1,000 pound
weights, the 100 and 250 pound sizes being used chiefly. These bombs
consist of a light steel casing filled with TNT or other high explosive
and a detonator separated from the explosive by a safety-pin. When the
bomb is released from the airplane the safety-pin is automatically pulled
out, permitting the detonator to slide down into such a position that the
bomb will explode the instant it strikes the ground. These demolition
bombs are primarily designed for use against buildings, fortifications,
and other heavy structures where a high-explosive charge is desired. Had
the war continued long enough to have permitted of our aviators letting
loose a few 1,000-pound bombs on some of the trans-Rhine strongholds,
the Germans would have learned what the San Francisco earthquake was
like. Fragmentation bombs are considerably smaller, the size most
frequently used weighing twenty pounds. They have a thicker case than the
demolition bombs and are constructed so as to explode a few inches above
the ground. These bombs are for use against troops in trenches or in the
open and depend upon the scattering of the fragments for their effect.
Incendiary bombs weigh about fifty pounds and contain charges of oil
emulsion, thermite, and metallic sodium, which burn for several minutes
with the intense heat of a plumber’s blow-lamp. They are used against
ammunition-depots, storehouses, and other structures of inflammable
construction, the purpose of the metallic sodium being to discourage
the efforts of any one who attempts to put out the fire, as it explodes
violently when water is poured on it.
Comparatively few persons realize, I suppose, that fireworks almost
identical with those we used to set off on the Fourth of July in the good
old days before the safe-and-sane laws went into effect are utilized
in aerial warfare and form a valuable and often vital asset for the
aviator. Most of these aerial pyrotechnics resemble in their effects
the colored lights and the Roman candles of our childhood and are used
for signalling from the airplane to the ground and vice versa, or from
one plane to others in the air at the same time. For this purpose every
active service airplane carries one or more signalling pistols, depending
upon the number of the crew. These rather formidable-appearing weapons,
which look not unlike the big-barrelled affairs the pirates were wont
to carry in their scarlet sashes, are similar to the Very pistols used
in the trenches; their ammunition consists of cartridges very similar
to shotgun shells, but larger, containing stars of various colors, like
those in Roman candles, and the necessary powder charge to eject the
stars. Three colors, red, green, and white, are furnished, the color of
the star being indicated on the base of the cartridge, which is also
serrated in such a manner that the aviator can tell the color by touch
when flying at night. By different combinations of these colors an almost
endless variety of signals can be conveyed. One of the strangest and most
fascinating night sights on the Western Front was to see these countless
stars, scarlet, yellow, emerald, shot from invisible airplanes, drifting
across the purple velvet of the sky. The stars are clearly visible in
the daytime and were used for many purposes, such as indicating the
position of enemy troops, the presence of hostile aircraft, requests for
assistance from other planes, and as a means of transmitting orders from
the leader of a squadron to other machines in formation. At night the
signalling pistol is of exceptional value in aiding the aviator to effect
a safe landing. When approaching his home-field the pilot fires a light
of a prearranged color, and if answered by a light of a proper color from
the ground, he knows that the field is clear of obstructions and other
machines and safe to land on. Pilots have also used their signalling
pistols for firing into their gasoline-tanks and thus setting fire to
their machines when forced to land in enemy territory. There are also a
few cases on record of the pilot being able to hold enemy soldiers at bay
with his signalling pistol long enough to prevent them from extinguishing
the fire.
Night-flying is one of the most hazardous duties of the aviator,
the chief danger being in the difficulty of making a safe landing.
Night-landing fields are, as a rule, well illuminated by flood-lights,
but near the front this was not always advisable or safe, and, owing to
the difficulty of judging the distance of the machine above the ground in
the darkness, accidents were by no means uncommon. In order to minimize
this danger there was developed the “wing-tip flare,” which consists of a
small cylinder of magnesium material in a metallic holder, one of which
is fitted under each lower wing of the plane. The flares are ignited by
an electric current and are controlled by push-buttons, one for each
flare, in the pilot’s cockpit. In making a night-landing, when the pilot
judges the plane to be but a few feet above the ground, he presses one
of the buttons. The flare instantly ignites and for about fifty seconds
burns with a light of approximately 20,000 candle-power, which, reflected
on the ground by the under surface of the wing, enables the pilot to
judge his distance and effect his landing without trouble.
The requirements of night-bombing have led to the development of a
new and very interesting form of pyrotechnic known as the “airplane
flare.” This flare, which weighs thirty-five pounds, is contained in a
cylindrical case of sheet-iron about four feet long and five inches in
diameter. The flare consists of an illuminating charge, capable of giving
32,000 candle-power for approximately ten minutes, which is attached to a
silk parachute twenty feet in diameter. The cylinder is attached to the
airplane by a light release mechanism similar to those used for holding
bombs. On the end of the cylinder is a small pinwheel, which, revolved by
the rush of air as the released cylinder hurtles downward, ignites the
illuminating charge and at the same time detonates a small black-powder
charge sufficient to eject the flare and its tightly rolled parachute
from the case. The parachute immediately opens and the burning flare
descends very slowly, illuminating a large area of territory underneath
almost as brightly as though it were day. These flares were used
particularly for night-bombing raids, the pilots thus being enabled to
illuminate the objectives so that they could accurately drop their bombs.
On several occasions, when raiding airplanes were met by heavy fire from
the enemy’s antiaircraft batteries, it was found that the light from
these flares was so dazzling as to make it impossible for the gunners to
take accurate aim. So wide is the radius illuminated by these flares, and
so intense their light, that it has been found possible by their aid to
obtain aero photographs of excellent detail even on the darkest nights.
I can personally vouch for the amazing brilliancy of these flares, for I
saw one dropped by the Germans during one of their air-raids on Paris in
the summer of 1918. It apparently landed on the Pont Alexandre III or in
the Seine, yet both banks of the river, the façades of the Grand and the
Petit Palais, and the Champ Elysées for several blocks in both directions
were almost as bright as though illuminated by a midday sun. Standing
alone in the Cours de la Reine, I had the feeling that the Kaiser’s
eye was on me and that, having discovered me, he intended to drop upon
me one of his steel visiting-cards. The brilliancy and unexpectedness
of the glare reminded me of boyhood days in the Thousand Islands, when
the captain of the _Island Wanderer_, making his nightly excursions
amid the clustered, cottage-dotted isles, took keen delight in suddenly
turning the beam of his powerful search-light upon some affectionate pair
love-making on the shore.
* * * * *
It has been said that the airplane is the eye of the army, and it is
equally true that the camera is the eye of the airplane. Nothing more
strikingly emphasizes the enormous importance attached to pictures taken
from the air, showing the progress of the operations, than the fact that,
during the offensive in the Argonne, the American photographic sections
made _one hundred thousand aero photographs of the battle-lines in four
days_.
As aerial photography was an entirely new military subject at the
outbreak of the war in 1914, there were no precedents to act as guides,
nor was there any special apparatus in existence. Consequently, the
entire art of aerial photography was developed and brought to its present
state of perfection by the Allies under the incentive of military
necessity and after the war had begun. As trench warfare made aerial
photography not only important but vital to the success of any proposed
operations, the changes and improvements in the apparatus employed
came with incredible rapidity, practices employed one week becoming
obsolete the next. By April, 1917, the British Air Service alone had
issued approximately 280,000 prints, and this number was equalled, if
not surpassed, by the French _Section Photographique_. At the beginning
of the war it was possible to fly at low altitudes and secure reasonably
satisfactory pictures with such cameras, plates, and lenses as were then
available. But as antiaircraft artillery was developed, the planes were
forced to climb higher to keep out of their range, and owing to the
necessity for longer-focus lenses, special plates, and color filters to
overcome the haze existing between the camera and the earth, photography
at these high altitudes became increasingly difficult.
When the United States entered the war the British, French, and Italians
were using plates exclusively and we followed their lead, it not being
until some months later that we turned to films. At this time the British
were using 4 × 5 plates, and cameras equipped with lenses of from 8 to
12 inch focus. Instead of making contact prints from these negatives,
enlargements 6½ × 8½ were made on glossy paper, it being claimed that
this process gave greater control in printing. Whether the British system
really had all the advantages claimed for it is open to question, but in
any event we adopted it and followed it through the first nine months
of the war. The great masters of photography in Rochester were by no
means content to let another nation set the pace for the United States,
however, and in January, 1918, a concern in that city completed a very
remarkable aero camera, radically different from anything which had been
seen in Europe up to that time, which was promptly adopted by the War
Department. This camera, which took an 18-cm. by 24-cm. picture, had a
focal length of 20 inches, held a roll of film on which 100 successive
exposures could be made, and weighed only 35 pounds. Its most novel
feature was the “vacuum back,” consisting of a perforated sheet which
extended across the top of the chamber and over the face of which the
film passed. A slight air-suction, produced by a Venturi tube placed
where it would catch the rush of air past the plane, served to hold the
film absolutely flat—for the slightest curvature of its surface would
play havoc with the perspective of a picture taken from a height, say, of
10,000 feet. This ingenious instrument was driven by an electric motor
which changed the film and automatically set the shutter, the observer
having only to start the machinery going and regulate its speed according
to the rate of travel of the airplane in order to obtain a series of
pictures forming a continuous photograph of the territory over which the
machine was passing.
Another picturesque phase of aerial photography of which the public was
permitted to know next to nothing was the so-called “gun camera,” the
invention of Thornton Pickard, of Altringham, England. This camera,
which was designed for the purpose of training aerial gunners, imitated
as closely as possible a Marlin aircraft machine-gun, and in order to
make a picture it was necessary for the operator to go through the same
movements as in firing a Marlin gun. The picture was made through a
circular graticule synchronized with the sight on the fixed machine-gun,
so if the film, upon being developed, showed that the gunner had scored
a “hit” with the camera, he would have been equally successful with an
actual machine-gun. The gun cameras as developed in the United States
were of two kinds: one, using a regular Brownie film, took one picture
each time the trigger was pulled; the other, which was virtually a
motion-picture camera so constructed as to exactly replace the magazine
on a Lewis gun, gave a “burst” of exposure with a rapidity equalling
that of a machine-gun firing a burst of shots, and was used for training
aviators in the handling of their flexibly mounted Lewis guns. The
resulting film, or bromide print, consisted of a string of silhouettes
of the supposed enemy plane, each with an image of the gun-sights
superimposed to show where the gun was held, with reference to the
target, at the instant the picture was taken.
The enormous numbers of pictures taken from the skies necessitated a
corresponding development and manufacture of travelling dark rooms,
seventy-five complete units of these machines being built and shipped
overseas. These consisted of mobile photo laboratories, having all the
equipment necessary for the rapid production of prints in the field,
for when important operations are in progress it is imperative that the
aero photographs reach the staff at the earliest possible moment after
they are taken. The dark rooms, which were mounted on trucks, were
equipped with apparatus for generating the current used in the lamps
and enlargers, while trailers were fitted with sinks, tanks, enlarging
cameras, and other necessary photographic apparatus. The fact should not
be overlooked, moreover, that provision had to be made for training the
vast and for the most part inexperienced personnel of the photographic
sections in the countless new and peculiar phases of taking pictures from
the skies.
In considering the development of military aeronautics it must be borne
in mind that the maximum altitudes attained by airplanes increased
enormously during the war. In 1914 the record for altitude was 26,246
feet, or slightly less than five miles. By January, 1919, the record had
been raised to 30,500 feet, an increase of more than four-fifths of a
mile. In 1915 the Western Front pilots worked at 7,000 feet without fear
of attack from the ground, and few machines flew at heights of more than
10,000 feet. In fact, the “ceiling” with the early equipment was about
12,000 feet. In the closing months of the war, however, as a result of
the development of the antiaircraft artillery, it became necessary for
aviators to climb to 15,000 feet over the enemy lines, and tactics of the
air made that machine safest which could fly highest.
Now it may not have occurred to you that the higher you ascend the
greater becomes the decrease in atmospheric pressure. At 19,000 feet
the pressure of the atmosphere is one-half the pressure at sea-level.
That means that a given amount of air in the lungs of an aviator flying
at that height gives only half the oxygen that it would were he on the
ground. It is, then, the lack of oxygen, and not, as many suppose, the
low pressure itself, which makes men weak and slow of action at high
altitudes. Though these facts have been determined by medical research,
it is a curious phase of the flyer’s psychology that most aviators laugh
at the idea. Yet any one who has crossed the Rockies or ascended one of
the Alpine peaks by funicular has noticed that as the altitude increases
the breathing becomes quicker and deeper, the heart beats faster and
faster. But though the pilot may, as he asserts, continue to feel
perfectly fit and well, he is not as efficient as when near the ground.
His reactions become slower, he is less prompt to judge distances, to
aim his guns, to fire, to manœuvre his plane—and this despite the fact
that he is usually quite unconscious of any impairment of his faculties.
He will feel dizzy but perfectly happy—autointoxication, I believe the
doctors call it—whereas, as a matter of fact, he has lost his judgment;
and if he attempts to stay at these altitudes he will gradually pass into
a condition of partial and sometimes total unconsciousness, lose control
of his machine, and come crashing to the earth.
The imperative necessity of maintaining flyers at the highest possible
efficiency was brought home to the aviation authorities through studying
the reports of English air-casualties during the first year of the war.
The records divided these as follows: 2 per cent were due to the enemy,
8 per cent were due to the plane, and 90 per cent were due to the men,
which clearly indicated that something was radically wrong with the
personnel and that prompt action was necessary. A thorough study of the
situation disclosed the fact that practically all of the flying personnel
was suffering from what is known to scientists as oxygen fatigue,
caused by flying for many hours a day at high altitudes where there
was not enough oxygen to feed the body. As a result of this discovery,
Lieutenant-Colonel Dreyer, of the Royal Army Medical Corps, designed an
oxygen apparatus for use by the British air forces, the manufacture of
which was immediately begun in Paris. So pressing was the need for these
apparatus that an automobile was kept waiting at the plant where they
were being manufactured to rush each one to the front as soon as it was
finished.
An original model of this apparatus was brought to the United States
shortly after we entered the war, but as it was made entirely by hand,
it had to be redesigned to meet our manufacturing conditions. The
perfected oxygen equipment, as used in the American Air Service, consists
of a small tank, or tanks, according to the amount of oxygen carried,
a pressure device, a face-mask covering the mouth and nose, and a tube
connecting the mask with the oxygen reservoir. The American mask has
combined with it the interphone whereby the pilot and observer can
converse with each other while in the air and, in certain cases, the
receiver of the radio telephone. In May, 1918, six complete apparatus
were sent overseas by special messenger to be tried out under battle
conditions, and when the war ended 5,000 had been manufactured and
accepted. All American military planes flying at an altitude of over
10,000 feet are now fitted for the installation of oxygen equipment.
This includes day-bombing, pursuit, and chase planes, and a percentage
of night-bombing and observation machines. So much importance was
attached by the military authorities to supplying our flying-men with
oxygen that a special oxygen division was organized and sent to France
for the purpose of installing the apparatus in the planes. Yet, as I
have previously remarked, the flyers themselves persist in regarding the
apparatus, probably because of the discomfort involved in wearing it,
with amused scepticism.
* * * * *
Of all the inventions which have sprung from the war, none is more
amazing, to my way of thinking, than the radio telephone. Think of
standing on the ground and holding a conversation in a normal tone of
voice with an aviator so high in the sky that you cannot see his airplane
with the naked eye. Think of it! Before we entered the war, any one
save a handful of enthusiastic scientists would have ridiculed such a
suggestion, yet to-day, at any one of a score of flying-fields, you can
sit at an office desk and converse with aviators in the clouds as easily
as though you were sitting opposite them at a dinner-table.
[Illustration: RADIO TELEPHONE APPARATUS IN OPERATION ON AN AIRPLANE.
The pilot and observer are able to talk to each other through the same
instrument by means of which they communicate with the ground.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: PRESIDENT WILSON TALKING WITH AN AVIATOR IN THE CLOUDS BY
MEANS OF THE RADIO TELEPHONE.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: A RANGE-FINDER FOR ASCERTAINING THE ALTITUDE AND SPEED OF
AIRPLANES.
One of the most remarkable inventions of the war. This instrument not
only ascertains the altitude and position of an airplane but by means of
an electric connection automatically sets the sights on the antiaircraft
gun.]
The enormous advantage which such an invention would give to the army
possessing it was early recognized by certain electrical engineers and a
few scientifically minded officers of the Signal Corps, and, as a result
of their enthusiasm, before the first contingent sailed for France work
had been begun on the development of a radiotelephone set for airplanes.
There is no necessity of recounting the innumerable experiments and
heart-breaking failures before the first real successes were obtained. So
far as the radio part of the problem was concerned, a solution was had in
a comparatively short time. But working this apparatus in a swift-moving
and terrifically noisy airplane was quite a different matter, it was
quickly discovered, from working it under ordinary conditions on the
ground, the roar of the engine and the rushing air making it impossible
to hear one’s own voice, much less the weak signals of the receiver. One
of the first problems to be solved, therefore, was to design a head-set
which would exclude these noises while at the same time permitting the
voice of the telephone to be heard. The answer was found in a form of
aviator’s helmet fitting the head so closely as to exclude virtually
all extraneous sounds save those coming through telephone-receivers
inserted in the helmet so as to fit the ears. No sooner was this
problem solved, however, than another one demanded solution. A means
had been devised for protecting the receivers from outside noises—but
how about the _transmitter_? Every one knows how sensitive the ordinary
telephone-transmitter is to extraneous sounds, so it does not require
much imagination to picture how impossible it would be for the aviator
to make his voice heard in a transmitter alongside a 200 horse-power
airplane engine. But a brilliant series of experiments, conducted
largely by Mr. J. P. Minton, of the Western Electric Company, resulted
in a form of telephone-transmitter or microphone which possessed the
remarkable quality of being insensible to engine and wind noises and at
the same time highly responsive to the tones of the voice. With these two
elements in hand it was thought that the problem was solved, but three
more months of unremitting work were required to perfect the apparatus
to a state where it was practicable for use by others than experts. At
last everything was ready, however, and in December, 1917, the officials
of the Aircraft Production Board and the joint Army and Navy Technical
Boards announced that they would witness an exhibition of the apparatus
at the Moraine Flying-Field at Dayton. Two days before the date set for
the demonstration a group of the engineers and mechanics who had been
working over the problem almost night and day during the preceding six
months descended, with many cases of paraphernalia, on the Ohio town.
Only the enthusiasts who for the preceding half-year had spent their days
working over the problem and their nights dreaming of it believed that
the exhibition would prove successful. Every one else was sceptical. The
plan was to have two planes, both carrying radio sets, in the air at the
same time, while the visiting officials listened in at a ground-station
located on the top of a near-by hill. That night the inventors and their
assistants congregated in a room of the hotel where they were staying and
worked out a scenario and held a rehearsal of the morrow’s programme.
A famous electrical expert represented one plane and a young engineer
represented the other, while the inventors, sitting in the middle of the
room, gave them their orders and sent them sailing over beds, chairs,
and tables as it was hoped their planes would manœuvre in the clouds the
next day. No one slept very well that night. The morning was cold and
dismal, in keeping with the spirits of all concerned. Upon the arrival of
the exalted ones, among whom were several of the foremost scientists and
inventors of America, they were shown the apparatus installed in the two
planes and were told what it was expected to do. They were then escorted
up to the little station on the hill, where a loud-speaking receiver
had been connected with the wireless apparatus, so that all could hear
without the use of head-sets. The planes left the ground, and after what
seemed an interminable length of time, there came from the receiver the
first faint sounds which indicated that they were ready to perform. The
officials, with their coat-collars about their ears, appeared only mildly
interested and several gave unmistakable signs of being bored. Suddenly,
without the slightest warning, out of the horn of the loud-speaker came
the words: “_Hello, ground-station! This is Plane Number One speaking.
Do you get me all right?_” The bored expressions on the faces of the
officials changed to expressions of amazement tinged with awe. Instead
of the confusing dash-dot-dash which they associated with wireless, here
was a human voice coming out of space clear and distinct—yet the speaker
was two miles in the air. Soon the same signal came from the other plane
and the exhibition was on. Under command from the ground the planes were
manœuvred all over that part of the country. They climbed and volplaned
and circled. They were sent on scouting expeditions and reported what
they saw as they travelled through the air. Continuous conversation was
carried on, even when the planes were out of sight, and finally, upon
command, they came tearing down the skies like two huge homing pigeons
and landed where directed. From that moment the radio telephone was sold
to the government. It was no longer a question as to whether it would
work, but how soon and in what quantity its manufacture could be started.
The primary object of the airplane telephone is to make it possible for
the commander of an air-squadron to control the movement of his men in
the air just as a drill-sergeant directs the evolutions of a platoon on
the ground. For this purpose extra-long range is not required or, indeed,
desired, the distance over which they can talk being purposely limited
to two or three miles, so that the enemy cannot overhear except when
actually engaged in combat. Then it does not matter.
Neither my space nor my knowledge of electrical engineering are
sufficient to permit of explaining in detail the working of the radio
telephone. It is enough to say that a wind-driven generator supplies
electric current to a couple of vacuum tubes mounted in a box filled
with coils and condensers. These tubes transform the dynamo current
into a high-frequency alternating current which is fed out into space
through the antenna. This antenna consists of a copper wire about 200
feet long, which with a lead weight on the end trails out behind the
airplane when it is in flight. Normally this wire is wound up on a reel,
being let out and wound in as occasion demands. With the special form of
telephone-transmitter already described, the words of the aviator are
impressed on this wire, the electric waves thus set in motion radiating
out into space, where they are picked up by similar antennæ either on
other planes or on masts on the ground. The receiving process is the
exact reverse of that used in sending, other vacuum tubes taking the
high-frequency current from the antenna and transforming it so that
it can be heard in the form of speech in the telephone fitted in the
aviator’s helmet or in the loud-speaking horn on the ground. That is
about as near as I can come to explaining the radio telephone without
writing a book.
* * * * *
One of boyhood’s most joyous recollections is that of “balloon day”
at the county fair, when the great yellow spheroid in the middle of
the race-track enclosure slowly filled (oh, so slowly, it seemed!),
bulged, tugged at its moorings, and at last rose majestically skyward,
the aeronaut, a lithe figure in spangled tights, waving down to the sea
of upturned faces as he swung at ease in his cobweb-like trapeze. But,
though the recollection of the balloonist’s skill and daring remains
sharp and clear in our minds, so much space has been devoted in the
war books and the news despatches to the exploits of the aviators that
we seem to have completely lost sight of the no less hazardous work of
those daring souls who, day after day, in heat and cold, in snow and
drenching rain, sat huddled in their frail baskets under the swaying
gas-bags, often a mile above the ground, and through their glasses
watched what the enemy was doing, heedless of the repeated attempts made
by the enemy’s gunners and flyers to bring them down. Though they have
received practically no share of the publicity and praise which has
been showered upon the flying-men, the officers and men of the Balloon
Section of the Air Service deserve from the public its deepest gratitude
and appreciation. The perilous nature of their work is shown by the fact
that in the last six weeks of the war twenty-one American balloons were
lost, six being destroyed by shell-fire and fifteen by enemy planes.
Its importance is emphasized by the fact that the Germans gave official
credit to their aviators of _one and a half planes for every balloon
brought down_.
[Illustration: A SENTINEL OF THE SKIES.
Those daring souls who day after day sat huddled in their frail baskets
and through their glasses watched what the enemy was doing.]
[Illustration: AN AMERICAN OBSERVATION BALLOON LEAVING ITS “BED” BEHIND
THE WESTERN FRONT.]
[Illustration: A BALLOON COMPANY MANŒUVRING A CAQUOT FROM WINCH POSITION
TO ITS BED.
_Photograph by U. S. Air Service._]
At the beginning of the war the artillery-fire of the Allies was directed
for the most part by airplanes. Their work, however, left much to be
desired. Though the plane observers could locate targets fairly well,
they frequently lost touch with their batteries through the difficulty of
sending and receiving wireless or visual signals from the swiftly moving
craft. Thus there came into use the captive balloon, which by the end of
the war had practically replaced the airplane as a director of gun-fire
wherever possible, thus making the artillery infinitely more efficient
than ever before. Sitting comfortably aloft, the observer in the basket
of a kite-balloon had the whole panorama of his particular station spread
beneath him like a map in bas-relief, being able to detect, with the aid
of powerful glasses, anything transpiring within a radius of ten miles
or more. He was constantly in touch with his batteries by telephone and
could not only give the gunners, by means of co-ordinated maps, the
exact location of their target and the effect of their bursting shells,
but could keep the staff informed of enemy troop movements, airplane
activities, and preparations for impending attacks. The balloonist
became, indeed, a veritable sentinel of the skies, hovering over the
battle-lines with the persistency and the keen, long-range vision of
a hawk. He played a less spectacular part in the great drama than the
airplane scout or fighter in the latter’s free and dazzling flights,
but his duties were scarcely less important. Nor did he suffer from
ennui during his stays aloft. When a kite-balloon went up along the
battle-front it at once became the subject of the keenest attention by
the enemy because it was known to be up on business and was certain to be
the cause of damage unless it was forced down. Long-range, high-velocity
guns were trained on it and, from the upper levels of the air, planes
came swooping down upon it in their attempts to dash through the screen
of shells from the antiaircraft guns and put an incendiary bullet into
the sausage-shaped, elephant-colored gas-bag which so insolently defied
them. And a bullet which got home meant the instant ignition of the
highly inflammable hydrogen, the quick destruction of the balloon and,
perhaps, the occupants of the basket as well, unless they could get away
in their parachute. From the moment the gas leaped into flame until the
fall of the balloon was rarely over fifteen or twenty seconds, so quick
thinking and quick work was called for if the men in the basket were to
jump to safety. The pilot of the airplane could dodge and swerve and
slip away from the guns by a hundred shrewd devices; not so the pilot
of the kite-balloon anchored to its windlass. He had to carry on his
abstruse mathematical calculations unconcernedly, his spare moments being
enlivened by watching the flash of an enemy gun on a distant hill and
then waiting twenty or thirty seconds for the whining messenger of death
to reach him, pondering, meanwhile, on the accuracy of that particular
gunner. As a matter of fact, few direct shell-hits on a balloon were
recorded during the war, most of the balloons which were brought down
having been accounted for by incendiary bullets from diving planes. Just
as some sportsmen devote their energies to moose and elk and grizzlies
while others specialize on smaller game, so some of the airplane pilots
made a specialty of hunting “sausages,” and at this thrilling and highly
perilous sport became amazingly expert. When the Crown Prince’s assaults
on Verdun were at their height, I saw eight French aviators start out to
bring down eight German balloons. Within less than thirty minutes seven
of the _drachen_ had come down in flames—which shows that a balloonist
was not a good life-insurance risk. The average life of an observation
balloon on the Western Front was estimated to be about fifteen days.
Sometimes it lasted only a few minutes. There is a record of an American
balloon passing unscathed through the whole period of American activity
on a busy sector, but it was generally considered that a balloon which
has seen five or six months of ordinary non-war service has done its duty
and is unsafe because of the deterioration of the fabric.
In August, 1914, Germany had perhaps a hundred kite or “sausage”
balloons, France and England a very few. The German type was known as
the “Drachen,” and consisted of a gas-cylinder of rubberized cloth
about sixty-five feet long and twenty-seven feet in diameter, with
hemispherical ends. For stability a lobe, about a third of the diameter
of the cylinder, was attached to the underbody of the gas-bag and curved
up around the end. This lobe, made of a lighter fabric than the bag
itself, automatically filled with air as the balloon ascended and acted
as a rudder to hold the balloon in line. For further stability three
tail-cups, one behind the other, with mouths open to the wind, were
attached to the rear of the balloon.
