Part 29
To another subsection of M I 10 was delegated the censorship of mail to and from the prisoners of war in the various internment camps in the United States. As there were nearly 6,000 of these interned enemies, and as they were permitted, by the regulations, to send nearly 40,000 letters and post-cards a month, no limit being placed on the amount of mail they could receive, the task of censoring this mass of correspondence, most of it in languages other than English, was very far from being a sinecure. The primary object of this censorship was to prevent the passing of objectionable communications, such as attacks on the government or information which might be of value to the enemy. The censors were also constantly on the watch to prevent the prisoners from acting as correspondence intermediaries; that is, from transmitting messages from Germany to German sympathizers in the United States, or _vice versa_. The kind of paper to be used by the prisoners for their correspondence was selected by the subsection with a view to making difficult, if not impossible, the use of secret inks. Thousands of letters, both to and from the prisoners, were submitted to chemical tests for invisible writing, and hundreds of others, which aroused suspicion because of their peculiar wording or unusual marking, were examined for possible messages in code. One prisoner endeavored to communicate with his wife by writing in lemon-juice under the flap of the envelope, and at Fort Douglas a scheme was discovered whereby German sympathizers communicated with the prisoners by means of dots placed under the letters of words in newspapers sent into the internment camp.
In the days before the Great War revolutionized our customs and restricted the amazing liberty of action which we had enjoyed, it was as easy for any one who had the price of a ticket in his pocket to leave the United States as it was for him to leave his own dwelling. To-day—by which I mean the summer of 1919—it is about as easy for an American to leave the United States as it is for a convict to leave Sing Sing. This condition of affairs, so unfamiliar to Americans, is due to the barrier which has been thrown around these shores by rigid enforcement of the passport regulations of the Department of State in co-operation with the Passport Section of Military Intelligence. Prior to the passport regulations of September, 1918, no law of this country required an American travelling abroad to have a passport. In fact, the only countries where passports were needed were Russia and Turkey. But upon the breaking of the war-cloud in the summer of 1914, passports were required everywhere, and the person who could not produce one upon demand, immediately became an object of suspicion and investigation. Under the regulations now in force, the Department of State, by its authority to exercise discretion in the issuance of passports, is in a position to control travel. And, thanks to the facilities of M I 11 for investigating the loyalty and character of applicants, the department is able to form a remarkably accurate opinion as to whether the applications it receives should be refused or granted.
It must be perfectly obvious that, had the old system of non-interference with travel been permitted to continue, German agents could easily have come to the United States through neutral countries, gathered such information as they required, and departed as they came. When war was declared on April 6, 1917, it was not necessary for Congress to pass a law restricting travel by alien enemies, for the law was already in existence, having been framed in 1798, at a time when France was our enemy instead of our ally, and handed down to us by the Fathers. As a result of the authority conferred by this forgotten statute, the German agent who counted on the law’s delay, habeas corpus proceedings, and a long-drawn-out trial by jury, received the surprise of his life, for he found himself seized by a long, swift arm which, waiting for neither indictment nor trial, placed him where he could do no further mischief.
The seaman presented perhaps the most perplexing problem in the control of travel. He rarely remains on the same vessel for more than a few voyages and he seldom has a real home where his antecedents can be looked up. Moreover, under the Seaman’s Act, he is permitted, if not, indeed, encouraged, to desert in an American port in order to be re-engaged at the higher American rates of pay. So long as seamen from neutral countries, particularly those adjacent to Germany, could come ashore at will in American ports, no really effective control was possible. So, following the example of England and the advice of our military attachés in the countries of northern Europe, an order was issued by the Secretary of State—though not until seventeen days before the signing of the Armistice—forbidding seamen from neutral countries to leave their ships while in American ports. The presence of naval guards on the vessels insured the enforcement of the order, which was withdrawn, however, shortly after the signing of the Armistice.
By an arrangement with the State Department, all passport applications, both from citizens and aliens, are referred to M I 11 for investigation. The files of the Military Intelligence Division now contain a vast amount of information, much of it of a very detailed character, concerning persons and business firms in the United States and foreign countries. By referring to these files, therefore, or by directing its agents to make special investigations, it is an easy matter for the Passport Section to decide whether the applicant is the sort of a person to whom a passport should be granted. The passenger-list of every vessel bound for an American port is cabled to the Passport Section by the American consul upon the departure of the vessel from the last port of call. These lists are checked in the suspect files of the Military Intelligence Division, and if there is found anything which makes a passenger objectionable or suspicious, the intelligence officer at the port where the ship will arrive is promptly notified, whereupon the passenger in question is either denied entry to the United States or placed under arrest, according to his nationality and other circumstances. A somewhat similar system of control is in operation along the Mexican and Canadian borders, the immigration and intelligence officers who are stationed in the towns along the international boundaries making it difficult, though by no means impossible, for undesirables to enter or leave the country. It will thus be seen that the Passport Section, aided by a small army of military attachés, consuls, customs officials, immigration officers, secret agents, and intelligence police, has succeeded in establishing a highly effective control of travel, thus preventing the entry or departure of persons whose expressions or actions might prove detrimental to the interests of the United States.
