CHAPTER VII
SPEEDING UP
WHILE the soldiers were still, figuratively speaking, in their own trenches and learning the several arts of getting out, the officers of the infantry camp were having some special instructions in instructing.
Young captains and lieutenants were placed in command of companies of the Blue Devils, and told to put them through their paces – in French.
It was, of course, a point of honor with the officers not to fall back into English, even in an emergency. One particularly nervous young man, who had ordered his French platoon to march to a cliff some distance away, forgot the word for "Halt" or "Turn around" as the disciplined Blue Devils, eyes straight ahead, marched firmly down upon their doom. At the very edge, while the American clinched his sticky palms and wondered what miracle would save him, a helpful French officer called "Halte," and the American suddenly remembered that the word was the same in both languages – an experience revoltingly frequent with Americans in distress with their French.
But disasters such as this were not numerous. The officers worked excellently, at French as well as soldiering, and little precious time was needed for them.
Three battalions were at work at this first training – two American and one French. As these learned their lessons, they were put forward to the next ones, and new troops began at the beginning. This plan was thoroughly organized at the very beginning, so that the later enormous influx of troops did not disrupt it, and as the first Americans came nearer to the perfection they were after, they were put back to leaven the raw troops as the French Blue Devils had done for the first of them.
The plan further meant that after the first few weeks, what with beginners in the First Division and newly arriving troops, the Vosges fields offered instruction at almost anything along the programme on any given day.
Over the whole camp, the aim of the French officers was to reproduce actual battle conditions as absolutely as possible, and to eliminate, within reason, any advantage that surprise might give to the Germans.
By the end of the first week in August, the best scholars among the trench-diggers and bombers were being shown how to clean out trenches with live grenades, and the machine-gunners and marksmen were getting good enough to be willing to bet their own money on their performances.
Then came the battalion problems, the proper use of grenades by men advancing in formations against a mythical enemy in intrenched positions.
From the beginning, the American Army refused to accept the theory that the war would never again get into the open. They trained in open warfare, and with a far greater zest – partly, of course, because it was the thing they knew already, though they found they had some things to unlearn.
Then the war brought about a reorganization of American army units, and it was necessary for the officers to familiarize themselves with new conditions. The reorganization was ordered early in August, and put into effect shortly afterward. The request from General Pershing that the administrative units of the infantry be altered to conform with European systems had in its favor the fact that it economized higher officers and regimental staffs, for at the same time that divisions were made smaller, regiments were made larger.
The new arrangement of the infantry called for a company of 250 enlisted men and 6 commissioned officers, instead of 100 men and 3 officers. Each company was then divided into 4 platoons, with a lieutenant in command. Each regiment was made up of 3 battalions of 4 companies each, supplemented by regimental headquarters and the supply and machine-gun organizations.
This made it possible to have 1 colonel and 3 battalion commanders officer 3,600 men, as against 2,000 of the old order.
This army in the making was not called on to show itself in the mass till August 16, just a month after its hard work had begun. Then Major-General Sibert, field-commander of the First Division and best-loved man in France, held a review of all the troops. The manœuvres were held in a great open plain. The marching was done to spirited bands, who had to offset a driving rain-storm to keep the men perked up. The physical exercise of the first month showed in the carriage of the men, infinitely improved, and they marched admirably, in spite of the fact that their first training had been a specialization in technical trench warfare. General Sibert made them a short address of undiluted praise, and they went back to work again.
A few days later the army had its first intelligence drill, with the result that some erstwhile soldiers were told off to cook and tend mules.
The test consisted in delivering oral messages. One message was: "Major Blank sends his compliments to Captain Nameless, and orders him to move L Company one-half mile to the east, and support K Company in the attack." The officer who gave the message then moved up the hill and prepared to receive it.
The third man up came in panting excitement, full of earnest desire to do well. "Captain, the major says that you're to move your men a mile to the east," he said, "and attack K Company." He peeled the potatoes for supper.
The gas tests came late in August. The officers, believing that fear of gas could not be excessive, had done some tall talking before the masks were given out, and in the first test, when the men were to enter a gas-filled chamber with their masks on, they had all been assured that one whiff would be fatal. The gas in the chamber was of the tear-compelling kind, only temporarily harmful, even on exposure to it. But that was a secret.
