CHAPTER IIIFEEDING AND EQUIPPING THE ARMY
The Quartermasters Corps, which formerly totaled 500 officers and 5,000 enlisted men, with its facilities and routine adapted to the feeding and equipping of an army of 127,000 men, had at once not only to meet the needs of the vastly expanding forces and to keep abreast of the actual growth and immediate demands of the army as it came into being, but it had also to anticipate and prepare to meet what would be the much greater needs of a much larger army six or eight months in advance.
While a million and a half of men were being examined, classified and called to service and more than thirty cantonments and camps were being built in which to house and train them and other construction projects were being rushed forward, the Quartermasters Corps had to provide their uniforms and clothing and accumulate in storage the food for their subsistence. At the same time, it had to make sure that it could meet the constantly enlarging needs of the coming months when the army would grow like a Jonah’s gourd with every passing week. Production had to be stimulated and turned aside from its usual channels and enormous quantities of material used for new purposes. It was an emergency that required the practical making over of the methodsand purposes of American industry and in the process the Quartermasters Corps had to be both the directing and supervising agency and the channel of communication between industry and the army.
A soldier’s outfit of clothing for a year cost $65.51 and numbered twenty-three different items of a dozen different branches of manufacturing industry. The initial equipment for one man’s shoes alone cost $14.25. During the sixteen months from April 1st, 1917, to the end of July, 1918, the army was supplied, among other things, with 27,000,000 pairs of shoes, field and marching; 29,800,000 pairs of breeches, light and heavy; 19,800,000 coats, both wool and cotton; 192,200,000 shirts, undershirts and drawers, for both summer and winter wear; 156,600,000 pairs of stockings of cotton and light and heavy weight wool; and 21,000,000 blankets. And by the end of July the Corps already was taking measures to provide the clothing necessary during the coming year for the army of 5,000,000 men for which the War Department was preparing. That meant it must have on hand whenever and wherever they should be required, among many other things, all of which at the signing of the armistice it had either ready or in sight, 17,000,000 blankets, 28,000,000 woolen breeches, 34,000,000 woolen drawers, 8,000,000 overcoats, 33,000,000 pairs of shoes, 110,000,000 pairs of stockings, 9,000,000 overseas caps, 25,000,000 flannel shirts.
Ten great storage depots were maintained in as many different regions of the country where huge quantities of equipment were kept and from which the camps in that district were supplied. Other storage plants had to be kept full at the ports of embarkation from which the troops bound for overseasservice were outfitted. On the other side of the Atlantic stock depots were maintained with complete equipment for ninety days’ supply for all the troops, numbering finally over 2,000,000, that were sent overseas. As an indication of the enormous quantities of clothing which had to be sent across the Atlantic, on the first of July, 1918, there were, along with similar large quantities of other supplies, on docks in the United States ready for shipment, 2,700,000 blankets, 840,000 pairs of spiral puttees, 7,500,000 pairs of stockings, 1,400,000 pairs of field shoes, 203,000 pairs of hip rubber boots, 713,000 overseas caps, 697,000 woolen breeches, 709,000 overcoats.
A force of inspectors kept the output of the manufacturing contractors constantly under rigorous watch and whenever supplies were not up to the specified standard they were rejected. Because it is of the first importance that a soldier’s feet be always in the best condition, great care was taken in properly fitting each individual. A scientific means was devised of measuring the soldier’s foot when he received his first pair of shoes and of testing the fit so that he could be sure of entire comfort in his foot-gear, no matter what the length of the hikes he should take. And after being perfectly fitted the first time, with each successive pair—each year in the service in the United States he received three pairs and four pairs for each year abroad—he had only to ask for another exactly similar.
