CHAPTER XXXIBIG-BROTHERING THE FIGHTING FORCES
Never in all the history of wars was an army so big-brothered, its welfare so lovingly and efficiently cared for, as were the fighting forces of the United States in the world war. To the whole nation, from President down to street gamin, they were “our boys,” seldom spoken of by any other term, and whatever the nation thought they wanted and could have it gave with full heart and overflowing hands. At the very beginning of our war effort, the desire of the War Department that the men should be so environed and trained on this side the ocean and so cared for on the other that they should be not only better soldiers but also should return to their homes better men than when they left, with no scars other than the honored ones gained in battle, and its initial undertakings toward that aim won instant and whole-hearted response from end to end of the country.
Various organizations, to the number of a dozen or more, some of them newly created and others of long life and experience, were soon working, with their hundreds of thousands of members, for the health, the comfort, the welfare, the happiness of the men of the fighting forces. The twin Commissions on Training Camp Activities for the Army andthe Navy entered at once upon their program of activities in all the cantonments and camps for the training of soldiers and sailors. Their athletic directors, boxing instructors, song leaders, theater managers, dramatic entertainment coaches were all experts in their several lines and took up with enthusiasm the work of furnishing entertainment and recreation and of training the men to provide entertainment for themselves. These two commissions were appointed by the War and Navy Departments and were a part of the system of training for war. They have been described in the sections dealing with the Army and the Navy and, except for the approval and support given to them by the whole people and the coöperation with them of civilian agencies, do not rightfully belong in an account of how practically all the nation stood on its tiptoes behind the fighters in its zeal to serve them and care for them. These two commissions, while they were similar to the other agencies in methods and spirit, were of governmental origin, support and direction, while the others were civilian.
The activities of the civilian societies gave expression to the heart of the whole people. At first they worked separately, each supported by its own members and followers, but after a time smaller societies merged themselves in or coöperated with larger ones and the seven chief organizations which finally comprised the bulk of the effort so arranged their work as to avoid duplication and overlapping and so eliminate waste. These seven were the War Camp Community Service, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Salvation Army, the Jewish Welfare Board, the Knights of Columbus, the Young Men’sChristian Association and the American Library Association.
Supplementing the work of the Commissions on Training Camp Activities for the Army and Navy, the War Camp Community Service operated in the regions immediately surrounding or near the training camps. It bettered moral conditions in camp environments, provided sleeping quarters, baths, canteens, information booths, clubs, reading rooms, arranged dances and theatrical entertainments, served as a medium through which the hospitable desires of the community might reach the men, thus making possible their entertainment in hundreds of thousands of homes. Its work was established in one hundred and twenty-eight cities, in every state in the Union, and two million men registered at its clubs. In the work of the Service in New York City alone one million men in uniform were provided with beds and baths, it had 9,000 beds available every night, it served meals to more than 50,000 men, 75,000 soldiers and sailors attended its dances and almost as many were taken on Sunday sight-seeing trips through the city, while hundreds of thousands enjoyed the theatrical entertainments it furnished.
Coöperating with the War Camp Community Service, the National League for Women’s Service with its 300,000 members ran its own clubs and canteens, furnished workers for those of other organizations and for information booths, recruited a Woman’s Motor Corps whose members were ready for work as motor drivers for any war service organization served as the distributing agency for florists all over the country who contributed flowers for the wounded in hospitals, and collected and sent books, magazines,games, phonographs and records to army and navy camps at home and overseas.
The Over-There Theater League, under the leadership of men prominent in the theatrical world, secured actors and actresses, arranged theatrical tours, staged entertainments and, under the auspices of the Y. M. C. A., carried their performances from camp to camp. During the “Slacker Record Week” 15,000 men and women engaged in the campaign to secure phonographs and records to be sent overseas for the pleasure of the soldiers. To provide moving pictures for the camps at home and on the other side a great number of writers, actors and producers worked with zeal, and the Community Motion Picture Bureau, in charge of the service under the Y. M. C. A., made careful investigation to find out what kind of pictures were best liked in the different places. In the camps and cantonments at home it showed 8,000,000 feet of films per week. It had 2,000,000 feet of films in service on the transports that carried the troops to France. Its films were sent out to the ships of the Atlantic fleet and circulated from one cruiser to another. In France, and wherever there were American troops, the movie was ready for their entertainment in camps and hospitals from the port of debarkation to the rear of the firing line.
