Part 1

_BY E. ALEXANDER POWELL_

THE ARMY BEHIND THE ARMY THE LAST FRONTIER GENTLEMEN ROVERS THE END OF THE TRAIL FIGHTING IN FLANDERS THE ROAD TO GLORY VIVE LA FRANCE! ITALY AT WAR

_CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS_

THE ARMY BEHIND THE ARMY

[Illustration: THE BURNING OF AN OBSERVATION BALLOON AT FORT SILL, OKLAHOMA.]

THE ARMY BEHIND THE ARMY

BY MAJOR E. ALEXANDER POWELL U. S. A.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1919

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Published September, 1919

[Illustration]

TO

FIVE FRIENDS OF THE A. E. F.

LIEUT.-COL. N. J. WILEY MAJOR HUGH B. ROWLAND MAJOR HAMILTON FISH, JR. LIEUT. WILFORD S. CONROW LIEUT. KINGDON GOULD

IN MEMORY OF THE DAYS WE SPENT TOGETHER ON THE BANKS OF THE MARNE

AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT

For the interest they have shown and the assistance they have given me in the preparation of this book, I am indebted to many persons. Each chapter was written with the co-operation of the chief and subchiefs of the branch of the army with which it deals, and upon its completion it was by them carefully read and revised. The statements and figures are as nearly accurate, therefore, as extreme care can make them. The Honorable Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War, authorized the writing of the book and issued orders that every facility was to be afforded me for obtaining the necessary material, and the Honorable Benedict Crowell, Assistant Secretary of War, who from the beginning took a lively personal interest in the work, placed at my disposal the great mass of material which he had collected for his Official Report. To Major-General William S. Seibert, Director of the Chemical Warfare Service, to Colonel William S. Walker, in command of Edgewood Arsenal, and to Colonel Bradley Dewey, in command of the Gas Defense Division, I am particularly indebted, as it was due to their efforts that I was able to undertake the writing of the book. Major-General William M. Black, Chief of Engineers, Lieutenant-Colonel Chenoweth, and Major Evarts Tracy of the Corps of Engineers; Major-General C. T. Menoher, Director of Military Aeronautics, Colonel S. M. Davis, Lieutenant-Colonel H. B. Hersey, and Major H. M. Hickam of the Air Service; Colonel James L. Walsh, to whose generosity I am indebted for much of the material relating to Army Ordnance, Colonel E. M. Shinkle and Major A. B. Quinton, Jr., of the Ordnance Department; Major-General George S. Squier, Chief Signal Officer of the Army, Brigadier-General C. McK. Saltzman and Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph O. Mauborgne of the Signal Corps; Major-General M. W. Ireland, Surgeon-General, and Colonel M. A. De Laney of the Medical Corps; Brigadier-General Marlborough Churchill, Director of Military Intelligence, Captain R. G. Martin, Captain A. R. Townsend, Captain H. M. Dargan, and Captain J. Stanley Moore, of the Military Intelligence Division; Major-General Rogers, Quartermaster-General of the Army; Colonel I. C. Welborn, Director of the Tank Corps; Brigadier-General Drake, Director of the Motor Transport Corps; Captain W. K. Wheatley, Chief of the Historical Section of the Motor Transport Corps, and W. L. Pollard, Esq., Chief of the Historical Branch of Purchase and Storage, all showed me exceptional courtesy and afforded me every possible assistance. I welcome this opportunity to express to them my appreciation. To the _Bulletin of the Spruce Production Division_, published by the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, I am indebted for a considerable portion of the account of spruce production in the Pacific Northwest.