The American army has always been a well fed army. In the pre-war days, when it was the smallest army maintained by any large state, experts from other nations, versed in the quantity and quality of army rations, said that the American was the bestfed of all armies. And this was still true during the great war, though its numbers leaped on by magic strides. Whether in training at home, in camp on the other side, or on the battle front, the American soldier had better food and more of it than the soldier of any other nation. For instance, extra rations from American supplies were issued to American soldiers when brigaded with those of any other army, in addition to those supplied by the commissariat of the army with which they were working. No experiments were made upon the doughboy in the matter of food and experts saw to it that his ration was agreeable to the taste, well-balanced and nutritious. That it was good was proved by the fact that the average soldier gained from ten to twelve pounds in weight after entering the service.
Food experts were constantly busy devising the best means of preserving the food until it reached the army kitchens, whether in the home camps or behind the lines at the front. A part of their mission was also to eliminate waste. Coffee roasting plants were installed in all the large camps at home and overseas, for the double purpose of giving the soldier better coffee—coffee made within twenty-four hours after the bean had been roasted—and to prevent the waste, about two cents on each pound, which results when the roasted coffee is kept for long periods and so deteriorates in strength and quality. A school was established to which men were sent to learn the art of roasting coffee properly and after they became expert they were detailed to the different camps at home and abroad to take charge of the coffee roasting plants. Lemon drops were found to be a desirable part of the army ration, as they supply needed factorsof food, help to quench thirst and are much enjoyed by the soldiers. To make sure that the drops supplied should be of the best quality a formula was prepared calling for pure granulated sugar and the best quality of fruit and the candy makers taking the contract were held strictly to that standard. The same care was taken to see that manufacturers of chocolate candies should use the best cocoa beans in making them. The candy ration for troops on overseas service was a half pound every ten days for each soldier, and a great deal of this was made, toward the end of the war, in factories which the Quartermasters Corps established in France.
The American soldier’s daily ration consisted of twenty-seven articles of food, weighing altogether about four and a half pounds and costing about 50 cents per man, and it had to be ready for him regularly and promptly every day, wherever he might be. No second grade material of any kind was bought and constant inspection of raw materials, of processes and places, of preparation and of army kitchens kept the food up to the standard demanded. It was bought in enormous quantities and, in order to stabilize prices in all sections of the country, part of the supplies was secured through the Food Administration and the remainder by means of a system of zone buying. During the ten months from September 1st, 1917, to the end of June, 1918, 225,000,000 pounds of sugar were required and from the 1917 crop of vegetables and fruits the army bought and used 75,000,000 cans of tomatoes and 20,000,000 pounds of prunes. From the listed amounts of thirty articles of food demanded for the subsistence for one year of an army of 3,000,000 men, the approximatesize of the American army before the September draft, the following items are taken. They will give an idea of the size of the task which the Quartermasters Corps undertook in the feeding of our soldiers at home and abroad: Fresh beef, 478,515,000 pounds; bacon, 48,000,000 pounds; potatoes, 782,925,000 pounds; jam, 7,665,000 cans; flour, 915,000,000 pounds; coffee, 61,320,000 pounds; tea, 7,665,000 pounds; canned pork and beans, 4,000,000 cases; canned tomatoes, 6,000,000 cases; evaporated milk, 2,992,500 cases; butter, 15,330,000 pounds. More than six thousand different packers supplied the canned vegetables bought for the army in the summer of 1918, approximately 300,000,000 cans, enough to girdle the earth if the cans were laid in line, end to end.
The necessity of conserving shipping space led to the use of dehydrated vegetables, of which the Quartermasters Corps in the summer of 1918 contracted for 16,000,000 pounds. The soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force received a ration of 16 ounces of pure wheat flour per day each. No wheat saving substitute was used there, for the reason that field bakers must work swiftly and can not afford to experiment with flour mixtures. At the training camps in the United States kitchens were stationary and bakers definitely located and here the prescribed amount of substitutes was used, with satisfactory results. The Subsistence Division of the Corps worked out a special reserve ration for use in the trenches and under first line conditions in France. It was carried in containers proof against rats, water and poisoning in gas attacks. Schools were established for army cooks and bakers, so thatonly skilled and experienced men should serve the food from army kitchens.
