THE American training-camp area spread over many miles and through many villages. It had boundaries only in theory, because all its sides were ready to swing farther north, east, south, and west at a day's notice, whenever the Expeditionary Force should become army enough to require it.
But its focus was in the Vosges, in the six or seven villages set apart from the beginning for the Americans, and as such, overhauled by those first marines and quartermaster's assistants who left the coast in early July and moved campward.
This overhauling brought the end of the Franco-American honeymoon. Later, amity was to be re-established, but when the first marine ordered the first manure-pile out of the first front yard, a breach began which it took long months to heal.
There were few barracks in the Vosges. The soldiers were to be billeted with the peasants. And the marines said the peasants had to clean up and air, and the peasants said the marines were insane.
Those first days at training-camp, before the body of the troops arrived, were circus enough for anybody.
Six villages were to be got ready, the officers to have the pick of places, and the privates to have next best. And the choice of assignments for officers was still so far from ideal as to make the house-cleaning a thorough job all around.
The marines had a village to themselves, the farthest from the inspection-grounds. The correspondents had a village to themselves, too, though it wasn't because there was any excess of regard for the importance of the correspondents among the men who laid out the grounds. They were put where they could do the least harm, and where their confusing appearance, in Sam Brown belts and other officer-like insignia, would not exact too many wasted salutes.
General Headquarters was still in Paris atthis time, but General Sibert had Field Headquarters at camp, and though his assignment was relatively stylish, it could not have been said to offend him with its luxury.
He lived and worked in a little frame building in the main street of the central village, which had probably once been a hotel.
It was to be recognized by the four soldiers always at attention outside it, whenever motors or pedestrians passed that way. Two of the soldiers were American and two were French.
Although all the American training-camp area became America as to jurisdiction, as soon as the troops moved there, the French soldiers were always present around headquarters, partly to help and partly to register politeness.
Inside Field Headquarters, the little bare wooden rooms were stripped of their few battered vases and old chromos, and plain wooden tables and chairs were set about. The marines opened the windows, and scrubbed up the floors, and hung out the sign of "Business as usual," and General Sibert moved in.
The rest was not so easy. The various kitchens came in first for attention. For manydays French and American motor-lorries had been trundling across France, storing the warehouses with heaping piles of food-supplies. The procession practically never stopped. Trains brought what could be put aboard them, but it was to motors that most of the real work fell. So the thin, long line of loaded cars stretched endlessly from coast to camp, and finally everything was attended to but where to put the food and where to cook it.
The houses with the good back sheds were picked for kitchens, and the big army soup-kettles were bricked into place, and what passed for ovens were provided for the bakers.
For bathing facilities, there were neat paths marked to the river. That is, the French called it a river. Every American who rides through France for the first time has the same experience: he looks out of his train-window and remarks to his companion, who knows France well: "Isn't that a pretty little creek? Are there many springs about here?" And the companion replies scornfully: "That isn't a creek—that's the Marne River," or "That's the Aisne," or "That's the Meuse." TheAmerican always wonders what the French would call the Hudson.
It was one of these storied streams that ran through the American training-camp, in which the Americans did their bathing. Whenever a soldier wanted to get his head wet he waded across.
Later, when the camps were filled, these river-banks were to offer a remarkable sight to the French peasants, who thought all Americans were bathing-mad anyway. Hundreds of soldiers, in the assorted postures of men scrubbing backs and knees and elbows, disported with soap and wash-cloth along the banks. Hundreds of others, swimming their suds off, flashed here an arm and there a leg in the stream itself. It did not take much distance to make them look like figures on a frieze, a new Olympic group. Modesty knew them not, but there were not supposed to be women about, and the peasants had a nice Japanese point of view in the matter. At any rate, there was the training-camp bathtub, and they used it at least once a day, to the unending stupefaction of the French.
Where they slept was another matter, suggesting neither Corot nor Phidias.
The privates had houses first, then barns. The barns were freed of the live stock, which was turned into meadows to graze, and the floors were dug down to clean earth, and vast quantities of formaldehyde were sprayed around. Then the cots were carried up to the second floors of the barns and put along in tidy rows. At the foot of each soldier's bed was whatever manner of small wooden box he could corral from the quartermaster, and there he kept all he owned. His pack unfolded its contents into the box, and his comfort-kit perched on the top. And there he kept the little mess of treasures he bought from the gypsy wagons that rode all day around the outskirts of the camp.
Windows were knocked out, just under the eaves, for the fresh air that seemed, so inexplicably to the French, so essential to the Americans.
Even with the First Division, acknowledged to be about the smallest expeditionary force known to the Great War, the soldiers averaged a little over two thousand to the village, andsince not one of the villages had more than four or five hundred population in peace-times, the troubles of the man who arranged the billets were far from light.
Fortunately, the First Division did not ask for luxuries. Even the officers spent more time in simplifying their quarters than in trimming them up. The colonel of one regiment—one of those who became major-generals soon after the arrival in France—had his quarters in an aristocratic old house, set back in a long yard, where plum-trees dropped their red fruit in the vivid green grass and roses overgrew their confines—it was the sort of house before which the pre-war motor tourists used to stop and breathe long "ohs" of satisfaction.
The entrance was by a low, arched doorway. The hall was built of beautifully grained woods, old and mellow of tone. The stairway was broad and easy to climb. The colonel had the second floor front, just level with the tree-tops.
In the room there were rich woods and tapestried walls, and at the back was a four-poster mahogany bed with heavy satin hangings, brocaded with fleur-de-lis. The Pompadour wouldhave been entirely happy there. But the American colonel had done things to it—things that would have popped the eyes out of the Pompadour's head. He pinned up the four-poster hangings with a safety-pin, that being the only way he could convey to his amiable little French servant-girl that he didn't want that bed turned down for him of nights. And he had taken all the satin hangings down from the windows. Under these windows he had drawn up a little board table and an army cot. Beside the table was his little army trunk. The space he used did not measure more than ten feet in any direction, and his luxuries waited unmolested for some more sybaritic soul than he.