E. ALEXANDER POWELL.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE EARS OF THE ARMY 1

“ESSAYONS” 47

THE GAS-MAKERS 101

THE “Q. M. C.” 140

ORDNANCE 197

FIGHTERS OF THE SKY 259

“M. I.” 328

“TREAT ’EM ROUGH” 409

“GET THERE!” 424

MENDERS OF MEN 437

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Burning of an Observation Balloon at Fort Sill, Oklahoma _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

Laying a Field Telegraph Line 8

Signal-Corps Men Erecting a Field Telephone 8

Signal-Corps Men at Work Repairing the Tangle of Copper Wires Which Link the Infantry in the Front-Line Trenches with the Guns 9

Communication by Use of Panels 14

A Member of the Signal Corps Sending Messages by Means of a Lamp 15

Motion-Picture Operators of the Photographic Section of the Signal Corps Going into Action on a Tank 34

An Officer of the Signal Corps Operating a Telephone at the Front 35

New Type of Search-Light Used in the American Army 80

Camouflaging a Divisional Headquarters in the Toul Sector 81

Suits Known as Cagoules 94

The Work of the Camouflage Corps 95

Man and Horse Completely Protected Against Poisonous Gas 132

Types of Gas Masks Used by American and European Armies 133

1,500 Tons of Peach-Pits Used for the Manufacture of Charcoal for Use in Gas Masks 134

Testing Respirators Outside the Gas Chamber 135

Testing Gas Masks Inside the Gas Chamber 135

Advancing Under Gas 138

Training for Gas Warfare 139

Cutting Their Way through Barbed-Wire Entanglements while Training with Gas Masks 139

American Salvage Dump in France 192

A Workroom in an American Salvage Depot in France 192

An American Delousing Station 193

An American Laundry in Operation Near the Front 193

A 16-Inch Howitzer 202

A 16-Inch Howitzer on a Railway Mount 203

A Scene in an American Arsenal 214

Filling a Powder-Bag for a 16-Inch Gun 215

An American 75-mm in Action 232

The 37-mm Gun in Action 233

An American 75-mm Field Gun, Tractor Mounted 234

A 12-Inch Railway Gun in Operation 235

A 12-Inch Seacoast Mortar on a Railway Mount 236

6-Inch Seacoast Rifles Taken from Coast Fortifications and Mounted for Field Use in France 237

John M Browning, the Inventor of the Pistol, Rifle, and Machine Gun Which Bears His Name 242

The Browning Heavy Machine Gun 242

A Rifle Grenadier 243

Bombing Practice 288

Eggs of Death 288

Pigeons Have Been Repeatedly Used with Success from Both Airplanes and Balloons 289

The Eye in the Sky; an Airplane Camera in Operation 289

Radio Telephone Apparatus in Operation on an Airplane 300

President Wilson Talking with an Aviator in the Clouds by Means of the Radio Telephone 300

A Range-Finder for Ascertaining the Altitude and Speed of Airplanes 301

A Sentinel of the Skies 306

An American Observation Balloon Leaving Its “Bed” Behind the Western Front 307

A Balloon Company Manœuvring a Caquot from Winch Position to Its Bed 307

An American Kite Balloon About to Ascend 310

Planes in Battle Formation 311

A Basket Parachute Drop 316

Balloonist Making a Parachute Jump from an Altitude of 7,900 Feet 316

Training the Student Aviator 317

The American Whippet Tank 418

The Mark V Tank 418

A Squadron of Whippet Tanks Advancing in Battle Formation 419

A Squadron of Whippet Tanks Parked and Camouflaged to Conceal Them from Enemy Observation 419

Mobile Machine-Shop Operating in a Village Under Shell Fire 434

Supply of Motor Tires 434

A Motor-Car Wrecked Returning from the Front Lines 435

Field-Hospital 454

An Infectious Ward 454

Clear, Filtered, Disinfected Water 455

Water Station on the Western Front 455

THE ARMY BEHIND THE ARMY

I

THE EARS OF THE ARMY

Before the war made most Americans as conversant with the functions of the various branches of the army as they are with the duties of the gardener and the cook, the work of the Signal Corps troops was popularly supposed to consist, in the main, of standing in full view of the enemy and frantically waving little red-and-white flags. Don’t you remember those gaudily colored recruiting posters which depicted a slender youth in khaki standing on a parapet, a signal-flag in either outstretched hand, in superb defiance of the shells which were bursting all about him? This popular and picturesque conception was still further fostered at the officers’ training-camps, where the harassed candidates spent many unhappy hours attempting to master the technic of semaphore and wig-wag. Yet, as a matter of fact, during more than four years of war I do not recall ever having seen a soldier of any nation attempt to signal by means of flags, save, perhaps, in the back areas. Had such an attempt been made under battle conditions the signaler probably would have provided, in the words of the poet, “more work for the undertaker, another little job for the casket-maker.”