While the Drachen balloon was a rather clumsy affair and proved unstable
in high winds, its importance as an adjunct to the artillery was early
recognized by the Allies, for the results of its work daily became more
apparent. Though the armies of France, England, Italy, and the United
States made repeated experiments in an attempt to evolve a type which
should possess greater stability and permit of higher altitudes being
attained, it remained for Captain Caquot, of the French Army, to produce
a balloon which possessed both of these qualities, his name now being
used as a designation for the type which he invented and which was in
general used by the Allied armies during the last year of the war. The
Caquot received its greatest compliment from Germany when her army
adopted this type of balloon and discarded the Drachen.
The Caquot is an elongated gas-bag, ninety-three feet long and
twenty-eight feet in its widest diameter, made of rubberized cotton
cloth and sharply streamlined. Hydrogen gas is the ascensive power used,
lifting the cable, two men, basket, and all other equipment to a maximum
altitude, in the best weather conditions, of over 5,000 feet. It has a
balloonet, or air-chamber, within the main body of the gas-envelope,
which as the balloon ascends fills automatically with air through a
simple scoop placed under the nose of the balloon. The air and gas
chambers are separated by a diaphragm of cloth. When the balloon is fully
inflated this diaphragm rests on the underbody of the gas-envelope, there
being no air in the balloonet. When the balloon descends, minus the
several hundred feet of hydrogen which has escaped into the air, it would
lose its shape and grow flabby, a condition of considerable potential
danger, were it not for the balloonet, or air-chamber, coming into play.
As the air is driven in through the scoop, precisely as an air-scoop
fixed in the port-hole of an ocean liner brings air into a cabin, the
diaphragm rises and takes up the lost bulk in the gas-envelope above. In
other words, the escaping gas is replaced by air by means of what amounts
to an elastic air-envelope below the gas-envelope. Is that quite clear?
Three lobes of rubberized fabric give stability to the balloon. They are
filled automatically by the wind, if it blows, and, expanding to their
full capacity, act as rudders to hold the balloon steady. If there is no
wind there is, of course, no need for the lobes and they hang loosely,
like elephants’ ears, Caquots frequently being called “elephants” because
of these drooping lobes.
[Illustration: AN AMERICAN KITE BALLOON ABOUT TO ASCEND.
The lobes of rubberized fabric give stability to the balloon. They are
filled automatically by the wind, if it blows, and, expanding to their
full capacity, act as rudders to hold the balloon steady.]
[Illustration: PLANES IN BATTLE FORMATION.
As accurately spaced as the pips on a card; as picturesque as a flock of
geese southwardly bound.]
When the United States entered the war we were practically without this
type of aircraft, the only balloon possessed by our military forces on
the Mexican border having been the gift of an Akron rubber company to the
Ohio National Guard. In April, 1917, the whole production of military
balloons in the United States was not over two or three a month, but
at the request of the government the various rubber manufacturers went
whole-heartedly into the business of production, so that when the war
ended we were producing ten balloons a day. Up to November 11 there
had been produced for the United States Army alone 1,025 balloons of
all types, 642 of these being the final Type R Observation Balloon.
Propaganda and target balloons were likewise developed and produced, as
were new-type parachutes, canvas balloon hangars, and 1,221,582 feet of
steel cable—a sufficient length of single-strand, specially manufactured
wire to more than reach around the globe.
One of the chief difficulties which had to be overcome was the question
of a sufficient supply of cotton cloth of proper strength and texture,
for balloon cloth was practically unknown in this country when we
entered the war. In order to keep up with the balloon schedule of the
War Department, the manufacturers required millions of yards of a very
high-grade cloth with a weave of 140 threads to the inch both ways. At
first the wastage due to imperfect balloon cloth was enormous, frequently
running as high as 60 per cent, but by care and effort this was reduced
to perhaps 10 per cent in total from the loom to the balloon. The
wastage was largely caused by “slubs,” knots, and other imperfections of
weaving, which prevented an even surface for rubberizing and consequently
impaired the strength and gas-holding qualities of the cloth. Hundreds
of inspectors, both factory and government employees, were necessary to
get an approximately perfect fabric, and all had to be developed for this
work. Indeed, the making of balloon cloth in the United States amounted
to the development of an entirely new industry, for which thousands of
men had to be specially trained for months. It will give you a better
conception of the magnitude of this new industry, perhaps, when I tell
you that to make ten balloons a day it was necessary for the cotton-mills
to weave about 600,000 yards of this special balloon cloth a month, and
this required 3,200 looms. It is a tribute to the skill of the American
weavers that reports from the front stated that the American fabric burnt
very much more slowly than that made in Europe, thus giving the observer
more time to get away in his parachute and minimizing the danger of the
burning balloon falling on him.
Everything connected with the kite-balloon presented more or less of a
problem because it was new. The mobile windlass, for example, by which
the balloon was let up and pulled down on its cable, had to be developed
from nothing. But the genius of the American manufacturer overcame this
difficulty as it did every other in the manufacture of instruments for
war. Though steam was the motive power first used for balloon windlasses,
before the close of the war American ingenuity had developed both gas and
electric windlasses which were thoroughly efficient. The mobile windlass
could move on the road under its own power at a speed of twenty miles an
hour, and could tow a balloon in the air at the rate of five miles an
hour, or even better if necessity demanded. The gasoline windlass has
made a record pull-down of 1,600 feet a minute, bringing down its balloon
at a speed more than _three times that of the fastest passenger-elevator_.
A sufficient supply of hydrogen gas was, at the beginning, another of
the balloon problems. Hydrogen, before the war, was a by-product in the
manufacture of commercial oxygen, and only a small quantity was used
in this country. But the sudden demand for millions of cubic feet of
this gas was promptly met by the establishment of government plants and
the expansion of privately owned ones. Though by far the greater part
of the gas used in balloons at home and abroad was made at permanent
supply stations and shipped to the points where it was needed, in
steel cylinders, an extremely ingenious type of portable generator was
developed for the manufacture of hydrogen in the field. When these
portable hydrogen generators were unnecessary or unavailable, the gas
shipped from long distances was stored in high-pressure cylinders or
“nurse balloons,” the latter being simply huge bags of rubberized fabric,
each with a capacity of 5,000 cubic feet of hydrogen, which were used in
the same way as the ordinary steel gasometers to be seen in any American
city.
Hydrogen is itself an inflammable gas, and when mixed with air or oxygen
is dangerously explosive. It has, therefore, always been a source of
great concern to balloonists, who had long dreamed of a non-inflammable,
non-explosive gas, sufficiently light to function as does hydrogen. It
was known that helium was such a gas, but it was, until very recently,
so scarce and costly that its use in balloons had scarcely been given a
serious thought. Not more than 100 cubic feet of helium had ever been
produced up to the time we started our balloon programme, and it was
valued at $1,700 a cubic foot. Scientific investigators in the employ of
the government discovered about this time, however, that certain natural
gases in the United States contained limited quantities of helium, and
the problem then resolved itself into one of extracting the helium
from these gases in sufficient quantities, and at a sufficiently low
cost, to make practical its use. Funds were forthcoming and, under the
supervision of the Navy Department and the Bureau of Mines, the process
of gas liquefaction was put into operation, with the result that on
the day of the Armistice there were on the docks, ready for shipment
overseas, 147,000 cubic feet of helium with a pre-war value of a quarter
of a billion dollars. Plants were under construction which, had the war
continued, would have produced 50,000 cubic feet of this gas a day at a
cost of approximately ten cents per cubic foot. The importance of this
discovery cannot be overestimated, for it marks the opening of a new era
in lighter-than-airship navigation. In war it will make the incendiary
bullet, which has caused the destruction of countless balloons, a joke.
The only way to bring down a balloon filled with helium will be literally
to tear it apart by a direct hit with a high-explosive shell. Under peace
conditions, it opens up undreamed-of possibilities in the development of
new types of dirigible airships, as the danger from lightning, static
electricity, and sparks of any kind has been entirely eliminated. To
cross the Atlantic in a helium-filled balloon will be safer, so far as
danger from fire is concerned, than to cross the continent in a train.
* * * * *
Do you remember that hot September afternoon at the county fair when
you sat perched on the white-washed race-track fence, your face turned
skyward, and watched with fascinated eyes the tiny yellow globule, high,
high in the blue, which you had seen rise from the ground half an hour
before as a giant gas-balloon? And do you remember how, as you watched,
the band in the grand stand suddenly stopped playing and an awed hush
fell upon the crowd, and you saw a tiny something detach itself from
the yellow globule and drop into space, at first falling with sickening
speed, then slower, still slower, until the object, which you knew
was a man in pink tights (though sometimes, in order to heighten the
sensation, it was a young and, of course, beautiful woman), landed
quite gently in a distant field? In those days we little dreamed that
the strange, umbrella-like contrivance which brought the aeronaut
safely to earth would ever be used for any other purpose than to thrill
the admission-paying multitudes, but the emergencies and necessities
provoked by the Great War turned things with which we were all familiar
to unfamiliar uses, as, for example, when it converted a farm tractor
into a fighting-tank. Thus it was that the observers came to use
parachutes to escape from their burning balloons just as the inmates of
an office-building dash down the iron fire-escapes when somebody shouts
“Fire!”
At first the individual or one-man parachute was used to insure the
escape of the observer in the basket from his burning balloon, but
though the man escaped, the valuable maps and records were lost. In
order to save these records there was invented the basket parachute.
This was considerably larger in diameter than the individual parachute,
and when cut away brought the basket with all that it contained—men,
records, instruments, everything—safely and quickly to the ground. All
the observer had to do was to pull a cord and he started downward. It was
easier than stepping into an elevator and saying: “Ground floor, please.”
Amazingly few fatalities occurred in the hundreds of cases in which the
individual and basket parachutes were used in actual war service or in
training. I heard of one balloon observer who was forced to make four
parachute jumps in a single day, and of another who made three in four
hours, two balloons being burned over his head. Thirty parachute jumps
were made by American observers during the Argonne offensive alone. Yet
the safety of the parachute is demonstrated beyond all question by the
fact that during the entire time the American forces were in the field
only one death occurred as the direct result of a parachute drop, and in
that particular instance the burning balloon fell directly on top of the
open parachute, setting it on fire and allowing the observer to fall the
rest of the distance to the earth.
[Illustration: A BASKET PARACHUTE DROP.
The basket parachute brings men, instrument, and records safely to the
ground.]
[Illustration: BALLOONIST MAKING A PARACHUTE JUMP FROM AN ALTITUDE OF
7,900 FEET.]
[Illustration: TRAINING THE STUDENT AVIATOR.
“By means of a machine known as the Ruggles ‘Orientator,’ he could, while
on the ground, be put through every possible evolution experienced in
actual flying.”]
It is interesting to note that the use of parachutes is relatively new
compared even with ballooning. The man who developed the parachute and
who first descended safely to earth by its means—Thomas S. Baldwin—now
holds a major’s commission in the American Air Service, and during
the war had direct charge of the inspection of all army balloons and
parachutes. As the result of a life spent in performing aerial exploits
of all kinds, under all conditions and in all parts of the world, Major
Baldwin knows what is and what is not safe, so that when a balloon or
parachute was sent into action the observer always had the satisfaction
of knowing that the world’s most famous balloonist had given it his O. K.
* * * * *
Speaking of parachute jumps reminds me of an incident which actually
occurred on one of the American sectors toward the close of the war.
Despite the fact that only one American balloonist lost his life in
making a parachute jump—and in that case the fatality was caused by the
burning balloon falling on and setting fire to the parachute—a very
considerable element of risk is involved in the performance. In fact,
it became the custom to recommend a man making a parachute jump for the
Distinguished Service Cross, or, if he was operating with the French, for
the Croix de Guerre.
Just before the opening of the Argonne offensive an observation balloon
over the American lines was attacked by a German plane and sent down in
flames, the observer escaping by means of his parachute.
“You’ll get the D. S. C. all right,” his friends greeted him, as he
disentangled himself from the parachute harness.
“We’re sending up another balloon in a few minutes,” said the commanding
officer. “Want to try it again?”
“Surest thing you know, sir,” replied the grinning youngster.
But before the second balloon had been in the air an hour another enemy
plane swooped down upon it, like a hawk on a chicken-yard, and it too
burst into flame. Again the observer floated to safety beneath his
parachute.
“I guess I’ve got that D. S. C. copper-riveted this time,” he remarked;
but, when a third balloon ascended, he was in the basket. Once more a
German plane came tearing down the skies, a stream of bullets ripped the
silken gas-bag, and for the third time that day the observer reached the
earth by the parachute route.
“You’ll probably get the Croix de Guerre as well as the D. S. C.,” his
friends assured him. “The French are strong for this sort of thing. They
may even give you the Legion of Honor.”
Treading on air, the youngster returned to balloon headquarters. Tacked
on the bulletin-board in the hallway was a General Order. He paused to
glance at it. This is what he read:
“It is hereby directed that the custom of recommending officers making
parachute jumps for the Distinguished Service Cross or other decorations
be discontinued.”
Though the question of providing proper clothing for our flying-men and
balloon observers did not loom large when compared with the vast problems
involved in the production of engines, spruce, balloon cloth, bombs, and
machine-guns, it was nevertheless an exceedingly important one, for an
aviator cannot do his work if he is cold, and it is always bitterly cold
in the higher air-lanes. A man flying at 20,000 feet, say, suffers more
from the cold than he would on the ice-fields at the North Pole. Aviators
are commissioned officers, and when not at work wear the regular uniform,
which, as in the case of all officers, is furnished by the officer
himself. But the clothing required for work in the air, being of a highly
special character and very expensive, is loaned to the flyers by the
government. In view of this, it is a source of satisfaction to know that
it was frankly admitted on the front that our flyers were by far the best
and most efficiently equipped of any nation.
After many tests and much development, the following outfit was
devised: On the head was worn, in moderate weather, first a woollen
hood, or helmet, so designed as to fit closely over the entire head and
shoulders. In extremely cold weather, or for high-flight work, there
was worn a silk hood of like design and double thickness, having between
its layers an electrically heated unit connected by copper-wire cables
extending through the suit proper with the generator on the engine of the
plane. Over this silk hood was worn a soft-leather helmet lined with fur,
the face was entirely covered with a wool-lined leather mask, and the
eyes were protected by goggles. When it was necessary for the aviator to
use the radiotelephone, however, the fur-lined helmet was replaced by the
radio helmet, a leather affair somewhat similar in design to the other
but so fashioned as to contain the receivers of a wireless telephone. For
high-flight work, in addition to the above equipment, a rubber oxygen
mask, which contained a transmitter permitting the wearer to speak as
well as hear by wireless, was also worn. This mask was attached by a
flexible tube to a tank of oxygen carried in the plane, being so arranged
that it automatically fed the aviator with the amount of oxygen required
for the altitude at which he was flying.
Over the body was worn a one-piece flying suit of waterproof, airproof
material, reaching from throat to feet, buttoned tightly at wrists and
ankles, and lined throughout with fur. Through these suits, between the
fur and the outer coverings, were placed wire cables terminating in
snap-fasteners at neck, wrists, and ankles, to which could be attached
silk-covered wires leading to other electrical heating units in the
helmets, gloves, and moccasins, all of which were warmed by a current
drawn from the generator on the engine. Hence, though our aviators not
infrequently flew in a temperature of thirty degrees below zero, they
were as warm and comfortable as though they were sitting before a log
fire at home—much more comfortable, in fact, than were their relatives
and friends in America on the fireless Sundays which made uncomfortable
the first winter of the war. On his hands the aviator wore, in addition
to the electrically heated gloves, a pair of muskrat gauntlets extending
nearly to the elbow; on his feet, over the electrically heated moccasins,
another pair of moccasins, lined with sheepswool, reaching almost to the
knees. It is scarcely necessary to add that our air-fighters spent more
time in dressing than does a chorus-girl in a comic opera, and that when
they were dressed they looked like a cross between an Arctic explorer and
a deep-sea diver.
The question of obtaining the fur for lining this clothing presented a
perplexing problem, for there were required vast quantities of pelts
or skins of extreme warmth and sufficiently strong to withstand rough
usage, but not too bulky or heavy. After considerable investigation it
was found that these requirements were met by the skin of the Nuchwang
dog, which inhabits one of the provinces of north China, though I have
no doubt that sable or ermine would have answered the purpose equally
well had cost been no consideration. The demands of the American Air
Service required practically all of these skins that could be had in
China and necessitated the lifting of an embargo to bring them into
the United States, which, thanks to the co-operation of the War Trade
Board, was obtained. The last purchase before the Armistice was signed
called for 500,000 of these dog-skins. A strange thing, was it not,
that the lust for power of one William Hohenzollern, late of Berlin and
Potsdam, should bring about, among countless other things, the slaughter
of half a million dogs in far-off China? Though figures are, as a rule,
dry things, the magnitude of the Air Service’s clothing problem can be
better appreciated by my giving a few of them. The work in hand for
air-clothing when the Armistice was signed involved upward of $5,000,000.
Fifty thousand fur-lined flying suits at $36.25; over a 100,000 leather
helmets at $4.50; a like number of leather coats at prices ranging from
$10 to $30, and 80,000 goggles at $3.50 a pair reflect the major items
and explain how the government spent some of the money which you paid for
your Liberty Bonds.
* * * * *
Though in this chapter I have attempted to sketch the manifold phases
of America’s preparation for obtaining supremacy in the sky, I have
purposely left until the last the most important phase of all—the
flying-men themselves. The personnel side of the Air Service, including
the selection, training, organization, and operation of the flying
forces, developed, within the year following America’s declaration
of war, into one of the most remarkable educational systems in this
or any other country, with a larger student body and a more diverse
curriculum than any university in the world. Teaching men to fly, to send
messages by wireless, to operate machine-guns in the air, to gauge the
effectiveness of artillery-fire by its bursts, to read and make maps, to
operate gas-engines, and to travel hundreds of miles by compass; teaching
other men to read the enemy’s strategy from aerial photographs, and still
others to repair instruments, ignition systems, propellers, airplane
wings, and motors, required a vast network of schools and flying-fields,
a huge force of instructors, many of whom themselves had to be trained,
and an amazing mass of equipment and curricula.
The pilot is the heart and brain of the whole flying apparatus. Parts of
the airplane may break without serious result, but when the pilot breaks,
even momentarily, nothing is left to direct the flight. The man and the
machine come crashing to the ground. The early view that any one who
“had the nerve” could fly caused hundreds of unnecessary deaths and an
enormous avoidable waste of material. The lesson, for which we paid in
bitter and costly experience, was that it is essential to choose flyers
who are especially fitted for particular work, and then to keep them in
condition to perform their duties at all times by using the same thought
and care which is expended in the feeding, exercising, and conditioning
of a race-horse. Nature, remember, never intended man to fly in the same
sense that she did not intend him for life in a submarine. Conditions are
unnatural from the time he leaves the ground until he returns. There are
countless obstacles which he must overcome. He flies in an atmosphere
deficient in that oxygen which is “the breath of life”; he is subjected
in war to the shell-fire of antiaircraft guns and attack by enemy
aircraft; he travels through space at a speed far exceeding that of the
fastest express-train. In attaining altitudes and breathing rarefied air,
the flyer is shaking his fist in the face of nature.
It is imperative, therefore, to classify the flyer for the kind of work
he is physically capable of performing. Some men are not able to fly at
higher levels than a few thousand feet without suffering deleterious
effects, while others may operate at five miles above the surface of
the earth without physical harm. It is necessary to know a flyer’s
limitations before his training is specialized, for the saving of time
and money, and, indeed, the flyer himself. Just as the trainer of a
varsity track team classifies his available material into sprinters,
distance men, broad jumpers, high jumpers, and weight throwers, so the
director of a flying-school must classify his material into men fitted
for combat, observation, and bombing. It would be an obvious waste
of time and effort to train a man for combat work at high altitudes
and then discover that his physical limitations permitted only of his
doing bombing work at comparatively low levels. In order to accomplish
this work of classification, branch research medical laboratories were
established at the various flying-fields, which, by means of certain
standardized tests, especially the one on the “rebreather” machine,
placed the flyers in their proper categories. The rebreathing tests
were conducted in a room so designed, by the gradual expulsion of its
oxygen, as to create the exact and various conditions that would exist
at any known altitude. Physicians and physiological experts, themselves
supplied with oxygen through tubes, remained in the room throughout the
tests, closely observing the effect produced on the candidate by the
gradual decrease of the oxygen supply. It was soon found that a man’s
faculty to respond to sight, sound, and touch becomes more dormant as the
air becomes more rarefied, and it was to offset this condition that the
oxygen apparatus which I have described in preceding pages was designed.
The effect of low oxygen upon the mental process varies greatly, however,
according to the individual. He usually becomes mentally inefficient at
an altitude at which there is as yet no serious failure of his vital
bodily functions. By simple tests of mental alertness during these
rebreathing experiments, such as directing the candidate to press
designated buttons controlling electric lights of certain colors,
controlling a volume of sound by operating a pedal with his feet, and
the like, it was easy to determine that one flier would lose his mental
alertness at 15,000 feet, while another would retain full control of his
faculties at nearly double that height.
In order to accomplish the best results, a comprehensive programme
was undertaken, providing for the standardization of both tests and
examiners. Sixty-seven military units were established, each examining
from ten to sixty applicants a day, there being required, in addition to
the complete physical examination embracing all the features ordinarily
required of men entering the military service, rigid tests of the special
senses of vision, hearing, and motion sensing. Yet, despite the severity
of the tests to which the candidates were subjected, the records show
that 70.7% of the applicants qualified. But the work of the surgeons did
not end when they had passed a man as physically fitted for training
as an aviator. On the contrary, it had only begun. The candidate was
not only kept under the closest medical observation during his training
days, but this observation did not relax even after he had become a fully
fledged flyer with the silver wings embroidered on his breast, for the
“flight surgeon” who was attached to every squadron was instructed to
keep the flyers physically fit and to carefully investigate the causes
of all such accidents as might be attributed to the mental or physical
failure of the flyers themselves. Keeping the flyer fit was by no means
as simple a matter as it sounds, for it included seeing that the men
took the necessary amount of physical exercise, the provision of proper
recreation, watching the state of fatigue of the individual, making
arrangements for leave or furlough, determining the quantity and nature
of their food and the questions of alcohol and tobacco, and re-examining
them at frequent intervals. Any one who knows how temperamental many
flying-men are inclined to be will realize that the flight surgeons held
no sinecures.
During the last few months of the war an apparatus was perfected
whereby students could acquire flying experience and training without
leaving the ground. This machine, known as the “Ruggles Orientator,” is
a modification of the universal joint, composed of three concentric
rings so pivoted as to permit the fuselage, which is pivoted within the
innermost ring, to be put through every possible evolution experienced
in actual flying—the candidate being able to experience, while safely on
the ground, the sensations of nose-diving, tail-diving, side-slipping,
looping the loop, and all the rest—everything, in fact, except forward
progression. I feel certain that a man of Mr. Ruggles’s amazing ingenuity
could have satisfied both the parent and child of the ancient verse:
“‘Mother, may I go in to swim?’
‘Yes, my darling daughter.
Hang your hose on a hickory limb,
And don’t go near the water.’”
VII
“M. I.”
In writing the story of Military Intelligence I feel as though I were
picking my way along a narrow and slippery path which is bordered on
either side by precipices and is in places obscured by fog. On the one
hand, I am in danger of unconsciously overemphasizing the mysterious and
sensational aspects of the subject; on the other, of making it appear
more commonplace and prosaic than it really is. And, at every few steps,
I find my progress hindered by the veil of secrecy which necessarily
enveloped certain activities of the division during the war, and which
it has not been deemed wise entirely to lift with the return of peace.
And there is still another difficulty. The public has in a large measure
obtained its conceptions of military intelligence work from the novels
of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mr. Robert W. Chambers, and Mr. E. Phillips
Oppenheim. So, if the pages of this narrative are not filled with
alluring adventuresses of dazzling beauty, cloaked assassins, secret
agents flitting about the countryside in high-powered cars, German barons
disguised as head waiters, mysterious signals flashed by night to lurking
U-boats, messages written in invisible ink, and midnight meetings in
subterranean chambers, my readers will be disappointed and dissatisfied
and will probably believe in their hearts that I am holding something out
on them.
The story depends, after all, on the angle from which you look at it.
I know an officer of the Military Intelligence Division who goes about
on tiptoe, figuratively speaking, with his finger always on his lips.
He is so tight-mouthed that Colonel House seems garrulous beside him.
This officer has been of enormous service to his country, and the
importance of his work fully justifies the secrecy and mystery with which
he surrounds it, yet his duties have been performed at an office desk
in Washington, with a table of logarithms at his elbow, and, so far as
action and adventure are concerned, his life has been about as exciting
as that of a professor of mathematics. I know another man, likewise
connected with the Military Intelligence Division, who, assuming the
guise of a workman, succeeded in obtaining admission to the councils
of the I. W. W. and of criminals operating in the forests of the
Northwest, and who did more than any single person, perhaps, to unearth
the conspiracy which had for its object the crippling of our airplane
programme. For weeks on end he carried his life in his hands, for, had
his identity been suspected, he would have met a sudden and mysterious
end by knife or bullet. Yet he speaks of his adventures as casually as
though he had been in no greater danger than a Fifth Avenue policeman.
The fact is that the truth lies somewhere between the extremes
represented by these two instances. The opportunities which have been
afforded me to investigate the subject lead to the conclusion that,
though Military Intelligence is, in many of its phases, as hard-boiled
and unromantic as Standard Oil, it is nevertheless thickly sprinkled
with incidents and episodes which would have provided material for the
creators of LeCoq and Sherlock Holmes. Though a fairly careful perusal
of the files of “M. I. D.,” as the Division of Military Intelligence
is commonly referred to in the army, discloses no evidence that German
spies of the caliber of Karl Lody and Bolo Pasha operated in this country
during the war, they do contain the _dossiers_ of enemy agents whose
personalities and exploits meet all the requirements for characters in
spy fiction. Probably the nearest approach to the high-class spy, as made
familiar by the articles in the Sunday supplements and the magazines,
was Captain Franz von Rintelen, naval attaché of the German Embassy in
Washington, who is now enjoying an enforced sojourn in a large stone
château as the guest of the government. Though the equally notorious
Madame Victorica, a titled adventuress in the pay of the Wilhelmstrasse,
filled several of the specifications of the secret agent of fiction,
truth compels me to destroy certain illusions which the public has held
concerning this lady by stating that she was by no means young, that she
was only passably good-looking, and that she was so far from clever that
her own boastfulness led to her apprehension. The other enemy agents who
operated in this country were, for the most part, former privates in the
German Army or petty officers and stewards on German liners, the most
picturesque of the lot, a man named Bode, being so inefficient that he
was dismissed by his own government, whereupon, being without funds, he
surrendered himself to the American authorities. He will receive board
and lodging at government expense for some years to come. Though the
beautiful young Madame Storch, who died under mysterious circumstances at
Ellis Island a few days after her arrest, possessed a certain romantic
interest, she and her three companions were so weak in character and of
such small-caliber intelligence, that it is exceedingly doubtful if the
Wilhelmstrasse ever intrusted them with any important work or confided
to them any important secrets. Let it be perfectly clear, however, that
nothing is further from my intention than to minimize the deadly gravity
of the German-spy menace in this country during the war, or to suggest
that, had no steps been taken to check it, it would not have caused the
loss of millions of American dollars and thousands of American lives.
That the national safety was not more gravely imperilled by these enemy
agents was not due to their inefficiency, or to the weakness of the
German espionage system, but to the efficiency, resourcefulness, and
unremitting vigilance of the Division of Military Intelligence, which, I
might add, frequently carried on its work under the most disheartening
condition.