A major in that same village who had had a cavalry command before the cavalry, as he put it, became "mere messengers," picked his quarters out himself, on the strength of all he had heard about "Sunny France." His house was nothing much, but behind it was a garden—a long garden, filled with vegetables, decorated with roses, shaded by fruit-trees. At the far end of the garden was a summer-house, in a circle of trees. Here the major took his firstguests and showed how he intended to do his work in the open air, while the famous French sunshine flooded his garden and warmed his little refuge.
The one thing it will never be safe to say to any veteran of the First Division is "Sunny France." The summer of 1917, after a blazing start in June, settled down to drizzle and mist, cold and fog, rain that soaked to the marrow.
The major with the garden sloshed around the whole summer, visiting men who had settled indoors and had fireplaces. By the time the warmth had come back to his summer-house it was time for him to go up to the battle-line, and the man who writes a history of the billets in France will get a lot of help from him.
Some of the makeshifts of this first invasion were excusable and inevitable. Some were not. After the first two or three weeks of settling in, General Pershing made a tour of inspection, and some of the things he said about what he saw didn't make good listening. But after that visit all possible defects were overcome, and the men slept well, ate well, were as well clothed as possible, and were admirably sanitated.
The drinking-water was a matter for the greatest strictness. The French never drink water on any provocation, so that water provisions began from the ground up.
It was drawn into great skins and hung on tripods in the shaded parts of the billets, and it was then treated with a germicide, tasteless fortunately, carried in little glass capsules. This was a legacy from experiences in Panama.
Each man had his own tin cup, and when he got thirsty he went down and turned the faucet in the hanging skin tank. If he drank any other water he repented in the guard-house.
So, though the billets were rude and sometimes uncomfortable, the soldiers did stay in them and out of the hospitals.
And there were compensations.
Half of these were in play-times, and half in work-times. The training, slow at first, speeded up afterward and, with the help of the "Blue Devils" who trained with the Americans, took on all the exhilaration of war with none of its dangers. But how they trained doesn't belong in a chapter on billets. How they played is more suitable.
Three-fourths of their playing they did with the French children. The insurmountable French language, which kept doughboys and poilus at arm's length in spite of their best intentions, broke down with the youngsters.
It was one of the finest sights around the camp to see the big soldiers collecting around the mess-tent after supper, in the daylight-saving long twilight, to hear the band and play in pantomime with the hundreds of children who tagged constantly after them.
The band concerts were a regular evening affair, though musically they didn't come to much. Those were the days before anybody had thought to supply the army bands with new music, so "She's My Daisy" and "The Washington Post" made a daily appearance.
But the concerts did not want for attendance. The soldiers stood around by the hundreds, and listened and looked off over the hills to where the guns were rumbling, whenever the children were not exacting too much attention.
This child-soldier combination had just two words. The child said "Hello," which was allhis English, and the party lasted till the soldier, billet-bound, said "Fee-neesh," which was all his French. But nobody could deny that both of them had a good time.
Letter-writing was another favorite sport with the First Division, to the great dole of the censors. Of course the men were homesick. That was one reason. The other was that they had left home as heroes, and they didn't intend to let the glory lapse merely because they had come across to France and been slapped into school. The censors were astounded by what they read ... gory battles of the day before, terrific air-raids, bombardments of camp, etc. Some of the men told how they had slaughtered Germans with their bare hands. Most of the letters were adjudged harmless, and of little aid or comfort to the enemy, so they were passed through. But some of the families of the First Division must have thought that the War Department was holding out an awful lot on the American public.
Mid-July saw the camp in fair working order. The First Division had word that it was presently to be joined by the New England Divisionand the Rainbow Division, both National Guardsmen, and representative of every State.
Copyright by the Committee on Public Information. Buglers of the Alpine Chasseurs, assisted by their military band, entertaining American soldiers of the First Division.Copyright by the Committee on Public Information.Buglers of the Alpine Chasseurs, assisted by their military band, entertaining American soldiers of the First Division.
Copyright by the Committee on Public Information.
Buglers of the Alpine Chasseurs, assisted by their military band, entertaining American soldiers of the First Division.
American participation began to take shape as a real factor, a stern and sombre business, and all the lighter, easier sides of the expedition began to fall back, and work and grimness came on together.
The French Alpine Chasseurs—whom the Americans promptly called "chasers"—had a party with the Americans on July 14, when the whole day was given over to a picnic, with boxing, wrestling, track sports, and a lot of food. That was the last party in the training-camp till Christmas.
The work that began then had no let-up till the first three battalions went into the trenches late in October. The steadily increasing number of men widened the area of the training-camp, but they made no difference in the contents of the working-day, nor in the system by which it proceeded.
Within the three weeks after the First Division had landed, the work of army-building began.
THAT part of France which became America in July, 1917, was of about the shape of a long-handled tennis-racket. The broad oval was lying just behind the fighting-lines. The handle reached back to the sea. Then, to the ruin of the simile, the artillery-schools, the aviation-fields, and the base hospitals made excrescences on the handle, so that an apter symbol would be a large and unshapely string of beads.
But France lends itself to pretty exact plotting out. There are no lakes or mountains to dodge, nor particularly big cities to edge over to. In the main, the organizing staffs of the two nations could draw lines from the coast to the battle-fields, and say: "Between these two shall America have her habitation and her name."
The infantry trained in the Vosges. The artillery-ranges were next behind, and then theaviation-grounds. The hospitals were placed everywhere along the lines, from field-bases to those far in the rear. And because neither French train service nor Franco-American motor service could bear the giant burden of man-and-supply transportation, the first job to which the engineer and labor units were assigned was laying road-beds across France for a four-track railroad within the American lines.
In those days America did not look forward to the emergency which was to brigade her troops with French or British, under Allied Generalissimo Foch. Her plans were to put in a force which should be, as the English say of their flats, "self-contained." If this arrangement had a fault, it was that it was too leisurely. It was certainly not lacking on the side of magnificence, either in concept or carrying-out.
The scheme of bringing not only army but base of supplies, both proportionate to a nation of a hundred million people, was necessarily begun from the ground up. The American Army built railroads and warehouses as a matter of course. It laid out training-camps for the various arms of the service on an unheard-ofscale. As it happens, the original American plan was changed by the force of circumstances. Much of the American man-power eventually was brigaded with the British and French and went through the British and French soldier-making mills. But the territory marked America still remains America and the excellent showing made by the War Department in shipping men during the spring and early summer of 1918 furnished a supply of soldiers sufficient to make allotments to the Allies directly and at the same time preserve a considerable force as a distinctly American Army. It is possible that the fastest method of preparation possible might have been to brigade with the Allies from the beginning. But it would have been difficult to induce America to accept such a plan if it had not been for the emergency created by the great German drive of the spring of 1918.