The contribution of the Y. W. C. A. to the work of big-brothering the army gave a peculiar touch which, unprecedented in war as the whole movement was, carried in a still more unusual and original way the atmosphere of the home and the influence of the social fabric through the training camps and across the ocean. In more than a hundred camps and cantonments its Hostess Houses, accommodating from500 to 5,000, offered welcome to women friends and relatives visiting soldiers and sailors. The Hostess House, with its flowers and rugs and easy chairs, its desks for writing and tables offering books and magazines, its cheerful, blazing fireplace in winter and its verandas in summer, its pleasant and well conducted cafeteria and its general homelike air, was a charming bit of the outside world set down in the midst of military activities. There mother, wife, sister, sweetheart, friend could meet her soldier or sailor lad, could spend the night if necessary and have good, inexpensive meals. It was the scene of many impromptu weddings, the hostess of the house and her assistants taking charge of the arrangements, when lovers decided suddenly to be married before the ocean and the chances of battle should separate them. The Y. W. C. A. carried its work to France, and in its Hostess Houses there looked after the welfare of the women workers for the American Expeditionary Force and its canteens followed the American troops even to north Russia, where they were established in Murmansk and Archangel.
All of the great religious bodies of the country joined at once in the effort to lessen for the army and navy men the hardships of war, to surround them with as many as possible of the comforts of civilized life and to uphold them physically, mentally and morally. People of Protestant faith gave their support mainly to the long established and widely reaching organization of the Y. M. C. A., members of the Catholic Church, working through the National Catholic War Council, supported the endeavors of the Knights of Columbus, and the Jewish Welfare Board, with American Jewry behind it,turned its attention especially to soldiers of that faith. And the Salvation Army, with its years of experience in caring for the needs of humanity and upholding morale, was early in the field. All these organizations coöperated in the most cordial way, supplementing one another’s effort and joining their endeavors whenever the best results could be gained in that way, two or more of them sometimes using the same building. The friendly hand, the good cheer, the comforts each had to offer were ready for any man in uniform without a thought as to his religious affiliations. Each held its religious ministrations in reserve for those who asked for them and, for the rest, based its abundant and many-sided service solely on the desire to help the American Army fight the battle of justice and liberty. Their one purpose was to big-brother the fighting forces of the nation and, whether in training camp or debarkation port, on transport or battleship, behind the lines in France or at the very front, to be ready with whatever help and cheer and comfort it was in their power to give when it was wanted.
In a Red Triangle Hut in the Battle Zone
In a Red Triangle Hut in the Battle Zone
In a Red Triangle Hut in the Battle Zone
The Jewish Welfare Board was the youngest of all these organizations, having been formed after our entrance into the conflict for the purpose of helping to win the war by carrying out the policies of the War Department with regard to the welfare and the morale of the soldiers. Behind it were three and a half million citizens of the Jewish faith and, while it functioned on its religious side for the benefit of the 175,000 men of the Jewish religion in the Army and Navy, in all its other activities it was nonsectarian and worked as generously and cordially for one as for another. In the training camps of theArmy and the Navy in the United States it had many huts and nearly three hundred field workers who arranged entertainments, classes and study groups, provided religious services, and taught the English language and the principles of American citizenship to men new to America. In two hundred communities near training stations the representatives of the Welfare Board coöperated with the War Camp Community Service in all the phases of its activities. Overseas it had headquarters in Paris and at the end of hostilities it was preparing to establish others at debarkation ports and in cities near the large camps of the A. E. F. and was ready to send a hundred men and women workers to take charge of them. Its club rooms in Paris were equipped with books, music, games and other means of social enjoyment and the organization, by coöperation with a French society, arranged to have Jewish soldiers entertained in French homes of their own faith. Through the suggestion of the Welfare Board a number of rabbis were commissioned as chaplains with the fighting forces, each of them being provided with a monthly allowance to expend upon small comforts for his boys. They held Jewish holyday services back of and almost in the front line trenches, in cities and villages, once in the ruins of a Roman Catholic Cathedral and again in a large Y. M. C. A. hut. At one service, at which the rabbi, coming from another sector, arrived a little late, he found that the local Knights of Columbus Chaplain had kept the meeting together for him and opened it with a preliminary prayer.