Military intelligence is the term applied to all such information as
may be of value to the successful prosecution of a war. The Military
Intelligence Division is that branch of the General Staff which is
organized to secure this information. Its field of inquiry includes the
investigation of active and potential enemies, allies, and neutrals;
their military, political, and economic condition; their state of
mind, their secret activities at home and abroad, and their strategic
and tactical plans for present or future campaigns. A well-organized
intelligence service provides, moreover, for estimating and safeguarding
the resources of its own country; for protecting war industries and
means of transportation; for stimulating the morale of its troops and
of the civil population; for frustrating enemy agents and preventing
the dissemination of enemy propaganda. Thus arises the distinction
between the positive and the negative aspects of the service. The
former, known as Positive Intelligence, concerns itself with the
collection and distribution of information. It publishes estimates of
the military, economic, political, and psychological status of various
countries; prints maps of enemy districts, with particular reference to
fortifications, harbors, and routes of travel; deciphers intercepted
messages, and translates foreign documents. The Negative Branch of the
service concerns itself with the frustration of all agents, military or
civil, who are consciously or unconsciously of value to the enemy. This
is known as Counter-Espionage, or Negative Intelligence. It establishes a
system of propaganda designed to neutralize the propaganda of the enemy;
it detects and causes the arrest of spies among the troops as well as
in the civil population; it censors news and information given to the
public; it prevents enemy agents from entering or leaving the country,
and it investigates the causes of economic disturbances and unrest.
Though military intelligence work was undertaken by the army in 1885, in
response to a demand for information from the Secretary of War, it was
not until the United States found itself an actual belligerent in the
Great War that the immense importance of the work was fully realized.
Incredible as it may seem, when General Pershing set sail for France in
the spring of 1917, the entire personnel of the Military Intelligence
Section, as it was then called, consisted of four officers (of which one
was myself) and three clerks. Due, however, to the forcible arguments and
the breadth of vision of its first chief, Colonel Ralph H. Van Deman, the
foundation was laid for the present vast organization, whose activities
expanded, at the demands of war, until, when the Armistice was signed,
they virtually covered the globe. In addition to the huge military
intelligence personnel in Washington, a carefully organized intelligence
service is maintained in each camp, post, and station, as well as in the
field. Though these officers are appointed by their respective division
or department commanders, the responsibility for their instruction and
the control of their counter-espionage activities rest upon the Director
of Military Intelligence, at present (June, 1919) Brigadier-General
Marlborough Churchill. During the war the Military Intelligence Division
maintained the closest liaison with the Director of Naval Intelligence,
the Department of Justice, the agents of the departments of State, Labor,
and the Treasury, the War Trade Board, the War Industries Board, the
Censorship Board, the National Research Council, the American Protective
League, and the Council of National Defense, all of these organizations
being able, through the medium of their countless branches, agents, and
correspondents, to provide Military Intelligence with enormous amounts of
valuable information which it could not otherwise easily have secured.
The Administrative Branch of the Military Intelligence Division, referred
to, for the sake of convenience, as M I 1, co-ordinates the activities
of the other eleven sections, six of which, M I 2, M I 5, M I 6, M I 7,
M I 8, and M I 9, form the Positive Branch of the service, the Negative
Branch consisting of M I 3, M I 4, M I 10, M I 11, and M I 13. The
Second Section (M I 2) is divided in turn into five subsections, four of
which—Combat, Political, Economic, and Psychologic—devote themselves to
the collation of information, the maintenance of the “Current Estimate,”
of which more hereafter, and the furnishing of special reports. Another
subsection deals with the preparation of military monographs. M I 5
collects information for the use of the Positive Branch and supervises
the military attachés. M I 6 concerns itself with the translation of
documents for all branches of the War Department. M I 7 has charge of
all maps and photographs, one of its subsections devoting itself to map
construction and another having the custody of the War Department map
collection. To M I 8 is intrusted the solution of codes and ciphers, the
study of shorthand systems, encoding and decoding, the compilation of
codes, and the maintenance of a laboratory for the detection of invisible
inks. M I 9 has supervision of the training of intelligence officers
and men for work in the field. Turning to the Negative Branch of the
division, M I 3 is charged with counter-espionage within the military
establishment, together with collateral activities directly affecting
the army. The eleven subsections of M I 3 deal with such diverse
subjects as the preparation of bulletins, summaries, and surveys; and
of instructions for intelligence officers, counter-espionage in prison
camps, disciplinary barracks, the District of Columbia, the various
branches of the Staff and Line, and among conscientious objectors,
and the investigation of applicants for commissions. M I 4 conducts
counter-espionage outside the military service in the United States
and abroad, with particular reference to sabotage and the protection
of plants and means of communication, its activities covering nearly
the entire world. M I 10 is charged with the censorship of letters,
books, newspapers, and periodicals, telegraphs and telephones, and
radiophotographs and motion-pictures, and with a general supervision of
the foreign-language press. M I 11 passes on passport applications and,
in co-operation with certain other bureaus, has charge of port control.
M I 13 is the Graft and Fraud Section, its work being principally
concerned with criminal activities which may affect the army. The present
Morale Branch of the General Staff consists, as its name indicates, in
maintaining the morale of the army, which includes the encouragement and
supervision of soldier publications, military advertising, camp-posters,
and the treatment of the foreign-speaking and negro soldier problems
originated as the Military Morale Section of Military Intelligence.
M I 2, as I have already explained, is that section of the Military
Intelligence Division whose duty is to collect, collate, and distribute
_foreign_ intelligence, its Combat Subsection being charged with the
preparation, maintenance, and dissemination of combat and military
information on all countries. The work of the subsection is classified
as “active,” “static,” and “encyclopedic.” The “active” work consisted,
during the war, of the preparation of material for the _Daily Summary_
and the _Weekly Summary_, and of material for transmission to other
governmental departments; the preparation of _Front Summaries_ and
_Strength Summaries_; the transmission of a special weekly report to
the American Expeditionary Forces in Siberia; the establishment and
maintenance of line-maps of the various active fronts in the offices of
the Chief of Staff, the Secretary of State, the War Council, the War
College, and in the House of Representatives. In addition this subsection
was charged with the preparation of a weekly résumé of the situation on
all fronts to be presented to the heads of the several army bureaus, of
the industrial bureaus, and the military committees of the Senate and
the House. The “static” work consisted in keeping up to date the combat
portion of the _Current Estimate of the Strategic Situation_, where
was presented in concise form a wealth of combat, economic, ethnic,
political, and psychologic information for ready reference by the Chief
of Staff and other general officers who were compelled to keep their
fingers constantly on the pulse of the enemy and Allied nations. The
“encyclopedic” work consisted of the compilation of military and combat
information of a permanent character.
During the war there were few more interesting places in Washington—and
none, perhaps, more difficult to obtain access to—than the map-room of
the Military Intelligence Division. On its walls were displayed every
conceivable sort of map and diagrams depicting the movements of the
armies on the various fronts. Not only were there large-scale maps of
the European fronts on which our troops were fighting, but there were
likewise maps on which rows of tiny colored flags indicated the positions
of the opposing forces in Russia, Siberia, Macedonia, Mesopotamia,
Palestine, China, German East Africa, German Southwest Africa, and the
Cameroons. These maps recorded, not only from day to day, but frequently
from hour to hour, the advance or retreat of the lines on the various
fronts, besides representing in graphic form the location of the enemy
forces and indicating any economic conditions which were of particular
interest at the moment. Thanks to the completeness of our information
and the speed with which it was transmitted from the battle-fronts to
Washington, the Director of Military Intelligence could sit in his
map-room and follow the progress of a great battle on the Western Front
as readily as the crowd in front of a newspaper office can follow a
battle on a baseball diamond by means of the automatic score-board.
In addition to the unceasing care and study necessary for keeping the
maps of the various fronts up to the minute, and for anticipating events
so that maps which might be needed in the near future would be ready,
as, for example, when we first contemplated sending an expedition to
Italy or when we learned that the British were preparing to invade
Palestine, the staff of the map-room had many other duties. It verified
every name which occurred in the cables which were constantly being
received from every corner of the globe (and if you have ever seen what a
cable operator can do to geographical names you will appreciate how far
from a sinecure this task was); it answered periodic letters from the
Custodian of Alien Property requesting information as to the situation
and possession of various enemy-owned estates, and it dealt with demands
for every conceivable sort of information from every conceivable quarter.
For example, the National Geographic Society asked for the boundaries of
the Ukraine, which the society’s geographic experts had been unable to
determine themselves; the Naval Intelligence Division inquired about maps
of northern France and where it could obtain them; the Shipping Board
wanted information regarding French coastwise services. When the Siberian
Expeditionary Force was being organized it became imperative that its
commander should have an English map of the Trans-Siberian Railway. No
such map had ever been made, but by a stupendous effort the officers of
the subsection succeeded in translating three sections of the available
Russian map. The other sections were translated by the War College, and
the whole was reproduced by the Military Intelligence Printing-Office.
The work was, of course, hastily done, and later had to be revised, but
for the moment it served its purpose well, and the Expeditionary Force
was able to take with it the only complete map of that system in English
in existence.
In addition to the great number of combat, strategic, and physical
maps covering the belligerent countries and the various theatres of
war, complete sets of military maps of the neutral nations were also
kept available, for there was never any certainty as to how far the
conflagration might extend. While hostilities were in progress the
subsection responded to a constant stream of demands for estimates of
the military situation, of the enemy’s strength and resources, and for
forecasts of his plans. An enormous amount of information relative
to German and Austrian munitions, tanks, gas, aircraft, artillery,
and infantry equipment was also codified and distributed in pamphlet
form to those branches of the War Department particularly concerned.
Statistical reports, showing, for example, the percentage of French and
British officers wounded and killed during stated periods, were of great
assistance to the War Department in determining the number of officers
to be assigned to the various draft contingents and for figuring the
replacements which would be required. A report showing the housing
facilities for planes possessed by the French Air Service materially
aided our own Department of Aeronautics. The rate of pay for prisoners
of war was fixed by the Adjutant-General’s Department with the aid of
tables furnished by this subsection. Nor did the work of the subsection
end with the signing of the Armistice. If anything, it increased, for
it was called upon to furnish all sorts of highly technical information
for the use of the peace delegates. The most interesting and important
data thus supplied was a translation, with copious notes, of a Russian
document describing in great detail the growth of the movement for the
political independence of Siberia, a complete plan for the organization
of voting districts, the composition of scores of territorial councils
and commissions, and the effect on political life in Siberia of the
revolutions in European Russia.
Long before the entry of the United States into the war it was recognized
that the struggle for the control of raw materials was fully as important
a factor in the great conflict as the struggle of the armies themselves,
and that the food supply exercised a greater effect on the morale of a
nation than its casualties on the battle-field. Other factors which,
it was realized, had to be taken into consideration in estimating the
fighting ability and staying powers of a nation were labor conditions,
finance, shipping and ship-building, all of which bear an intimate
relation to the production of munitions and essential supplies. There
existed government agencies, such as the Department of Commerce and Labor
and the Department of Agriculture, as well as many others born of the
emergency, that were organized for the purpose of collecting data on all
these subjects, but the results of their activities were not readily
available for the purpose of the General Staff. As a consequence the need
arose for a section of the Military Intelligence Division to gather,
collate, and co-ordinate such economic information, and, in particular,
to interpret it from the military standpoint. The Economic Subsection of
the Positive Branch was created, therefore, to supply this need.
The chief, and indeed the most important, function of the subsection was
the compilation and the constant revision—based on the latest and most
accurate data obtainable—of the economic portion of the _Current Estimate
of the Strategic Situation_. Dealing as it did with vital economic
conditions in all the countries of the world; it enabled the high command
of the A. E. F. and the other organizations, both military and civil,
to whom it was distributed, to keep in constant and intimate touch with
the economic situation throughout the world. This work constituted, in
fact, an up-to-the-minute encyclopedia of the most vital economic factors
as they related to the strategic situation. The I. W. W. troubles in
the spruce forests of the Northwest, the spread of boll-weevil in the
cotton-growing districts of the South and of hoof-and-mouth disease on
the Texas cattle-ranges, riots in Korea, revolutions in Russia, the
assassination of a dictator in a Central American republic, a shortage
of the Brazilian coffee crop, a change of government in Chile, a textile
strike in Lowell, Mass., the price of bread in Bavaria, the increased
use of paper clothing and leather substitutes in Prussia, the speech of
a Socialist deputy in Paris, all were carefully weighed and given due
consideration, the conclusions thus arrived at, when condensed and put
into graphic form, enabling the military chiefs in Washington to gauge
with amazing accuracy the economic conditions throughout the world and to
forecast the effect which they might be expected to have on the fighting
armies.
Commencing early in 1918, the subsection contributed to the confidential
_Weekly Intelligence Summary_ specially written articles dealing with
particular phases of the economic situation in various countries, such
as “_Germany’s Raw Materials_,” “_The Food Supplies of Germany_,”
“_Turkish Finances_,” and the like. These articles, which were frequently
accompanied by specially prepared maps, tables, and diagrams, were all
of a confidential nature, and were of great importance to a complete
understanding of the strategic situation and its constantly shifting
phases. The signing of the Armistice naturally brought about a sudden
change in the nature of the subsection’s work, its articles becoming more
monographic in character and dealing with conditions from all points of
view but with particular reference to the future. Such articles included
“_The Coal Situation in Germany_,” which was a detailed account of
Germany’s use of the coal-fields which she occupied during the war; “_The
Left Bank of the Rhine_,” being a comprehensive study of this territory
from the view-point of the effect which its neutralization would have on
the future of Europe; “_Economic Resources of Czecho-Slovakia_,” with
a valuable map of railroads and mineral deposits in that newly born
nation; “_Palestine_,” with an account of the resources, railroads, and
prospects of the “State of Zion”; “_Baltic Ports_,” a monograph which
showed the necessity of developing these ports and their hinterlands for
the development of Russia. Upon the despatch of the American expedition
to Siberia, the Economic Subsection produced a weekly economic report on
Russia, with particular reference to the Asiatic territories, which was
regularly forwarded to the commander of the expedition at Vladivostok.
There were also prepared for the use of our forces in Siberia monographs
on the food and raw-material resources, the communications, the
industries, and the finances of Russia, these proving of enormous value
to the staff of the expedition, which was operating in a region of which
next to nothing was known save by a handful of scientists and explorers.
Among the countless other reports prepared by the subsection perhaps
the most important was the one on the fortifications and the territory
surrounding the great German stronghold of Metz, which, had the war
continued, would have been attacked by our forces. The completeness
and exactitude of the information contained in this report, which was
verified by persons familiar with the fortress and its environs, would,
I imagine, have given the chiefs of the German Intelligence Bureau some
very uncomfortable nights, had they known of its existence.
Now, though the non-military person may not have realized it, an
exceedingly important factor in the successful conduct of operations is
an adequate supply of up-to-date geographical monographs and handbooks,
describing in completest detail the regions where the operations are
taking place. Imagine, for example, how much difficulty you would
experience and how little information you would obtain if you were to
visit the galleries of the Vatican, the museums of Florence, or the
churches of Venice without a guide-book. As few of the statues and
pictures are labelled, you could only hazard a guess as to what you were
seeing; you would not know where to go next or how to get there. The
same thing holds almost equally true of armies. Land an expeditionary
force in Patagonia, let us say, and imagine how helpless it would be if
it had no accurate and detailed information as to the topography of the
country, the size and locations of the towns and villages, the nature of
the crops, and the customs of the natives. To fill this urgent need there
was created the Military Monograph Subsection. The gradual evolution in
the methods of this subsection may be summed up by saying that stiff
official letters, the very tone of which was about as reassuring to the
recipient as a court summons, have given place to informal, friendly
communications which immediately create a bond of personal sympathy
between the Intelligence Division and the person from whom information
is desired; the questionnaires sent out by the subsection to those
believed to have special knowledge of certain regions have dwindled from
ponderous and forbidding volumes, the mere labor involved in answering
which was appalling, to single pages of easily comprehended questions;
and sets of stereotyped queries have, wherever possible, been replaced
by intimate personal interviews. In other words, letters which addressed
the recipient as “Sir” were so humanized that, when the war ended, they
frequently began “Dear Bill.”
The most important work of the Military Monograph Subsection was the
preparation of military handbooks which described, with almost incredible
wealth of detail, the regions in which our forces were operating or in
which they might operate at some future time, the volumes being by no
means confined to Europe and Asiatic Russia. The method followed in the
preparation of these small, pocket-sized, linen-covered volumes was as
follows: From standard sources, such as Baedeker’s and Murray’s guides,
the best possible description of a given region or route is compiled, or,
should guide-books on the region in question be unobtainable, an account
is obtained from some experienced and reliable traveller. This skeleton
is then enlarged, improved, and brought up to date by the careful perusal
of consular and other reports and of all sorts of confidential documents
issued by our own and other governments, and by reference to reliable
books of travel. An even more fruitful method of obtaining new and
valuable information is through interviews with travellers, explorers,
mining engineers, consuls, commercial travellers, sea-captains, and
others who have had opportunities to familiarize themselves with the
regions about which information is desired. If these men were asked to
sit down and dictate accounts of their observations, the results would
probably, in nine cases out of ten, prove highly unsatisfactory, but
if a written account of the region under discussion is given them, it
invariably acts as a great stimulus to their memories. Though a man may
not be able to write as good an account from first-hand knowledge as the
intelligence officer has prepared from material obtained in a library, he
is easily able to point out errors, to suggest additions, and in other
ways to improve the version placed before him. The last and potentially
the most valuable of the methods used in gathering information for these
handbooks is the employment of the Military Intelligence Division’s own
agents, such as military attachés, diplomatic and consular officers, and
other civilian agents who are sent to foreign countries with specific
instructions as to the information which it is desired to obtain. I
might add that this has shown itself to be the most satisfactory source
of information for monographs and handbooks. It is no exaggeration to
say that each of these handbooks—and already a score or more of them
have been completed—represents the combined knowledge of from forty to a
hundred people.
The Siberian handbooks published by M. I. undoubtedly present the fullest
and most accurate date on routes of transportation in that country to
be found anywhere save only in the archives of the Russian, Japanese,
and German armies. The handbook entitled _Southwestern Russia_ contains
minute descriptions of all the ports on the Black Sea from Varna, in
Bulgaria, around to Batoum, in the Caucasus. It also contains such
information as would be required by an expedition in regard to the
selection of ports for the disembarkation of troops and supplies, the
garrisoning of these ports, and their maintenance as bases for operations
in the interior. In August, 1918, when the American Expeditionary Force
was about to set sail for Vladivostok, the Military Monograph Subsection
was suddenly called upon to furnish the staff of the expedition with a
handbook on eastern Siberia. Though much of the necessary material was
contained in documents which had not yet been translated, and though
there were available only a few persons who were intimately acquainted
with the region in question, the subsection, by placing its entire
personnel at the task and by working eighteen hours a day, succeeded
in producing a preliminary but really admirable little handbook which
was mimeographed in time to go with the expedition. It is scarcely
necessary to add that the preparation of these monographs demanded men
of exceptional ability who possessed wide and intimate knowledge of
the regions whereof they wrote. In order to provide such a corps of
writers, commissions in the Military Intelligence Division were given to
travellers, explorers, authors, scientists, archæologists, and others
whose work or pleasure had acquainted them with the world’s far places.
The Propaganda Subsection of Military Intelligence was formed for the
purpose of studying enemy propaganda, to combat it by means of suitable
counter-propaganda, and to take steps for the dissemination in the
enemy armies and enemy countries of positive propaganda of our own.
Though propaganda, as used by the United States, was nothing but the
truth, it had been so abused by the Central Powers as to have become
almost a term of reproach, the American Government steadily opposing
its use—at least under that name—during the earlier months of the war.
German propaganda had, indeed, achieved such an unenviable name that
it was found advisable, in the spring of 1918, to change the name of
this branch to “Psychologic Subsection.” Misleading and frequently
flagrantly untruthful though their propaganda was, the Central Powers
had made use of it with such marked success, particularly in Italy—for
the disaster at Caporetto was primarily due to Austrian propaganda
introduced into the Italian lines—that our government was reluctantly
compelled to recognize its efficacy and to initiate propaganda of its
own, this delicate and highly psychological work being intrusted to a
civilian organization—the Committee on Public Information. Despite the
vast amount of publicity which has been given to the work of Mr. Creel’s
organization, truth compels me to assert that it was very far from
being the success which the public has been led to believe. Memorandums
concerning the foreign situation, together with comments and suggestions,
were sent almost daily by Military Intelligence to the committee, thus
giving the civilian organization the military point of view and bringing
to its attention urgent calls for American propaganda made by its
representatives in many parts of the world. This should have been of
great value to the committee, since through its attachés, agents, and
other sources, Military Intelligence was able to obtain a vast amount of
information about enemy propaganda and morale which would not otherwise
have been accessible to Mr. Creel’s organization. Although the committee
agreed in general with the Intelligence Division as to the scope of our
propaganda, lack of funds and of experienced personnel made it unable to
act, in the majority of cases, on the information thus given. Incredible
as it may seem, in view of the immense importance attached to the use
of propaganda by other nations, it was not until after the Armistice had
been signed that the army was formally authorized to make use of this
potent weapon. I mention this because it illustrates how difficult it is
to obtain a satisfactory liaison between two such bodies as the Military
Intelligence Division and the Committee on Public Information, whose
respective activities were based on entirely dissimilar foundations, and
who carried on their work along entirely different lines. This is not
saying, however, that the officers of the Psychologic Subsection attached
to the expeditionary forces in France were idle all this time; on the
contrary, they succeeded in getting three million leaflets over the lines.
Early in the spring of 1918 Military Intelligence recommended the
immediate purchase of 6,500 balloons to be used for distributing great
quantities of propaganda leaflets behind the German front. As, however,
a sufficiently large appropriation could not be obtained, and as it was
feared that there would not be an adequate supply of gas for the purpose
in the A. E. F., it was finally decided to order only 500 balloons.
Though delivery was promised by November 1, they did not arrive then, nor
were they received before the Armistice was signed, such few balloons
as were used by the Propaganda Section of the A. E. F. being British
ones. These were paper affairs, about nine feet long and carrying four
pounds of leaflets strung on a slow-burning 12-inch fuse in such a manner
that they were dropped in small bunches, thus securing a wide area
of distribution. But bad weather, the shortage of hydrogen-gas, the
difficulties in transporting the gas-cylinders, and the rapid changes
in the battle-line combined to make the number of balloons actually
despatched very small. Great expectations were based, however, on the
balloon campaign which was planned for the winter of 1918-1919 against
interior Germany, particularly the Rhine towns. A large number of
leaflets were also distributed by American aviators, who, taking their
lives in their hands, frequently flew so low that they could see the
Germans picking up the literature which came fluttering down on them from
the skies.
In order to intelligently distribute propaganda by balloon, it was first
of all necessary to ascertain the actual state of the enemy’s morale,
which was principally done by questioning prisoners. The officers in
charge of the work—all of whom possessed, of course, a fluent knowledge
of German—after carefully studying the daily intelligence reports at
General Headquarters, would visit the war-cages near Toul and Souilly and
hold long interviews with prisoners of all ranks and from all parts of
the empire. By this means it was possible to gauge with a considerable
degree of accuracy the existing conditions beyond the Rhine and the
degree of importance which various sections of the German people attached
to America’s entry into the war. Arguments which had been suggested as
suitable for propaganda use were tried out on the prisoners and their
effect noted. Specimens of Allied propaganda were discussed with them and
they were asked to give their opinions of it. A sufficient knowledge was
thus gained of the Teutons’ mental processes to give the officers of the
Propaganda Section a fairly accurate idea of the sort of arguments which
would make the strongest appeal. The text of the proposed literature was
then prepared and, after being approved by General Headquarters, was
printed in Paris, the leaflets being sent to the field-stations which the
Propaganda Section had established at Bar-le-Duc and Toul. As a result of
the close liaison maintained with the Air Service, leaflets were sent to
the various flying-fields for distribution by airplane, careful records
being kept of the areas thus covered.
Almost from the start the liveliest interest was shown and the heartiest
co-operation afforded by all branches of the army concerned. The
Meteorological Section of the Signal Corps carried on an elaborate series
of experiments to determine the rate of ascension of the various types
of balloons. The G-2’s of many corps and divisions constantly sent in
requests for propaganda and offered many suggestions. And the aviators,
who were, after all, the ones most directly concerned, showed not the
slightest hesitation in undertaking the exceedingly dangerous work of
distribution, for more than one German commander announced that he would
execute any flyer captured in the act of distributing propagandist
literature. In only one quarter was opposition encountered. That was
where the out-of-date conviction was still held that “propaganda has no
place during operations.”
Nearly a score of types of leaflets were distributed by airplane or
balloon. Among the most successful was one known as the “Prisoner
Leaflet,” containing a translation of an extract from the orders
prescribing the treatment to be accorded by the A. E. F. to prisoners
of war. Appended to it was a list of rations issued to the American
soldier and prescribed for enemy prisoners. More than a million copies
of this leaflet were sent over the enemy lines. The “Prisoner Post-Card”
leaflet was a variation of the one just described, being printed in
close imitation of the German _Feldpostkarte_. This was predicated on
the idea that the first interest of the German soldier was solicitude
for his family and that the _Feldpostkarte_ form was one to which he was
accustomed. A number of these were found on the persons of prisoners.
Another leaflet had a picture of a file of soldiers rapidly increasing
in size, thereby impressing even the most illiterate of the enemy with
the amazing expansion of the American Army. Still another contained
the German request for an armistice and President Wilson’s reply. The
principal reason for dropping these over the German troops was the
belief, which proved to be well founded, that their full import, and
indeed even their complete texts, had been kept from reaching the German
soldier. In addition to the above, the Propaganda Section distributed
some 20,000 copies of a leaflet designed to appeal to those natives of
Alsace-Lorraine serving in the German armies.
The leaflets intended for the Alsace-Lorrainers were the work of Captain
Osamm of the 4th Corps, and were part of a plan which was to culminate
in a venturesome attempt at fraternization. Captain Osamm was perfectly
familiar with German Army organization and knew the names of hundreds
of German officers and men in the 224th Division, which was largely
recruited from the natives of Alsace-Lorraine. After the 224th had been
all but snowed under by the leaflets, and after a sufficient time had
elapsed for the arguments which they contained to penetrate the German
mind, Captain Osamm planned to crawl out into No Man’s Land, and when
within speaking distance of the German patrols to call out the names of
individuals in that division. He admitted that he expected to be met by
a few bursts of machine-gun fire, but he was convinced that the patrols
would eventually themselves come forward to meet him, whereupon, by a
verbal reinforcement of the arguments contained in the leaflets, he
expected to bring about wholesale desertions. He based his assumption
that the enemy would respond to his summons, I imagine, on the British
contention that all Germans had originally been waiters, and that, if
one were to shout, “Hi, Fritz, bring me a beer!” they would respond
from force of habit. The beginning of active operations abruptly halted
this amazing performance, however, thereby deeply disappointing the
adventurous captain.
The speed with which events moved during the last few weeks of the
war prevented the trial of a distinctively American idea, known as
_The International Bulletin_. This was to be issued in the form of a
newspaper, printed in parallel columns of English and German, and
distributed on both sides of the line. The intention was for the American
forces to honestly share a newspaper with the Germans! It was believed
that the very frankness of such a proceeding would serve to diminish the
suspicions of the enemy that all leaflets which fell into their hands
were “doctored.” The bulletin, as planned, was to contain news items,
chiefly concerning the A. E. F., maps, pictures, and cartoons, the
intention being to distribute it in large numbers among our own troops as
well as behind the enemy lines; then to collect the old copies from the
Americans, together with any comments which the fun-loving Yanks may have
written on the margins, and send them over to the Boche by balloon.