American engineers were both building railroads and running them from July on. The hospital units were installed even earlier. The first work of an army comes behind the lines and a large proportion of the early arrivals of the A. E. F. were non-fighting units. At thatthere was no satisfying the early demands for labor. As late as mid-August General Pershing was still doing the military equivalent of tearing his hair for more labor units and stevedores. A small number of negroes employed as civilian stevedores came with the First Division, but they could not begin to fill the needs. Later all the stevedores sent were regularly enlisted members of the army. While the great undertaking was still on paper and the tips of tongues, the infantry was beginning its hard lessons in the Vosges. The First Division was made up of something less than 50 per cent of experienced soldiers, although it was a regular army division. The leaven of learning was too scant. The rookies were all potentiality. The training was done with French soldiers and for the first little while under French officers. A division of Chasseurs Alpines was withdrawn from the line to act as instructors for the Americans, and for two months the armies worked side by side. "You will have the honor," so the French order read, "of spending your permission in training the American troops." This might not seem likethe pleasantest of all possible vacations for men from the line, but the chasseurs seemed to take to it readily enough. These Chasseurs Alpines—the Blue Devils—were the finest troops the French had. And if they were to give their American guests some sound instruction later on, they were to give them the surprise of their lives first.
The French officer is the most dazzling sight alive, but the French soldier is not. Five feet of height is regarded as an abundance. He got his name of "poilu" not so much from his beard as from his perpetual little black mustache.
The doughboys called him "Froggy" with ever so definite a sense of condescension.
"Yes, they look like nothing—but you try following them for half a day," said an American officer of the "poilus."
They have a short, choppy stride, far different to the gangling gait of the American soldier. The observer who looks them over and decides they would be piffling on the march, forgets to see that they have the width of an opera-singer under the arms, and that they no more getwinded on their terrific sprints than Caruso does on his high C's.
And after they had done some stunts with lifting guns by the bayonet tip, and had heaved bombs by the afternoon, the doughboys called in their old opinions and got some new ones.
All sorts of things were helping along the international liking and respect. The prowess of the French soldiers was one of the most important. But the soldiers' interpretation of Pershing's first general order to the troops was another. This order ran:
"For the first time in history an American Army finds itself in European territory. The good name of the United States of America and the maintenance of cordial relations require the perfect deportment of each member of this command. It is of the gravest importance that the soldiers of the American Army shall at all times treat the French people, and especially the women, with the greatest courtesy and consideration. The valiant deeds of the French Army and the Allies, by which together they have successfully maintained the common cause for three years, and the sacrifices of the civilpopulation of France in support of their armies command our profound respect. This can best be expressed on the part of our forces by uniform courtesies to all the French people, and by the faithful observance of their laws and customs. The intense cultivation of the soil in France, under conditions caused by the war, makes it necessary that extreme care should be taken to do no damage to private property. The entire French manhood capable of bearing arms is in the field fighting the enemy, and it should, therefore, be a point of honor to each member of the American Army to avoid doing the least damage to any property in France."
Veteran soldiers take a general order as a general order, following it literally. Recruits on a mission such as the First Division's took that first general order as a sort of intimation, on which they were to build their own conceptions of gallantry and good-will. Not only did they avoid doing damage to French property, they minded the babies, drew the well-water, carried faggots, peeled potatoes—did anything and everything they found a Frenchwoman doing, if they had some off time.
They fed the children from their own mess, kept them behind the lines at grenade practice, mended their toys and made them new ones.
These things cemented the international friendliness that the statesmen of the two countries had made so much talk of. And by the time the war training was to begin, doughboys and Blue Devils tramped over the long white roads together with nothing more unfriendly left between them than rivalry.
The first thing they were set to do was trench-digging. The Vosges boast splendid meadows. The Americans were told to dig themselves in. The method of training with the French was to mark a line where the trench should be, put the French at one end and the Americans at the other. Then they were to dig toward each other as if the devil was after them, and compare progress when they met.
Trench-digging is every army's prize abomination. A good hate for the trenches was the first step of the Americans toward becoming professional. It was said of the Canadians early in the war that though they would die in the last ditch they wouldn't dig it.
No army but the German ever attempted to make its trenches neat and cosey homes, but even the hasty gully required by the French seemed an obnoxious burden to the doughboy. The first marines who dug a trench with the Blue Devils found that their picks struck a stone at every other blow, and that by the time they had dug deep enough to conceal their length they were almost too exhausted to climb out again.
The ten days given over to trench-digging was not so much because the technic was intricate or the method difficult to learn. They were to break the spirit of the soldiers and hammer down their conviction that they would rather be shot in the open than dig a trench to hide in. They were also to keep the aching backs and weary shoulders from getting overstiff. Toward the end of July the first batch of infantrymen were called off their trenches and were started at bomb practice. At first they used dummy bombs. The little line of Blue Devils who were to start the party picked up their bombs, swung their arms slowly overhead, held them straight from wristto shoulder, and let their bombs sail easily up on a long, gentle arc, which presently landed them in the practice trenches.
"One-two-three-four," they counted, and away went the bombs. The doughboys laughed. It seemed to them a throw fit only for a woman or a substitute third baseman in the Texas League. When their turn came, the doughboys showed the Blue Devils the right way to throw a bomb. They lined them out with a ton of energy behind each throw, and the bombs went shooting straight through the air, level above the trench-lines, and a distance possibly twice as far as that attained by the Frenchmen. They stood back waiting for the applause that did not come.
"The objects are two in bomb-throwing, and you did not make either," said the French instructor. "You must land your bomb in the trenches—they do no more harm than wind when they fly straight—and you must save your arm so that you can throw all afternoon."
So the baseball throw was frowned out, and the half-womanish, half-cricket throw was brought in.