The men were drilled in putting their masks on, till the worst of them could do it in from three to five seconds. Both the French and the British masks were used, the one much lighter but comparatively riskier than the other. Officers required the men to have their masks constantly within reach, and gas alarms used to be called at meal-times, or whenever it seemed thoroughly inconvenient to have them. The soldiers were required to drop everything and don the cumbersome contrivances, no matter how well they knew that there wasn't any gas. There is no question that this thoroughness saved many lives when the men went into the trenches.
When they masked and went into the gas-chamber the care they took with straps and buckles could not have been bettered. One or two of the men fainted from heat and nervousness, but nobody caught the temporary blindness that would have been their lot if the gas had not been held off. And after the first few entrants had returned none the worse, the rest made a lark of it, and the whole experience stamped on their minds the uselessness of gas as a weapon if you're handy with the mask.
The first insistence on rifle use and marksmanship, which General Pershing was to stress later with all the eloquence he had, was heard in late August. The French said frankly they had neglected the power of the rifle, and the Americans were put to work to avoid the same mistake. In target-shooting with rifles the Americans got their first taste of supremacy. They ceased being novitiates for as long as they held their rifles, and became respected and admired experts. The first English Army, "the Old Contemptibles," had all been expert rifle-shots, and, after a period when rifle fire was almost entirely absent from the battle-fields, tacticians began to recall this fact, and the cost it had entailed upon the Germans.
So the doughboys added rifle fire to their other jobs.
About this time the day of the doughboy was a pattern of compactness, though he called it a harsher name.
It began in the training area at five o'clock in the morning. One regiment had a story that some of the farm lads used to beat the buglers up every day and wander about disconsolate, wondering why the morning was being wasted. This was probably fictional. As a rule, five o'clock came all too early. There was little opportunity to roll over and have another wink, for roll-call came at five-thirty, and this was followed by brief setting-up exercises, designed to give the men an ambition for breakfast. At this meal French customs were not popular. The poilu, who begins his day with black coffee and a little bread, was always amazed to see the American soldier engaged with griddle-cakes and corned-beef hash, and such other substantial things as he could get at daybreak. Just after breakfast sick-call was sounded. It was up to the ailing man to report at that time as a sufferer or forever after hold his peace. While the sick were engaged in reporting themselves the healthy men tidied up. Work proper began at seven.
As a rule, bombing, machine-gun, and automatic-rifle fire practice came in the mornings. Time was called at eleven and the soldiers marched back to billets for the midday meal. Later, when the work piled up even more, the meals were prepared on the training-grounds. Rifle and bayonet practice came in the afternoon. Four o'clock marked the end of the working-day for all except captains and lieutenants, who never found any free time in waking hours. In fact, most of the excited youngsters – almost all under thirty – let their problems perturb their dreams. The doughboys amused themselves with swims, walks, concerts, supper, and French children till nine o'clock, when they were always amiable toward going to bed.
With September came the British to supplement the French and, after a little, to go far toward replacing them. For the Blue Devils had still work to do on the Germans, and their "vacation" could not last too long.
A fine and spectacular sham battle put a climax to the stay of the French, when, after artillery preparation, the Blue Devils took the newly made American trenches, advancing under heavy barrage. The three objectives were named Mackensen, Von Kluck, and Ludendorff. The artillery turned everything it had into the slow-moving screen, under which the "chasers" crept toward the foe. All the watching doughboys had been instructed to put on their shrapnel helmets. At the pitch of the battle some officers found their men using their helmets as good front seats for the show, but fortunately there were no casualties. Words do not kill.
The departure of the Blue Devils was attended by a good deal of home-made ceremony and a universal deep regret. A genuine liking had sprung up between the Americans and their French preceptors, and when they marched away from camp the soldiers flung over them what detachable trophies they had, the strains of all their bands, the unified good wishes of the whole First Division, and unnumbered promises to be a credit to their teachers when they got into the line.