But the Quartermasters Corps, while it was feeding and clothing the army, did not forget to be thrifty and it instituted and developed a remarkable system of conservation and reclamation that eliminated wastefulness and turned waste products into wealth. It reduced army waste of food stuffs, including bread, cooked meat and bones, to three-fifths of a pound per day per man, a figure much lower than the average waste of the civilian population in the cities of the United States.
Every camp, both in the United States and overseas, had its repair shops where every article of clothing—hats, shoes, overcoats, stockings, leggins, breeches, coats, gloves—that could be made to give farther service was put into shape. In one month in the summer of 1918 more than a million articles of clothing and equipment were repaired. Fats were extracted from garbage, manure was sold, waste materials of various sorts were sold or turned over to one or another army organization that could find use for them. A school was established with a three months’ course at which several hundred men were constantly in training to take charge of the repair, dry cleaning and laundry shops of the army and of the prevention of waste in the handling of food in the camps and the reclamation of values from garbage and waste materials.
Out of the importance of this work of reclamation and conservation came the formation of the Field Salvage Service. The members of this Service, after training at a school for this special work, were sent overseas to collect, classify and dispose of the wreckageof guns, shells, tools, all the implements of war that strew a battlefield after an engagement, and which, in former wars, would have been considered of no value. The Salvage Service also operated through all our lines, from the front trenches back through the training camps and lines of communication to every base port, collecting worn or damaged articles of every sort, and turning them to some kind of use. Even empty tin cans were collected and tin and solder salvaged.
The Service had in active operation in France at the end of hostilities four depots, twenty shops and sixty-six laundries and disinfectors. Of all the items it received for renovation and repair it recovered 91 per cent. and utilized the remaining nine per cent. for raw material in repair work. The value of its work during the last month of war was estimated at over $12,300,000, or more than $4,000,000 per day.
Under the care of the Quartermasters Corps was developed the Motor Truck Service, which later became a separate Corps—the “Gas Hounds,†as it was called both in and out of the army. At the beginning of our participation in the war the Corps had only 3,000 trucks, most of them in bad condition after hard service on the Mexican border. During the nineteen months of war there were shipped to France 110,000 vehicles and 15,000 tons of spare parts, and in mid-summer of 1918 the Service had 2,700 officers and 77,000 men. The Motor Transport Corps became of the first importance as a means of transport of troops and supplies, both in the United States and overseas, but especially so in France. Its work in moving men, munitions and supplies to the front was of such great consequence that it deserves the creditof having been an important factor in the winning of the war. In order to assure the quantity production that was urgently needed designs were standardized and all branches of the automotive industry united for their manufacture in close coöperation. Training camps were established to provide officers and men for the operation and maintenance of the Service both in the United States and in France and training was given also at several immense base repair shops. The courses varied from two to eight weeks and 15,000 men were in training at one time.
The American army was the best paid of all the armies of the contending nations. The private and the non-commissioned officer received from two to twenty-five times the pay of privates and non-commissioned officers in the British, French, Italian and German armies. Except for the grades of Lieutenant-General and General in the British forces, the pay of the American officers was also considerably greater than officers received in any of the other armies. The payroll amounted to $40,000,000 per month for every million of officers and men abroad, and was almost as much more for the forces at home. The rapid and tremendous expansion of the payroll, coming at the same time that the Quartermasters Corps was, by necessity, greatly expanding and reorganizing its personnel and was undertaking the huge tasks of providing food, clothing and equipment for the army, somewhat demoralized the system of payment for the first year of war effort. But an individual pay card system was devised which simplified the vexatious problem.
The personnel of the Quartermasters Corps expanded from five hundred officers and 5,000 enlistedmen to 9,000 officers, 150,000 enlisted men and 75,000 civilian employees, while the entire Corps was reorganized, several new divisions created and their work specialized, and finally, so enormous and varied were the tasks which came under its supervision that several of them were transferred to other offices of the War Department or new corps were developed to take charge of them. The total expenditures and obligations of the Quartermasters Corps for the war amounted to about $7,000,000,000.