By this I do not mean to imply that the changed conditions brought about by the Great War made the army signaler a good life-insurance risk. Far from it! But they did have the effect of making him a trifle less dashing and picturesque. Instead of recklessly exposing himself on the parapet of a trench in order to dash-dot a message which the enemy could have read with the greatest ease, he dragged himself, foot by foot, across the steel-swept terrain, a mud-caked and disreputable figure, on his task of repairing the tangle of copper strands which linked the infantrymen in the front-line trenches with the eager guns; crouching in the meagre shelter afforded by a shell-hole, with receivers strapped to his ears, he sent his radio messages into space; carrying on his back a wicker hamper filled with pigeons, he went forward with the second wave of an attack; or, by means of a military edition of the dictaphone device so familiar to readers of detective stories, he eavesdropped on the enemy’s strictly private conversations. Even though he had no opportunity to wave his little flags, the Signal Corps man never lacked for action and excitement.

If the Air Service is, as it has frequently been termed, “the eyes of the army,” then the Signal Corps constitutes the army’s entire nerve-system. Under the conditions imposed by modern warfare, an army without aviators would be at least partially blind, but without signalers it would be bereft of touch, speech, and hearing. It is the business of the Signal Corps to operate and maintain all the various systems of message transmission—telegraphs, telephones, radios, buzzers, Fullerphones, flags, lamps, panels, heliographs, pyrotechnics, despatch-riders, pigeons, even dogs—which enable the Commander-in-Chief to keep in constant communication with the various units of his army and which permit of those units keeping in touch with each other. It was imperative that General Pershing should be able to pick up his telephone-receiver in his private car, sidetracked hundreds of miles away from the battle-front, perhaps, and talk, if he so desired, with a subaltern of infantry crouching in his dugout on the edge of No Man’s Land. The Secretary of War, seated at his desk in Washington, must be enabled to talk to the commander of a camp on the Rio Grande or of a cantonment in the Far Northwest. Though every strand of wire leading to the advanced positions was cut by the periodic shell-storms, means had to be provided for the commanders of the troops holding those positions to call for artillery support, for reinforcements, for ammunition, or for food. It was essential to the proper working of the great war-machine that the chiefs of the Services of Supply at Tours should be in constant telegraphic and telephonic communication with the officers in charge of the unloading of troops and supplies at Bordeaux and Marseilles, at Brest and St. Nazaire. It was vital that the Chief of Staff should be kept constantly informed of conditions at the various ports of embarkation. All this was made possible by the Signal Corps. But it was also necessary that these various conversations should be so safeguarded that there was no possibility of them being overheard by enemy spies. And the Signal Corps saw to that too.

When Count von Bernstorff was handed his passports in the spring of 1917, the Signal Corps consisted of barely 50 officers and about 2,500 men. When, nineteen months later, the German delegates, standing about a table in Marshal Foch’s private car, sullenly affixed their signatures to the Armistice, the corps had grown to nearly 2,800 officers and upward of 53,000 men. It comprised at the close of the war seventy-one field signal battalions, thirty-four telegraph battalions, twenty replacement and training battalions, and fifty-two service companies, together with several pigeon and army radio companies, a photographic section, and a meteorological section.

Not many people are aware, I imagine, that nearly a third of the officers and men who wore on their collars the little crossed flags of the Signal Corps were recruited from the employees of the two great rival telephone systems of the United States—the Bell and the Independent. The former raised and sent to France twelve complete telegraph battalions; the latter ten field signal battalions—to say nothing of the great number of experts, specialists, and telephone-girls who left the employ of those systems to embark on the Great Adventure. So you need not be surprised if, the next time your telephone gets out of order, your trouble call is answered by a bronzed and wiry youth who wears in the buttonhole of his rather shabby coat the tricolored ribbon of the D. S. C.—won, perhaps, while keeping the communications open at Château-Thierry. And the operator who says, “Number, please,” so sweetly, may have been—who knows?—one of those alert young women in trim blue serge who sat before the switchboard at Great Headquarters and handled the messages of the Commander-in-Chief himself.