Military control of travel is, of course, a war-time measure, and with the passing of the emergency which gave it birth it will almost certainly disappear, along with most of the other activities of Military Intelligence. Though I am heartily in favor of completely restoring the country to a peace-time basis, and of abolishing the many highly arbitrary measures made necessary by the war, it seems to me that it might be a good idea to continue some form of travel control which would prevent the entry into the United States of undesirable aliens. We have quite enough of them as it is.
VIII
“TREAT ’EM ROUGH!”
It is rather a curious circumstance that the idea from which was evolved one of the most formidable weapons of the war, and one which proved a prime factor in bringing Germany to her knees, was obtained by an Englishman in Germany, from under the very noses of the Germans themselves, who did not have the vision to recognize its amazing military possibilities. About a year before the Teutonic wave surged across the frontiers of France, the representative of a California manufacturing concern was giving demonstrations in the larger German cities of a singular device known as the Holt caterpillar tractor. Though this contrivance, in spite of its grotesque and clumsy appearance, could cross ditches and surmount obstacles with amazing agility, it did not arouse particular interest among the Germans, for it was intended for the pursuits of peace, whereas they were even then seeking new means for making war. But it chanced that among the onlookers at one of the demonstrations was an English traveller, who had the imagination to see in the clumsy machine, as it waddled across an apparently impassable terrain with the relentlessness of fate, something more than an agricultural appliance. Upon his return to England he described the tractor to Colonel E. D. Swinton, who evinced the liveliest interest in the subject, closely examining the pictures and asking countless questions. I might add that General Swinton, for he has since been promoted, has, unlike most professional soldiers, a highly developed imagination, as is shown in the stories he has written, the best known of which is entitled _The Green Curve_. Colonel Swinton, who had served in the South African campaign, had long had in mind an idea for an armored fighting-machine, a sort of small fort on wheels, which could be propelled by its own power over ground impassable to any other type of vehicle. The caterpillar tractor gave him the means of propulsion which he had been seeking. But, as might have been expected, the hidebound, brassbound officials of the War Office condemned the suggestion as fantastic and impractical, it not being until 1915, when the gloom of despondency overhung the land and people snatched at straws of hope, that Swinton’s plans were taken from their pigeonhole for reconsideration and he was reluctantly given permission to show what he could do. Upon caterpillar tractors brought from America he proceeded to mount armored hulls built according to his own designs, the land battleships thus created being armed with both field and machine guns. They were tested under conditions of the greatest secrecy, the trials proving so successful that the construction of a considerable number was immediately authorized. In order that the public might obtain no hint of the true nature or purpose of these terrible new weapons they were referred to as “tanks,” the impression being given that they were intended for transporting water. Painted in dull colors and swathed in tarpaulins, fifty tanks were landed at Le Havre on August 29, 1916, and were moved up to the Somme front under cover of darkness. At dawn on September 15, everything being in readiness for the launching of the great Somme drive, they were entered in battle on a most astonished foe.
Though I saw one of the tanks in action on this occasion—it was named, if I am not mistaken, “_Crème de Menthe_”—I was not permitted to photograph it or to write about it. It has repeatedly been asserted that these tanks were the first vehicles of their kind in the history of warfare, and that is true, so far as the method used for their propulsion is concerned, yet it is interesting to note that, ten years before the Great Navigator set foot on the beach of San Salvador, Leonardo da Vinci had written as follows to the Duke Ludovico Sforza: “I am also building secure and covered chariots which are invulnerable, and when they advance with their guns into the midst of the foe, even the largest army masses must retreat, and behind them infantry may follow in safety and without opposition.”