The National Catholic War Council, organized to direct the war-aiding activities of all Catholic forces,operated a million-dollar chain of Visitors’ Houses at army and navy training camps and of service clubs in communities and embarkation ports, where it worked in coöperation with the War Camp Community Service. Under its supervision was the society of the Knights of Columbus which, at the close of hostilities, had in the United States several hundred buildings and 700 secretaries and overseas more than a hundred buildings and huts, with many more in preparation, and over 900 workers. It had service clubs in London and Paris which provided reading, lounging and sleeping rooms, and all such club comforts, while its huts behind the lines furnished centers of comfort, cheer, entertainment and small services of many sorts. It operated a great fleet of motor trucks which carried supplies up to the firing line and into the front trenches. Nothing was more welcome to the battle-weary soldiers relieved from front line duty than these “K. C.” rolling canteens with their hot drinks, cigarettes and other comforts. The organization shipped to the other side and gave to soldiers and sailors many tons of supplies, including cigarettes by the hundreds of millions and huge amounts of chewing gum, soap, towels, stationery, candy and chocolate. It had more than a hundred voluntary chaplains on service with the troops, many of whom carried money furnished by the society to aid in providing comforts for the welfare of the soldiers.
The Salvation Army won a peculiar place in the hearts of our fighting men by the simple hominess and complete self-abnegation of its service. Its huts and hostels were in all the important training camps at home, while overseas the Salvation Army uniformin some kind of a structure or dugout welcomed the army lad in the big camp areas, in the supporting lines and in the forward troop movements up to the rear of the front line forces and trenches. It had overseas more than 1200 officers, men and women, operating 500 huts of one sort or another, rest rooms and hostels. It had forty chaplains serving under Government appointment and it supplied nearly fifty ambulances. Its method was to put a husband and wife in charge of a canteen or hut, the man making himself useful in any way that offered, the woman making doughnuts and pies, chocolate and coffee for the ever hungry doughboys, and doing for them whatever small motherly service was possible. In their huts the men could always find warmth and light and good cheer, music and games and good things to eat that were touchingly reminiscent of boyhood and home. Shells screamed overhead, gas floated back from the front and the earth shook with the roar of battle, but the Salvation Army workers stood to their self-imposed duties regardless of their own comfort or danger and had ready for the long lines of soldiers coming and going a smiling, heartfelt welcome and huge quantities of pies and doughnuts and hot drinks. Its canteens were always open, day and night, and none of its workers was sent overseas without special training.
By far the largest, oldest and most important of these welfare organizations was the Young Men’s Christian Association, which expanded a total of nearly $80,000,000 on a system of war service so vast that the sun was rising upon it through every hour of the day. Within a few hours after the United States entered the war the Y. M. C. A. offered itsentire resources to the Government. At the end of hostilities it had overseas over 7,000 workers, of whom 1,600 were women; in the American Expeditionary Forces it had 1,900 war service centers, nearly 1,500 in the French armies, several hundred in Italy, with more in Russia and Siberia; in the United States it had 950 of these centers and 6,000 workers and it was represented in every cantonment and training camp for Army or Navy from end to end of the country. On this side, it paid for its huts and their equipment a total of more than $6,000,000, while overseas the similar expenditure went beyond $5,000,000, making a total of well over $11,000,000 invested in the equipment with which to give our soldiers and sailors rest and cheer, entertainment and comfort. The cost of the operation of these centers amounted, for the duration of the war, to over $6,550,000.
In the home camps and cantonments the “Y” centers had an average of nearly 20,000,000 visits from soldiers and sailors per month, while in them at the same time were written letters on free Red Triangle stationery numbering more than 14,000,000 and its entertainments, lectures and motion picture shows were attended by 5,000,000 men. It established and carried on thousands of educational classes, French being the most popular study. Its work was especially valuable in the education of illiterates and of foreigners who did not understand English. Some 50,000 who could not read or write when they entered the training camps received in this way the rudiments of a common school education. On troop trains and transports the “Y” workers were present, giving whatever service the conditions made possible.
Overseas the hut of the Red Triangle was to be found wherever there were American fighting men—in England, Ireland, Scotland, in France and Italy, Russia and Siberia, from Gibraltar to Vladivostok, from the Caucasus to the Murman coast. Sometimes the “hut” was a dugout, sometimes a ruined chateau, again it was a freight car on a siding, or a temporary shack, or a substantial building. But, whatever its form and appearance, it stood for home, for the democratic social fabric for which the men were fighting, and within it they could always find light and warmth, cheer and good fellowship, books, games, music, entertainment, smokes and toothsome dainties.