After the doughboys had mastered their method they were put to getting somewhere with it. They were given trenches first at ten metres' distance, and then at twenty. Then there were competitions, and war training borrowed some of the fun of a track meet. The French had odds on. No army has ever equalled them for accuracy of bomb-throwing, and the doughboys, once pried loose from their baseball advantage, were not in a position to push the French for their laurels. The American Army's respect for the French began to have growing-pains. But what with driving hard work, the doughboys learned finally to land a dummy bomb so that it didn't disgrace them.
With early August came the live grenades, and the first serious defect in the American's natural aptitude for war-making was turned up. This defect had the pleasant quality of being sentimentally correct, even if sharply reprehensible from the French point of view. It was, in brief, that the soldiers had no sense of danger, and resisted all efforts to implant one, partly from sheer lack of imagination in training, and partly from a scorn of taking to cover.
The live bombs were hurled from deep trenches, aimed not at a point, but at a distance—any distance, so it was safe. But once the bombs were thrown, every other doughboy would straighten up in his trench to see what he had hit. Faces were nipped time and again by the fragments of flying steel, and the French heaped admonitions on admonitions, but it was long before the American soldiers would take their war-game seriously.
Later, in the mass attacks on "enemy trenches," when they were ordered to duck on the grass to avoid the bullets, the doughboys ducked as they were told, then popped up at once on one elbow to see what they could see. The Blue Devils training with them lay like prone statues. The doughboys looked at them in astonishment, and said, openly and frequently: "But there ain't any bullets."
It was finally from the British, who came later as instructors, that the doughboys accepted it as gospel that they must be pragmatic about the dangers, and "act as if...." Then some of the wiseacres at the camp pronounced the conviction that the Americans thought theFrench were melodramatic, and by no means to be copied, until they found their British first cousins, surely above reproach for needless emotionalism, were doing the same strange things.
The state of mind into which Allied instructors sought to drive or coax the Americans was pinned into a sharp phrase by a Far Western enlisted man before he left his own country. A melancholy relative had said, as he departed: "Are you ready to give your life to your country?" To which the soldier answered: "You bet your neck I'm not—I'm going to make some German give his life for his."
This was representative enough of the sentiments of the doughboys, but the instructors ran afoul of their deepest convictions when they insisted that this was an art to be learned, not a mere preference to be favored.
After the live bombs came the first lessons in machine-gun fire, using the French machine-gun and automatic rifle. The soldiers were taught to take both weapons apart and put them together again, and then they were ordered to fire them.
The first trooper to tackle an automatic rifle aimed the little monster from the trenches, and opened fire, but he found to his discomfiture that he had sprayed the hilltops instead of the range, and one of the officers of the Blue Devils told him he would better be careful or he would be transferred to the anti-aircraft service.
The veterans of the army, however, had little trouble with the automatic rifle or the machine-guns, even at first. The target was 200 metres away, at the foot of a hill, and the first of the sergeants to tackle it made 30 hits out of a possible 34.
The average for the army fell short of this, but the men were kept at it till they were thoroughly proficient.
One characteristic of all the training of the early days at camp was that both officers and men were being prepared to train later troops in their turn, so that many lectures in war theory and science, and many demonstrations of both, were included there. This accounted for much of the additional time required to train the First Division.
But while their own training was unusuallylong drawn out, they were being schooled in the most intensive methods in use in either French or British Army. It was an unending matter for disgust to the doughboy that it took him so long to learn to hurry.
WHILE the soldiers were still, figuratively speaking, in their own trenches and learning the several arts of getting out, the officers of the infantry camp were having some special instructions in instructing.
Young captains and lieutenants were placed in command of companies of the Blue Devils, and told to put them through their paces—in French.
It was, of course, a point of honor with the officers not to fall back into English, even in an emergency. One particularly nervous young man, who had ordered his French platoon to march to a cliff some distance away, forgot the word for "Halt" or "Turn around" as the disciplined Blue Devils, eyes straight ahead, marched firmly down upon their doom. At the very edge, while the American clinched his sticky palms and wondered what miracle wouldsave him, a helpful French officer called "Halte," and the American suddenly remembered that the word was the same in both languages—an experience revoltingly frequent with Americans in distress with their French.
But disasters such as this were not numerous. The officers worked excellently, at French as well as soldiering, and little precious time was needed for them.
Three battalions were at work at this first training—two American and one French. As these learned their lessons, they were put forward to the next ones, and new troops began at the beginning. This plan was thoroughly organized at the very beginning, so that the later enormous influx of troops did not disrupt it, and as the first Americans came nearer to the perfection they were after, they were put back to leaven the raw troops as the French Blue Devils had done for the first of them.
The plan further meant that after the first few weeks, what with beginners in the First Division and newly arriving troops, the Vosges fields offered instruction at almost anything along the programme on any given day.
Over the whole camp, the aim of the French officers was to reproduce actual battle conditions as absolutely as possible, and to eliminate, within reason, any advantage that surprise might give to the Germans.
By the end of the first week in August, the best scholars among the trench-diggers and bombers were being shown how to clean out trenches with live grenades, and the machine-gunners and marksmen were getting good enough to be willing to bet their own money on their performances.
Then came the battalion problems, the proper use of grenades by men advancing in formations against a mythical enemy in intrenched positions.
From the beginning, the American Army refused to accept the theory that the war would never again get into the open. They trained in open warfare, and with a far greater zest—partly, of course, because it was the thing they knew already, though they found they had some things to unlearn.
Then the war brought about a reorganization of American army units, and it was necessaryfor the officers to familiarize themselves with new conditions. The reorganization was ordered early in August, and put into effect shortly afterward. The request from General Pershing that the administrative units of the infantry be altered to conform with European systems had in its favor the fact that it economized higher officers and regimental staffs, for at the same time that divisions were made smaller, regiments were made larger.
The new arrangement of the infantry called for a company of 250 enlisted men and 6 commissioned officers, instead of 100 men and 3 officers. Each company was then divided into 4 platoons, with a lieutenant in command. Each regiment was made up of 3 battalions of 4 companies each, supplemented by regimental headquarters and the supply and machine-gun organizations.
This made it possible to have 1 colonel and 3 battalion commanders officer 3,600 men, as against 2,000 of the old order.