It was the bayonet which proved the first connecting-link between the Americans and the British. American observers had decided after a few weeks that the bayonet was a peculiarly British weapon, and in consequence it was decided that for this phase of the training, the army should rely on the British rather than the French.
The British General Staff obligingly supplied the chief bayonet instructor of their army with a number of assisting sergeants, and the squad was sent down to camp.
The British brought two important things, in addition to expert bayoneting. They were, first, a familiar bluntness of criticism, which the Americans had rather missed with the polite French, and a competitive spirit, stirred up wherever possible between rival units of the A. E. F.
Their willingness to "act" their practice was another factor, though in that they did not excel the French except in that they could impart it to the Americans.
The British theory of bayonet work proved to be almost wholly offensive. They went at their instruction of it with undimmed fire. At the end of the first week, they gave a demonstration to some visiting officers. Three short trenches had been constructed in a little dip of land, and the spectators stood on the hill above them. On the opposite slope tin cans shone brightly, hoisted on sticks.
"Ready, gentlemen," said the drill-sergeant. "Prepare for trench bayonet practice by half sections. You're to take these three lines of trenches, lay out every Boche in the lot, and then get to cover and fire six rounds at them 'ere tin hats. Don't waste a shot, gentlemen, every bullet a Boche. Now, then, ready – over the top, and give 'em 'ell, right in the stomach."
Over the top they went and did as they were told. But the excitement was not great enough to please the drill-sergeant. He turned to the second section, and put them through at a rounder pace. Then he took over some young officers, who were being instructed to train later troops, at cleaning out trenches. Sacks representing Germans were placed in a communicating trench.
"Now, remember, gentlemen," said the sergeant, "there's a Fritz in each one of these 'ere cubby-'oles, and 'e's no dub, is Fritz. 'E's got ears all down 'is back. Make your feet pneumatic. For 'eaven's sake, don't sneeze, or 'is nibs will sling you a bomb like winkin', and there'll be a narsty mess. Ready, Number One! 'Ead down, bayonet up … it's no use stickin' out your neck to get a sight of Fritzie in 'is 'ole. Why, if old Fritz was there, 'e'd just down your point, and then where'd you be? Why, just a blinkin' casualty, and don't you forget it. Ready again, bayonet up. Now you see 'em. Quick, down with your point and at 'im. Tickle 'is gizzard. Not so bad, but I bet you waked 'is nibs in the next 'ole. Keep in mind you're fightin' for your life…"
By the time the officers were into the trench, the excitement was terrific.
It was such measures as these that made the bayonet work go like lightning, and cut down the time required at it by more than one-half.
The organized recreation and the competitions, two sturdy British expedients for morale, always came just after these grimmest of all of war's practices. The more foolish the game, the more rapturously the British joined in it. Red Rover and prisoner's base were two prime favorites. A British major said the British Army had discovered that when the men came out of the trenches, fagged and horror-struck, the surest way to bring them back was to set them hard at playing some game remembered from their childhood.
The British had even harder work, at first, to make the men fall in with the games than they had with war practice. But the friendly spirit existing basically between English and Americans, however spatty their exterior relationships may sometimes be, finally got everybody in together. The Americans found that a British instructor would as lief call them "rotten" if he thought they deserved it, but that he did it so simply and inoffensively that it was, on the whole, very welcome.
So the Americans learned all they could from French and British, and began the scheme of turning back on themselves, and doing their own instructing.
The infantry camp was destined to have some offshoots, as the number of men grew larger, and the specialists required intensive work. Officers' schools sprang up all over France, and all the supplemental forces, which had infantry training at first, scattered off to their special training, notably the men trained to throw gas and liquid fire.
But, for the most part, the camp in the Vosges remained the big central mill it was designed to be, and in late October, when three battalions put on their finishing touches in the very battle-line, the cycle was complete. Before the time when General Pershing offered the Expeditionary Force to Generalissimo Foch, to put where he chose, the giant treadway from sea to camp and from camp to battle was grinding in monster rhythms. It never thereafter feared any influx of its raw material.