Motion picture films for the Y. M. C. A. to the average length of fifteen miles were shipped every week, and at its moving picture shows there was an average weekly attendance of 2,500,500. Scores of actors and actresses canceled their engagements and went overseas to interest and amuse the soldiers and sailors with performances of all kinds on the hut circuit, organized and directed by the Over-There Theater League, under the Y. M. C. A. During the latter months a hundred performances daily, on the average, were put on in the various camps. None of the players received a salary and shows of all kinds were free. There were concerts, lectures, readings, as well as movies and every kind of theatrical performance. A department of plays and costumes maintained in Paris sent out to the camps facilities for amateur performances and fifty professional coaches went from the United States to encourage and train the soldiers to produce entertainments of their own. Violins, banjos, mandolins, ukeleles and cornets weresent over by the thousands, to say nothing of smaller instruments and sheets of music.
To provide for athletics and physical recreation for the soldiers and sailors overseas the Y. M. C. A. expended more than a million and a half dollars. It sent over 1,200 sports leaders and its shipments included huge quantities of baseballs and bats, boxing gloves, footballs, ping-pong balls, racquets, nets, tennis balls, running shoes, and all the paraphernalia of indoor and outdoor sports, to the value of $2,000,000, which were free for the asking.
The post canteens of the army were taken over by the Y. M. C. A., at the urgent request of the commander of the American forces and against its own desire, and operated throughout the war. This entailed the running of a huge merchandising proposition foreign to its customary activities and the work was assumed in addition to its chosen program of fostering the morale and cherishing the welfare of the fighting forces. For this post exchange service it furnished buildings and service without charge and sold to the soldiers at cost goods to the value of $3,000,000 per month. Its workers often carried packs of goods into the trenches and distributed them freely. Because it was all a question of service the organization itself bore the very considerable loss at which it operated the canteens.
A system of “leave-areas” conducted by the Y. M. C. A. provided recreation for the men on the seven days’ furlough given to each one after four months of service. It was not thought desirable by the military authorities to turn the men loose for their holiday and therefore several resorts were taken over to furnish interesting places for them tovisit and were put into the hands of the Y. M. C. A. as hosts and entertainers. Aix-les-Bains was the first and twenty-five others were added until the men had a wide range of selection ranging from famed resorts in the Alps to others on the shores of the Mediterranean. It was a kind of entertainment that had to be created, for it was entirely without precedent. Largely in the hands of women workers in the Y. M. C. A., they and their men helpers and advisers bent their utmost endeavor, resourcefulness and loving care to the work of giving the men a good time and sending them back to their duties at the end of their leaves physically and mentally refreshed. Each area had its athletic field in which every day there were sports going on and there were mountain climbs, picnics, bicycle rides, and, in the evening, movies, theatrical entertainments, concerts, music and dancing.
The women’s contingent of the Y. M. C. A. did effective work both in these leave areas and in the canteens. Their service was not enlisted until a year after our entrance into the conflict, but at the end of hostilities a thousand women were engaged in it, and so insistent was the call for them that they were recruited as rapidly as possible, a thousand more being sent over during the next three months. They were given a week or more of intensive training before sailing to fit them for the duties they would have to undertake.
Unique in all army as well as in all educational history was the great educational system which the Y. M. C. A. undertook to establish, under the authority and with the coöperation of the War Department. Beginning in the home camps, it was carriedacross the sea, developed more and more as time went on, and found its climax in the “Khaki University.” The final and complete plans were ready only in time for use with the Army of Occupation in Germany and in the camps abroad and at home in which the men waited for demobilization, when $2,000,000 worth of text-books had been ordered for the work. Some of the foremost educational experts of the United States, numbering several hundred, were engaged in the organizing and supervision of the system and many hundreds of others, members of the alumni and faculties of American educational institutions who were enrolled among the fighting forces, undertook the work of instruction. The scheme enabled soldiers and sailors to continue their studies without expense, whether they desired elementary, collegiate or professional instruction or agricultural, technical or commercial training. The scheme, which was finally taken over by the Army, is described at more length in the chapter on “The Welfare of the Soldiers.”