What were the results of this propaganda offensive? Making an estimate
of how it affected the enemy is like reporting on the effects of
artillery-fire or bombing raids, for they happened on the other side
of the line, “where visibility was poor.” Any one who has listened to
the interrogation of German prisoners can hardly fail to have been
struck by the wide variance in the replies given by soldiers from the
same unit. Questioned about the effect of a barrage, for example, one
man would state that it destroyed the German wire, demolished their
trenches, and cut their communications, and that he and his companions
were demoralized and panic-stricken; while another prisoner, from the
same company, perhaps, would defiantly insist that the Yankee shell did
no great damage, that casualties were light, and that he never missed a
meal or a night’s sleep. Or, when interrogated in regard to the damage
caused by our bombing squadrons, one prisoner would insist that, beyond
killing a cow and breaking a few windows, absolutely no harm was done,
while another, visibly shaken by his experiences, would assert that all
that remained of the town in which he was billeted was a hydrant and
two paving-stones. German officers, when questioned about the effect of
our propaganda, invariably made the stock reply, “The men laughed at
the leaflets,” but the enemy privates generally admitted that they read
and believed the _flug blätter_. On the other hand, captured officers
frequently complained about the depressing effect which the leaflets had
on the morale of their men, while many privates stoutly denied having
been influenced by propaganda, even when the much-thumbed leaflets were
found on their persons. It must be remembered, however, that no soldier
likes to attribute his defeat to pieces of paper; he prefers to blame it
on lack of food, the enemy’s overwhelming superiority of numbers, and
to his preponderance of artillery and machine-guns. If a historian ever
has an opportunity to delve into the files of the German Intelligence
Bureau, however, I imagine that he will find ample evidence that the
showers of leaflets falling from the blue played no inconsiderable part
in the collapse of the German war-machine. But, whatever the results of
our efforts in this direction, as revealed by the light of history, the
American people can be assured that never was a campaign of propaganda
waged with such scrupulous regard for the truth. Though certain of our
allies sent out material for distribution over the enemy lines which took
considerable liberties with the truth, to put it mildly, and though the
French quite frankly made use of Bolshevistic arguments, appeals, and
promises, the distribution of our own propaganda leaflets was delayed
time after time in order that the General Staff might sift and weigh the
statements which it contained until they contained nothing save sincerity
and truth.
In the weeks that followed Foch’s great offensive in the summer of 1918,
it became increasingly apparent to those who were in a position to judge,
that German morale, both in the heart of the empire as well as at the
front, was imperceptibly but none the less steadily deteriorating. No one
realized the significance of this to the Allied cause better than the
chief of the Psychologic Subsection, who determined to watch the progress
of the movement, just as a physician watches the progress of a disease,
and to indicate its trend by means of a chart, like those on which nurses
record the variations in the pulse and temperature of their patients. In
pursuance of this plan, which was put into execution about the 1st of
September, 1918, a daily report was prepared which contained in brief
form all news in any way relating to German morale which had come in from
all sources during the preceding twenty-four hours. At the end of each
week an interpretation of the drift of these news items was attempted in
a weekly report. Using as a basis for its estimates material contained
in these reports, supplemented by information obtained from every source
open to Military Intelligence, the subsection worked out its famous
“Chart of German Civilian Morale,” which, during the closing months of
the war, occupied a conspicuous place on a wall of Secretary Baker’s
office. The chart was drawn on a sheet divided into cross-sections,
each of which represented a day, while the heavy black line, writhing
across the paper like a dying serpent, showed the wavering morale of
Germany’s civil population. Secondary lines depicted in graphic form the
German military situation, the degree of political unity in Germany,
the situation in Austria-Hungary, the state of the food supply in the
Central Empires, and the U-boat sinkings. But it was, of course, the line
indicating the state of civilian morale which most accurately gauged the
situation. Starting in August, 1914 (nearly three years before our entry
into the war), at the top of the chart, the line runs almost straight
until the battle of the Marne, when there is a sudden drop. It recovers,
however, with the continuance of the German advance, declines during the
winters of 1914-1915 and 1915-1916, only to ascend again with the coming
of spring; falls sharply after the final reverse at Verdun, drops to a
still lower level than before during the anxious winter of 1917-1918,
rises almost to its highest peak during Hindenburg’s tremendous onset in
the following spring; begins a gradual decline in ratio to the steady
increase in the strength of the American armies, and finally, beginning
with the defeat of the all-conquering Germans at Château-Thierry, goes
plunging downward until, on November 11, 1918, the line ends at the
bottom of the chart in the abyss of national despair.
Shortly after the Armistice, when the morale of Germany’s civil
population was no longer of any interest save to the Germans themselves,
the symptoms of a new and even more alarming disorder became apparent to
the specialists of the Psychologic Subsection, whereupon, in order to
keep this new menace to the health of the world under observation, a new
chart was started and a fresh series of reports were begun, the personnel
of the section being instructed to immediately note all movements and
manifestations likely to prove destructive of good order and stable
government. On huge wall-maps of Europe and Asiatic Russia various
kinds of disturbances or threatened disturbances—revolutions, mutinies,
riots, racial and religious troubles, strikes, labor and political
demonstrations—were indicated by pins of different colors:
Red: Bolshevism, Syndicalist, or Socialist.
Brown: Political revolution, counter-revolution,
anti-Bolshevist or social disturbances.
Blue: Industrial strikes.
Green: Food riots, plundering, or difficult food situation.
White: Racial troubles.
Black: Military mutiny.
Yellow: Disease epidemic.
Each day a report was made out, compiled from various sources, covering
the subject of European disturbances, these reports being arranged
geographically. Every Friday a weekly summary was prepared in numbered
paragraphs, condensing the daily reports and giving, if possible, an
interpretation of the trend of unrest during the preceding week. As the
most threatening disturbances during the winter of 1918-1919 were of a
Bolshevist nature, it was deemed advisable to issue a weekly report on
the activities of Trotzky, Lenine & Co. and their followers.
The Fifth Section of the Military Intelligence Division, known as M I 5,
is charged with the duty of obtaining positive intelligence, that is,
of locating direct and indirect sources of information; of supervising
military attachés, who, within the limits of their activities, obtain
essential information, and of forwarding this information to such
sections of the Intelligence Division as may find it of value. Now
I am perfectly aware that the army officers who are attached to the
American embassies and legations in various foreign countries do not
stand particularly high in the estimation of the American people. They
are generally regarded as men who have been selected for their wealth
and social distinction rather than for their abilities as soldiers; who
have had more experience in ballrooms than in bombarded cities, and are
more successful in leading cotillions than at leading troops in battle.
As a matter of fact, this estimate of our military attachés is bitterly
unjust. As showing the type of men who represented the army abroad, I
might mention that our military attaché in England during the early years
of the Great War was Major-General George S. Squier (then a colonel),
chief signal officer of the army and one of the foremost scientists in
America, if not, indeed, in the world; our attaché at Paris was Colonel
Spencer S. Crosby, one of the most able engineer officers in the army;
while at Berlin our military representative was Major-General (then
Colonel) Joseph A. Kuhn, who, after organizing, training, and commanding
in action the 79th Division, eventually rose to the command of an army
corps.
Everything considered, the American military attachés have done more
valuable work and received less recognition for it than almost any
class of officers that I know. They have been placed in the unenviable
position of taking orders from two departments—War and State; they
have been forced, by the very nature of their duties, to play the rôle
of onlookers while their fellow officers were fighting, and they have
repeatedly been accused of being spies. Though the duties of our attachés
in the capitals of our allies have been largely ornamental during the
war, owing to the fact that they were virtually superseded in their
military functions by the various American military missions, their work
in the neutral countries of Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain,
and Switzerland was of enormous importance, for they provided Military
Intelligence with its most reliable and important source of information.
Those officers stationed at The Hague, Copenhagen, and Berne could look
across the barbed wire, figuratively speaking, and see for themselves
what the enemy was doing. Through all sorts of agents—spies, smugglers,
deserters, refugees, business men whose affairs took them into the
territory of the Central Powers, and returning travellers—they were able
to keep their fingers constantly on the military and economic pulse of
the enemy, and to report the information thus obtained to the A. E. F.
and to Washington. It goes without saying that this work called for the
exercise of the highest degree of patience, resourcefulness, and tact,
for they were always surrounded by German agents, and particularly in
those countries where German sympathizers predominated, the slightest
indiscretion would have resulted in a demand for their recall. No news
that came out of Germany was too trivial to escape their attention. Every
one who crossed the frontier, from Dutch and Danish bankers to German
deserters, was adroitly questioned and cross-questioned by the attachés,
certain of the information thus obtained exercising a profound effect
on America’s military policy. For example, our attaché at The Hague
was dining one evening with a Dutch banker who had just returned from
a business trip to Germany. While chatting over the coffee and cigars
the Hollander remarked that, though he had been the guest of a German
nobleman of great wealth, he had not been quite as comfortable as on
previous visits, owing to the absence of his host’s butler.
“What has become of old Franz?” the Hollander had asked his host. “The
place isn’t the same without him.”
“He was called to the colors last week,” was the answer.
“But surely he is too old for active service,” the banker protested.
“He must be nearer sixty than fifty; he is blind in one eye and he is
crippled with rheumatism.”
“Ach, yes,” admitted the German. “But what would you? The Fatherland has
need of every man.”
This incident, related quite casually over a dinner-table, though trivial
in itself, gave our military attaché—and through him our Military
Intelligence—an intimation of the enormous depletion of Germany’s
man-power. Taken in conjunction with similar reports from other sources,
it convinced him that Germany was fast becoming desperately hard up for
men.
The attaché in Switzerland, perusing, as was his custom, the current
issues of the German newspapers, had his attention attracted by an
advertisement, inserted by a citizen of a south German city, offering
to rent a pair of stout leather boots, in good condition, for six weeks
for forty marks. When the equivalent of ten dollars is demanded for the
use of a pair of boots for six weeks, there is only one conclusion to
be drawn. “Germany must be at the last gasp for leather,” argued the
attaché, and he so informed Washington. His surmise proved perfectly
correct.
Our military representative at The Hague was materially aided in his
quest for information by a former sergeant in the American Army, who,
upon his discharge, had bought a small truck-farm in southern Holland,
within a few rods of the frontier. His dwelling was a recognized
rendezvous for smugglers and deserters, the old soldier sending reports
of the immensely important information which he obtained from them to the
attaché at the capital as regularly as, when stationed at an army post in
the Indian country, he turned in his company reports.
All cable messages sent by the military attachés to the Military
Intelligence Division habitually ended with the sentence “Pershing
informed,” which signified that the information had also been
communicated to the Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary
Forces. Shortly after the arrival of the former Kaiser at Amerongen, the
newspapers carried circumstantial accounts of serious political unrest
in Holland. In order to correct the impression thus created, the attaché
at The Hague, who was evidently blessed with a sense of humor, sent the
following message to Washington:
“_Everything quiet in Holland. The Kaiser is still with us.
Pershing informed. God also._”
Outside of Tiflis, in the Caucasus, in whose bazaars eighty languages
are commonly spoken, I suppose that the Sixth Section of Military
Intelligence, familiarly referred to as M I 6, is the nearest modern
equivalent to the Tower of Babel. This section is charged with
translating into English books, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets,
posters, proclamations, army orders, war diaries, confidential reports,
Heaven only knows what besides, which appear in pretty much every
language under the sun. The translators at present employed in the
section make translations from the French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,
German, Dutch, Dano-Norwegian, Russian, Swedish, Greek, and Icelandic.
This comprises only a portion of the section’s work, however, for it
also makes translations from Roumanian, Ukrainian, Czecho-Slovak,
Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Polish, Lithuanian,
Lettish, Finnish, Ladino (there’s a strange one!), Hebrew, Yiddish,
Turkish, Armenian, Assyrian, Syriac, Arabic, Hindustani, Bengali,
Chinese, Japanese, Choctaw, and other North American Indian dialects,
Samoan, a dialect of the Philippine Islands, and Esperanto. By an
ingenious system of filing and indexing the information thus obtained,
the section has become a sort of clearing-house for data gleaned from the
foreign press.
M I 8 is the Cable and Telegraph Section of Military Intelligence. A
portion of its work consists in sending and receiving telegrams and
cables between the division and its intelligence officers on duty outside
of Washington, including the military attachés in foreign countries.
By means of special wire connections, remarkably fast service has been
provided, particularly with the most important centre, Paris, whence
messages in plain text have been delivered in Washington four hours
earlier by the clock than they were despatched, while code messages have
been delivered at approximately the same time by the clock that they were
sent. As an illustration of the peculiar tricks played by the change
in time, I might mention—though it has nothing on earth to do with the
subject of Military Intelligence—that the news of the death of Queen
Victoria was received in New York three and a half hours before the time
at which she breathed her last!
By far the greater portion of the enormous amount of cable correspondence
handled by this office has been in the form of code messages. Since
the necessity for security has required that the code words of each
message be enciphered to prevent the possibility of the message being
intercepted and read by the enemy, it has been necessary to subject each
code message to two complete translations. It has also been the duty of
this section, in order to insure secrecy and to secure economy in the
transmission of messages, to prepare five code-books for publication.
Few persons realize, I imagine, that the use of code by the Military
Intelligence Division, the Adjutant-General’s Office, and other branches
of the War Department, as well as by the American Expeditionary Forces,
has resulted in a saving to the government of at least 50 per cent in the
cost of telegraphic and cable communications. The use of the Geographical
Code has brought about an even greater economy by eliminating the
necessity of spelling out foreign place names. Though hundreds of plays,
novels, and magazine stories have been based on the work of code and
cipher experts in this and other countries, the writers have usually
painted in too vivid colors the romantic side of the calling. Though
code and cipher work is frequently productive of exciting and dramatic
moments, it is usually the intellectual excitement of a chemist who,
after weeks of laborious experiments, discovers a new reaction, rather
than the physical thrill which a detective experiences when he discovers
a clew to a crime.
* * * * *
Because of the enormous number of foreign-born citizens who were brought
into the army by the draft, or who entered it through the National Guard
or as volunteers, the work of counter-espionage within the military
establishment itself was of vital importance, for a single traitor in
the expeditionary forces might well have turned victory into disaster.
Had it not been for the vigilance and efficiency of the Third Section of
Military Intelligence, which was charged with counter-espionage within
the military establishment itself, our hastily recruited and somewhat
loosely organized armies would have afforded countless opportunities for
the operations of enemy agents. I can give no higher praise to the work
of this section than to say that, though numerous enemy agents succeeded
in gaining admission to the military service in the United States,
they did not succeed in getting overseas, where they might have done
irreparable harm. So active were our intelligence officers, so carefully
did they investigate the record of every man destined for service in
France, that, of the two and a half million men in the A. E. F., not a
single one, so far as I am aware, was convicted of espionage.
Every military organization operating independently, from a division
down to a quartermaster depot, possessed its own counter-espionage
organization, built up within itself for its own protection but operating
according to a general plan and reporting directly to the Military
Intelligence Division in Washington. During the war there were over
400 intelligence officers reporting to Military Intelligence, either
directly or through department intelligence officers. In addition to
these, there were special intelligence officers at certain highly
important points: New York, Hoboken, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, St. Louis,
New Orleans, Seattle, and San Juan, Porto Rico—and twenty-one district
intelligence officers stationed in centres of somewhat less importance.
The privilege of direct communication, granted by the Secretary of War,
enabled the counter-espionage organization throughout the United States
to be controlled and co-ordinated without interference by the normal
military command, thereby insuring additional secrecy for its operations
and eliminating the enormous amount of time and red tape involved
in sending communications through the usual military channels. Each
intelligence officer corresponded directly and freely with every other
intelligence officer, copies of such lateral communications being sent to
Military Intelligence, the files of M. I. thus becoming a great central
reservoir for intelligence information of every sort. As a result of this
organization, the Director of Military Intelligence, sitting at his desk
in Washington, was the centre of a vast network of intelligence officers
and other agents which covered not only the whole of the United States
but, indeed, the greater part of the world.
The ever-present problem presented by counter-espionage work within the
army was the determination of the loyalty of officers and men. Experience
proved that the pro-German was almost certain to reveal himself sooner or
later, or to be reported by some one who had known him, the loyal rank
and file themselves constituting the most effective counter-espionage
service of all. Investigations of men thus reported frequently showed,
however, that, though the suspect might have been pro-German before our
entrance into the war, he had been apparently loyal since. If he was
an enlisted man it was usually deemed safe to put him with line troops
and send him to the front, for, even were he to prove disloyal, his
opportunities for acquiring important information were comparatively
few, and his opportunities for transmitting such information to the
enemy almost infinitesimal. In the case of an officer, however, the
question took on a far graver aspect, and only after the most searching
investigation was such a man permitted to go overseas.
The activities of the men under investigation assumed many forms. First
in importance, of course, though not in numbers, were those enemy agents
who had entered the army for the express purpose of acquiring information
for transmission to the enemy. These were, in plain language, spies, and
had they been caught “with the goods,” they would have been subject to
court martial and execution. In order to silence the countless stories
and rumors which have been circulated, I will avail myself of this
opportunity to state that _not a single American soldier or civilian
was executed for espionage during the entire course of the war_. The
bulk of the cases which were investigated concerned men who, because of
their foreign birth, or antecedents, or sympathies, _might_ have been
willing to impart information of military value to enemy agents. The most
difficult class to deal with, however, was the man who was spreading
stories, with or without thought as to their effect, which would tend
to lower the morale of the army. The reports upon which investigations
were initiated varied greatly in definiteness, ranging all the way
from specific statements as to a man’s utterances or acts to a vague
rumor that in such and such a place there was a man, name not given, who
should be investigated. It was the policy of the section, however, to
pursue any clew, no matter how vague, until the guilt or innocence of
the suspect was definitely established. Where the original information
was anonymous, that point was always sharply emphasized, so that the
suspect’s reputation might not be injured should the allegations prove
to be unfounded, for it was found that anonymous charges were very
frequently made from motives of spite or revenge or because of some real
or fancied injury. In such cases it was the policy of the section to push
the investigation only far enough to show their character and then drop
them promptly, without burdening the field intelligence officers or other
investigating agencies with useless work.
The converse of this policy was followed in cases where the charges
appeared to be well grounded, the man then being kept under surveillance
until something, no matter what, was picked up which would place him
where he could do no harm.
One of the commonest problems was the one presented by the officer of
German extraction who had been born and bred amid Teutonic influences,
and who was naturally pro-German in sympathy and utterances before
the United States entered the war, but who had been guilty of no
act or utterance since that date which could be construed as in any
degree disloyal, and who, from a military point of view, was extremely
efficient. Such cases, in the last analysis, always resolved themselves
into the question: “Is he fit to go across?” Each case was, of course,
considered on its own merits. While it was obviously impossible to lay
down a rule-of-thumb applicable to all, two considerations in the main
governed the decision. In the first place, an effort was made to obtain
the opinions of the officers serving with the man in question and to
learn whether they would be satisfied to go into action against German
troops with him. If his fellow officers felt that they could trust him
under such circumstances, it was a fair judgment in his favor. The second
consideration was to ascertain whether his name, lineage, or appearance
would make him unacceptable to our French allies. If such were likely to
be the case, international courtesy, if nothing else, made it inadvisable
to send him overseas. Surveillance of these men naturally was continued
in France, but the Intelligence Division of the A. E. F., in reporting
that such a case could be considered closed, frequently said in effect
that any taint of disloyalty which might once have existed had been
burned away by the fire of battle.
The process of having an officer discharged from the army by authority
of Paragraph 9, War Department Bulletin No. 32 (“The President is hereby
authorized to discharge any officer from the office held by him under
such appointment for any cause which, in the judgment of the President,
would promote the public service”), was the easiest and most satisfactory
manner of dealing with cases of individuals against whom it was
impossible to obtain sufficient evidence for conviction by court martial
but whose presence in the army was regarded as constituting a menace
to the national safety. This will explain in some measure, perhaps, the
curt announcements which appeared from time to time during the course of
the war in Army Orders: “Lieutenant (or Captain, or Colonel) So-and-So
has been discharged for the good of the Service.” The great drawback,
however, to this method of ridding the army of undesirables was that it
could not be applied to officers of the regular establishment, as the
terms of the Act restricted its application to Reserve officers and those
holding commissions for the term of the emergency. The policy pursued
by Military Intelligence in the cases of regular officers suspected of
disloyalty—for all suspected officers were not confined to the National
Army or the Reserve Corps—was to have them assigned to posts where their
opportunities for mischief would be reduced to a minimum. An officer
ordered to duty in the heart of Alaska, say, was considered about as
safe, from the point of view of Military Intelligence, as though he were
in a cell at Leavenworth.
Among the nearly 700,000 men swept by the first draft into the
cantonments to be fused into a national army were thousands upon
thousands of men of alien birth, many of them but recently arrived in
this country and all but ignorant of its tongue. It speedily became
apparent that the fusing process was failing to produce in many of
these men, perhaps in the majority of them, the change necessary to
make them into soldiers. Instead of melting and flowing like the rest
of the metal from which was forged the weapon which halted the Huns at
Château-Thierry and beat them back in the Argonne, these men of alien
birth remained a hard, unyielding mass, not only obdurate in itself,
but threatening to leave in the finished weapon flaws that would be
fatal when it was subjected to the test of battle. By the fall of 1917,
therefore, the military authorities had awakened to a realization of the
fact that they were confronted by a serious and difficult problem—what to
do with the foreign-speaking element of our new armies.
These immigrants, particularly the more recent, tend to congregate in the
industrial centres of the country, in New York’s teeming “East Side,”
in the mining regions of Pennsylvania, in the manufacturing cities of
New England, and in the Pacific Northwest. Here they live in swarming
communities, speaking their own languages, reading (if they can) their
own newspapers, attending their own churches, their wants ministered
to by their own doctors, lawyers, bankers, and tradesmen. From such
colonies the drag-net of the draft drew into the army tens of thousands
of foreign-speaking men. Here, then, was the first and greatest source
of difficulty in transforming these aliens from many lands into American
soldiers—ignorance of the English language. Unable to understand the
orders which were given them, they were set down as stupid and surly,
and through a lack of judgment in the selection of the commissioned and
non-commissioned officers put in charge of them, they were frequently the
victims of misunderstanding and ill-treatment. Four illustrations are
typical of a hundred or more similar incidents in the Depot Brigade at
Camp Gordon:
Private Sobolowski, failing to spell his name, was struck in
the jaw by his sergeant, so successfully that the jaw was
broken and a few teeth were knocked out. The private went to
the hospital and the sergeant to the guard-house, pending
court-martial proceedings.
Private Pagarzelski replied to his corporal in Polish, which
the corporal considered highly abusive. The private was
court-martialled and sixty dollars of his pay was forfeited.
As a consequence the man was not only unable to help his aged
mother but was left without a penny for himself.
Private Sznyder, being on guard duty, misunderstood the orders
repeated to him by the corporal of the guard, and naturally
did not comply with them. As a result he was arrested and put
in the guard-house, fifty-seven dollars being taken from him
by a corporal, of which only thirty-five dollars was returned.
The corporal took advantage of his ignorance of English to
appropriate a part of the money.
A Russian was arrested for evasion of military service. After
he had spent six weeks in the guard-house it was discovered
(through an interpreter) that the man was arrested before he
had received notification of being drafted.
From a counter-espionage point of view such conditions were distinctly
dangerous. The foreign-speaking soldiers, if not actually affiliated
with the enemy, were, because of their ignorance and credulity,
especially susceptible to the advances of enemy agents and propagandists.
When herded together in a depot brigade, made surly by the inconsiderate
treatment they received and chafing under the compulsion of being set at
manual labor in this country when their ambition was to go overseas, they
were potentially, if not actually, ripe for mischief.
Early in 1918 Mr. D. Chauncey Brewer, of Boston, president of the North
American Civic League for Immigrants, was appointed by the Secretary
of War to take the situation in hand. Under his direction a corps of
field agents commenced operations both in the camps and cantonments
and in the large cities and industrial centres, collecting information
about the non-English-speaking men taken by the draft. These agents, who
were carefully picked men of foreign extraction and generally linguists
of ability, observed the general and special influences affecting the
foreign-born groups and investigated propaganda, suspects, complaints
regarding draft evasion, draft boards, soldiers’ allotments, insurance,
and the like. They reported on conditions existing in the camps from
information contained in soldiers’ letters, for many men who were
prevented by their lack of knowledge of English or other reasons from
complaining to their military superiors, would recite their troubles in
their letters to the folks at home. These agents accounted in various
ways for their presence in the camps, most of them announcing that they
were working for the Associated Charities or for the North American
Civic League for Immigrants. They established connections with leaders of
the foreign colonies in the larger cities as well as with the poor. The
foreign-language press, its editors and its influence, good or bad, also
demanded their attention. They reported loyal citizens of integrity and
ability who were later induced by means of correspondence to volunteer
for this kind of service and who could keep Military Intelligence
informed on conditions in their respective cities when the agent had
finished his work or found it advisable to withdraw. Thus was built up a
large volunteer organization composed of loyal citizens of foreign birth
or extraction, who kept the Intelligence Division advised of conditions
among their respective groups or races, and to whom the division could
apply for assistance or information in individual cases or localities.
These volunteer assistants included men in all lines of business
and in all professions. The Boards of Health of cities having large
foreign-speaking populations vouched for loyal foreign-speaking doctors
who, because of the peculiarly confidential relations they enjoyed
with their patients, were able to obtain information of great value
to the section. The same was true of clergymen of many denominations.
The editors of foreign-language newspapers frequently rendered highly
effective co-operation, and correspondence was started with a dozen
or more school superintendents in the larger cities with a view to
enlisting the aid of the high-school boys in promoting the morale of the
foreign-speaking colonies.
Reports received from Camp Gordon in April, 1918, indicated serious
trouble with the unnaturalized Russians and Poles, and, in some
instances, with the Italians, all of whom were perfectly willing to fight
for the lands from which they came but not for this one. Camp Gordon
was a replacement camp, and as such had become a dumping-ground for
divisions having men that they wished to get rid of, a large proportion
of whom were foreigners. Of the 1,500 men of all nationalities who were
transferred to this camp by the 82d Division on the ground of suspected
disloyalty, nearly 1,000 did not speak English. In order to remedy this
dangerous condition, a memorandum was drawn up by M I 3 and was adopted
by the War Department. This memorandum recommended that foreign-speaking
draftees not having sufficient knowledge of English to understand
the commands be segregated by nationalities in companies, both the
commissioned and non-commissioned officers of which should be of the
same nationality as their men, or should at least be familiar with their
language, habits, and psychology. In support of the plan the words of
Napoleon were quoted:
“If I had enough humpbacks in the Army to make a regiment, enough Negroes
to make a battalion, enough dumb men to make a company, I would so
organize them. No stimulus is more potent than the pride of men who have
a common bond either of race, nationality, color, or even affliction.
Men thus put together want to show the rest of the Army their extreme
capability.”
The work at Camp Gordon was put in charge of an officer of Military
Intelligence, who had had considerable experience in social-service
work among the foreign-speaking soldiers at Camps Grant and Custer.
Upon his arrival at Camp Gordon he found that those soldiers (most
of them foreigners) who had been left behind when troops were sent
overseas had been placed in the 5th and 10th Training Battalions of the
Depot Brigade. Forty-one nationalities were represented in this group
of foreigners, classified as Allied Aliens, Neutral Aliens, and Enemy
Aliens, 80 per cent of them being Italians, Slavs, and Russian Jews.