Everything considered, the tanks were not of much assistance to the infantry on the occasion of their first appearance, though they unquestionably caused considerable consternation in the German lines. Owing to delay in production, the British were obliged to employ at the battle of Arras, on April 9, 1917, tanks identical with those which had been used on the Somme and which were, in reality, fit only for training purposes, having only 8-mm. armor. Nevertheless, two battalions were launched on a two-kilometre front, and there is no doubt that they rendered valuable service, the capture by twelve tanks of a German stronghold known as “The Harp” being a particularly noteworthy achievement. Eighty-eight tanks of an improved model, protected with 12-mm. armor, were used in the attack on Messines Ridge, June 7, 1917, but the success of the infantry was so complete on that occasion that the tanks had only an unimportant rôle to play. The torrential rains which fell during the early stages of the Ypres offensive on July 31 turned the battle-field into a broad and treacherous morass, in which tanks were of but little use. The following figures, which were doubtless as well known to Hindenburg as to Haig, explain why the tanks did not sweep everything before them, as it was confidently expected that they would do, and why the Germans were no longer particularly alarmed by their appearance:
Battle of Tanks in action Ditched Hit by shells
{ Arras 60 33 (55%) 7 (2%) First day’s fighting { Messines 88 7 (19%) 4 (5%) { Ypres 133 60 (45%) 37 (28%)
It was my understanding at the time that the use of tanks by the British during the fighting on the Somme caused great annoyance to the French High Command, it being asserted that the British had agreed not to make use of their machines until the tanks which the French had under construction were ready, when both armies would make a combined tank attack on a large scale. How much foundation there was for this assertion I do not know, but perhaps it was as well that the British tanks made their début when they did, for the French did not make use of tanks until April 16, 1917, when 132 Schneider tanks attacked between Rheims and the Aisne. “In spite of the congratulations of the commander-in-chief,” reads a French report, “the results did not meet expectations, although wherever tanks were used they led the infantry beyond the advance of the rest of the front of attack.”
It would seem that it was not until the British victory at Cambrai, when 430 tanks were used to lead a large attack, in the course of which 8,000 prisoners and 100 guns were taken, that the German High Command realized that the use of tanks could no longer be postponed, for shortly thereafter the German Tank Corps was formed, an Antitank School of Instruction was established, and orders were placed for a large number of antitank rifles. The Germans experienced numerous manufacturing difficulties, however, in the construction of their tanks, and when Marshal Hindenburg inspected the first fifteen _panzerkraftwagens_, as they were called, at Charleroi, in March, 1918, he damned them with the faint praise: “They probably won’t be of much use, but since they are made we might as well employ them.” This discouraging send-off apparently had its effect, for the original of the _Elfriede_ type—_Elfriede_ herself—was ditched and captured near Villers-Brettoneux a few weeks later. By contriving to unite in this one model all the faults of the British and French tanks, the Germans once again proved the truth of the old saying: “Success has many imitators, but sometimes they copy only her defects.” According to a German deserter, the German Tank Corps in July, 1918, consisted of 25 German tanks and 50 repaired British machines. This same authority stated that 250 light tanks had been ordered for delivery in September, 1918, and that in April construction had been begun on a monster 38 feet long, weighing 110 tons, carrying four 77-mm. cannon and 13 machine-guns. This formidable war-engine, called a “_Fahrbarer Sefechtsunterstand: ver dunden mit Artillerie unt Infanterie Beebachtung_,” boasted contrivances for creating artificial mists (probably similar to our own smoke-producing devices), for laying and covering its own telephone-wires en route, was equipped with wireless, and carried a crew of an officer and twenty-eight men. If this supertank was ever constructed, it certainly never went into action.
The Germans were more successful, however, when it came to devising protective measures against tank attacks. These consisted of trenches of peculiar construction and design, some of them from 15 to 20 feet wide and 6 to 8 feet in depth; “tank traps,” consisting of deep pits with camouflaged covers; bridges so built as not to support a tank’s weight; mine-fields; special tank observation-posts; _Tank Goschutz Batterie_, as the Germans called their groups of 77-mm. antitank cannon; 55-mm. tank batteries, which were kept in pits about a thousand metres from the front line and were only brought up when tanks were signalled; trench mortars mounted for horizontal fire; machine-guns firing armor-piercing bullets; hand-grenades with concentrated charges, and antitank rifles. The antitank rifle was a single-shot Mauser, mounted on a bipod, weighing 32 pounds and firing an armor-piercing ball of 13-mm. caliber. At close range this weapon penetrated the British heavy and the French light tanks. Had it been used in groups it might well have proved extremely formidable, but the unpopularity it enjoyed because of its heavy recoil combined with a well-founded reluctance on the part of its users to await the near approach of a tank, in a large measure neutralized its effectiveness. Toward the close of the struggle it seems to have fallen into general disuse, and when the Armistice was signed the enemy was preparing to supplant it with a 22-mm. machine-gun, a few of which had already been used with considerable success.