This army in the making was not called on to show itself in the mass till August 16, just a month after its hard work had begun. ThenMajor-General Sibert, field-commander of the First Division and best-loved man in France, held a review of all the troops. The manœuvres were held in a great open plain. The marching was done to spirited bands, who had to offset a driving rain-storm to keep the men perked up. The physical exercise of the first month showed in the carriage of the men, infinitely improved, and they marched admirably, in spite of the fact that their first training had been a specialization in technical trench warfare. General Sibert made them a short address of undiluted praise, and they went back to work again.
A few days later the army had its first intelligence drill, with the result that some erstwhile soldiers were told off to cook and tend mules.
The test consisted in delivering oral messages. One message was: "Major Blank sends his compliments to Captain Nameless, and orders him to move L Company one-half mile to the east, and support K Company in the attack." The officer who gave the message then moved up the hill and prepared to receive it.
The third man up came in panting excitement,full of earnest desire to do well. "Captain, the major says that you're to move your men a mile to the east," he said, "and attack K Company." He peeled the potatoes for supper.
The gas tests came late in August. The officers, believing that fear of gas could not be excessive, had done some tall talking before the masks were given out, and in the first test, when the men were to enter a gas-filled chamber with their masks on, they had all been assured that one whiff would be fatal. The gas in the chamber was of the tear-compelling kind, only temporarily harmful, even on exposure to it. But that was a secret.
The men were drilled in putting their masks on, till the worst of them could do it in from three to five seconds. Both the French and the British masks were used, the one much lighter but comparatively riskier than the other. Officers required the men to have their masks constantly within reach, and gas alarms used to be called at meal-times, or whenever it seemed thoroughly inconvenient to have them. The soldiers were required to drop everythingand don the cumbersome contrivances, no matter how well they knew that there wasn't any gas. There is no question that this thoroughness saved many lives when the men went into the trenches.
When they masked and went into the gas-chamber the care they took with straps and buckles could not have been bettered. One or two of the men fainted from heat and nervousness, but nobody caught the temporary blindness that would have been their lot if the gas had not been held off. And after the first few entrants had returned none the worse, the rest made a lark of it, and the whole experience stamped on their minds the uselessness of gas as a weapon if you're handy with the mask.
The first insistence on rifle use and marksmanship, which General Pershing was to stress later with all the eloquence he had, was heard in late August. The French said frankly they had neglected the power of the rifle, and the Americans were put to work to avoid the same mistake. In target-shooting with rifles the Americans got their first taste of supremacy. They ceased being novitiates for as long as theyheld their rifles, and became respected and admired experts. The first English Army, "the Old Contemptibles," had all been expert rifle-shots, and, after a period when rifle fire was almost entirely absent from the battle-fields, tacticians began to recall this fact, and the cost it had entailed upon the Germans.
So the doughboys added rifle fire to their other jobs.
About this time the day of the doughboy was a pattern of compactness, though he called it a harsher name.
It began in the training area at five o'clock in the morning. One regiment had a story that some of the farm lads used to beat the buglers up every day and wander about disconsolate, wondering why the morning was being wasted. This was probably fictional. As a rule, five o'clock came all too early. There was little opportunity to roll over and have another wink, for roll-call came at five-thirty, and this was followed by brief setting-up exercises, designed to give the men an ambition for breakfast. At this meal French customs were not popular. The poilu, who begins his day with black coffeeand a little bread, was always amazed to see the American soldier engaged with griddle-cakes and corned-beef hash, and such other substantial things as he could get at daybreak. Just after breakfast sick-call was sounded. It was up to the ailing man to report at that time as a sufferer or forever after hold his peace. While the sick were engaged in reporting themselves the healthy men tidied up. Work proper began at seven.
As a rule, bombing, machine-gun, and automatic-rifle fire practice came in the mornings. Time was called at eleven and the soldiers marched back to billets for the midday meal. Later, when the work piled up even more, the meals were prepared on the training-grounds. Rifle and bayonet practice came in the afternoon. Four o'clock marked the end of the working-day for all except captains and lieutenants, who never found any free time in waking hours. In fact, most of the excited youngsters—almost all under thirty—let their problems perturb their dreams. The doughboys amused themselves with swims, walks, concerts, supper, and French children till nineo'clock, when they were always amiable toward going to bed.
With September came the British to supplement the French and, after a little, to go far toward replacing them. For the Blue Devils had still work to do on the Germans, and their "vacation" could not last too long.
A fine and spectacular sham battle put a climax to the stay of the French, when, after artillery preparation, the Blue Devils took the newly made American trenches, advancing under heavy barrage. The three objectives were named Mackensen, Von Kluck, and Ludendorff. The artillery turned everything it had into the slow-moving screen, under which the "chasers" crept toward the foe. All the watching doughboys had been instructed to put on their shrapnel helmets. At the pitch of the battle some officers found their men using their helmets as good front seats for the show, but fortunately there were no casualties. Words do not kill.
The departure of the Blue Devils was attended by a good deal of home-made ceremony and a universal deep regret. A genuine likinghad sprung up between the Americans and their French preceptors, and when they marched away from camp the soldiers flung over them what detachable trophies they had, the strains of all their bands, the unified good wishes of the whole First Division, and unnumbered promises to be a credit to their teachers when they got into the line.
It was the bayonet which proved the first connecting-link between the Americans and the British. American observers had decided after a few weeks that the bayonet was a peculiarly British weapon, and in consequence it was decided that for this phase of the training, the army should rely on the British rather than the French.
The British General Staff obligingly supplied the chief bayonet instructor of their army with a number of assisting sergeants, and the squad was sent down to camp.
The British brought two important things, in addition to expert bayoneting. They were, first, a familiar bluntness of criticism, which the Americans had rather missed with the polite French, and a competitive spirit, stirred upwherever possible between rival units of the A. E. F.
Their willingness to "act" their practice was another factor, though in that they did not excel the French except in that they could impart it to the Americans.
The British theory of bayonet work proved to be almost wholly offensive. They went at their instruction of it with undimmed fire. At the end of the first week, they gave a demonstration to some visiting officers. Three short trenches had been constructed in a little dip of land, and the spectators stood on the hill above them. On the opposite slope tin cans shone brightly, hoisted on sticks.