The officer immediately initiated a study of each nationality and of
each individual, the process of personally interviewing each man, 976
in all, occupying two weeks. Thousands of questions and complaints were
answered and explanations made to the men in their native tongue, every
man being recorded and classified according to his nationality, loyalty,
intellect, citizenship, and military fitness. This done, two companies
were formed, one composed of Slavs—the majority of them Poles—and the
other of Italians. Three officers of Polish extraction and one of Russian
were procured for the Slav company and two of Italian extraction for the
Italian company. The first week of training and lectures on discipline
resulted in an amazing impetus of spirit and enthusiasm. Between the
Slavs and the Italians arose the keenest competition for proficiency in
drill. So startling was the change that the battalion commander and the
American officers in charge of the two companies passed rapidly from
discouragement and pessimism to extreme enthusiasm. An elaborate plan
was worked out for giving the men a working knowledge of English and a
series of lectures were given in their own tongues, thus acquainting them
with the requirements necessary for service overseas. Special religious
services were arranged for the Italians and the Slavs, their spiritual
needs being ministered to by priests of their own faiths. The camp diet
was modified in order to give them food which was racially acceptable.
Social entertainments were planned, so that prominent citizens of Atlanta
could meet the foreign-speaking soldiers and make them feel that they
were as dear to the country whose uniform they were wearing as though
they were American-born. The immediate result of this interesting
experiment was the conversion of potentially dangerous malcontents into
loyal, enthusiastic, and efficient soldiers. Furthermore, the reaction
upon the families of the soldiers and upon the colonies from which they
came was highly gratifying, for their letters from the men, filled
with their suddenly awakened enthusiasm for army life and with glowing
accounts of the kindness and consideration which were being shown them,
did much to counteract any latent disloyalty among the foreign-speaking
population. To each new group of foreigners who entered the battalion
the question was put: “How many of you men are willing to go abroad and
fight?” In most cases the affirmative responses were pitifully few. In
fact, the Slavs practically all refused to put on identification tags,
asserting that should they be sent abroad they would be as willing to
help the Germans as the Allies. But when, after a few weeks’ stay in the
battalion, the question, “How many of you men are willing to go abroad
and fight?” was again put to them, the response was as remarkable as it
was thrilling, for practically the whole battalion stepped forward as
one man. Properly treated, the metal had fused at last. They were all
Americans now.
So successful did the experiment prove at Camp Gordon that a few months
later the same officer was ordered to introduce his plan at Camp Devens,
where there were approximately 6,000 men who did not have sufficient
knowledge of English to be effectively trained. In three days he, with
proper assistance, personally examined upward of 2,000 men, and on the
fourth day divided them into four companies, Company No. 1 consisting of
250 Slavs (three-fourths of them Poles), Company No. 2 of 230 Italians,
Company No. 3 of 200 Greeks and Albanians, and Company No. 4 of the same
number of Armenians and Syrians. A number of non-commissioned officers
who could speak the necessary languages were transferred from the depot
brigade and assigned to assist in the training of the new companies. The
results obtained were beyond all expectations. The spirit and enthusiasm
of the men advanced by leaps and bounds. They entered into competitive
drills as enthusiastically as though they were schoolboys playing a game.
The guard-house, which, until the introduction of the plan, had always
been full of foreign-speaking soldiers, suddenly became deserted. From
being the worst organization at the camp, the “Foreign Legion,” as it was
called, became the model battalion.
The plan, followed both at Camp Devens and Camp Gordon, of providing the
foreign-speaking organization with foreign-speaking non-commissioned
officers of unquestioned loyalty served an additional purpose in that
it provided the Intelligence Division with new and valuable sources of
information, for the non-commissioned officers, being familiar with
the language, customs, and modes of thought of their men, could easily
detect any undercurrent of disaffection or disloyalty. Their common
speech would at once establish a bond of sympathy that would be likely
to disarm the suspicions of an enemy agent or sympathizer. Moreover, the
speech and characteristics of peoples living in close proximity to each
other, though divided by an international frontier, are usually so nearly
identical that no one can distinguish between them save a person who
himself comes from that region. Only a man who had himself lived on the
Russo-German frontier, for example, would be able to say with certainty
whether a certain soldier came from Russian, Austrian, or German Poland;
from Galicia or Lithuania; from Transylvania, Besserabia, or the Ukraine.
An incident which occurred at one of the camps illustrates this principle
as applied to the Oriental races. A civilian agent of the Military
Intelligence Division, who was an Armenian, noticed that a soldier who
claimed to be a Syrian refused to eat pork. Being perfectly familiar
with both Turkish and Syrian customs, and knowing that the Turks, who
are Mohammedans, are forbidden to eat pork, while the Syrians, who are
Christians, are not, the operative sharply questioned the pretended
Syrian, who at length confessed that he was a Turk, and, consequently, an
enemy alien. Such a slight indication would have passed unnoticed save
by one familiar with Oriental customs, and a dangerous enemy agent might
thus have escaped detection.
To M I 4 was intrusted the extremely important work of counter-espionage
among the civilian population. It investigated the activities of
the enemy in propaganda, in sabotage, and in the establishment of
communications with the home country; it investigated such of his trade
activities and financial transactions as might impede our successful
prosecution of the war; it discovered enemy influences among political,
racial, and religious groups and in labor organizations, and it watched
persons throughout the nation who, though not associated with the enemy,
were nevertheless engaged in pacifist, revolutionary, and similar
activities which were likely to interfere with our military operations.
The section operated through many agencies. As a branch of the War
Department, it employed intelligence officers serving with troops in
the various camps and cantonments, who furnished the section with much
valuable information relative to civilian activities which reacted
upon the army. Similar information was furnished by the departmental
intelligence officers, stationed at the headquarters of the several
geographical departments of the army, and by the military attachés in
foreign countries. The Department of Justice, the State Department, and
the Office of Naval Intelligence also actively co-operated with the
section. By the establishment of a system of counter-espionage in foreign
countries the section succeeded in frustrating many of the German plans
at their source and in counteracting enemy propaganda which, had it
gone unchecked, might have had the gravest results. The German method
of organized propaganda was well illustrated by the operations of the
Chilean-German League, which was founded in October, 1916, by Chileans
of German descent, its membership including commercial agents, priests,
professors, physicians, merchants, and school-teachers. In a circular
dated Valparaiso, October 24, 1917, and marked “Confidential,” the
management of the local branch of the league at Valparaiso announced
a meeting to be held jointly with the representatives of all German
societies of the city for the purpose of founding a propaganda committee.
The necessity for starting a propaganda on a large scale was pointed
out, and the main object of the league, that of urging the maintenance
of neutrality by the Chilean Government, was described in detail. The
importance to the Allies of the German ships in Chilean waters was
also emphasized, the circular saying, in part: “... if we succeed in
postponing the rupture of relations by this propaganda only for weeks,
we have aided Germany and her allies to the extent of millions, harming
the Allies at the same time by millions.” Though the league succeeded
in preventing Chile from joining the Allies, the vigilance and energy
displayed by the agents of our counter-espionage service in that country
practically nullified the effects of the league’s propaganda in South
America.
From the beginning of the war until its end the American public was
constantly thrilled by the sensational and usually highly circumstantial
accounts which appeared in the press, particularly the Sunday
supplements, of the operations of German secret agents in the United
States. Every one, I suppose, has heard, in some one of its many
versions, the story of the German spy who was shot in the telephone-booth
of a New York hotel by a Secret Service operative while giving a
confederate information relative to the sailing of American transports.
Though I have heard that story related, with minutest detail, in clubs,
over dinner-tables, and in the smoking-compartments of Pullmans, I never
heard any one ask the quite obvious questions as to why it was necessary
for the operative to shoot the spy instead of taking him alive, or how
the confederate proposed to transmit the information to Germany. One
picturesque version of the story laid the scene in a crowded New York
Subway train, the Secret Service man having his automatic in his pocket
and firing through the cloth of his coat. Then there was the equally
sensational story of the Hoboken family in whose employ was a German spy
disguised as a maid of all work. One day she mysteriously disappeared,
and a few hours after her disappearance Secret Service agents called at
the house and searched the belongings she had left behind her. Their
search was rewarded by discovering, under a false bottom in her trunk, a
complete set of the plans of the defenses of New York harbor. Variations
of that tale placed its locale in Stamford, Conn., in Chittenango, N.
Y., in Newton Centre, Mass., in Key West, and in Los Angeles, while
the papers discovered in the mysterious trunk ranged all the way from
drawings of coast-defense guns to a copy of the German Naval Code.
The same hysteria which led the public to accept these ridiculous
concoctions at their face value, and to beg for more, caused them to
suspect all sorts of well-known persons of being engaged in espionage
activities—the general commanding a certain American division, a famous
woman aviator, a still more famous prima donna, a Jewish banker noted
for his philanthropies, the chancellor of a great university, and even
the secretary to the President having been discovered—so the rumors had
it—to be German spies. At one period of the war, indeed, it was popularly
reported that spies were executed every morning at daybreak on Governor’s
Island. Now I dislike to destroy illusions and to spoil perfectly good
stories, but the dictates of truth compel me to assert that not a single
spy was executed on Governor’s Island or anywhere else in the United
States, though it is my personal opinion that a few such executions would
have brought to an abrupt end the series of fires, explosions, strikes,
and other cases of sabotage for which the agents of the Wilhelmstrasse
were responsible. For stating this opinion, quite early in the war, at a
dinner in Boston at which I was a speaker, I received a mild reprimand
from the Adjutant-General of the Army. On the occasion in question I
remarked, if I remember rightly, that I was convinced that the most
effective method of dealing with spies was not to intern them but to
inter them. And I am still of the same opinion.
Though Germany had a number of secret agents operating in the United
States—though not nearly as many as was generally supposed—the only one
of them who measured up to the popular conception of a spy was a woman
known as Madame de Victorica. In certain respects she came very near to
meeting the specifications for an international adventuress as laid down
in the mystery stories of Messrs. Chambers and Oppenheim. The results
she obtained were, however, distinctly disappointing—at least from the
Wilhelmstrasse point of view. Her father was the Prussian general to whom
Marshal Bazaine handed his sword at the surrender of Metz; her mother was
a Prussian countess; her sister was married to a Prussian nobleman, and
her brother was a Jesuit priest serving as a chaplain in the Austrian
Army. Madame de Victorica has had three husbands—all South Americans. Two
died within a few months after marrying the handsome adventuress; the
third was divorced. According to her confession, Madame de Victorica was
trained in espionage work at the Naval Intelligence Bureau in Berlin and
was sent to the United States by the authorities of the Wilhelmstrasse
for the purposes of obtaining military and naval information, to foment
labor troubles, to tamper with the Roman Catholic clergy, and to lay the
plans for a rebellion in Ireland more successful than the abortive one of
1916. She memorized a code before leaving Berlin. The secret ink in which
her letters were written was given her at the Chemical Institute and
was carried in two silk mufflers, the ink being obtained by saturating
them in cold water and wringing them. Writing in this ink could be
developed with iodine tablets, manufactured by a well-known firm of
London chemists, dissolved in vinegar. Other messages were transmitted by
means of pin-pricking certain letters in newspapers. Madame de Victorica
was unquestionably a woman of considerable intelligence and social
position; she had had some experience as a journalist, and was apparently
credited by the Germans with quickness of wit and resourcefulness as
an organizer. This reputation she only partly justified, however, for
she talked indiscreetly on the steamer while coming over, wasted time
and money after her arrival in New York in buying elaborate gowns, and
was an inveterate user of drugs. As the result of converging lines of
inquiry pursued by Military Intelligence and the Department of Justice,
she was arrested, together with several of her confederates, in August,
1918. There you have a thumb-nail sketch, as it were, of the most
dangerous German agent in America. She can thank her lucky stars that
the Wilhelmstrasse sent her to the United States instead of to France or
England, for had she been caught in either of those countries her career
would have ended not between stone walls but between a stone wall and a
firing-party.
It is easy enough to understand, if not to sympathize, with the reasons
which led Madame de Victorica to come to the United States in the
capacity of a German spy, for she was, after all, German to the core, her
relatives for generations before her having held high positions under the
Prussian crown. But it is not easy, indeed it is almost impossible, for
a loyal American to understand how men who were born and educated in the
United States and who had a long line of American ancestors behind them,
could sell their honor and their loyalty for German gold. It is, however,
a curious and regrettable fact that certain persons whose disloyalty
was proved beyond the shadow of a doubt were purely American, so far as
their birth and parentage were concerned, their only connections with
Germany being financial ones. Of these I have particularly in mind three
men, all, if I am not mistaken, possessing university educations, who
were journalists and correspondents of considerable standing until the
discovery of their pro-German activities blasted their reputations and
plunged them into oblivion. One of them—a correspondent who had seen
service in several wars—was caught in the act of carrying messages from
the Austrian Ambassador in Washington to Berlin. He was arrested by
British intelligence officers and returned to the United States. His
passport was taken from him, and those who were once his friends now pass
him by without speaking. Another of these gentry succeeded, in spite
of his German sympathies and affiliations, in obtaining admission to a
training-camp, being given a commission and sent to France. But, as the
result of representations made by the Intelligence Division, which was
thoroughly familiar with his career, he was brought back to the United
States, subjected to an official interrogation, confessed, and, though he
made desperate efforts to have the President accept his resignation, was
dismissed from the army “for the good of the service.” The third of this
precious trio went to Germany as a correspondent, at once constituted
himself a champion of everything German, savagely attacked the land of
his birth, and, upon the fall of the Kaiser, fled to Sweden, where, so
far as I am aware, he is still living in exile, a real “Man Without a
Country.”
The great organization built up by Von Papen and his fellows for purposes
of sabotage made it imperative, upon the entry of the United States into
the war, that a system should immediately be devised for the protection
of those plants and workers engaged in the manufacture of munitions. With
the declaration of war the United States became, almost overnight, the
greatest manufacturer of war materials in the world. In every city in the
land factories producing the tools of the fighter’s trade were running
night and day, and other factories, hundreds of them, began to spring
up as though at the wave of a magician’s wand. The nation was a-hum
with feverish industry from ocean to ocean. But of what avail was this
tremendous wave of manufacturing activity, of what use the expenditure of
billions in the erection and operation of plants and factories, unless
those plants and factories were afforded protection against fire and the
acts of enemy agents? To fill this need there was organized, in July,
1917, the Plant Protection Section of the Military Intelligence Division.
The system of plant protection provided, first of all, for a physical
examination of the munition factories of the country with a view to
minimizing the danger of their destruction by fire. Basing their plans on
the estimates of the insurance companies that 85 per cent of all fires
are the result of carelessness, the inspectors sent out by the section
insisted, as a measure essential to the success of their work, on a
systematic and wholesale house-cleaning, the wave of cleanliness which
struck those American plants engaged in the manufacture of munitions
during the first year of the war being directly traceable to the orders
of the Plant Protection Section. The officers of the section next turned
their attention to measures for the prevention of sabotage and the
fomentation of labor troubles by enemy agents, which was accomplished by
the introduction of what was known as the “interior organization system.”
This consisted in the establishment within the plant of a complete
espionage system, composed of old and trusted employees, who worked
as Secret Service agents, and were unknown to one another. In cases
where it was deemed necessary, this body was re-enforced by trained and
experienced operatives from the Plant Protection Section, who usually
obtained positions as workmen in the plant without the knowledge of the
management. By this means the perpetrators of many cases of sabotage were
discovered, incipient strikes were prevented, agitators and professional
trouble-makers were kept under surveillance, and, if their actions
warranted, were placed under arrest, and an unceasing watch kept on the
movements of enemy agents. The campaign of sabotage and destruction which
German sympathizers had been conducting almost unchecked was abruptly
halted, for so wide-spread and efficient was the section’s organization
that the enemy agent was constantly haunted by the fear that his most
trusted confederate might be a secret operative who was watching his
every action. Though it never had more than 400 active agents (this does
not include, of course, the enormous number of volunteer operatives
recruited from the workers themselves), the section extended its
protection to more than 37,000 manufacturing plants, and, during the
period of its war-time operations, made upward of 270,000 recommendations
for arrests, investigations, and prosecutions, or for further plant
protection.
Agents of the Plant Protection Section succeeded in gaining admission
to the innermost councils of the I. W. W. and kindred organizations,
and, by thus obtaining advance notice of any contemplated action, were
successful in averting strikes and labor troubles which would have
caused the loss of millions of dollars, and, through halting the flow
of munitions to the front, the loss of thousands of American lives. The
success of the section in this phase of its work was due, first, as I
have already explained, to its ability to obtain advance information of
impending trouble, and, secondly, to the fact that the agents of the
section were in a position to handle a delicate labor situation in an
absolutely impartial manner, taking no sides and inspiring the confidence
of both employers and employees. Thus it came about that the section was
frequently able to compose differences between capital and labor when
other arbitrators, who did not so completely hold the confidence of both
parties to the dispute, failed.
After the Armistice the activities of the section consisted, in the main,
in protecting the government against fraudulent claims presented by
manufacturers and in guarding the great plants and warehouses which were
abandoned upon the cancellation of war contracts. In one case the section
obtained and prepared evidence for a grand jury which so conclusively
showed fraud on the part of certain manufacturers holding government
contracts, that another concern, which had already presented claims
amounting to $600,000, upon learning that they were being investigated by
agents of the section, hurriedly withdrew them. Another example of the
efficiency which characterized the work of the section is illustrated by
the case of a concern engaged in the manufacture of shells, the evidence
presented by the section resulting in the indictment of the president
and ten other officials of the company for submitting shells to the
government for inspection under fraudulent circumstances.
* * * * *
The difficult, perplexing, and highly delicate work connected with the
various phases of the censorship was intrusted to the Tenth Section of
Military Intelligence, a number of subsections being established for the
censorship of mail matter, telegraphs and telephones, radio, books and
permanent literature, foreign-language newspapers, religious and pacifist
publications, photographs, motion-pictures, and mail to or from prisoners
of war.
To assume censorship of the mails was a new experience to our government,
for it was in direct opposition to American customs and traditions
and was extremely repugnant to a large and influential section of the
American people. It was undertaken, indeed, only after its necessity
had been urgently and repeatedly emphasized by our allies. Early in the
war France had taken over the censorship of the Swiss mails, leaving
to England the supervision of the mails to and from Holland and the
Scandinavian countries. Little attention had been paid, however, to
the Spanish, Mexican, and Central and South American mails, save when
they passed through the postal barrier erected by the Allied censorship
around the neutral states of Europe. The first problem that faced the
American censors, therefore, was to close the channels of information
leading into Germany through Spain, or out of Germany, via Spain, to the
Americas, Spain being in constant communication with Berlin by a powerful
system of wireless. Upon our entrance into the war it became imperative
to close this gap in the news blockade which was in force against the
enemy. This done, the only possible way for a German sympathizer in the
western hemisphere to communicate with Germany was indirectly, through
an intermediary in a neutral country, it becoming necessary for a German
agent in South America, for example, to direct his communications to
some confederate in Holland or Scandinavia. Such communications, which
were usually disguised as innocent social or business letters, but in
reality contained concealed messages in code, cipher, or invisible ink,
would then be transcribed by the confederate in the neutral country and
forwarded to the particular bureau of the German Government for which
they were intended, either by special courier or through ordinary postal
channels.
Owing to the peculiar position of the United States and its distance from
the actual battle-front, about 95 per cent of its postal-censorship work
was negative in character and only 5 per cent positive, these terms,
“negative” and “positive,” being used in the same sense as they applied
to other activities of Military Intelligence. By far the greater part of
the mail that required censorship was of a nature which might have caused
social unrest, labor troubles, or even rebellion in this country. Only
a comparatively small number of letters were intercepted which brought
positive information concerning the plans of the enemy or of neutrals. In
studying this positive information it was necessary for the censors to
keep constantly in mind the fact that the enemy intentionally permitted
false information to be sent out, which, were it taken at its face value,
might lead us to alter our plans or to relax our efforts. For periods of
two or three months, perhaps longer, immediately preceding each of the
great German offensives, there trickled into the offices of the censor
scores of letters depicting in heartrending terms the social unrest and
the appalling food conditions in the Fatherland.
Early in 1918 the United States, following the example of France and
England, established large chemical laboratories in New York and
Washington, where thousands of letters were subjected to tests for
invisible ink. The usual letter-paper which is used for communications in
invisible ink can be given minor tests without altering its appearance.
These preliminary tests are for the purpose of ascertaining whether the
paper has been moistened or subjected to other treatment preparatory to
the use of invisible ink. In case the minor tests show the paper has
received some unusual treatment, a major test is given which results in
developing any invisible writing, though it at the same time affects the
texture and color of the stationery so that it is impossible to restore
it to its original appearance. Practically all mail to or from persons
on the suspect lists kept by England, France, and the United States was
subjected to such examination.
By assuming the censorship of the Spanish, West Indian, and Latin
American mails, the American authorities were able to break up the trade
relations which up to that time had existed between German sympathizers
in the United States and German forwarding agents in South America.
In the latter months of the war Germany found herself in desperate
need of rubber in any form for use in electrical devices, particularly
for the construction of electrical apparatus to be used in torpedoes
and submarines. Hence we find the censorship intercepting suspicious
orders for such goods as dental rubber, tobacco-pouches, rubber soles
and heels. The censorship also intercepted and confiscated hundreds of
tons of German propaganda literature prepared by German agents in Spain
and intended for distribution in Latin America. Had this propaganda
reached the German agents in South and Central America to whom it was
addressed and had it been distributed in accordance with their plans,
it would unquestionably have resulted in great social unrest, political
demonstrations, and revolutions, if not, indeed, in actual war between
certain Latin American countries, thus interrupting our supply of certain
products essential to the manufacture of munitions. Had the Germans, for
example, succeeded in starting a war between Chile and Bolivia over the
Tacna-Arica question, our supply of Chilean nitrates, which we imported
in enormous quantities, in all probability would have been cut off. In
fact, it was the likelihood of just such an occurrence which led us to
spend millions of dollars in the erection of nitrate plants in the United
States, thus making us independent of the Chilean nitrate beds. The
censorship was likewise largely responsible for preventing revolutions
which were planned to take place simultaneously in Cuba and Mexico.
German agents had planned to launch a revolution in the Oriente province
of Cuba with a view to burning the cane-fields, while at the same time
an insurrection was to break out in the Tampico district of Mexico,
thus providing an excuse for the destruction of the oil-wells. Had this
plan been successful—and it came much nearer being successful than most
persons realize—our main sources of supply for oil and sugar would have
disappeared. But the plotters in Cuba were indiscreet enough to discuss
their plans in letters sent to their representatives in the United
States; these letters were intercepted by the postal censors, and a few
days later a transport, loaded to the gunwales with American Marines, set
sail for Guantanamo. The commander of the Marines had orders to prevent
the peace of the island republic from being disturbed. And he did. For
which we—and the Cubans—have to thank the postal censors.
It did not take the government long to realize that, if the cable and
postal censorships were to be made sufficiently water-tight to prevent
our military secrets leaking through to the enemy, it would be necessary
to reinforce them with a censorship of photographs and motion-picture
films. Accordingly, the Censorship Section of Military Intelligence was
charged, in addition to its numerous other duties, with the censorship
of all pictures taken by military photographers for the use of the
Committee on Public Information and for other publicity purposes, as
well as of those taken for commercial purposes by private concerns.
In order to keep our own people, as well as those of the Allied and
neutral countries, acquainted with the progress which the United States
was making in the business of war, scores of cameramen belonging to
the Photographic Section of the Signal Corps were sent out, at the
request of the Committee on Public Information, to take pictures at the
cantonments, training-camps, and munition factories in this country and
in the theatres of operations overseas. As, however, there were countless
details of our equipment, munitions, training methods, and the like
of which the enemy must be kept in ignorance, it was imperative that
all such pictures be carefully examined and passed upon before being
released for publication or exhibition. And, moreover, they must be
passed upon by men who were authorities on the various phases of the army
with which the pictures dealt. That it was a matter which could not be
left with safety to amateurs was emphasized by an incident which occurred
in October, 1918, when the great Allied offensive was at its height.
One Sunday morning the officers of the General Staff were astounded to
see, in the illustrated supplement of a New York newspaper, detailed
photographs of the new French howitzers, the very existence of which
up to that time had been one of the most carefully guarded secrets of
the Allies. The young officer who passed the pictures for publication
explained that, not being an artilleryman, the howitzers looked like
any other guns to him. A few weeks later the Staff was again surprised
and angered to see another secret—the small tanks which were being
manufactured in this country—revealed in the same paper. Here was another
case of an officer having passed a photograph dealing with a subject of
which he was ignorant. In order to prevent a repetition of such blunders,
the Censorship Section arranged to work in close co-operation with the
Chief Naval Censor and with experts in the offices of the Chief of Coast
Artillery, the Chief of Field Artillery, the Chief of Ordnance, the
Director of Military Aeronautics, the Bureau of Aircraft Production,
the quartermaster-general and the surgeon-general, these experts being
consulted in regard to all pictures relating to their respective arms
of the service. With their assistance a series of precedents was
established and a set of regulations for the censorship of photographs
was evolved. Among the pictures withheld from the public were those
dealing with new inventions of military significance, such as radio
telephony; with all examples of military and naval camouflage, and with
the various new types of artillery, especially those on tractor mounts.
Such photographs as were not released were placed in the archives of the
War College to become a permanent part of the pictorial history of the
war, while those which were passed were turned over to the Committee on
Public Information for distribution to the various agencies which were
in a position to give them the greatest publicity. There was also an
informal, intimate, and extremely valuable service which the section
was able to perform. As pictures were received from the A. E. F., a
systematic effort was made to furnish to the relatives and friends of
soldiers serving overseas copies of the photographs or sections of the
films in which their loved ones appeared, of the hospitals in which they
were being treated, or of the spots where they were buried. As a result
of this official thoughtfulness, comfort was given to many a lonely wife,
many an anxious parent.
A no less important phase of the section’s activities was the censorship
of still and motion pictures taken for commercial use at home and abroad
and the supervision of the firms and individuals taking them. When one
remembers that “The Birth of a Nation” is estimated to have been seen by
60,000,000 people, a realization can be had of the enormous possibilities
of the motion-picture for purposes of propaganda and the necessity
of subjecting it to rigid censorship. Whenever a picture contained
a suggestion of enemy propaganda, or when the policy of a producing
company appeared to be antagonistic to the interests of the United
States, a systematic investigation was started to determine the loyalty
of the officers of the organization and the source of its financial
backing. If the enemy propaganda was evidently intentional, steps were
immediately taken to prosecute the producers under the Espionage Act. If,
however, as was usually the case, the fault was due to mere ignorance
or thoughtlessness, a conference with the persons concerned generally
resulted in the alteration or withdrawal of the offending picture.
Exceptional precautions were observed in the censoring of films destined
for export. This work was in charge of the Customs Division of the
Treasury Department, the films being viewed by a board composed of
representatives of the Customs, Military and Naval Intelligence, and
the Committee on Public Information. If a member of this board made
any objection to a film it was sent to the custom-house for review by
another board of censors. If the matter to be deleted was unimportant,
the objectionable parts were cut out in the projection room. If the film
was approved, a letter of clearance was issued by the Committee on Public
Information and an export license was then granted by the War Trade
Board; should the film be rejected, the license was, of course, refused.
In censoring commercial films and photographs, every effort was made to
prevent the export of pictures which might reveal the war secrets of the
United States, which might be distorted and used as enemy propaganda, or
which might give a wrong impression of the conditions prevailing in this
country. For example, no pictures dealing with the influenza epidemic
were permitted to leave the country, for the German Government would
almost certainly have used them as proof that the man-power of America
was seriously impaired, thus encouraging the German people to prolong
their resistance. An export license was refused to a picture showing the
effects of a cyclone in Tyler, Texas, because, had it reached Germany,
it would, in all probability, have been given a caption something like
this: “American city after bombardment by German aircraft.” The fact that
there were no German aircraft on this side of the Atlantic would have
made no difference; the credulous German public would have greeted such
a picture with wild applause. As a matter of fact, thousands of pictures
of crumbling castles in England and of French ruins dating from the
Crusades were used in such manner by the Germans. For a similar reason,
the beautiful poster drawn by Joseph Pennell for the Fourth Liberty
Loan, depicting New York City in ruins as the result of a raid by German
aircraft, was not permitted to go abroad, for it would have been only too
easy for the German Government to publish it as an official picture of
the devastation wrought by German airmen in the American metropolis. I
have wondered, indeed, why the German propaganda bureau did not publish
a picture of Pompeii with a caption to the effect that it was an Italian
city destroyed by the Austrian fleet.