* * * * *
When the United States entered the war in April, 1917, the value of the tank as a weapon of offense had been so thoroughly established that steps were immediately taken to form a tank organization of our own, a special regiment—the 65th Engineers—being raised for the purpose. The units of this regiment were recruited at Camp Upton, New York; Camp Devens, Massachusetts; Camp Meade, Maryland; Camp Lee, Virginia, and Camp Cody, New Mexico, the entire regiment being assembled in March, 1918, at Camp Colt, on the battle-field of Gettysburg, which then became the general concentration and preliminary training-camp for the tank organization. The tanks passed from the control of the Corps of Engineers on March 6, 1918, when the Secretary of War directed the organization of the Tank Corps as a separate arm of the service, Lieutenant-Colonel Ira C. Welborn, a regular infantry officer, being commissioned as colonel and appointed director of the Tank Corps in the United States.
The structural organization of the corps, as it existed at the close of the war, consisted of General Tank Headquarters, with 15 officers and 60 men; Army Tank Headquarters (one for each field army), with 7 officers and 27 men; Brigade Headquarters, 4 officers and 47 men; a Heavy Battalion, with a strength of 68 officers and 778 men; a Light Battalion, consisting of 20 officers and 375 men; a repair and salvage company, 4 officers and 146 men; a Depot Company, 4 officers and 138 men. To each Army Tank Headquarters were assigned 5 brigades, each brigade being composed of 3 battalions, 1 heavy and 2 light, and 1 repair and salvage company. A battalion consists of three companies, each company having three platoons. As five fighting-tanks are assigned to each platoon, it will thus be seen that a field army has 675 tanks at its disposal.
The commissioned and enlisted personnel of the Tank Corps was of as high an average, both mentally and physically, as any organization in the army, not even excepting the Air Service. About 65 per cent of the corps were technically trained men—engineers and machinists—while the remaining 35 per cent was composed of business and professional men, farmers, cow-punchers, college undergraduates, and soldiers of fortune. They came from every section of every State in the Union. Their versatility was denoted by the pipings of their overseas caps—blue, red, and yellow—which denoted that they combined the functions of infantry, artillery, and cavalry. Several other colors might appropriately have been added, however, for the tank men were as familiar with Browning, Lewis, and Vickers as the machine-gunners, they knew as much about gas-engines as the Motor Transport Corps, they were as competent to make repairs as the men of the Ordnance Department, and in action they took as many risks as the youngsters on whose breasts were embroidered the silver wings. They were as keen as razors and as hard as nails. They were, to use the phraseology of the plains, fairly “rarin’ to go,” and they were ready and anxious to fight at the drop of the hat. In fact, that was why they joined the Tank Corps—because they believed it offered more opportunities for Boche-killing than any other branch of the service.
The training of the tank units was based on infantry drill, which is the best means of instilling discipline. This was supplemented, however, by instruction in the use of machine-guns and tank cannon and in the operation and maintenance of gas-engines, the men finally being brought to a point where they were ready to take up technical and tactical tank training at the British and French tank-training centres, to which they were sent as soon as there was accommodation for them. Thousands of men, trained to the limit of the facilities in this country, were held at Gettysburg from April and May until August and September because of the shortage of tanks and the lack of training facilities in France. Not until September, in fact, did any tanks become available for training purposes in the United States, when there arrived five British heavy tanks and several light tanks of American manufacture, thus permitting training to be resumed on a larger scale. When the Armistice was signed, the Tank Corps had a total of 20,212 officers and men, of whom 8,183 were serving in Europe. Shortly before the collapse of Germany preparations had been begun for the great Allied drive planned for the spring of 1919, steps being taken to increase the corps to a point where it could supply tank units for four field armies. The proposed strength for this purpose was 57,940 officers and men, it being planned to have this entire force fully organized, trained, equipped, and in France by the early spring of 1919.
The programme of tank construction for the American Army was initiated in February, 1918, but, owing to the extensive arrangements which had to be made with numerous manufacturers for the enormous number of parts required, and to the fact that there existed in the United States little or no accurate data regarding tank construction, the first light tank was not delivered to the Tank Corps in the United States until the following September. Owing to the more complicated mechanism of the heavy tanks, none of them was completed before the signing of the Armistice. The machines used by the American Tank Corps units engaged on the Western Front were supplied by the French and British, no American-built tanks being employed in active fighting during the war.
[Illustration: THE AMERICAN WHIPPET TANK.]
[Illustration: THE MARK V TANK.]
[Illustration: A SQUADRON OF WHIPPET TANKS ADVANCING IN BATTLE FORMATION.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: A SQUADRON OF WHIPPET TANKS PARKED AND CAMOUFLAGED TO CONCEAL THEM FROM ENEMY OBSERVATION.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]