"Ready, gentlemen," said the drill-sergeant. "Prepare for trench bayonet practice by half sections. You're to take these three lines of trenches, lay out every Boche in the lot, and then get to cover and fire six rounds at them 'ere tin hats. Don't waste a shot, gentlemen, every bullet a Boche. Now, then, ready—over the top, and give 'em 'ell, right in the stomach."
Over the top they went and did as they were told. But the excitement was not great enoughto please the drill-sergeant. He turned to the second section, and put them through at a rounder pace. Then he took over some young officers, who were being instructed to train later troops, at cleaning out trenches. Sacks representing Germans were placed in a communicating trench.
"Now, remember, gentlemen," said the sergeant, "there's a Fritz in each one of these 'ere cubby-'oles, and 'e's no dub, is Fritz. 'E's got ears all down 'is back. Make your feet pneumatic. For 'eaven's sake, don't sneeze, or 'is nibs will sling you a bomb like winkin', and there'll be a narsty mess. Ready, Number One! 'Ead down, bayonet up ... it's no use stickin' out your neck to get a sight of Fritzie in 'is 'ole. Why, if old Fritz was there, 'e'd just down your point, and then where'd you be? Why, just a blinkin' casualty, and don't you forget it. Ready again, bayonet up. Now you see 'em. Quick, down with your point and at 'im. Tickle 'is gizzard. Not so bad, but I bet you waked 'is nibs in the next 'ole. Keep in mind you're fightin' for your life...."
By the time the officers were into the trench, the excitement was terrific.
It was such measures as these that made the bayonet work go like lightning, and cut down the time required at it by more than one-half.
The organized recreation and the competitions, two sturdy British expedients for morale, always came just after these grimmest of all of war's practices. The more foolish the game, the more rapturously the British joined in it. Red Rover and prisoner's base were two prime favorites. A British major said the British Army had discovered that when the men came out of the trenches, fagged and horror-struck, the surest way to bring them back was to set them hard at playing some game remembered from their childhood.
The British had even harder work, at first, to make the men fall in with the games than they had with war practice. But the friendly spirit existing basically between English and Americans, however spatty their exterior relationships may sometimes be, finally got everybody in together. The Americans found that a British instructor would as lief call them "rotten" if he thought they deserved it, but thathe did it so simply and inoffensively that it was, on the whole, very welcome.
So the Americans learned all they could from French and British, and began the scheme of turning back on themselves, and doing their own instructing.
The infantry camp was destined to have some offshoots, as the number of men grew larger, and the specialists required intensive work. Officers' schools sprang up all over France, and all the supplemental forces, which had infantry training at first, scattered off to their special training, notably the men trained to throw gas and liquid fire.
But, for the most part, the camp in the Vosges remained the big central mill it was designed to be, and in late October, when three battalions put on their finishing touches in the very battle-line, the cycle was complete. Before the time when General Pershing offered the Expeditionary Force to Generalissimo Foch, to put where he chose, the giant treadway from sea to camp and from camp to battle was grinding in monster rhythms. It never thereafter feared any influx of its raw material.
THE American Expeditionary Force which went into the great training-schools of France and England was like nothing so much as a child who, having long been tutored in a programme of his own make, an abundance of what he liked and nothing of what he didn't, should be thrust into some grade of a public school. He would be ridiculously advanced in mathematics and a dunce at grammar, or historian to his finger-tips and ignorant that two and two make four. He would amaze his fellow pupils in each respect equally.
And that was the lot of the Expeditionary Force. The French found them backward in trench work and bombing, and naturally enough expected that backwardness to follow through. They conceded the natural quickness of the pupils, but saw a long road ahead before they could become an army. Then the Americans tackled artillery, hardest and deepest of thewar problems, and suddenly blossomed out as experts.
Of course, the analogy is not to be leaned on too heavily. The Americans were not, on the instant, the arch-exponents of artillery in all Europe. But it is true that in comparison to the size of their army, and to the extent to which they had prepared nationally for war, their artillery was stronger than that of any other country on the Allied side at the beginning of the war, notwithstanding that it was the point where they might legitimately have been expected to be the weakest.
Hilaire Belloc called the American artillery preparation one of the most dramatic and welcome surprises of the war.
It must be understood that all this applies only to men and not in the least to guns. For big guns, the American reliance was wholly upon France and England, upon the invitation of those two countries when America entered the war.
And the readiness of America's men was not due to a large preparation in artillery as such. The blessing arose from the fact that the coastdefense could be diverted, within the first year of war, to the handling of the big guns for land armies, and thus strengthen the artillery arm sent to France for final training.
Artillery was every country's problem, even in peace-times. It was the service which required the greatest wealth and the most profound training. There was no such thing as a citizenry trained to artillery. Mathematics was its stronghold, and no smattering could be made to do. Even more than mathematics was the facility of handling the big guns when mathematics went askew from special conditions.
These things the coast defense had, if not in final perfection, at least in creditable degree. And the diversion of it to the artillery in France stiffened the backbone of the Expeditionary Force to the pride of the force and the glad amazement of its preceptors.
One other thing the coast defense had done: it had pre-empted the greater part of America's attention in times of peace and unpreparedness, so that big-gun problems had received a disproportionate amount of study. The American technical journals on artillery were always of the finest. The war services were honeycombed with men who were big-gun experts.
So when the first artillery training-school opened in France, in mid-August of 1917, the problems to be faced were all of a more or less external character.
The first of these, of course, was airplane work. The second was in mastering gun differences between American and French types, and in learning about the enormous numbers of new weapons which had sprung from battle almost day by day.
The camp, when the Americans moved in, had much to recommend it to its new inhabitants. There need be no attempt to conceal the fact that first satisfaction came with the barracks, second with the weather, and only third with the guns and planes.
Some of the artillerymen had come from the infantry camps, and some direct from the coast. Those from the Vosges camp were boisterous in their praise of their quarters. They had brick barracks, with floors, and where they were billeted with the French they found excellent quarters in the old, low-lying stone and brick houses. The weather would not have been admired by any outsider. But to the men from the Vosges it owed a reputation, because they extolled it both day and night. The artillery camp was in open country, to permit of the long ranges, and if it sunned little enough, neither did it rain.
The guns and airplanes supplied by the French were simple at first, becoming, as to guns at least, steadily more numerous and complicated as the training went on.