Some curious schemes were perfected by German agents in the United States
to convey messages to Germany in spite of the censorship. A set of
films depicting cannibal life in the South Seas aroused the suspicions
of the censors because of the irregularity of the perforations and
because of certain mysterious numbers appearing along the edges. The
films were finally passed for export, but not until the perforations
and numbers had been trimmed off. On another occasion the censor seized
an advertising folder, issued by a famous New York department store,
which contained a photograph of an exceedingly good-looking young woman
wearing an embroidered blouse and a plaid skirt, such as the store was
offering for sale. The picture showed the young woman standing beside a
table, holding in one hand a volume which, upon close inspection, was
found to bear the peculiar title _The Laborer’s Catechism_. Some bright
mind in the Censorship Section deduced that this title was really the
key to a code message, and that the message itself was contained in
the embroidery on the blouse. The story, which appeared to have all
the elements of a first-class spy tale, was spoiled, however, by the
unromantic code experts of M I 8, who professed themselves unable to
find any message concealed in the embroidery. Both the department store
and the photographers who took the picture were entirely absolved of any
attempt to communicate with the enemy, and the young woman herself was
found in a hospital, desperately ill with influenza. When the agents of
the Department of Justice visited the hospital some time later for the
purpose of interrogating her, it was found that she had left for parts
unknown. Whether the message was embroidery or imaginary I do not pretend
to say. I merely repeat the story because it illustrates the extreme
caution exercised by the Censorship Section. Knowing the cunning of the
Teuton, it was taking no chances.
Speaking of false scents in the tracking of spies, I remember being told
in England of an old lady, apparently a woman of some means, living in a
suburb of London, who was accustomed to write several times a week to her
daughter in Austria. The letters, being addressed to an enemy country,
were, of course, opened by the censor. Though there was nothing in the
communications themselves which could, by any stretch of the imagination,
be interpreted as treason, the suspicions of the officials were
instantly aroused by the discovery that each letter contained three new
playing-cards. One letter might contain, for example, the ace of hearts,
the ten of clubs, and the king of diamonds; in the next letter, posted a
few days later, would be the seven and the nine of spades and the king of
hearts. Here was a code which baffled every expert in the United Kingdom.
British Intelligence, the Censor’s Bureau, and the Criminal Investigation
Department of Scotland Yard all tried to ferret out the mystery of the
cards, but without success. Every conceivable test was applied to both
the letters and the cards for codes, ciphers, and invisible writing,
but without an atom of success. At length the old lady, whose every
movement had been shadowed for weeks, was summoned to Scotland Yard and
questioned. When the chief inquisitor suddenly demanded of her why she
enclosed playing-cards in her letters to her daughter, she replied: “My
daughter is a great bridge-player, and when I read in the newspapers that
it was impossible to get cards in Austria, I thought I would slip three
or four cards into every letter. In that way, you see, I would be able to
send her a pack every five or six weeks.”
To another subsection of M I 10 was delegated the censorship of mail to
and from the prisoners of war in the various internment camps in the
United States. As there were nearly 6,000 of these interned enemies, and
as they were permitted, by the regulations, to send nearly 40,000 letters
and post-cards a month, no limit being placed on the amount of mail they
could receive, the task of censoring this mass of correspondence, most of
it in languages other than English, was very far from being a sinecure.
The primary object of this censorship was to prevent the passing of
objectionable communications, such as attacks on the government or
information which might be of value to the enemy. The censors were
also constantly on the watch to prevent the prisoners from acting as
correspondence intermediaries; that is, from transmitting messages from
Germany to German sympathizers in the United States, or _vice versa_.
The kind of paper to be used by the prisoners for their correspondence
was selected by the subsection with a view to making difficult, if
not impossible, the use of secret inks. Thousands of letters, both to
and from the prisoners, were submitted to chemical tests for invisible
writing, and hundreds of others, which aroused suspicion because of
their peculiar wording or unusual marking, were examined for possible
messages in code. One prisoner endeavored to communicate with his wife
by writing in lemon-juice under the flap of the envelope, and at Fort
Douglas a scheme was discovered whereby German sympathizers communicated
with the prisoners by means of dots placed under the letters of words in
newspapers sent into the internment camp.
In the days before the Great War revolutionized our customs and
restricted the amazing liberty of action which we had enjoyed, it was
as easy for any one who had the price of a ticket in his pocket to
leave the United States as it was for him to leave his own dwelling.
To-day—by which I mean the summer of 1919—it is about as easy for an
American to leave the United States as it is for a convict to leave
Sing Sing. This condition of affairs, so unfamiliar to Americans, is
due to the barrier which has been thrown around these shores by rigid
enforcement of the passport regulations of the Department of State in
co-operation with the Passport Section of Military Intelligence. Prior
to the passport regulations of September, 1918, no law of this country
required an American travelling abroad to have a passport. In fact, the
only countries where passports were needed were Russia and Turkey. But
upon the breaking of the war-cloud in the summer of 1914, passports
were required everywhere, and the person who could not produce one upon
demand, immediately became an object of suspicion and investigation.
Under the regulations now in force, the Department of State, by its
authority to exercise discretion in the issuance of passports, is in a
position to control travel. And, thanks to the facilities of M I 11 for
investigating the loyalty and character of applicants, the department is
able to form a remarkably accurate opinion as to whether the applications
it receives should be refused or granted.
It must be perfectly obvious that, had the old system of non-interference
with travel been permitted to continue, German agents could easily have
come to the United States through neutral countries, gathered such
information as they required, and departed as they came. When war was
declared on April 6, 1917, it was not necessary for Congress to pass
a law restricting travel by alien enemies, for the law was already in
existence, having been framed in 1798, at a time when France was our
enemy instead of our ally, and handed down to us by the Fathers. As a
result of the authority conferred by this forgotten statute, the German
agent who counted on the law’s delay, habeas corpus proceedings, and a
long-drawn-out trial by jury, received the surprise of his life, for he
found himself seized by a long, swift arm which, waiting for neither
indictment nor trial, placed him where he could do no further mischief.
The seaman presented perhaps the most perplexing problem in the control
of travel. He rarely remains on the same vessel for more than a few
voyages and he seldom has a real home where his antecedents can be looked
up. Moreover, under the Seaman’s Act, he is permitted, if not, indeed,
encouraged, to desert in an American port in order to be re-engaged
at the higher American rates of pay. So long as seamen from neutral
countries, particularly those adjacent to Germany, could come ashore at
will in American ports, no really effective control was possible. So,
following the example of England and the advice of our military attachés
in the countries of northern Europe, an order was issued by the Secretary
of State—though not until seventeen days before the signing of the
Armistice—forbidding seamen from neutral countries to leave their ships
while in American ports. The presence of naval guards on the vessels
insured the enforcement of the order, which was withdrawn, however,
shortly after the signing of the Armistice.
By an arrangement with the State Department, all passport applications,
both from citizens and aliens, are referred to M I 11 for investigation.
The files of the Military Intelligence Division now contain a vast amount
of information, much of it of a very detailed character, concerning
persons and business firms in the United States and foreign countries. By
referring to these files, therefore, or by directing its agents to make
special investigations, it is an easy matter for the Passport Section to
decide whether the applicant is the sort of a person to whom a passport
should be granted. The passenger-list of every vessel bound for an
American port is cabled to the Passport Section by the American consul
upon the departure of the vessel from the last port of call. These lists
are checked in the suspect files of the Military Intelligence Division,
and if there is found anything which makes a passenger objectionable
or suspicious, the intelligence officer at the port where the ship
will arrive is promptly notified, whereupon the passenger in question
is either denied entry to the United States or placed under arrest,
according to his nationality and other circumstances. A somewhat similar
system of control is in operation along the Mexican and Canadian borders,
the immigration and intelligence officers who are stationed in the towns
along the international boundaries making it difficult, though by no
means impossible, for undesirables to enter or leave the country. It will
thus be seen that the Passport Section, aided by a small army of military
attachés, consuls, customs officials, immigration officers, secret
agents, and intelligence police, has succeeded in establishing a highly
effective control of travel, thus preventing the entry or departure of
persons whose expressions or actions might prove detrimental to the
interests of the United States.
Military control of travel is, of course, a war-time measure, and
with the passing of the emergency which gave it birth it will almost
certainly disappear, along with most of the other activities of Military
Intelligence. Though I am heartily in favor of completely restoring
the country to a peace-time basis, and of abolishing the many highly
arbitrary measures made necessary by the war, it seems to me that it
might be a good idea to continue some form of travel control which would
prevent the entry into the United States of undesirable aliens. We have
quite enough of them as it is.
VIII
“TREAT ’EM ROUGH!”
It is rather a curious circumstance that the idea from which was
evolved one of the most formidable weapons of the war, and one which
proved a prime factor in bringing Germany to her knees, was obtained
by an Englishman in Germany, from under the very noses of the Germans
themselves, who did not have the vision to recognize its amazing military
possibilities. About a year before the Teutonic wave surged across the
frontiers of France, the representative of a California manufacturing
concern was giving demonstrations in the larger German cities of a
singular device known as the Holt caterpillar tractor. Though this
contrivance, in spite of its grotesque and clumsy appearance, could
cross ditches and surmount obstacles with amazing agility, it did not
arouse particular interest among the Germans, for it was intended for
the pursuits of peace, whereas they were even then seeking new means
for making war. But it chanced that among the onlookers at one of the
demonstrations was an English traveller, who had the imagination to see
in the clumsy machine, as it waddled across an apparently impassable
terrain with the relentlessness of fate, something more than an
agricultural appliance. Upon his return to England he described the
tractor to Colonel E. D. Swinton, who evinced the liveliest interest
in the subject, closely examining the pictures and asking countless
questions. I might add that General Swinton, for he has since been
promoted, has, unlike most professional soldiers, a highly developed
imagination, as is shown in the stories he has written, the best known
of which is entitled _The Green Curve_. Colonel Swinton, who had served
in the South African campaign, had long had in mind an idea for an
armored fighting-machine, a sort of small fort on wheels, which could be
propelled by its own power over ground impassable to any other type of
vehicle. The caterpillar tractor gave him the means of propulsion which
he had been seeking. But, as might have been expected, the hidebound,
brassbound officials of the War Office condemned the suggestion as
fantastic and impractical, it not being until 1915, when the gloom of
despondency overhung the land and people snatched at straws of hope, that
Swinton’s plans were taken from their pigeonhole for reconsideration
and he was reluctantly given permission to show what he could do.
Upon caterpillar tractors brought from America he proceeded to mount
armored hulls built according to his own designs, the land battleships
thus created being armed with both field and machine guns. They were
tested under conditions of the greatest secrecy, the trials proving so
successful that the construction of a considerable number was immediately
authorized. In order that the public might obtain no hint of the true
nature or purpose of these terrible new weapons they were referred to
as “tanks,” the impression being given that they were intended for
transporting water. Painted in dull colors and swathed in tarpaulins,
fifty tanks were landed at Le Havre on August 29, 1916, and were moved
up to the Somme front under cover of darkness. At dawn on September 15,
everything being in readiness for the launching of the great Somme drive,
they were entered in battle on a most astonished foe.
Though I saw one of the tanks in action on this occasion—it was named, if
I am not mistaken, “_Crème de Menthe_”—I was not permitted to photograph
it or to write about it. It has repeatedly been asserted that these
tanks were the first vehicles of their kind in the history of warfare,
and that is true, so far as the method used for their propulsion is
concerned, yet it is interesting to note that, ten years before the
Great Navigator set foot on the beach of San Salvador, Leonardo da Vinci
had written as follows to the Duke Ludovico Sforza: “I am also building
secure and covered chariots which are invulnerable, and when they advance
with their guns into the midst of the foe, even the largest army masses
must retreat, and behind them infantry may follow in safety and without
opposition.”
Everything considered, the tanks were not of much assistance to the
infantry on the occasion of their first appearance, though they
unquestionably caused considerable consternation in the German lines.
Owing to delay in production, the British were obliged to employ at
the battle of Arras, on April 9, 1917, tanks identical with those
which had been used on the Somme and which were, in reality, fit only
for training purposes, having only 8-mm. armor. Nevertheless, two
battalions were launched on a two-kilometre front, and there is no doubt
that they rendered valuable service, the capture by twelve tanks of a
German stronghold known as “The Harp” being a particularly noteworthy
achievement. Eighty-eight tanks of an improved model, protected with
12-mm. armor, were used in the attack on Messines Ridge, June 7, 1917,
but the success of the infantry was so complete on that occasion that the
tanks had only an unimportant rôle to play. The torrential rains which
fell during the early stages of the Ypres offensive on July 31 turned the
battle-field into a broad and treacherous morass, in which tanks were of
but little use. The following figures, which were doubtless as well known
to Hindenburg as to Haig, explain why the tanks did not sweep everything
before them, as it was confidently expected that they would do, and why
the Germans were no longer particularly alarmed by their appearance:
Battle of Tanks in action Ditched Hit by shells
{ Arras 60 33 (55%) 7 (2%)
First day’s fighting { Messines 88 7 (19%) 4 (5%)
{ Ypres 133 60 (45%) 37 (28%)
It was my understanding at the time that the use of tanks by the British
during the fighting on the Somme caused great annoyance to the French
High Command, it being asserted that the British had agreed not to
make use of their machines until the tanks which the French had under
construction were ready, when both armies would make a combined tank
attack on a large scale. How much foundation there was for this assertion
I do not know, but perhaps it was as well that the British tanks made
their début when they did, for the French did not make use of tanks until
April 16, 1917, when 132 Schneider tanks attacked between Rheims and
the Aisne. “In spite of the congratulations of the commander-in-chief,”
reads a French report, “the results did not meet expectations, although
wherever tanks were used they led the infantry beyond the advance of the
rest of the front of attack.”
It would seem that it was not until the British victory at Cambrai,
when 430 tanks were used to lead a large attack, in the course of which
8,000 prisoners and 100 guns were taken, that the German High Command
realized that the use of tanks could no longer be postponed, for shortly
thereafter the German Tank Corps was formed, an Antitank School of
Instruction was established, and orders were placed for a large number
of antitank rifles. The Germans experienced numerous manufacturing
difficulties, however, in the construction of their tanks, and when
Marshal Hindenburg inspected the first fifteen _panzerkraftwagens_, as
they were called, at Charleroi, in March, 1918, he damned them with the
faint praise: “They probably won’t be of much use, but since they are
made we might as well employ them.” This discouraging send-off apparently
had its effect, for the original of the _Elfriede_ type—_Elfriede_
herself—was ditched and captured near Villers-Brettoneux a few weeks
later. By contriving to unite in this one model all the faults of the
British and French tanks, the Germans once again proved the truth of the
old saying: “Success has many imitators, but sometimes they copy only her
defects.” According to a German deserter, the German Tank Corps in July,
1918, consisted of 25 German tanks and 50 repaired British machines.
This same authority stated that 250 light tanks had been ordered for
delivery in September, 1918, and that in April construction had been
begun on a monster 38 feet long, weighing 110 tons, carrying four
77-mm. cannon and 13 machine-guns. This formidable war-engine, called a
“_Fahrbarer Sefechtsunterstand: ver dunden mit Artillerie unt Infanterie
Beebachtung_,” boasted contrivances for creating artificial mists
(probably similar to our own smoke-producing devices), for laying and
covering its own telephone-wires en route, was equipped with wireless,
and carried a crew of an officer and twenty-eight men. If this supertank
was ever constructed, it certainly never went into action.
The Germans were more successful, however, when it came to devising
protective measures against tank attacks. These consisted of trenches of
peculiar construction and design, some of them from 15 to 20 feet wide
and 6 to 8 feet in depth; “tank traps,” consisting of deep pits with
camouflaged covers; bridges so built as not to support a tank’s weight;
mine-fields; special tank observation-posts; _Tank Goschutz Batterie_,
as the Germans called their groups of 77-mm. antitank cannon; 55-mm.
tank batteries, which were kept in pits about a thousand metres from the
front line and were only brought up when tanks were signalled; trench
mortars mounted for horizontal fire; machine-guns firing armor-piercing
bullets; hand-grenades with concentrated charges, and antitank rifles.
The antitank rifle was a single-shot Mauser, mounted on a bipod, weighing
32 pounds and firing an armor-piercing ball of 13-mm. caliber. At close
range this weapon penetrated the British heavy and the French light
tanks. Had it been used in groups it might well have proved extremely
formidable, but the unpopularity it enjoyed because of its heavy recoil
combined with a well-founded reluctance on the part of its users to
await the near approach of a tank, in a large measure neutralized its
effectiveness. Toward the close of the struggle it seems to have fallen
into general disuse, and when the Armistice was signed the enemy was
preparing to supplant it with a 22-mm. machine-gun, a few of which had
already been used with considerable success.
* * * * *
When the United States entered the war in April, 1917, the value of the
tank as a weapon of offense had been so thoroughly established that steps
were immediately taken to form a tank organization of our own, a special
regiment—the 65th Engineers—being raised for the purpose. The units
of this regiment were recruited at Camp Upton, New York; Camp Devens,
Massachusetts; Camp Meade, Maryland; Camp Lee, Virginia, and Camp Cody,
New Mexico, the entire regiment being assembled in March, 1918, at Camp
Colt, on the battle-field of Gettysburg, which then became the general
concentration and preliminary training-camp for the tank organization.
The tanks passed from the control of the Corps of Engineers on March
6, 1918, when the Secretary of War directed the organization of the
Tank Corps as a separate arm of the service, Lieutenant-Colonel Ira C.
Welborn, a regular infantry officer, being commissioned as colonel and
appointed director of the Tank Corps in the United States.
The structural organization of the corps, as it existed at the close
of the war, consisted of General Tank Headquarters, with 15 officers
and 60 men; Army Tank Headquarters (one for each field army), with 7
officers and 27 men; Brigade Headquarters, 4 officers and 47 men; a Heavy
Battalion, with a strength of 68 officers and 778 men; a Light Battalion,
consisting of 20 officers and 375 men; a repair and salvage company, 4
officers and 146 men; a Depot Company, 4 officers and 138 men. To each
Army Tank Headquarters were assigned 5 brigades, each brigade being
composed of 3 battalions, 1 heavy and 2 light, and 1 repair and salvage
company. A battalion consists of three companies, each company having
three platoons. As five fighting-tanks are assigned to each platoon, it
will thus be seen that a field army has 675 tanks at its disposal.
The commissioned and enlisted personnel of the Tank Corps was of as
high an average, both mentally and physically, as any organization in
the army, not even excepting the Air Service. About 65 per cent of the
corps were technically trained men—engineers and machinists—while
the remaining 35 per cent was composed of business and professional
men, farmers, cow-punchers, college undergraduates, and soldiers of
fortune. They came from every section of every State in the Union. Their
versatility was denoted by the pipings of their overseas caps—blue, red,
and yellow—which denoted that they combined the functions of infantry,
artillery, and cavalry. Several other colors might appropriately have
been added, however, for the tank men were as familiar with Browning,
Lewis, and Vickers as the machine-gunners, they knew as much about
gas-engines as the Motor Transport Corps, they were as competent to make
repairs as the men of the Ordnance Department, and in action they took as
many risks as the youngsters on whose breasts were embroidered the silver
wings. They were as keen as razors and as hard as nails. They were, to
use the phraseology of the plains, fairly “rarin’ to go,” and they were
ready and anxious to fight at the drop of the hat. In fact, that was
why they joined the Tank Corps—because they believed it offered more
opportunities for Boche-killing than any other branch of the service.
The training of the tank units was based on infantry drill, which is the
best means of instilling discipline. This was supplemented, however,
by instruction in the use of machine-guns and tank cannon and in the
operation and maintenance of gas-engines, the men finally being brought
to a point where they were ready to take up technical and tactical tank
training at the British and French tank-training centres, to which they
were sent as soon as there was accommodation for them. Thousands of men,
trained to the limit of the facilities in this country, were held at
Gettysburg from April and May until August and September because of the
shortage of tanks and the lack of training facilities in France. Not
until September, in fact, did any tanks become available for training
purposes in the United States, when there arrived five British heavy
tanks and several light tanks of American manufacture, thus permitting
training to be resumed on a larger scale. When the Armistice was signed,
the Tank Corps had a total of 20,212 officers and men, of whom 8,183 were
serving in Europe. Shortly before the collapse of Germany preparations
had been begun for the great Allied drive planned for the spring of 1919,
steps being taken to increase the corps to a point where it could supply
tank units for four field armies. The proposed strength for this purpose
was 57,940 officers and men, it being planned to have this entire force
fully organized, trained, equipped, and in France by the early spring of
1919.
The programme of tank construction for the American Army was initiated
in February, 1918, but, owing to the extensive arrangements which had
to be made with numerous manufacturers for the enormous number of parts
required, and to the fact that there existed in the United States little
or no accurate data regarding tank construction, the first light tank was
not delivered to the Tank Corps in the United States until the following
September. Owing to the more complicated mechanism of the heavy tanks,
none of them was completed before the signing of the Armistice. The
machines used by the American Tank Corps units engaged on the Western
Front were supplied by the French and British, no American-built tanks
being employed in active fighting during the war.
[Illustration: THE AMERICAN WHIPPET TANK.]
[Illustration: THE MARK V TANK.]
[Illustration: A SQUADRON OF WHIPPET TANKS ADVANCING IN BATTLE FORMATION.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: A SQUADRON OF WHIPPET TANKS PARKED AND CAMOUFLAGED TO
CONCEAL THEM FROM ENEMY OBSERVATION.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
After a series of conferences between American, French, and British tank
officers, it was decided that two types of tanks should be manufactured
in the United States: a heavy model (Mark VIII) and a light machine
(Mark I) known as a “whippet.” The heavy tank, which weighs thirty-five
tons and carries a crew of one officer and nine men, is armed with two
six-pounder rapid-fire guns and six Browning machine-guns, and is capable
of a speed of from four and one-half to six miles an hour over ordinary
ground. The whippet, named after a breed of small dog used in England for
racing, was an adaption of the French Renault tank. It weighs six tons
and carries a crew of two men—a driver and a gunner—and over ordinary
ground can move at a speed of from seven to eight miles an hour. These,
then, were the two types of tanks originally decided upon, but, as will
be seen, the programme was considerably altered.
When it was decided that the United States should embark on a programme
of tank construction, the Ordnance Department had only the haziest
instructions to guide it. Owing to the mystery in which the French and
British enshrouded the details of their tank construction, all that
our Ordnance officers knew about a tank was that it should be able to
cross trenches at least six feet wide, that it should be protected
with armor-plate approximately five-eighths of an inch thick, and
that it should carry one heavy gun and two or three machine-guns. Two
experimental machines were laid down and work started on them at once,
these models being intended to develop the possibilities of the gas,
electric, and steam systems of propulsion as well as to ascertain the
relative advantages of very large wheels and a specially articulated form
of caterpillar tread.
At this time the British were using and were interested in a large
tank only. The French had been using a medium-sized tank, known as the
Schneider, but, as it had not been wholly successful, they had developed
a much smaller two-man machine, called the Renault, which presented
some very decided advantages and which they eventually adopted as their
only type. While the large British tank had been reasonably successful
in operation, it had certain very decided limitations which the British
themselves recognized, so, after a thorough investigation of its
possibilities and shortcomings, it was decided to redesign the large tank
rather than to copy the existing model with its admitted defects. It was
furthermore decided that the work of designing should be done jointly by
British and American engineers, acting under the Anglo-American agreement
drawn up as the result of a conference at British General Headquarters,
which provided for the joint production by England and the United States
of 1,500 large tanks, England to furnish the hulls, guns, and ammunition,
the United States to provide the power-plant and driving mechanism.
When the Armistice was signed, approximately 50 per cent of the work
represented by the American components had been completed, and it was
confidently expected that the entire programme of 1,500 would have been
completed by March. England had about 250 of the hulls ready when the
Armistice was signed.
* * * * *
The work of manufacturing the French type of tank had not progressed
satisfactorily, however, this being partly due to the delay involved in
changing all drawings from the metric system to the American, and to
the difficulty which was experienced in inducing American concerns to
take on the production of this machine, which is extremely complicated
and difficult to manufacture. It was necessary, therefore, to divide up
manufacturing activities on this tank between a considerable number of
plants. The original programme called for 4,440 of these small tanks, of
which 209 had been completed by the end of December, 1918, with 289 more
partly completed and production just getting under way. There was every
reason to believe that the entire number would have been ready for use by
April, 1919.
During the last summer of the war two new types of tank were developed.
One of these was a two-man, three-ton affair, which the Ford Motor
Company guaranteed to produce at the rate of one hundred a day. Orders
were placed with that concern for 15,000 of these “flivvers” and the
first 500 machines would have been ready for delivery on January 1, but
upon the signing of the Armistice their production was stopped. The
other machine was a successor to the French Renault, but designed with a
view to quantity production. It carried three men instead of two and was
armed with both a 37-mm. cannon and a machine-gun, whereas the Renault
carried only two men and one weapon. The cost of production would have
been very much less than the Renault machine and the weight substantially
the same. One thousand of these had already been ordered and negotiations
were pending for a second thousand—the first to be delivered in January
and the entire two thousand by the end of March.
In addition to the above activities, the Ordnance Department had decided
to build 1,450 of the large Mark VIII tanks, including hull, guns, and
ammunition, entirely in this country. In fact, work on the interior
components for this lot of machines was well under way when the Armistice
was signed.
It was perhaps as well for the Germans that they contracted yellow fever
when they did, for had the war continued long enough to permit of America
launching the avalanche of tanks which she had under construction, the
Huns certainly would have had heart-failure. I doubt, indeed, if any
Americans, save the handful of officers directly concerned, realize
how tremendous was our tank programme. When the war ended, orders
had actually been placed for 23,390 tanks, representing an outlay of
approximately $175,000,000. This vast fleet of tanks was to be manned by
some 58,000 men—as many as there were in the entire American Army prior
to the war with Spain. _Had these tanks been placed side to side they
would have formed a moving wall of steel forty miles long._ Even the
comparatively few Tank Corps units which had an opportunity to get into
action gave the enemy a taste of what we were preparing for him. Their
crest was an angry cat. Their motto was “Treat ’Em Rough!” And they did.
IX
“GET THERE!”
It may be said, without taking undue liberties with the truth, that the
newest branch of the American Army, the Motor Transport Corps, owes its
existence to a Mexican bandit named Francisco Villa, sometimes called
“Pancho” for short. You may have heard of him. Though the officers who
wear on their collars the insignia of the wheel and the winged helmet
will probably disagree with this statement, asserting that their corps
is an outgrowth of the Great War, it is, nevertheless, a fact that the
present huge organization, which controls all the motor-driven transport
of the American Army, had its beginning in the handful of trucks, barely
a score in all, which ploughed their way across the sands of Chihuahua in
the wake of Pershing’s little punitive column.
When Villa and his raiders swooped down upon the border settlement of
Columbus on the night of March 8, 1916, there was not a single organized
motor-truck unit in the army, our officers, most of them trained in the
schools of Indian and Filipino warfare, insisting that no motor-driven
vehicle was as sturdy and dependable as the old-time escort wagon and its
four-mule team. The refusal of our staff authorities to recognize the
advantages of motor transport is the more difficult to understand when
it is remembered that for close on four years there had been unfolding
before our eyes the countless object-lessons of civil life and of the
war in Europe, every highway from the North Sea to the Alps being crowded
with the motor-driven vehicles of the fighting armies.
