Corps, being composed of officers and men who are expert pigeon breeders
and handlers, and who have the ability to impart their knowledge to
others. The pigeon section, which was organized shortly after our entry
into the war, consisted of two companies with a personnel of 24 officers
and about 650 men. The birds used by the army are known to the fancier
as “homers” and are really not carrier-pigeons at all, the latter being
a large, ungainly show-bird that cannot fly a city block. But our allies
persist in calling homers “carrier-pigeons,” and our military authorities
have adopted the term. The homer has all the qualities required of a
military messenger. He is a strong, well-built, racy-looking bird,
possessed of indomitable courage. His most characteristic trait is, of
course, his remarkable ability to find his home when released at great
distances from it. This power, which has been developed by scientific
breeding to an almost uncanny degree, is the asset which makes the
bird of enormous value to the army. Though scientists have attempted
to explain the homing instinct, they have arrived at different and
frequently contradictory conclusions, it being enough to know that it is
an instinct with which all birds are endowed to a greater or less degree,
and which has been developed in the homer to a stage where it is limited
only by the bird’s physical endurance. Nature has equipped the pigeon
with numerous air-sacs adjoining the lungs, in which a reserve supply of
warm air is carried and supplied to the lungs as needed during flight.
Over the eye is a transparent lid, called a “blinder,” which protects the
eye while in flight, and is at the same time transparent, thus providing
a sort of natural goggle. Well-trained homers have frequently flown 1,000
and even 1,500 miles, while pigeon-fanciers think no more of a 500-mile
flight than horsemen do of a mile trotted in 2:30. On clear days a homer
pigeon will fly distances up to 300 miles at a speed close to a mile a
minute, though longer distances are usually covered at a somewhat lower
rate of speed, the birds instinctively taking advantage of the favoring
air-currents and increasing or decreasing their altitude in order to
obtain the benefit of them.
Long before the Great War it was discovered that pigeons would “home” to
movable lofts as unerringly as to stationary ones, this being of great
importance from the military point of view because it made it possible to
move the cotes up to within a few miles of the firing-line. It also made
it comparatively easy to supply the advanced posts with fresh pigeons.
It was found that a week or ten days was usually sufficient to acquaint
the birds with the new location of the loft and with the surrounding
country, moves of twenty-five miles without the loss of any birds
being not at all uncommon. Each of these mobile lofts was stocked with
seventy-five young birds, six to eight weeks old, of the best pedigreed
stock obtainable. Clasped about the leg of each bird was a seamless
aluminum band bearing a serial number, the year of birth, and the letters
“U. S. A.” These bands are put on soon after birth and cannot be removed
except by destroying them. As the birds had never been outside a loft,
it was a comparatively easy matter to settle them in their new homes.
Their early training was devoted to the development of their flying
strength and stamina and to the habit of quick “trapping,” by which is
meant the entrance of the bird into the loft immediately upon reaching
it, a pigeon that alights on the ground or roosts on the roof of the
loft being considered most imperfectly trained. They soon learn to trap
without hesitation, a flock of seventy-five birds entering a loft in from
ten to twenty seconds after pitching on the roof. To overcome the habit
of loafing, birds are fed in the loft after alighting with their favorite
grain. After a month or two of this preliminary training the birds are
“tossed,” to use the phraseology of the fancier, at increasing distances
from the loft, so that by the time they are five or six months old they
are flying from fifty to seventy-five miles with speed and certainty.
They are then ready for service in the trenches. Not all, however,
are assigned to the infantry. Every tank crew carries a complement of
pigeons, men from the Pigeon Service are frequently attached to cavalry
units, and birds have been used successfully from balloons and airplanes.
The infantryman carries his pigeons in a light wicker hamper strapped
to his back, each bird wearing a corselet made of crinoline stiffened
with whalebone and with strings running to the sides of the basket, thus
preventing it from being tossed about and injured.