The men began on the seventy-fives, approximately the American three-inch gun, and on the howitzers of twice that size.
The airplane service was the only part of the work wholly new to the men, and, naturally enough, it was the most attractive.
Although the officers and instructors warned that air observation and range-finding was by far the most dangerous of all artillery service, seventy-five per cent of the young officers who were eligible for the work volunteered for it. This required a two-thirds weeding out, and insured the very pick of men for the air crews.
The air service with artillery was made over almost entirely by the French between the time of the war's beginning and America's entrance. All the old visual aids were abolished, such as smoke-pointers and rockets, and the telephone and wireless were installed in their stead. The observation-balloons had the telephone service, and the planes had wireless.
By these means the guns were first fired and then reported on. The general system of range-finding was: "First fire long, then fire short, then split the bracket." This was the joint job of planes and gunners—one not to be despised as a feat.
In fact, artillery is, of all services, the one most dependent on co-operation. It is always a joint job, but the joining must be done among many factors.
Its effectiveness depends first upon the precision of the mathematical calculation which goes before the pull of the lanyard. This calculation is complicated by the variety of types of guns and shells, and, in the case of howitzers, by the variable behavior of charges of different size and power. But these are things that canbe learned with patience, and require knowledge rather than inspiration.
It is when the air service enters that inspiration enters with it. Observation must be accurate, in spite of weather, visibility, enemy camouflage, and everything else. More than that, the observer in the plane must keep himself safe—often a matter of sheer genius.
The map-maker must do his part, so that targets not so elusive as field-guns and motor-emplacements can be found without much help from the air.
Finally, the artillery depends, even more than any other branch of the service, on the rapidity with which its wants can be filled from the rear. The mobility of the big pieces, and their constant connections with ammunition-stores, are matters depending directly on the training of the artillerymen.
These, then, were the things in which the Americans were either tested or trained. Their mathematics were A1, as has been noted, and their familiarity with existing models of big guns sufficient to enable them to pick up the new types without long effort.
They had a few weeks of heavy going with pad and pencil, then they were led to the giant stores of French ammunition—more than any of them had ever seen before—and told to open fire. One dramatic touch exacted by the French instructors was that the guns should be pointed toward Germany, no matter how impotent their distance made them.
Long lanes, up to 12,000 metres, were told off for the ranges. The training was intensive, because at that time there was a half-plan to put the artillery first into the battle-line. In any case it is easier to make time on secondary problems than on primary.
Throughout September, while the artillerymen grew in numbers as well as proficiency, the mastering of gun types was perfected, and the theory of aim was worked out on paper.
Late in the month the French added more guns, chief among them being a monster mounted on railway-trucks whose projectile weighed 1,800 pounds. The artillerymen named her "Mosquito," "because she had a sting," although she had served for 300 charges at Verdun. It was not long before every type of gun inthe French Army, and many from the British, were lined up in the artillery camp, being expertly pulled apart and reassembled.
By the time the artillery went into battle with the infantry, failing in their intention to go first alone, but nevertheless first in actual fighting, they were able to give a fine account of themselves. By the time they had got back to camp and were training new troops from their own experience, they were the centre of an extraordinary organization.
The rolling of men from camp to battle and back again, training, retraining, and fighting in the circle, with an increasing number of men able to remain in the line, and a constantly increasing number of new men permitted to come in at the beginning, ground out an admirable system before the old year was out.
The fact that the artillery-school could not take its material raw did not make the hitches it otherwise would, chiefly, of course, because of the coast defense, and somewhat because American college men were found to have a fine substratum of technical knowledge which artillery could turn to account.
After all the routine was fairly learned, and there had been a helpful interim in the line, the artillery practised on some specialties, partly of their own contribution, and partly those suggested by the other armies.
One of these, the most picturesque, was the shattering of the "pill-boxes," German inventions for staying in No Man's Land without being hit.
A "pill-box" is a tiny concrete fortress, set up in front of the trenches, usually in groups of fifteen to twenty. They have slot-like apertures, through which Germans do their sniping. They are supposed to be immune from anything except direct hit by a huge shell. But the American artillery camp worked out a way of getting them—with luck. Each aperture, through which the German inmates sighted and shot, was put under fire from automatic rifles, coming from several directions at once, so that it was indiscreet for the Boche to stay near his windows, on any slant he could devise. Under cover of this rifle barrage, bombers crept forward, and at a signal the rifle fire stopped, and the bombers threw their destruction in.
All these accomplishments, which did not take overlong to learn, enhanced the natural value of the American artilleryman. He became, in a short time, the pride of the army and a warmly welcomed mainstay to the Allies.
Major-General Peyton C. March, who took the artillery to France and commanded them in their days of organization, before he was called back to be Chief of Staff at Washington, was always credited, by his men, with being three-fourths of the reason why they made such a showing. General March always credited the matter to his men. At any rate, between them they put their country's best foot foremost for the first year of America in France, and they served as optimism centres even when distress over other delays threatened the stoutest hearts.
AMERICA'S beginnings in the air service were pretty closely kin to her other beginnings—she furnished the men and took over the apparatus. And although by September 1, 1917, she had large numbers of aviators in the making in France, they were flying—or aspiring to—in French schools, under American supervision, with French machines and French instructors.
There existed, in prospect, and already in detailed design, several enormous flying-fields, to be built and equipped by America, as well as half a dozen big repair-shops, and one gigantic combination repair-shop, assembling-shop, and manufacturing plant.
But in the autumn, when there were aviators waiting in France to go up that very day, there was no waiting on fields trimmed by America.
When the main school, under American supervision,had filled to overflowing, the remaining probationers were scattered among the French schools under French supervision. Meanwhile, the engineers and stevedores shared the work of constructing "the largest aviation-field in the world" in central France.
It was once true of complete armies that they could be trained to warfare in their own home fields, and then sent to whatever part of the world happened to be in dispute, and they required no more additional furbishing up than a short rest from the journey. That is no longer true of anything about an army except the air service, and it isn't literally true of them. But they approach it.
So it was practicable to give the American aviators nine-tenths of their training at home, and leave the merest frills to a few spare days in France. This, of course, takes no account of the first weeks at the battle-front, which are only nominally training, since in the course of them a flier may well have to battle for his life, and often does catch a German, if he chances on one as untutored as himself.