So successful and important was the work of the Y. M. C. A. with the American forces that both the French and the Italian Governments requested it to establish service centers with their respective armies. This it did, the American workers who initiated and supervised the program of recreation and fostering of morale being assisted, in the respective armies, by French and Italians.
A Pleasant Evening in a Hostess House
A Pleasant Evening in a Hostess House
A Pleasant Evening in a Hostess House
Salvation Army Lassies at the Front
Salvation Army Lassies at the Front
Salvation Army Lassies at the Front
The prodigious program of the Y. M. C. A. with the American forces, which it has not been possible to more than outline, was carried through largely by volunteer workers who wished to undertake it as the best way in which they could help to win the war.Men who were too old to fight or were physically unfit for military service joyfully welcomed the opportunity to do something that would aid the fighting men. Many gave up large salaries and left their situations for the sake of this important service. Others who were financially unable to leave dependents accepted for them an allowance much smaller than they could have earned themselves and gladly took up the work upon the mere payment of their expenses.
The “Y” workers were on the troop trains that carried the men from their homes to the training camps and the Red Triangle was at the fighting man’s side from that moment until he was ready to go over the top. And sometimes the “Y” worker even went forward in the charge with the men for whose welfare he was giving his service. Shell fire not infrequently destroyed the trucks upon which the goods of the Y. M. C. A. were being carried to the front, its huts were sometimes shattered in the same way and nine of its workers, two of them women, were killed by bursting shells. Fifty-seven died in the service, most of them from wounds, over-work and exposure. Twenty-three were seriously injured or gassed. Of its workers 152 received official recognition for distinguished services, to thirteen of whom was awarded the Croix de Guerre and to fifty more other famous decorations.
The American Army was a reading and thinking army and that one of the seven great big-brothering organizations which undertook to supply it with reading matter, the American Library Association, was kept busy. The Library War Service of the Association had in each of forty-eight large army andnavy training camps and in seventy hospitals in the United States a central library building, or library quarters, with branches and stations radiating all over the camp or hospital area to render its volumes easy of access. It had collections of books in nearly two hundred hospitals and Red Cross Houses. It equipped with these collections over five hundred military camps and posts and aviation fields, schools and repair depots. It supplied with libraries 260 naval and marine stations and 750 vessels. It had nearly 2,000 branches and stations placed in Y. M. C. A. and K. of C. huts, barracks and mess halls. It shipped overseas 2,000,000 books and 64,000 magazines and distributed 5,000,000 magazines donated by the public through the mails. In its war service libraries there were over 5,000,000 volumes. Three hundred and forty trained librarians supervised its service. Accepted books to the number of 4,000,000 were given by the American people, who provided also the money with which were bought 1,300,000 more. Book donations were well sifted before the books were accepted for war service and the authorities of the association estimated that probably twice as many were given as were finally used.
But even these enormous quantities of books and magazines were no more than sufficient to meet the desire for reading shown throughout the Army and the Navy. The Library War Service of the Association did its best to supply to every fighting man in the training camps at home, on the transports, on the cruisers and battleships, in the stations overseas, in the camps and rest billets, the book he needed when he wanted it, whether it was light fiction, or a technical treatise, or a work of history, economics,philosophy or travel. It supplied books in practically all the modern languages—about forty were represented in each of the large camps—for both study and reading and its lists were filled with titles of scientific, technical and other works that covered the whole range of modern knowledge and activity, philosophy, literature, history, biography, poetry, art, music, fiction, drama, economics, sociology, business, travel. There was demand for them all. Toward the end of the war and after the armistice the Library War Service bent its energies to meeting the greatly increased call for vocational books that would enable the fighting man to become more efficient in his special job or to get a better one when he should presently be returned to civil life.
To support this vast enterprise of big-brothering the Army the American people gave without stint to the organizations by which the work was systematized and carried through. They gave money and effort and thought and love, because it was for “our boys.” They responded with more than was asked by each organization in its separate appeals made during the first year and a half of our war effort. Then, in order that the appeal for funds might be made more efficiently and economically, the seven chief organizations united in a great, nation-wide drive, the money that was subscribed to be divided proportionately among them. They asked for $170,000,000. All the preparations had been made for it before the armistice was signed and it began on that day. Every one believed that the war was over, but because “our boys” were still overseas and for many weeks to come would need care, recreation, comfortsand entertainment, no hand withheld its gift. When the week’s drive was over it was found that $203,179,000 had been subscribed to continue the work of big-brothering the fighting forces.