CHAPTER XIVTHE TRAINING OF THE RESERVES
The rapid, splendid expansion of the navy to more than sevenfold its former size brought its own big problems of how to prepare for a very specialized kind of life and duty young men having, as was the case with most of them, no sea tradition in their blood and but little previous interest in the naval affairs of their own country. In Great Britain there are hundreds of families whose names have been represented in the British naval roster, without the break of a single generation, for centuries. The very strength of the tradition draws the sons of these houses into the naval service by an insuperable attraction and from childhood attunes their minds and hearts to preparation for naval life and work. And everywhere in Britain pride in the navy is high and interest in it is keen.
No such previous mental attitude of a whole people made easy the problem of expanding the American navy and training its new recruits under the necessity of the highest possible speed. Pride and interest in their navy have always been potential rather than actual and constant among the American people. If it did something, in war or peace, that aroused their sub-conscious feeling about it they were quick and ardent in their response. But through yearafter year the navy was something as foreign to the daily life and interests of the great mass of people in all that wide extent of inland country wherein lives the majority of the population as were the canals on Mars. Very few of them ever saw a battleship or a destroyer or a naval officer or a bluejacket and only an occasional picture, or newspaper headline, or magazine article reminded them at wide intervals of the American navy’s existence.
Under such conditions, the quick response of the country to the navy’s needs was one of the finest and least to be expected of its many achievements. From all over the country, Mid-Western and coastal regions alike, young men began to pour into the naval recruiting stations, and it is well within the truth to say that the majority of them came from homes and from regions in which the navy had hardly been even mentioned or thought about by any one from year’s end to year’s end. Moreover, they were mainly men of old American stock. The navy for this war did not become a fused mass of nationalities, as the army did, but returned to a condition even more thoroughly native-American than it had recently shown. Between ninety and one hundred per cent of the seamen of the enlarged navy were American born. The most of them were of that fine type of young men, educated and intelligent, who become, a little later, of consequence in their communities. In their training the fact that they had had no “sea legs” in their ancestry, or in their own minds and hearts, did not seem to matter in the least. They took to the training and to the life on the sea-washed, rolling decks of destroyers, chasers and other craft as ducks take to water.
The increase of over 400,000 in the naval personnel came partly through expansion in the permanent strength of the navy, partly through the enlargement of the various naval reserves, fleet, auxiliary, coast defense and others, and to some extent through the national naval volunteers and the Marine and Hospital Corps. In September, 1918, provision was made by which men in the selective service might enter the navy instead of the army. A quota of 15,000 men a month was allotted to the naval service, and 5,000 monthly to the Marine Corps for four months, after which its monthly quota was to have been 1,500. Provision for the navy was made, at the end of September, in the Students’ Army Training Corps, under instruction in several hundred colleges, and naval sections were established in ninety of these institutions and placed under the instruction of naval officers.
But the sudden close of the war in November made unnecessary the completion of these plans for the further expansion of the navy. While increasing its size and strength at the swift pace that marked all our war preparations, at the same time it met every need for its services, of whatever sort, with promptness and efficiency. That had meant zealous and incessant work in the education for their new duties of more than 300,000 young men who had joined the Naval Reserve Force, in addition to those who had become a part of the naval forces in other ways. At a number of immense camps, where were built barracks, lecture halls and other necessary buildings for the housing and training of from 20,000 to 40,000 students at each station, the young men were trained in naval discipline and schooled in the maritime andnaval subjects in which they must be proficient. Special schools for officers gave to those who were qualified and ambitious the necessary instruction. Other schools for advanced and specialized work trained officers for submarine duty, for assignment to the naval torpedo station and for work as naval aviation and naval turbine-engine engineers. An intensive course of instruction at Annapolis Naval Academy completed the training for officer duty for many who had already had sea service.
The Navy furnished during the war to the United States Shipping Board 200,000 trained enlisted men, as well as 20,000 trained officers, to man its new ships, and the training for these men, in addition to that for fireman’s and seaman’s duty given at the regular naval training stations, was provided in nearly fifty different schools, from those for carpenters, cooks, yeomen, signalmen and divers, to those for mine sweeping, searchlight control and aviation aerography. On both ships of the Navy and naval-manned merchant ships sea-training constantly went on of those who had finished the courses at training stations, camps and schools, each ship of whatever type receiving its quota for a certain length of training in specified duties. Training bases in Europe for men who had already had some service aboard ship furnished material for refilling the crews of destroyers, part of whose complement had been sent back to this country to form the nucleus of new destroyer crews.
The taking over by the Navy, upon our declaration of war, of all radio stations, the constantly increasing demand for radio operators in the Navy and on merchant vessels in the transport service and in commerce made necessary greatly enlarged radio trainingfacilities. Two large naval radio schools were developed, one at Harvard University and the other at Mare Island Navy Yard, each of which gave a four-months’ course and graduated thousands of operators.
In all the naval training camps, stations and schools the utmost effort was made, as in the army training camps, to conserve the physical, mental and moral well being of the young men preparing for sea service. The activities and beneficence of the Army Commission on Training Camp Activities have already been described. Under the same head and working along similar lines the Navy Commission on Training Camp Activities busied itself with the welfare of the men fitting for naval service and provided them with books, sports, lectures, music, theatrical entertainments, moving pictures. There was the same endeavor to develop musical and dramatic talent and direct its use among the men. The cordial coöperation of the same civilian organizations that did so much to promote the welfare of the soldiers in training aided also in safeguarding the naval recruits and in adding to their pleasure. The thorough organization of athletic sports in all the camps, both outdoors and indoors, provided seasonal recreation in the way of football, baseball, basket ball, hockey, running races, boxing, wrestling, rowing and swimming. In the last named sport, when it was found that less than half the young men gathering in the camps were able to swim, instructors were added to the list of athletic directors and told to make sure that every man in the camp learned to take care of himself in the water.