For a number of years before the war it was recognized in Washington that should the United States ever become involved in a conflict with a first-class Power, the handful of officers and men who composed the personnel of the Signal Corps would be utterly incapable of handling, unaided, the enormous system of communications which is so essential to the success of a modern army. It was perfectly evident, moreover, that should the country suddenly find itself confronting an emergency, there would be no time to train officers and men in the highly technical requirements of the Signal Corps. To insure the success of the great citizen armies which we would be compelled to raise with the utmost speed in case of war, it was essential that there should be available an adequate supply of men who were already thoroughly trained in the installation and operation of the two chief forms of military communication—telegraphs and telephones. And this trained personnel was at hand in the employees of the great telephone and telegraph companies. It was not, however, until June, 1916, when Congress, tardily awakening to the imminent danger of sparks falling on our own roof from the great conflagration in Europe, passed the National Defense Act, which authorized, among other things, the creation of the Signal Officers’ Reserve Corps and the Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps, that the way was opened for definite action. Shortly thereafter the Bell Telephone System was approached by the Signal Corps with the suggestion that a number of reserve Signal Corps units be recruited from its various subsidiary organizations. The suggestion met with the hearty approval of the Bell officials and the work of organization was turned over to the Bell’s chief engineer, Mr. J. J. Carty, the foremost telephone expert in the world. In accordance with the plans drawn up by Mr. Carty, there were organized from the employees of the New York, New England, Pennsylvania, Chesapeake and Potomac, Central Union, Cincinnati, Northwestern, Southwestern, Southern, Mountain States, and Pacific telephone companies twelve reserve telegraph battalions. I might mention, in passing, that Mr. Carty was given a commission as major, was later promoted to colonel, was made chief of the telegraphs and telephones of the A. E. F., and for his invaluable work was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.

While the Bell System was devoting its efforts to the raising of the telegraph battalions, the Chief Signal Officer of the Army asked the co-operation of the Bell’s great rival, the United States Independent Telephone Association, in the organization of a number of field signal battalions for front-line work. Mr. F. B. McKinnon, vice-president of the association, assumed charge of the work and enthusiastically threw himself and all the agencies at his disposal into the business of recruiting, ten field battalions eventually being raised by the Independent System.

But the demand for trained personnel from the telegraph and telephone companies did not end with the formation of the units I have just mentioned. With the declaration of war and the despatch to France of the first American contingents, it was realized that their work had only begun. Though the telegraph and field battalions contained many experts on telegraphy and telephony, they were formed primarily as constructive and operative units for comparatively short lines. But the lines in the A. E. F. did not remain short, and as they grew in length and in number, new equipment and different types of technicians had to be employed. In August, 1917, there came from France the first call for specialists, to include telephone-repeater experts, printer-telegraph mechanicians, printing-telegraph traffic supervisors, and similar highly trained men. Almost at the same time there was received a cablegram from General Pershing requesting the immediate organization in Paris of a Research and Inspection Department, in order that the best, latest, and most reliable signal equipment might be assured for the American troops. To Colonel Carty was assigned the task of selecting the twelve scientists to be the officers of the new division and the fifty enlisted assistants who were necessary to commence the work. He found them in the remarkable Research Department of the Western Electric Company, which is closely allied with the Bell System, Mr. Herbert Shreeve of the Western Electric being given a commission as lieutenant-colonel and placed in charge of the work. The improvements made and the devices introduced by this division made the signal system of the A. E. F. one of the marvels of the war. So wide-spread and reliable were the American communications, and so efficient the American operators, that on more than one occasion Marshal Foch, during his tours of inspection along the battle-front, went many miles out of his way in order to use the American wires for important conversations. But so rapid was the growth of the telegraph and telephone lines in France that hardly had one requisition for additional personnel been filled before another was received. Yet always the great systems of the United States answered the call, and this despite their crying need for such personnel at home, where war conditions had enormously increased their business, and the difficulty which they were experiencing in making replacements in their own forces. In fact, of the 2,800 officers commissioned in the Signal Corps during the war, fully 30 per cent had been trained with the telegraph and telephone systems, and the percentage of enlisted men was equally high. The response made by these great corporations to the nation’s call constitutes, indeed, one of the most gratifying incidents of the war.