The present Motor Transport Corps may be said to have been born when,
three days after the Columbus raid, General Funston, in command of the
Southern Department, telegraphed to Washington for authorization to
form a number of motor-truck companies for service with the punitive
expedition. The War Department acted promptly. The request was
immediately approved, and within three days twenty-four trucks had been
purchased, a force of civilian drivers had been recruited, and the entire
outfit loaded aboard special trains. As soon as the trains reached
Columbus the trucks were loaded with supplies and sent across the border
to overtake the expedition, which was already well into northern Mexico.
Notwithstanding the total absence of anything resembling roads, despite
the deep sand, the extreme heat, and the inexperience of the drivers, the
trucks caught up with the column before the supplies which it had taken
from the United States were exhausted. From that moment the value of
motor-driven vehicles for military purposes was firmly established in the
minds of American officers, even the most hidebound old Indian fighters,
who disapproved of everything new on principle, being compelled to admit
that the mule must give way to the motor.
The first two motor-truck units proved so extremely efficient that the
organization of others was begun, and by June 30 there had been formed
fifteen companies in all. The personnel of these early motor-transport
companies was civilian, the drivers and repair men being provided by
the factories which supplied the trucks, but it quickly became apparent
that the employment of civilians would not prove satisfactory because
of their lack of discipline and the consequent difficulty of keeping
them under control, the officers not knowing how to handle civilians.
So, whenever possible, enlisted men who had had experience with motor
vehicles or who possessed some mechanical aptitude were transferred to
the truck companies to replace the civilians, the latter remaining on
to give instruction in driving and maintenance. Maintenance is, I might
add, perhaps the most important factor in the successful operation of
motor vehicles, for broken-down cars must be repaired, worn parts must
be replaced, and the vehicles must frequently be overhauled. In order to
maintain in a state of efficiency the truck trains operating in Mexico,
it was found necessary, therefore, to build repair-shops and to organize
repair crews. Though the personnel of these shops, like the drivers, was
at first largely civilian, it, too, was gradually replaced by enlisted
men, so it may be said that by the opening of 1917 motor transportation
had become a recognized branch of the military establishment, although it
was not until some time after declaration of war that it was authorized
for the army.
Although, upon our entry into the European war, preparations were
immediately begun for the complete motorization of the various
trains—ammunition, engineer, sanitary, and supply—which comprise the
divisional trains, each of these sections was still controlled by
the corps or department to which it pertained. In other words, the
ammunition trains were controlled by the Ordnance Department so far as
the procurement of vehicles and the supply of personnel was concerned;
the engineer trains were under the control of the Corps of Engineers;
the sanitary trains were under the Medical Corps, and only the supply
trains came under the jurisdiction of the Quartermaster Corps. It must
be understood, however, that the divisional trains were assigned to
and became a part of the division itself, being, therefore, under the
direct command of the divisional commander. As might have been expected,
this system resulted in inefficiency and confusion because of municipal
officers in control. Instead of all motor activities being directed by a
single head, each of the staff departments using motor vehicles had its
own ideas and worked along its own lines. Thus, the Corps of Engineers
had designed and was manufacturing various types of vehicles adapted
to engineering work. The Signal Corps was producing vehicles designed
for carrying radio equipment, photographic laboratories, and the like.
The Medical Corps was experimenting with various types of ambulances,
dental wagons, and mobile laboratories, while the Ordnance Department was
dividing its allegiance between the tractor type and the model known as
the “Quad” or four-wheel drive. Thus it was that for many months after
the declaration of war the motor activities of the army were distributed
among several arms of the service, with the inefficiency and duplication
of effort which invariably results from decentralization.
The necessity for a separate organization to handle motor transportation
was first recognized by the A. E. F., and in December, 1917, General
Pershing issued a general order creating a Motor Transport Service. The
new service was described as a part of the Quartermaster Corps, and an
assistant to the Chief Quartermaster was detailed as its chief. For
all practical purposes, however, it became a separate organization.
In the United States the transition was more gradual, it not being
until August, 1918, that the Secretary of War authorized the creation
of a Motor Transport Corps as a separate and distinct branch of the
military establishment, Colonel Charles B. Drake, who was later made a
brigadier-general, being named as its first chief. The new organization
was built up along the same lines as the Motor Transport Service, the
officers and men of the latter being transferred to similar positions
in the new corps, thus enabling them to continue the performance of
their duties without interruption or confusion. The effect was as though
the Motor Transport Service was lifted bodily out of the Quartermaster
Corps, renamed, and made completely independent, the only visible
sign of the change being, however, that the officers and men changed
their Quartermaster insignia for the winged helmet superimposed upon a
motor-wheel which was adopted as the device of the new corps.
Under the new order all the motor transportation of the army, save
only tractors used for artillery purposes, was embraced in the Motor
Transport Corps. The Medical Corps, the Engineer Corps, the Quartermaster
Corps, the Signal Corps, and the Department of Military Aeronautics, all
of which had developed special types of vehicles for their respective
needs, immediately turned over their equipment to the new organization.
The designing of bodies was left to the several branches, but the
designing of all types of chassis was included in the functions of the
Motor Transport Corps. Among the duties of the new corps were the design,
procurement, storage, maintenance, and replacement of all motor vehicles,
though a few weeks later procurement was assigned to the Purchase,
Storage, and Traffic Division of the office of the Quartermaster-General,
with the proviso, however, that the Motor Transport Corps should
prescribe the type and design of the vehicles supplied to it. The corps
was thus enabled to insist that it be supplied only with the standardized
military truck, the design of which had been achieved by the Motor
Transport Service in spite of much opposition and after untiring effort.
This arrangement also effectually prevented the purchase and use of
vehicles of many different designs and put an end to the complicated and
extravagant system of spare parts and supplies inseparable from the use
of a multiplicity of types.
I might mention, in passing, that in the spring of 1917, just prior to
our entry into the war, the automotive engineers of the United States
met in Washington and, putting aside all thought of commercial rivalry
or profit, or, indeed, of everything save patriotism, designed a
motor-truck which combined the best features of the many trucks which
were then being manufactured, placing at the disposal of the government
designs and patents that were the result of heavy expenditures of time,
money, and talent. This work of standardization was in charge of Mr.
Christian Girl, who was probably better fitted for the task than any man
in the United States. The result was a standardized military motor-truck
which is generally admitted to be the most efficient vehicle of its kind
in existence.
The efficiency of any motor-transport service, no matter how well
equipped with vehicles, must depend primarily upon the efficiency of its
personnel. The finest truck that mechanical genius can design and money
can buy can be ruined in a few hours by the carelessness or ignorance
of its driver. It was quickly realized, therefore, that, if the Motor
Transport Corps was to give efficient service, its officers and men must
be as carefully trained as their fellows in the combatant branches of
the army. The first real training-school for Motor Transport officers
was established by General Pershing in France, its students being
recruited mainly from Americans who had gone overseas prior to our entry
into the war and had entered the French service as camion and ambulance
drivers. These men possessed much practical knowledge, gained in actual
warfare, and a large percentage of them were given commissions in the
Motor Transport Service of the A. E. F. The chief training-centre in the
United States was at Camp Joseph E. Johnston, on the St. John’s River,
near Jacksonville, Fla., and a smaller one was later organized at Camp
Meigs, in the District of Columbia. Using as a basis of instruction
the curriculum adopted by the A. E. F., the officers and men at these
camps were given a very thorough course of training in all phases of
motor-transport work, including road-training, tactics, maintenance
and repair of cars, and a certain amount of infantry drill in order to
inculcate discipline. But with the growth of the army increased training
facilities became imperative, it being estimated that between 20,000 and
30,000 men per month would be required by the Motor Transport Corps. In
fact, requirements from overseas for men for operations up to July 1,
1919, was placed at upward of 231,000 officers and men. In order to train
these men and organize them into the proposed units, it was planned to
establish motor-transport training-centres at Camp Bowie, Texas; Fort
Sheridan, Illinois; Camp Frémont, California; Camp Wheeler, Georgia, and
Camp Taylor, Kentucky, which, in conjunction with the schools already in
operation at Camp Joseph E. Johnston and Camp Meigs, and other schools
which had been established by the Committee of Education and Special
Training, would have given a total monthly training capacity of 23,800
men. The signing of the Armistice put an abrupt end to this enormous
training programme, but plans have already been perfected for the
formation of a Motor Transport Reserve Corps, which, it is believed, will
result in providing a large number of officers trained in motor-transport
duties and ready for immediate service in the event that the United
States should again go to war.
About six weeks before the signing of the Armistice a spectacular
campaign was inaugurated in order to obtain for the corps recruits
possessing the necessary technical and mechanical training. Officers and
civilians were sent to the principal cities in the United States to open
recruiting offices, though no funds were appropriated for office rent,
clerical hire, supplies, or advertising, each recruiting officer being
expected to exercise his ingenuity in procuring all of the above without
cost to the government. But thanks to the co-operation and assistance
rendered by the local Chambers of Commerce and Boards of Trade, and
to the patriotism of the automobile manufacturers and newspapers, the
campaign proved, in spite of the lack of funds, a remarkable success,
there being received more than 50,000 applications for enlistment.
Shortly after the beginning of hostilities steps were taken toward the
establishment of three great motor-transport centres: Camp Holabird,
about twenty miles from Baltimore, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay;
Camp Jessup, at Atlanta, Ga., and Camp Normoyle. The huge assembly and
repair shops erected at these camps are perhaps the most complete plants
of their kind in existence, being of permanent construction and adapted
to the needs of the army for many years to come. At each of these camps
storage facilities have been provided for the vast number of motor
vehicles which will not be required under peace conditions, but which
will be kept in constant readiness for use in an emergency. Practically
all motor vehicles destined for service overseas passed through Camp
Holabird, where they were uncrated, assembled, put in thorough running
order, inspected, registered, and finally loaded aboard ship for
transport to France. During the last summer of the war, when the shipment
of motor vehicles was at its height, Camp Holabird was worth journeying
a considerable ways to see, there being literally acres of vehicles,
ranging all the way from huge artillery repair trucks, veritable
machine-shops on wheels, to “flivvers” which unsuccessfully attempted
to conceal their identity beneath coats of olive-drab. The paint-shops
were, incidentally, one of the most interesting features of the camps,
the paint being sprayed on the vehicles by means of air-brushes and a
hose in little more time than it takes to tell about it. Thanks to this
ingenious method, it did not take very much longer to paint a motor car
or a truck than it does to polish a pair of shoes. Then there were the
trimming-shops, where tops, curtains, boots, and cushions were turned
out by the thousand; the supply depots, whose huge steel and concrete
buildings were stacked to the ceilings with incredible quantities of
tires, tubes, lamps, and other accessories; the repair-shops, with their
forges, lathes, and travelling cranes; and the spare-parts department,
where, thanks to a remarkably ingenious card-index system, there could
be obtained without confusion or delay any duplicate part that might be
called for, whether it was a new rear axle for a mobile repair-shop or
a tiny cotter-pin for a motorcycle. Though these great shops had been
in operation only a few months when the war ended, and though their
personnel had been obtained anywhere, everywhere, almost at a moment’s
notice, they were probably, everything considered, the best organized and
most efficient plants of their kind in the world.
The Motor Transport Corps naturally resolves itself into two main
branches: Park Service and Field Service. The first of these branches
is subdivided, in turn, into four general types of parks: Reception,
Organization, Replacement, and Repair. The Reception Park was usually
established at, or near, a base port for the purpose of receiving motor
vehicles for shipment abroad. Here the vehicles were uncrated, assembled,
registered, and put in running condition. This done, the vehicle was sent
on to an Organization Park, where vehicles and men first met, the latter
coming from one of the Motor Transport Corps schools; here the various
units were organized, and the personnel and material held in readiness
for assignment. The function of a Replacement Park is, as its name
signifies, to fill any deficiencies in equipment or personnel. Though
this scheme of organization was quite generally adhered to in the A. E.
F., each camp in the United States devoted to motor-transport activities
may be said to have combined the functions of Reception, Organization,
and Replacement Parks under a single head.
[Illustration: MOBILE MACHINE-SHOP OPERATING IN A VILLAGE UNDER SHELL
FIRE.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: SUPPLY OF MOTOR TIRES.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: A MOTOR-CAR WRECKED RETURNING FROM THE FRONT LINES.
This means a job for the wrecking crew.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
The present organization of the Field Service units of the Motor
Transport Corps is as follows: the personnel of a motor-transport
company consists of a first lieutenant, a second lieutenant, eight
sergeants, forty-four privates (ten first-class), and two cooks; the
equipment consists of a light open motor-car, a motorcycle with
side-car, twenty-nine cargo trucks, including one for light repair
and one for company supply, two tank trucks, and a rolling kitchen. A
motorcycle company has a first lieutenant, a second lieutenant, six
sergeants, a corporal, thirty privates, first-class, and a cook, together
with thirty-two motorcycles with side-cars, and two cargo trucks. A
headquarters motor command is in charge of a captain, who has two first
lieutenants, a second lieutenant, five sergeants, four corporals, and two
privates, first-class; the rolling-stock includes two heavy motor-cars,
two light closed cars, one light open car, one cargo truck, and two
motorcycles with side-cars. Though there are no tables of organization
for the larger units of the Motor Transport Corps, a Supply Train is
composed of a headquarters motor command and not less than two or more
than six motor-transport companies.
So much space has been devoted in the newspapers and magazines to the
exploits of the combatant arms of the service that the public has heard
little, if anything, of the less spectacular but no less arduous and
important work of the men who wore the purple hat-cords of the M. T. C.
It was their endurance and resourcefulness which made possible the
transfer by road to the St. Mihiel and Argonne sectors, in nineteen days,
of more than half a million men, and this in spite of the unprecedented
congestion as a result of the preparations in progress for the great
offensives. It was the tireless, iron-hard drivers of the M. T. C. who
got forward the food for the men and the food for the guns. It was the
despatch-riders of the corps who, jeering at death, delivered the vital
messages which were intrusted to them, tearing down the steel-swept,
shell-pocked roads at express-train speed on their roaring motorcycles.
No mud was too deep, no shell-storm too violent, no road too dangerous to
stop the men of the M. T. C. They went wherever their wheels could find
traction—and in some places where they could not. They did not possess
so much as a bowing acquaintance with either fatigue or fear. They were
the newest corps in the army and they made their own traditions. They
were as unconventional in their methods of doing things as the old-time
army teamster, the stage-coach driver, and the pony-express rider, whose
qualities they have inherited and whose lineal descendants they are. When
in doubt they stepped on the accelerator, for the motto of the Motor
Transport Corps is “_Get There!_”
X
MENDERS OF MEN
Beneath the crest of the British Royal Artillery appears the word
“_Ubique_”—“Everywhere.” It is a motto which might more fittingly be
applied to the Medical Department of our own army, however, for that
corps has its representatives in every branch of the service—on land,
afloat, and in the air. It directed the designing and production of our
first gas-masks and from it was drawn the nucleus of our original Gas
Defense Service. It provided the medical staffs for the hospital ships
and for the army transports. By means of the ingenious system of tests
which it devised, it selected our flying-men, determined on the form of
aviation work for which they were mentally and physically fitted, and,
by a system of unceasing observation, kept them constantly in condition
to fight the Boche in the skies. It organized an ambulance service which
won the admiration of the world. No battery or battalion went into
action without its quota of medical officers, who shared all the perils
and privations of their comrades of the line and worked longer. Only
two units in the American Army were granted by the French the coveted
distinction of wearing the _fourragère_: one of them was an Air Service
squadron, the other a unit of the Sanitary Corps of the Army Medical
Department. Our medical officers were actually the first in the field
and the first to sustain wounds; the first American killed after the
declaration of war was a medical officer.
A list of the Medical Department’s activities would include the Dental
Corps, the Sanitary Corps, the Veterinary Corps, the Nurse Corps;
laboratories for the study and prevention of infectious diseases;
organizations for the isolation and the special care of the tuberculous,
the insane, the victims of war neuroses; convalescent centres and
sanatoria; a division of psychology for gauging the mental capabilities
of the army’s enlisted personnel; a division of physical reconstruction
for the rehabilitation of the sick and wounded; a hospital division
which planned and equipped hospitals to meet the constantly increasing
needs of the army; a motion-picture industry which enabled the staffs
of the various hospitals to see depicted on a screen the latest methods
of surgery and medicine and which also illustrated to the soldier the
danger of breaking sanitary regulations; the publication of a chain of
hospital papers to strengthen the morale of the soldier patients; a
system, working in co-operation with the War Risk Insurance Bureau and
the Adjutant-General’s Office, designed to expedite the settlement of
war claims, and a remarkable statistical classification of the sick and
wounded, including a complete medical history of each individual case.
To this array of extraordinary activities must be added, of course, the
features usual to any well-organized medical department: services of
internal medicine and surgery working in the closest harmony in every
hospital unit; divisions of head surgery (including eye, ear, nose, and
throat), orthopedics, urology, and Roentgenology; and finally that vast
organization for the care of the wounded whose operations began with
the stretcher-bearers out in No Man’s Land and ended only when the men
had passed out of the great general hospitals in the homeland with the
wound-chevrons on their sleeves.
When, in the past, we have been suddenly confronted by the necessity
of making war, we have had to do our organizing after the beginning of
hostilities. And, though the titanic conflict had been in progress for
more than two years and a half before we entered it, we ran true to
form, being as unprepared for war from a medical standpoint as we were
from an ordnance, an artillery, or an aviation, point of view. Barring
the superficial experience gained by some of our medical officers
during the mobilization on the Mexican border, our medical preparations
were all made after war had been declared. This unpreparedness was
not the fault of the heads of the Medical Department, mind you; it
was not due to carelessness or lack of foresight, but was, instead,
the logical result of a deliberate policy of those who held that to
be prepared for war was to invite war. When the war-cloud broke, it
became necessary, therefore, to build overnight, and virtually from
the ground up, a mammoth and highly complex organization. When war was
declared, the Medical Department, including the Medical Corps, the
Dental Corps, the Veterinary Corps, and their respective reserves, had
barely 700 commissioned officers on duty in the United States and its
possessions. Though the regular Medical Corps included many officers
whose achievements had contributed very largely to the prevention of
disease and the amelioration of suffering in all parts of the world—it
has been said of former Surgeon-General Gorgas that he “made the Canal
possible and the tropics habitable”—and though these officers were
skilled in preventive medicine, field sanitation, and other phases of
the work of the army surgeon, there was, after all, only a handful
of them. It became necessary, therefore, to provide, on the instant,
not only for an enormously augmented personnel but also for new and
unconsidered conditions. An ambulance service had to be organized and
vehicles for it had to be designed and manufactured; hospital trains had
to be built—there was only one in the United States when the war began;
antiseptic methods in field surgery had to be devised as a substitute for
the complete surgical cleanliness possible only under peace conditions;
a system had to be devised and put in operation which would insure the
prompt collection of the wounded on the battle-field and their rapid
evacuation; measures had to be taken for the reconstruction of the
severely wounded and their training for future efficiency in civil life.
Beginning, as I have already said, with a peace-time personnel of barely
700 officers, and a peace-time organization, the Medical Department
expanded as the army expanded, until, when the Armistice was signed,
it was serving 4,000,000 American soldiers at home and overseas and
had, in addition, spread its safeguards over millions more of the civil
population on both sides of the Atlantic. Several years prior to the war
there had been organized a Medical Reserve Corps which included in its
membership many prominent physicians and surgeons. The National Guards
of the several States also had their respective medical organizations.
The Medical Department at the outbreak of the war consisted, therefore,
of nine corps: the Medical Corps, the Medical Reserve Corps, the Medical
Corps of the National Guard, the Dental Corps, the Dental Reserve
Corps, the Dental Corps of the National Guard, the Veterinary Corps,
the Veterinary Reserve Corps, and the Veterinary Corps of the National
Guard, to which were added before the war had been in progress a month
a Medical Corps, National Army, a Veterinary Corps, National Army, a
Sanitary Corps, and an Ambulance Corps, making a total of thirteen
distinct services in the Medical Department. By the act of August 7,
1917, however, all of the above were merged into the Medical Corps,
United States Army, thereby greatly simplifying administration. But it
was quickly realized that, even by calling to the colors every medical
officer in the Reserve Corps and the National Guard, the personnel would
still fall far short of the number required to provide for the proper
care and treatment of the enormous armies which were rapidly being placed
in the field, for already the Secretary of War had made his celebrated
remark: “Why stop with an army of 5,000,000 men?” Some conception of the
problem confronting the surgeon-general may be had when I explain that
the Medical Department was expected to furnish each infantry division
with approximately 111 officers and 1,400 enlisted men. In addition,
an enormous number of medical officers was required for the camp, base,
and general hospitals which were springing up like mushrooms, almost
in a night, throughout the land. In order to obtain these officers it
became necessary, therefore, to appeal to the medical profession of the
United States and to the various medical societies, the American Medical
Association taking a particularly energetic and enthusiastic part in the
work of recruiting. The response of the medical men of America was as
prompt as it was gratifying. Specialists whose names were as familiar to
the public as those of Cabinet officers and who for a single operation
received fees equal to the annual salary of an ambassador; obscure
country practitioners who made their daily rounds in mud-bespattered
buggies and who, as often as not, received their pay—when they received
it at all—in produce; prosperous middle-aged physicians with established
and lucrative city practices; struggling young internes; lecturers on
medicine and surgery at universities and colleges, put aside their
private affairs and offered their services to the nation. So universal
was the response, indeed, that numerous communities found themselves
facing the prospect of being wholly without medical attendance, for all
their physicians were in or were trying to get into khaki.
The same patriotic enthusiasm was shown by the dental profession. At the
outbreak of the war there were only 86 dental officers in the Regular
Army, this number being based upon the ratio of one dentist to each
thousand enlisted men. And, though the importance of a clean, healthy
mouth was fully recognized as being essential in maintaining the health
of the individual soldier, no Dental Reserve Corps existed at this time.
It was evident from the very beginning, therefore, that, in order to
care for the teeth of millions of fighting-men, it would be necessary
to strain to the very limit the resources of the dental profession.
Moreover, before the war had been in progress half a year, it was found
necessary to raise the authorized quota of one dentist to every thousand
men to one dentist to every 500 men. But the dentists lagged not a whit
behind their fellows of the medical profession, so that when Germany
threw up her hands and cried “Kamerad!” there were 6,284 officers in the
Dental Corps.
When the Secretary of State intimated to the German Ambassador that his
immediate departure for the Fatherland would cause no tears, there were
barely 400 members of the Army Nurse Corps, 170 of whom were reserve
nurses, having been called into active service as a result of the
mobilization on the border. Yet when the war ended, the corps carried on
its rolls the names of 21,480 nurses, nearly half of whom were serving
overseas. As long as a veteran of the Great War lives, the work of these
young women will be referred to with something akin to reverence. They
displayed a courage, self-sacrifice, and devotion beyond all praise.
Among them were capable, experienced executives who wore on the breasts
of their trim blue jackets ribbons showing that they had seen previous
service in Cuba, in the Philippines, and on the Mexican border. Others,
hundreds upon hundreds of them, came from the hospitals of the larger
cities. But by far the greater number of them were graduate nurses who
left assured and lucrative private employment for the fatigues, the
discomforts, and ofttimes the dangers, of army work. Nurses with wide
executive experience were brought into the service as chief nurses of
the great army hospitals, some of which had from 300 to 600 nurses on
their staffs while the influenza epidemic was at its height. Their work
in this emergency requires no comment, for they were untiring in their
efforts, taking no heed of the number of hours they worked and frequently
staying at their posts until they dropped from exhaustion. During the
epidemic 127 nurses died in this country and 35 overseas from influenza
or pneumonia resulting from it. Though a number of American nurses have
been decorated by foreign governments, our own government has seen fit to
recognize the heroism of only four: Miss Beatrice McDonald, who received
the D. S. C. for staying by her patients when the hospital in which she
was on duty was bombed by German airmen, though severely wounded herself,
Miss Helen G. McClelland, Miss Isabelle Stambaugh, and Miss Julia
Stimson, who received the D. S. M.
Meanwhile the enlisted personnel had increased enormously. At the
outbreak of the war there were in the Medical Department approximately
6,900 men. During the nineteen months of hostilities this force steadily
expanded, the recruits including medical students, pharmacists, and
others of a medical turn of mind. Not every one in the corps had had
experience in medicine or kindred subjects, however; the chief orderly
at the hospital in which I was in France had been one of the editors
of _Vanity Fair_, another had been engaged in the importing business,
and one of the enlisted men at Fort McHenry Hospital, Baltimore, was a
motion-picture actor whose features are known to “movie” fans all over
the United States. The Medical Corps reached its maximum strength in
November, 1918, when its records showed a total of 264,181 officers and
men. Thus it will be seen that the personnel of the Medical Corps alone
at the close of the Great War was much greater than that of the entire
Regular Army before the beginning of hostilities.
The Medical Corps naturally divides itself into two main branches:
the Division of Surgery and the Division of Internal Medicine. The
latter, as its name indicates, deals almost entirely with non-surgical
diseases and conditions; in other words, medicine as distinguished from
the knife. One of the principal functions of the Division of Internal
Medicine consisted in obtaining, training, if necessary, and assigning
to duty in the various hospitals and camps expert examiners in diseases
of the heart and lungs, these officers being charged with the duty of
determining the fitness of recruits for military service and their
condition on discharge, with special reference to heart disease and
tuberculosis. This latter phase of their work assumed such important
proportions, however, that it was eventually taken over by a separate
division. Another function of the division was to obtain mature and
highly trained internists of long experience to serve as Chiefs of
Medical Service in base and general hospitals, these officers, who
included many of the ablest physicians in the United States, being
responsible for the professional care of all medical patients. For a time
a school was maintained to train these medical chiefs, practically all
of whom were fresh from civil practice, in the details of army-hospital
administration. Younger men, usually with little or no hospital
experience and, therefore, less highly qualified, were assigned to serve
under the medical chiefs as ward surgeons in direct charge of sick
soldiers. A small number of highly experienced men were also brought
into the service as medical consultants, their duties being to visit
the various hospitals and to maintain helpful and sympathetic relations
between the medical staffs and the surgeon-general in Washington. The
above is, of course, merely a hasty sketch of the great work done by the
medical internists. The vast majority of them were desperately anxious
for service in France and moved heaven and earth to obtain overseas
assignments, being bitterly disappointed when they found that the needs
of the army required that they should remain on duty in the homeland.
By comparison with those of their fellows who were serving within sound
and often within range of the guns, domestic service seemed quiet and
prosaic. But, as a matter of fact, there was nothing commonplace about
it at any time. The nearest approach to it was after the Armistice, when
the main impulse and motive for military service, the winning of the war,
became a thing of the past. But during the continuance of the war the
medical officer, whether his duties kept him on the firing-line itself,
in the camp and base hospitals in the rear, far from the thunder of the
cannon, or at the cantonments on this side of the Atlantic, never had
reason to complain of his work being monotonous or uninteresting, for
every day, almost every hour, indeed, brought new experiences and new
problems. I doubt if there is a single officer who wore the uniform of
the Medical Corps who will not willingly admit that his army work better
fitted him for civil practice and afforded him a deeper understanding of
the needs of suffering humanity.