CHAPTER VIII
BACK WITH THE BIG GUNS
THE American Expeditionary Force which went into the great training-schools of France and England was like nothing so much as a child who, having long been tutored in a programme of his own make, an abundance of what he liked and nothing of what he didn't, should be thrust into some grade of a public school. He would be ridiculously advanced in mathematics and a dunce at grammar, or historian to his finger-tips and ignorant that two and two make four. He would amaze his fellow pupils in each respect equally.
And that was the lot of the Expeditionary Force. The French found them backward in trench work and bombing, and naturally enough expected that backwardness to follow through. They conceded the natural quickness of the pupils, but saw a long road ahead before they could become an army. Then the Americans tackled artillery, hardest and deepest of the war problems, and suddenly blossomed out as experts.
Of course, the analogy is not to be leaned on too heavily. The Americans were not, on the instant, the arch-exponents of artillery in all Europe. But it is true that in comparison to the size of their army, and to the extent to which they had prepared nationally for war, their artillery was stronger than that of any other country on the Allied side at the beginning of the war, notwithstanding that it was the point where they might legitimately have been expected to be the weakest.
Hilaire Belloc called the American artillery preparation one of the most dramatic and welcome surprises of the war.
It must be understood that all this applies only to men and not in the least to guns. For big guns, the American reliance was wholly upon France and England, upon the invitation of those two countries when America entered the war.
And the readiness of America's men was not due to a large preparation in artillery as such. The blessing arose from the fact that the coast defense could be diverted, within the first year of war, to the handling of the big guns for land armies, and thus strengthen the artillery arm sent to France for final training.
Artillery was every country's problem, even in peace-times. It was the service which required the greatest wealth and the most profound training. There was no such thing as a citizenry trained to artillery. Mathematics was its stronghold, and no smattering could be made to do. Even more than mathematics was the facility of handling the big guns when mathematics went askew from special conditions.
These things the coast defense had, if not in final perfection, at least in creditable degree. And the diversion of it to the artillery in France stiffened the backbone of the Expeditionary Force to the pride of the force and the glad amazement of its preceptors.
One other thing the coast defense had done: it had pre-empted the greater part of America's attention in times of peace and unpreparedness, so that big-gun problems had received a disproportionate amount of study. The American technical journals on artillery were always of the finest. The war services were honeycombed with men who were big-gun experts.
So when the first artillery training-school opened in France, in mid-August of 1917, the problems to be faced were all of a more or less external character.
The first of these, of course, was airplane work. The second was in mastering gun differences between American and French types, and in learning about the enormous numbers of new weapons which had sprung from battle almost day by day.
The camp, when the Americans moved in, had much to recommend it to its new inhabitants. There need be no attempt to conceal the fact that first satisfaction came with the barracks, second with the weather, and only third with the guns and planes.
Some of the artillerymen had come from the infantry camps, and some direct from the coast. Those from the Vosges camp were boisterous in their praise of their quarters. They had brick barracks, with floors, and where they were billeted with the French they found excellent quarters in the old, low-lying stone and brick houses. The weather would not have been admired by any outsider. But to the men from the Vosges it owed a reputation, because they extolled it both day and night. The artillery camp was in open country, to permit of the long ranges, and if it sunned little enough, neither did it rain.
The guns and airplanes supplied by the French were simple at first, becoming, as to guns at least, steadily more numerous and complicated as the training went on.
The men began on the seventy-fives, approximately the American three-inch gun, and on the howitzers of twice that size.
The airplane service was the only part of the work wholly new to the men, and, naturally enough, it was the most attractive.
Although the officers and instructors warned that air observation and range-finding was by far the most dangerous of all artillery service, seventy-five per cent of the young officers who were eligible for the work volunteered for it. This required a two-thirds weeding out, and insured the very pick of men for the air crews.
The air service with artillery was made over almost entirely by the French between the time of the war's beginning and America's entrance. All the old visual aids were abolished, such as smoke-pointers and rockets, and the telephone and wireless were installed in their stead. The observation-balloons had the telephone service, and the planes had wireless.
By these means the guns were first fired and then reported on. The general system of range-finding was: "First fire long, then fire short, then split the bracket." This was the joint job of planes and gunners – one not to be despised as a feat.