When the history of the great conflict comes to be written, the story of the achievements of the telegraph and field battalions of the Signal Corps will form one of its most fascinating chapters. Working under the most trying conditions, in a land with whose customs they were unfamiliar and whose language they did not understand, with equipment and material frequently improvised from whatever was at hand, they covered France from the seaboard to the Rhine with the network of their wires; they made it as easy for Great Headquarters to communicate with a remote outpost in Alsace or the Argonne as it is for a brokerage house in Wall Street to communicate with the manager of its Chicago branch, and it established a standard of speed and efficiency which will make the French dissatisfied with their own services for years to come. Their work was, in the words of General Pershing, “a striking example of the wisdom of placing highly skilled technical men in the places where their experience and skill will count the most.”

[Illustration: LAYING A FIELD TELEGRAPH LINE.

They established a standard of speed and efficiency.

_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]

[Illustration: SIGNAL CORPS MEN ERECTING A FIELD TELEPHONE.

Working under the most trying conditions, these men covered France with the network of wires.]

[Illustration: SIGNAL CORPS MEN AT WORK REPAIRING THE TANGLE OF COPPER WIRES WHICH LINK THE INFANTRY IN THE FRONT-LINE TRENCHES WITH THE GUNS.]

Despite the unending stream of men which constantly flowed Europeward for work on the “A. E. F. Tel. & Tel. Co.,” as our military telegraphs and telephones were familiarly known, more were ever needed, and it was finally decided, though, I believe, with considerable reluctance on the part of certain old-fashioned officers in the War Department, to replace the men operators, wherever possible, with girls. Again the American systems were called upon, this time to furnish young women who possessed the necessary technical experience, and to give them a working knowledge of French. Imagine the furor of excitement that swept through every telephone-exchange in the country when it was learned that girls were wanted for service in the A. E. F.! Where was the red-blooded, adventure-loving American girl who could resist such a call? Soon the company officials as well as the Signal Corps itself were almost swamped by the flood of applications that poured in. Then the Signal Corps found itself confronted by the necessity of educating the applicants; to do this it had to operate a whole system of boarding-schools for girls. Such schools were established in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Jersey City, Atlantic City, and Lancaster, Pa., the candidates for overseas duty being given intensive courses in military telephony, French, and European geography, together with lectures on French manners and customs, and, I might add (this in a whisper), on their own behavior, particular emphasis being laid on the evils of flirting, impertinence, and gum-chewing. Upward of 200 girls were finally selected, provided with uniforms and overseas caps of navy serge—which looked as though they might have been designed by the technical experts of the Signal Corps—and sent to France as full-fledged members of the A. E. F. No pupils at a fashionable girls’ boarding-school were ever more strictly chaperoned. At Tours quarters were built for them on an island in the Loire, which was connected with the mainland by a narrow foot-bridge, the military police on duty at the end of the bridge only permitting the girls to “go ashore” when they were accompanied by a matron or were in pairs. Notwithstanding the strictness of the regulations under which they lived and worked, it was a girl’s own fault if she came home unengaged. Though it goes without saying that the military authorities took every precaution against exposing the girls to danger, those who were on duty in towns near the front, such as Toul, on numerous occasions tasted the excitement of German air-raids, one of them being cited in army orders for remaining at her post and coolly continuing to operate her switchboard “whence all but she had fled.”

I always liked the true story of the telephone-girl who, upon her arrival at an American port of debarkation, informed the landing officer that she was a second lieutenant.

“But why do you call yourself a second lieutenant?” he inquired. “No commissions have been given to telephone-girls.”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with it,” she retorted, tossing her head. “I get more pay than a second lieutenant, and I’ve been of more use to the army than any second lieutenant that I know.”