The great and crowded days of the medical internist in the United States
came with the influenza epidemic. Thrilling, trying, and tragic was
this period. At first in driblets, then in streams which increased with
appalling rapidity, the men poured into the hospitals. In civil life a
hospital with 250 beds is considered a very considerable institution and
one of which the community it serves has reason to boast, yet the great
base hospitals, sometimes with as many as 2,500 beds, were literally
swamped with new cases, occasionally as many as 1,000 “flu” patients
being brought in during a single day. These men had to be cared for and
carried through. But how? Not only were there not enough hospitals in
the land to hold them, but the medical profession, already drained of
its practitioners by the demands of the army overseas, was unable to
find enough, or nearly enough, physicians, nurses, and attendants, for
the influenza, remember, showed no discrimination, attacking soldiers
and civilians alike. When the epidemic descended upon the cantonments,
barracks near the hospitals were taken over by the medical authorities,
the well men being evacuated to tents in favor of the sick. In many
instances buildings which did not have a stick of furniture in them in
the morning were ready to receive patients by mid-afternoon. In the
meantime cots, pillows, sheets, and blankets, three or four to each cot,
had been moved in. Medicines, glasses, and all the other paraphernalia
of modern medicine had been obtained. Fires had been started. Cooks,
stoves, cooking utensils, food, and dishes appeared as at the wave of a
magician’s wand. Medical officers and nurses had been assigned and had
reported for duty. The Red Cross and other war service agencies were on
hand. Arrangements had been made to care for the clothing and valuables
of the patients and a hundred other details had received attention. And
all this, mind you, in a few short hours. Surgical officers volunteered
for medical service. Officers from the training-camps of the Medical
Corps were sent by tens and twenties to help out. Every city, town, and
village between the oceans was combed for nurses. There were not enough
ambulances to transport the sick, so private motor-cars, taxicabs,
even motor-trucks, were pressed into use. The drivers sat at their
steering-wheels day and night until they could no longer keep their
eyes open. Medical officers were on duty from daybreak until long after
midnight, day after day, week after week. Nurses and orderlies kept at
their work until they dropped from sheer exhaustion. This was the home
equivalent of battle service. No sterner, no more gallant, resistance to
the Hun assaults was ever made by the men on the firing-line in France
than the battle which was waged against an equally formidable, equally
treacherous, enemy by the men and women who wore on their sleeves the
silver chevrons of home service.
The Division of Tuberculosis is one of the four branches of the Division
of Internal Medicine, it being the only division that has to do with a
single disease. This is due to the fact that tuberculosis is admitted the
world over to be the most prevalent disease known, one out of every seven
of the earth’s inhabitants dying from some form of it. In order to detect
the presence and combat the spread in the army of the Great White Plague,
the Medical Corps very early in the war took steps to standardize the
chest examinations of soldiers, all recruits being examined upon their
arrival at the camps according to the standard thus devised by doctors
who were specialists in tubercular troubles. These measures resulted
in excluding from the army about 80,000 cases of active tuberculosis.
Had the methods pursued in former wars been adhered to, a considerable
proportion of these would undoubtedly have escaped detection, and, as
tuberculosis is a highly communicable disease, thousands of perfectly
healthy men would have become infected. Most of these tubercular
cases would have had their disease aggravated by field service, and,
moreover, the resources of the Medical Corps would have been heavily
taxed had it been called upon to treat so large a number of patients.
Soldiers who were suspected of having tuberculosis, or who developed
it while in the service, were examined by specialists, who confirmed
or rejected the original diagnosis, those who were found to have the
disease being immediately sent to special hospitals or sanatoria for
treatment. The location of these sanatoria in such recognized and widely
scattered health resorts as Asheville, North Carolina, Denver, Colorado,
the Catskill Mountains, Arizona, and New Mexico enabled the medical
authorities to send the soldier patients to regions which, as experience
has taught, promote recovery from the disease, and which were at the
same time as close as possible to their homes. Patients sent to these
hospitals were not discharged from the service until they were cured or
until the maximum improvement had been obtained. Thus soldiers received
treatment which few civilians could afford, no multimillionaire being
able to purchase better medical attention than that which Uncle Sam gave
his boys. As tuberculosis is a chronic disease, and as a certain number
of cases will relapse after its progress has apparently been arrested,
special efforts were made to teach the patients how to live in order to
prevent further retrogression, particular emphasis also being laid on the
necessity of observing the sanitary precautions which will prevent the
transmission of the tubercular germs from the patient to the members of
his family.
Though for a number of years prior to the war there had been a steadily
increasing appreciation of the importance of neurology and psychiatry
in the organization of a fighting-machine, the theories which had been
evolved along these lines were never put into practice, at least on a
large scale, until America’s entry into the great conflict, when there
was organized the Neuropsychiatric Section of the Division of Internal
Medicine. When the section was created, about fifty neuropsychiatric
officers were commissioned; when the Armistice was signed, this
number had risen to nearly 700. The chief function of the section was
the exclusion from the army, by means of special tests, of men who,
because of mental and nervous diseases, were considered unfit for
military service. At first this section was treated with open derision
or contemptuous tolerance by certain of the narrow-minded or the
prejudiced—for the Medical Corps, like all other branches of the army, is
not without its fogies who regard with suspicion anything that is new.
The best proof of the success of its work, however, is the fact that
it discovered the presence in the army, at home and overseas, of more
than 72,000 men suffering from nervous and mental disorders, every one
of whom was a potential menace to our success as long as he remained in
active service. Thanks to the simple but highly effective tests which the
psychiatrists devised, certain men were discovered to be moral perverts;
the tests showed that others, if exposed to the strain of battle,
probably would have suffered mental collapse, and that still others did
not possess a sufficiently developed mentality to understand or to carry
out orders. Imagine how grave a menace a single pervert might have proved
to the morals of the men with whom he was associated in the intimacy of
army life. Picture the danger to the success of a military operation of a
single soldier who did not possess sufficient intelligence to understand
the orders which were given him or the courage to carry them out. Such
men were of far greater potential danger to the welfare of the army than
were those suffering from tuberculosis. By means of the psychiatric tests
given at the camps and cantonments, more than 1 per cent of all the men
brought into the army by the draft were discovered to be mentally unfit
and were at once rejected. On the other hand, many drafted men were found
to possess exceptional mental qualifications and were thus marked out for
assignments where their special aptitudes would prove of the greatest
value, in many cases being recommended for the officers’ training-camps.
This was the first war in which mental tests have been employed. Men with
undeveloped minds, unstable nervous systems, or inadequate self-control
are very bad risks for armies. They are unknown quantities and their
behavior in moments of stress cannot be relied upon. Such men may cause
disaster in action, they are liable to shell-shock, and they are likely
to swell the lists of pension claimants. But the psychological tests,
though they did not entirely eliminate these dangers, certainly reduced
them to a minimum, enabling line-officers to equalize the mental strength
of their commands by the reassignment or transfer of men to less exacting
duties, or, in the case of those who were actually feeble-minded,
securing their discharge from the army and returning them to their homes.
To the Division of Laboratories and Infectious Diseases were assigned
the duties of ascertaining the causes of communicable diseases and of
establishing methods for their control. The immensely important work of
this division was handled by five sections, as follows: (1) The Section
of Laboratories, whose duty it was to furnish and train personnel,
supervise the work of the laboratories, and standardize the equipment.
(2) The Section of Epidemiology, which followed the progress of disease
and recommended measures of control. (3) The Section of Urology and
Dermatology, which was specially charged with the treatment of venereal
disease. (4) The Section on Combating Venereal Diseases, which elaborated
and executed measures for educating the soldier on this subject, for
the enforcement of legal measures against immoral conditions, and for
venereal prophylaxis or early treatment. (5) The Army Medical Museum,
which collected pathological material and other specimens of interest to
medical men, the scope of its activities being greatly enlarged by the
formation of an organization for collecting material in the field.
The problems handled by the Division of Laboratories and Infectious
Diseases were both varied and vitally important in preventing wastage of
troops. The view held by the experts of the division that the enteric
group of diseases, which wrought such havoc in other wars, could be
controlled by typhoid and paratyphoid inoculation and by adequate
sanitary measures, was confirmed by the fact that, though typhoid
occurred in the devastated and extremely insanitary regions along the
Western Front, it never became a serious menace to the American Army.
With the practical elimination of the enteric diseases, the respiratory
diseases provided the most important problem for the Medical Department.
The most vigorous measures were pursued in studying and attempting to
control the incidence and mortality of respiratory diseases, and many
facts were ascertained which proved of great value during the period
of operations and which, when the lessons to be drawn from them have
received sufficient study, will eventually place in our hands more
adequate means of control. Epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis is another
disease which always has to be feared when troops are mobilized.
Infection is transmitted by the discharges from the respiratory passages,
usually being disseminated by “carriers,” who spread the disease without
having it themselves. In order to detect these “carriers,” any one of
whom might unintentionally create as much havoc as an enemy agent in
a munitions plant, hundreds of thousands of men were examined, our
knowledge of the methods by which the disease is transmitted being
thereby greatly increased. The problem presented by the venereal diseases
has always been of vital interest to all armies and the fight against
this class of infections has been vigorously waged in the American Army
for many years. With the passage of the Draft Act it became evident that
it would be necessary to extend the fight to the civilian population
not only because it was a source of infection of the army but in order
to diminish the occurrence of these diseases among drafted men. To
accomplish this a close alliance was formed between the Section on
Combating Venereal Diseases of the Medical Department and the War
Department’s Commission on Training Camp Activities. The methods pursued
in preventing venereal diseases aimed, first, at diminishing exposure
to infection, and, second, at giving medical treatment to soldiers who
have been exposed in order to prevent the development of the disease. One
of the most immediately effective measures in preventing exposure was
the repression of prostitution and its ally, the liquor traffic, in the
neighborhood of army camps and to a lesser degree throughout the country.
The surgeon-general assigned specially qualified officers of the Sanitary
Corps, mostly lawyers, to the Law Enforcement Division of the Commission
on Training Camp Activities, with orders to see that the federal and
local laws against prostitution and liquor-selling were rigidly enforced.
The results exceeded all expectations. In a year and a half about 130
red-light districts were closed at the instigation of these officers
working in the name of the Law Enforcement Division. Street-walking and
the connivance of lodging-house and hotel-keepers, taxicab drivers,
and others was kept down. Trained women social workers, experts in
the management of reformatories and detention houses, and civilian
investigators co-operated with the military authorities in the work.
Seven hundred and fifty cities and towns were investigated and a thorough
clean-up was made in 453. As a result of this work, _it is estimated that
to-day not more than five openly recognized red-light districts remain in
the whole United States_. It has repeatedly been asserted that military
life is conducive to immorality and that the army reeks with venereal
diseases. This charge is effectually disposed of by the statement that
of a total of approximately 225,000 cases of venereal disease found to
exist in the army, 200,000 were contracted before enlistment.
[Illustration: FIELD-HOSPITAL.]
[Illustration: AN INFECTIOUS WARD.]
[Illustration: CLEAR, FILTERED, DISINFECTED WATER.
Complete water-purification plant and laboratory on truck, known as the
“steri-lab.”]
[Illustration: WATER STATION ON THE WESTERN FRONT.
The hose of a “steri-lab” can be seen in the foreground.]
The Division of Surgery is subdivided into sections of General Surgery,
Orthopedic Surgery, Head Surgery, and Genito-Urinary Surgery. In each of
the forty-five army hospitals in the United States a surgical service is
maintained, the chief surgeon and his assistants having practically the
same freedom of judgment in deciding upon the kind of treatment that is
to be pursued that they would exercise in civilian institutions. To some
extent, however, the matter of treatment is governed by the rules laid
down in the Army Medical Manual and the regulations established by the
Surgeon-General’s Office. Thus, each month a duplicate of the record of
every operation performed, a list of the patients who have died and the
reasons for their deaths, and a list of the supplies used by the surgical
service must be sent to Washington. In addition, the hospital must report
upon the number of patients received from overseas and the character of
their injuries, and the number of cases of peripheral nerve, empyema,
fractures, osteomyelitis, etc., which are in the hospital, together
with the classification of the stage of the disease, that is, whether
it is improving, whether it is stationary, or whether it will require
operation. In this way the Division of Surgery is enabled to maintain a
supervision over the operation of each hospital without interfering with
its actual workings. In other words, the surgical service is permitted to
exercise its own judgment untrammelled and without interference, but it
must render a faithful report of all its doings. These monthly returns
are carefully scrutinized in Washington and the work of the entire
surgical personnel is carefully watched and card-catalogued. Monthly
reports from the various commanding officers and from consultants, as
well as information picked up here and there, are entered on these cards,
so that no officer can remain for any length of time in the surgical
service without the department knowing exactly what he is doing and
having a very accurate estimate of his ability.
When war was declared, the army possessed in the United States two
hospitals for general cases, one for tuberculosis, one for rheumatism,
and 113 post hospitals, with a total capacity of 6,665 beds. In order to
meet the anticipated needs of our great new armies a vast programme of
hospital construction was started in August, 1917, and, though it was
greatly curtailed after the sudden collapse of the German war-machine,
by March, 1919, the Medical Department had at its disposal in the United
States alone a total of 130,564 beds. In other words, the capacity of our
army hospitals was increased 1,850 per cent in twenty months—a record
which is, I imagine, without parallel in the history of medicine. The
total number of medical officers, nurses, and enlisted men on duty in
these hospitals during the period of the war was equal to the population
of Albany, New York, and the number of cases which were treated—2,000,000
in all—was equivalent to the total population of Chicago. These gigantic
hospitals, with their cool, clean wards, their ridge ventilation,
their wide corridors, their elaborate heating, lighting, water, and
fire-fighting systems, are not surpassed by any civil hospitals of their
size in the world. To realize this, one has only to visit them. Indeed,
it is not the slightest exaggeration to say that the American soldier
received the most expensive kind of medical treatment, in hospitals of
the finest type, at the hands of physicians and surgeons many of whom had
given up princely incomes and leisurely lives in order to work eighteen
hours out of the twenty-four at a captain’s or major’s pay.
It did not take the Medical Department many months to realize that it not
only had on its hands thousands of sick and wounded soldiers but it also
had the great American public—and the public required the most careful
and tactful handling. Before we had been at war a year every conceivable
sort of rumor in regard to the way in which the men in the hospitals were
being treated was making the rounds. It was whispered that they did not
get enough to eat, that they were not properly clad, that the physicians
played poker and the nurses danced while their patients lay dying, that
out-of-date methods of treatment were the rule, that the medical officers
were incapable or overbearing. No rumor seemed too fantastic to receive
credence. One woman alighted from her limousine at the entrance to the
Walter Reed Hospital in Washington and asked to be shown the “basket
cases.” Upon being asked by the puzzled attendants what she meant, she
explained that she wished to see the soldiers who had lost both legs
and arms, and who, she understood, were kept in baskets! And she was
quite frankly sceptical when assured that neither at Walter Reed nor at
any other military hospital in the United States was there a soldier
who had lost both of his legs and both of his arms. In order to combat
such ridiculous and harmful stories, to keep the public informed of the
splendid treatment which the soldiers were receiving, and to cheer up the
depressed and lonely soldiers themselves, the Publicity Section of the
Surgeon-General’s Office established a series of hospital papers which
covered the entire country. _The Come-Back_, edited and published at
the Walter Reed Hospital, Washington, D. C., jumped in one issue to the
ranks of the big dailies and steadily held its place in everything—news,
editorials, cartoons, advertising, and circulation—that makes a
successful newspaper. _The Right About_, published by the patients of
Debarkation Hospital No. 3, located in the former Greenhut store in New
York City, soon ran up a circulation of more than 50,000—at five cents
a copy, too. Among the other papers was _The Trouble Buster_, published
at Fort McHenry Hospital, Baltimore; _The Ward Healer_, at General
Hospital No. 12, Biltmore, North Carolina; _The Pill Box_, at Debarkation
Hospital No. 1, Ellis Island; _The Reclaimer_, General Hospital No.
34, East Norfolk, Massachusetts; _The Stimulant_, General Hospital No.
19, Lakewood, New Jersey, and a score or more of others with equally
amusing names. The joyous, humorous, American spirit of these papers set
a fashion of good cheer and sportsmanship among the patients, their
attitude being characterized by the slogan shouted from the top of the
first page of one of them: “The Come-Back chirps so loud that nobody has
the nerve to growl.”
Even before the first of the constantly growing streams of wounded began
to trickle home from France, it was recognized by the Medical Department
that a system must be devised and put into operation whereby these men,
instead of being mended and turned loose to shift for themselves as
best they could, must be carried along, receiving treatment and pay,
until they had attained the maximum degree of physical and functional
restoration. For a quarter of a century after the close of the Civil
War the streets of American cities were filled with disabled men
who eked out their scanty pensions by selling shoe-laces, pencils,
novelties, or by begging, because no intelligent measures had been
taken to refit them for their former occupations or to fit them for
new ones. It was determined that this condition must not occur again.
The plan for physical reconstruction of the soldiers, as ultimately
adopted, was simple, direct, and effective. It involved primarily the
establishment of an administrative organization known as the Division of
Physical Reconstruction, divided into departments of physiotherapy and
education. Certain subdepartments were also made necessary by the special
requirements of those soldiers who had lost their speech, their hearing,
or their sight. The sympathy and interest aroused by this work throughout
the country quickly drew into it as officers or advisers many men
eminent in those walks of life which best fitted them for the exacting
duties demanded by this service. The work of physical reconstruction
has been eminently successful in its effect upon the disabled soldier,
bringing him to a realization that, however great and disheartening his
impairment, he might hope for usefulness, happiness, and self-support
in the future, and in many cases leading to the adoption of a new and
better vocation and a better standing in life. I knew one man who had
had both legs blown off by a shell at Château-Thierry. He was a young,
fine-looking, exceptionally intelligent fellow, but, with the prospect of
spending the rest of his days in a wheel-chair staring him in the face,
he had sunk to the depths of misery and discouragement. But one day one
of the experts of the reconstruction service sat down beside his bed,
offered him a cigarette, and started a conversation.
“What did you do before you went into the army?” the reconstructionist
inquired.
“I was a carpenter,” the man answered. “Made good money, too. But I
guess the only thing I’ll be good for in the future will be peddling
shoe-laces,” he added bitterly. “No one wants a legless man.”
“Ever have any other occupation?”
“No. I always wanted to be an architect, but my people didn’t have the
money to send me to college, so I went to work after I finished high
school.”
“Would you like to take up architecture now if you could get the
training?” the reconstruction expert asked.
“Would I?” the soldier gasped incredulously. “Would I? Say, friend,
what’s the use of hitting a fellow when he’s down and out?”
“You’re not down and out,” was the cheery answer. “Not by a damned sight!
If you want to be an architect, Uncle Sam is ready to give you a chance.
He will give you an education, and pay you while you are getting it, and
then he will get you a job. Don’t get the idea into your head that he has
forgotten what he owes you boys who have fought for him.”
The last time I saw that soldier he had already commenced his
architectural education.
“If he keeps on as well as he has begun,” one of his instructors told me,
“he will make several times as much money without any legs as he did with
them.”
The educational work starts at the bedside as soon as the patient feels
the need of some activity or diversion. Each patient is treated as an
individual, an educational activity being selected for him which will
have the greatest curative effect and will at the same time present the
greatest interest and incentive because of the future usefulness which
it holds out to him. Simple crafts, light, desultory, and diverting,
gradually give place to more exacting, more purposeful studies and
occupations. For one man the series may be bead-work, mechanical
drafting, wood-shop, carpentry; for another, knitting, basketry,
penmanship, and accounting; for the illiterate it may be some textile
project followed by instruction in reading and writing. Since the work
began, 75,000 men have been enrolled in some form of educational work in
fifty hospitals. Many have regained control of palsied muscles, limbered
up stiffened joints, revived dulled mental sensibilities, steadied
shaken nerves, or obtained improved physical tone by the application
of these methods. To thousands the educational service has brought the
discovery that, in spite of the handicap of their disabilities, they
possess unsuspected ability in certain lines of useful and profitable
endeavor, thus substituting hope for despair and showing them the way to
a useful and contented future.
M—— was illiterate; in fact, he could not sign the pay-roll or read
the simplest orders; he was bedridden with wounds in his shoulder and
arm. He came from a remote mountain community, where the need of even
a rudimentary knowledge of the three R’s was not deemed necessary. For
thirty minutes a day for six weeks he studied reading, writing, and
arithmetic. When he was ready for discharge from hospital he was able to
write short letters, though he found spelling puzzling. In reading he
made unusual progress, though his oral inflection left something to be
desired. His greatest pleasure was to receive a letter from his brother,
who had had five years’ schooling but could not write as well as M——
himself, or to write to his mother instead of being compelled to ask the
other boys to write his letters for him.
Many of the soldiers are country boys and will go back to farming when
they leave the hospital. For them there are courses in farm accounting
and work in the gas-engine shop and with the hospital’s tractor. Clerks
who were unable to obtain promotion because they did not understand
stenography and typewriting are learning those branches, and some are
taking courses in the newest systems of cataloguing and bookkeeping. A
boy who had lost both legs above the knee became proficient in Spanish
in order that he might assist his brother in the management of a ranch
near the Mexican border. Others are taught woodworking, gardening,
the operation and repair of gas-engines, shoe repairing, oxyacetylene
welding, printing, electrical mechanics, lettering, and drawing. One
day there was brought into the reconstruction hospital at Colonia, New
Jersey, a boy whose hands had been taken off at the wrists. For five
weeks he had been fed and cared for by any one who happened to be near.
He was helpless and despondent. The able and energetic woman in charge of
the educational work in his ward suggested that if a spoon was fastened
to the stump of his right arm he would be able to feed himself. At first
he said that he couldn’t, but she insisted on his making the attempt. The
very next day he called to the sergeant who had told him that dinner was
ready: “I can wait on myself now.” Then he devised a way to light his
own cigarettes. Before long they had rigged up a device by which brushes
could be fastened to his arms and he was set to work painting toys and
boxes. And he did it remarkably well, everything considered. And, what
was much more important, he whistled as he worked.
I doubt if any branch of the army did more efficient work in its
respective line, and received less credit from the public, than the
Veterinary Corps. This lack of appreciation was due, in the first place,
to public ignorance of the duties of the corps and of the character of
its personnel. Most people associate a veterinarian with the old-time
country horse-doctor, of rough manners and still rougher speech, who
was known to every man and boy in the countryside as “Doc.” The army
veterinarian is a different genus altogether. He is usually as smart in
appearance and as well-set-up as any officer of the line; he is more
often than not a university graduate, and his methods of treatment are
as modern and scientific as those of a surgeon or a medical specialist.
The impression also seems to prevail that, as a result of the wholesale
motorization of artillery and transport and the enormous use of aircraft,
animals played but a small part in the Great War, and that consequently
the army veterinarian enjoyed something akin to a sinecure. As a matter
of fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Probably you were not
aware that when the war ended, the United States Army possessed close to
half a million horses and mules—the exact figure was, I believe, about
470,000—and was purchasing hundreds of more daily. Not only was the task
of inspecting and supervising the care of this great body of animals an
enormous one, but, as a result of the extreme scarcity of horse-flesh—for
buyers for the European armies had almost drained the markets of the
world before we entered the war—and because of the lack of tonnage, the
animals of the A. E. F. were, as a divisional commander expressed it in a
general order, “worth their weight in gold.”
Prior to 1916 there were only about 75 veterinarians in the entire army,
but with the passage during that year of the National Defense Act the
number of veterinarians at the call of the government was materially
increased by the creation of the Veterinary Reserve Corps. The Veterinary
Corps, like other branches of the service, kept pace with the expansion
of the army, and when the Armistice was signed it had on duty 2,200
officers and an enlisted force of more than 21,000 men.
When an animal is first led before a purchasing commission its relation
to the Veterinary Corps begins. Every horse and mule must be examined
by a veterinary officer for soundness and freedom from physical defects
before it can be purchased. As soon as the purchased animals have arrived
at the various remount depots they become the objects of unceasing
attention by the Veterinary Corps, whose duty it is to keep them free
from disease and in the highest state of efficiency. This work includes
the sanitary inspection of stables, picket-lines, forage and bedding,
methods of feeding, watering, grooming, and shoeing, the detection and
segregation of communicable diseases and the establishment of proper
quarantine regulations, the care and treatment of all sick animals, the
operation of veterinary hospitals, the investigation of the cause and
cure of equine diseases, and the keeping of records. Another important
duty of the corps in France was the prompt evacuation of all wounded
animals in order that they might not hinder the mobility of the troops or
engage the attention of the men. In order to facilitate the evacuation
of sick and wounded animals from the Zone of the Advance, 21 veterinary
hospital organizations—each consisting of 7 officers and 300 men, and
each having a capacity of 1,000 sick animals—were trained, organized, and
sent overseas. There were also sent to France 2 base veterinary hospitals
with a capacity of 500 animals each. Besides this, every cantonment in
the United States had its own veterinary hospital, varying in capacity
from 200 to 600 animals each. As a result of the scientific methods
of sanitation and treatment introduced by the Veterinary Corps, the
mortality among animals was enormously reduced (in the early days of the
war the British estimated that the average life of a horse in France was
only sixteen days), thousands of disabled horses which in former wars
would have been shot were evacuated, mended, and sent back to the front
for further service, and millions of dollars were saved to the American
taxpayer.
Even more important than its care of the animals of the army was the work
of the Veterinary Corps in protecting the men by guarding the purity
of their meat and dairy supplies. The activities of the Meat and Dairy
Inspection Service include the inspection of meats purchased for the use
of the army at the time of their receipt, while in storage, and upon
issue to troops; inspection of storehouses, refrigerators, and methods
of operation in handling food therein; inspection of slaughter-houses,
butcher-shops, and packing-houses; ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection
for soundness and suitability for human food of animals slaughtered;
inspection of cows and dairies providing milk, butter, and cheese for
the use of the troops. Some conception of the extent and importance of
the work of the Meat Inspection Service can be had by remembering that
when the war ended, the Packing-House Products Branch of the Office of
the Director of Purchase and Storage was purchasing for the use of the
army an average of from 15,000,000 to 19,000,000 pounds of meat products
weekly. And every carcass, if not every pound, had to be inspected and
passed by the Veterinary Corps before it reached the mess-tables of the
army. That, in spite of the incredible quantities of meat products which
had to be purchased for the use of our forces in the field, and the great
distances between the abattoirs and the zone of operations, there was no
repetition of the “embalmed-beef” scandal which sullied the history of
the war with Spain was due to the efficiency and unremitting vigilance of
the men who wore on their collars the insignia of the Veterinary Corps.
* * * * *
I am perfectly aware that the medical officers who do me the honor to
read this chapter will criticise me for the omissions I have made. And
such criticism is justified. I have dismissed such important phases of
the work of the Medical Corps as the Division of Surgery with a few
paragraphs; to the Dental Corps and the Nurse Corps I have been able to
devote but a few lines; the Sanitary Corps, the Ambulance Service, and a
score of other branches I have merely mentioned. Of the marvellous work
performed by our medical officers in plastic surgery, in bone grafting,
in the disinfection of wounds, in orthopedics, in the treatment of the
blind, the shell-shocked, and the insane, I have written nothing—the
subject is too great, the space at my disposal too limited to even
attempt it. The most that I can hope to do in the limits of a single
chapter is to give my readers the same fleeting, cursory view of the
achievements of the Medical Department that one obtains of a countryside
from an airplane.
* * * * *
If America’s losses in the greatest of wars were relatively slight—and
they _were_ slight when compared with the appalling casualties suffered
by most of the other warring nations—the reason is not to be found
in the superiority of American strategy, in the ability of American
commanders, or in the excellence of American weapons, but in the
efficiency, self-sacrifice, and devotion of the officers, nurses, and
men who wore the caduceus of the Army Medical Department. And I know
whereof I speak, for I have not only visited French, British, Belgian,
Italian, even German, hospitals all the way from La Panne to Montfalcone,
thus affording me standards of comparison, but I spent nearly three
months in an American hospital on the Marne, I came home on an American
hospital-ship, and for nearly three months more I was under the care of
army medical officers in the United States. In dressing-stations, field,
camp, base, debarkation, and general hospitals I have watched the Medical
Department at its work, and the first-hand knowledge thus gained gives
me the right to assert that it was the most efficient service of its
kind possessed by any army. To its officers and men, and to the devoted
women of the Army Nurse Corps, I lift my hat in gratitude and admiration.
The American Army and the American people owe them a debt which they can
never fully pay.
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