The French estimate of the necessary time tomake an aviator is about four months before he goes up on the line, and about four months in patrol, on the line, before he is a thoroughly capable handler of a battle-plane. They cap that by saying that an aviator is born, not made, anyway, and that "all generalizations about them are untrue, including this one."
The air policy of France, however, was in a state of great fluidity at this time. They were not prepared to lay down the law, because they were in the very act of giving up their own romantic, adventurous system of single-man combat, and were borrowing the German system of squadron formation. They were reluctant enough to accept it, let alone acknowledge their debt to the Germans. But the old knight-errantry of the air could not hold up against the new mass attacks. And the French are nothing if not practical.
Even their early war aviators had prudence dinned into them—that prudence which does not mean a niggardliness of fighting spirit, but rather an abstaining from foolhardiness.
Each aviator was warned that if he lost his life before he had to, he was not only squandering his own greatest treasure, but he was leaving one man less for France.
This was the philosophy of the training-school. If the French were impatient with a flier who lost his life to the Germans through excess of friskiness, they were doubly so at the flier who endangered his life at school through heedlessness.
"If you pull the wrong lever," they said, "you will kill a man and wreck a machine. Your country cannot afford to pay, either, for your fool mistakes."
But there their dogma ended. Once the flier had learned to handle his machine, his further behavior was in the hands of American officers solely, and these, he found, were stored with several very definite ideas.
The first of these—the most marked distinction between the French system and the American—was that all American aviators should know the theories of flying and most of its mathematics.
Concerning these things the French cared not a hang.
Neither did the American aviators. Butthey toed the mark just the same, and many a youngster gnawed his pencil indoors and cursed the fate that had placed him with a country so finicky about air-currents on paper and so indifferent to the joys of learning by ear.
The Americans accepted from the beginning the edict on squadron flying. It was as much a part of their training as field-manœuvres for the infantry. And because they had no golden days of derring-do to look back upon, they did less grumbling. Besides, there was always the chance of getting lost, and patrols offered some good opportunities to the venturesome.
The air service had at this time an extra distinction. They were the only arm of America's service that had really impressed the Germans. The German experts, as they spoke through their newspapers, were contemptuous of the army and all its works. They maintained that it would be impossible for American transports to bring more than half a million men to France, if they tried forever, because the submarines would add to the inherent difficulties, and make "American participation" of less actual menace than that of Roumania.
The Frankfurter Zeitung said: "There is no doubt that the Entente lay great stress on American assistance on this point (air warfare). Nor do we doubt that the technical resources of the enemy will achieve brilliant work in this branch. But all this has its limits ... in this field, superiority in numbers is by no means decisive. Quality and the men are what decide."
Major Hoffe, of the German General Staff, wrote in the Weser Zeitung: "The only American help seriously to be reckoned with is aerial aid."
There was a quantity of such talk. Incidentally, the same experts who limited America's troops to half a million in France at the most indulgent estimate, said, over and over, that a million were to be feared, just the number announced to be in France by President Wilson one year from the time of the first debarkation.
The aviators worked hard enough to deserve the German honor. In the French school supervised by the Americans the schedule would have furnished Dickens some fine material for pathos.
The day began at 4 A. M., with a little coffee for an eye-opener. The working-day began in the fields at 5 sharp. If the weather permitted there were flights till 11, when the pupil knocked off for a midday meal. He was told to sleep then till 4 in the afternoon, when flying recommenced, and continued till 8.30. The rest of his time was all his own. He spent it getting to bed.
There was an average of four months under this régime. The flier began on the ground, and for weeks he was permitted no more than a dummy machine, which wobbled along the ground like a broken-winged duck, and this he used to learn levers and mechanics—those things he had toiled over on paper before he was even allowed on the field.
After a while he was permitted in the air with an instructor, and finally alone. There were creditably few disasters. For months there was never a casualty. But if a man had an accident it was a perfectly open-and-shut affair. Either he ruined himself or he escaped. It was part of the French system with men who escaped to send them right back into the air,as soon as they could breathe, so that the accident would not impair their flying-nerves.
After the three or four months of foundation work, if the term is not too inept for flying, the aviator had his final examination, a triangular flight of about ninety miles, with three landings. The landings are the great trick of flying. Like the old Irish story, it isn't the falling that hurts you, it's the sudden stop.
If the pupil made his landings with accuracy he was passed on to the big school at Pau, where acrobatics are taught. The flight acrobat was the ace, the armies found. And no man went to battle till he could do spiral, serpentine, and hairpin turns, could manage a tail spin, and "go into a vrille"—a corkscrew fall which permitted the flier to make great haste from where he was, and yet not lose control of his machine, at the same time that he made a tricky target for a Boche machine-gun.
While all this training was going on the ranks of American aviators were filling in at the top. The celebrated Lafayette Escadrille, the American aviators who joined the French Army at the beginning of the war, was taken into theAmerican Army in the late summer. Then all the Americans who were in the French aviation service who had arrived by way of the Foreign Legion were called home.
These were put at instructing for a time, then their several members became the veteran core of later American squadrons. This air unit was finally placed at 12 fliers and 250 men, and before Christmas there was a goodly number of them, a number not to be told till the care-free and uncensored days after the war.
By the beginning of the new year American aviation-fields were taking shape. The engineers had laid a spur of railroad to link the largest of them with the main arteries of communication, and the labor units had built the same sort of small wooden city that sprang up all over America as cantonments.
There were roomy barracks, a big hall where chapel services alternated with itinerant entertainers, a little newspaper building, plenty of office-barracks with typewriters galore and the little models on which aviators learn their preliminary lessons.
There is one training-field six miles long anda mile and a half wide, where all kinds of instruction is going on, even to acrobatics.
And there are several large training-schools just behind the fighting-lines, which have plenty of visiting Germans to practise on.
The enormity of the American air programme made it a little unwieldy at first, and it got a late start. But on the anniversary of its beginning it had unmeasured praise from official France, and even before that the French newspapers had loudly sung its praises.
The American aviator as an individual was a success from the beginning. He has unsurpassed natural equipment for an ace, and his training has been unprecedentedly thorough. And he has dedicated his spirit through and through. He has set out to make the Germans see how wise they were to be afraid.