In fact, artillery is, of all services, the one most dependent on co-operation. It is always a joint job, but the joining must be done among many factors.
Its effectiveness depends first upon the precision of the mathematical calculation which goes before the pull of the lanyard. This calculation is complicated by the variety of types of guns and shells, and, in the case of howitzers, by the variable behavior of charges of different size and power. But these are things that can be learned with patience, and require knowledge rather than inspiration.
It is when the air service enters that inspiration enters with it. Observation must be accurate, in spite of weather, visibility, enemy camouflage, and everything else. More than that, the observer in the plane must keep himself safe – often a matter of sheer genius.
The map-maker must do his part, so that targets not so elusive as field-guns and motor-emplacements can be found without much help from the air.
Finally, the artillery depends, even more than any other branch of the service, on the rapidity with which its wants can be filled from the rear. The mobility of the big pieces, and their constant connections with ammunition-stores, are matters depending directly on the training of the artillerymen.
These, then, were the things in which the Americans were either tested or trained. Their mathematics were A1, as has been noted, and their familiarity with existing models of big guns sufficient to enable them to pick up the new types without long effort.
They had a few weeks of heavy going with pad and pencil, then they were led to the giant stores of French ammunition – more than any of them had ever seen before – and told to open fire. One dramatic touch exacted by the French instructors was that the guns should be pointed toward Germany, no matter how impotent their distance made them.
Long lanes, up to 12,000 metres, were told off for the ranges. The training was intensive, because at that time there was a half-plan to put the artillery first into the battle-line. In any case it is easier to make time on secondary problems than on primary.
Throughout September, while the artillerymen grew in numbers as well as proficiency, the mastering of gun types was perfected, and the theory of aim was worked out on paper.
Late in the month the French added more guns, chief among them being a monster mounted on railway-trucks whose projectile weighed 1,800 pounds. The artillerymen named her "Mosquito," "because she had a sting," although she had served for 300 charges at Verdun. It was not long before every type of gun in the French Army, and many from the British, were lined up in the artillery camp, being expertly pulled apart and reassembled.
By the time the artillery went into battle with the infantry, failing in their intention to go first alone, but nevertheless first in actual fighting, they were able to give a fine account of themselves. By the time they had got back to camp and were training new troops from their own experience, they were the centre of an extraordinary organization.
The rolling of men from camp to battle and back again, training, retraining, and fighting in the circle, with an increasing number of men able to remain in the line, and a constantly increasing number of new men permitted to come in at the beginning, ground out an admirable system before the old year was out.
The fact that the artillery-school could not take its material raw did not make the hitches it otherwise would, chiefly, of course, because of the coast defense, and somewhat because American college men were found to have a fine substratum of technical knowledge which artillery could turn to account.
After all the routine was fairly learned, and there had been a helpful interim in the line, the artillery practised on some specialties, partly of their own contribution, and partly those suggested by the other armies.
One of these, the most picturesque, was the shattering of the "pill-boxes," German inventions for staying in No Man's Land without being hit.
A "pill-box" is a tiny concrete fortress, set up in front of the trenches, usually in groups of fifteen to twenty. They have slot-like apertures, through which Germans do their sniping. They are supposed to be immune from anything except direct hit by a huge shell. But the American artillery camp worked out a way of getting them – with luck. Each aperture, through which the German inmates sighted and shot, was put under fire from automatic rifles, coming from several directions at once, so that it was indiscreet for the Boche to stay near his windows, on any slant he could devise. Under cover of this rifle barrage, bombers crept forward, and at a signal the rifle fire stopped, and the bombers threw their destruction in.
All these accomplishments, which did not take overlong to learn, enhanced the natural value of the American artilleryman. He became, in a short time, the pride of the army and a warmly welcomed mainstay to the Allies.
Major-General Peyton C. March, who took the artillery to France and commanded them in their days of organization, before he was called back to be Chief of Staff at Washington, was always credited, by his men, with being three-fourths of the reason why they made such a showing. General March always credited the matter to his men. At any rate, between them they put their country's best foot foremost for the first year of America in France, and they served as optimism centres even when distress over other delays threatened the stoutest hearts.