As long as the ordinary means of communication are working
satisfactorily, birds are not used. But when a barrage is laid down and
the telephone-wires are destroyed, resort is had to the pigeons. When
an advance-party has pushed far ahead of the main force it, too, relies
on this method of liaison. In short, when every other method of liaison
has failed or is unavailable, important messages are intrusted to the
birds. The messages are written on fine tissue-paper, folded into a small
wad, and inserted in the aluminum holder which is attached to the leg
of each pigeon. The bird is then released, and in spite of the terrific
din and confusion of battle, in spite of the enemy shotgun squads,
composed of expert shots, whose duty it is to pick off carrier-pigeons,
it wings its way through shell and gas barrages to its loft in the
rear of the lines. I might mention in passing that though birds are
frequently killed while in their baskets by exploding shells, and others
die from long confinement without food or care in the trenches, those
that survive become accustomed to the roar of cannon and never suffer
from shell-shock. On reaching his loft the bird hurries into it through
an opening which permits of entry but not of exit, the dropping back of
the little door ringing a bell which announces the arrival of a message
from the front, whereupon eager hands strip the cylinder from the leg of
the bird, the message which it contains being relayed to headquarters by
telephone or despatch-rider.
The pigeons were not always fortunate enough, however, to pass through
the battle area unscathed, many birds having succeeded in reaching
their lofts with their messages only to succumb to their wounds. During
the offensive in the Argonne an American pigeon reached its loft with
the leg to which the message was attached severed and dangling by
the ligaments, the missile that severed the leg having also passed
through the breast-bone. In spite of these injuries and the great loss
of blood the heroic bird flew twenty-five miles with a message of
vital importance. I am glad to say that the pigeon recovered and was
recommended in due form for the D. S. C. An English bird was struck by a
piece of shrapnel while homeward bound with a message. Both of its legs
were broken and the aluminum message-holder was embedded in the flesh
by the force of the bullet. But its spirit never faltered. It struggled
on and on, blood dripping from it in an ever-increasing stream, to fall
dead at the feet of the loft attendants. Another bird was released from
a seaplane which had fallen and was being shelled by a German destroyer.
It rose quickly and circled once to get its bearings. Shots resounded
from the deck of the destroyer, the bird stopped short in its flight,
and a flurry of falling feathers told their tale, but, after a short
fall, it recovered and valiantly struggled on. Within thirty minutes
after its release three British destroyers, white waves curling from
their prows and clouds of smoke belching from their funnels, came racing
toward the scene, whereupon the German turned and fled and the aviators
were saved. With wings and body terribly lacerated the plucky bird had
flown thirteen miles to a naval air-station and given the alarm. Here is
another incident in which a feathered messenger played a hero’s rôle. A
detachment of French infantry was ordered to hold a certain strategic
position at all costs, thereby affording their main body time to retire
to another position. The Germans, realizing that the stubborn little
band of Frenchmen was balking them of their prey, launched attack after
attack, until, borne down by sheer weight of numbers, the defenders were
literally engulfed by the wave of men in gray. Just as all that remained
of the detachment were making their last stand, a blood-stained pigeon
fell exhausted in a French loft behind the lines. The message which it
bore read:
“The Boche are upon us. We are lost, but we have done good work. Have the
artillery open on our position.”
Little has been said about the work of pigeons in this country. Over a
hundred lofts were established at the various camps and cantonments,
the thousands of birds which they housed proving of no inconsiderable
value in the training of the troops for fighting overseas. Everywhere
that they were used the birds showed a dependability which won for
them the enthusiastic admiration of all who were familiar with their
work. Indomitable courage, a gameness which ends only with death,
and a burning love of home are among the qualities most cherished by
Americans, and nothing possesses them to a greater degree than the army
carrier-pigeon.
Though the Belgians made extensive use of dogs for hauling machine-guns,
and though the French used them to a certain extent for liaison work
and the British for locating the wounded, they were not utilized by
the American forces overseas. A considerable number of dogs, most of
them police-dogs and Airedales, were trained at the various camps and
cantonments in this country, however, and had the war continued they
would undoubtedly have proved of real service in certain forms of work
in France. The attitude of the American soldier toward the subject of
dogs is best expressed by a story which I heard in France. An American
officer, lost at night in No Man’s Land, sought refuge in a shell-hole.
He found, however, that it already had an occupant, an American
doughboy—from his accent evidently a product of the Bowery—who, it
appeared, was lost like himself. In the periodic bursts of light afforded
by the star-shells the officer noticed that the man had strapped to his
back what appeared to be a large basket.
“What have you in there?” he inquired curiously.
“Boids, cap’n, boids,” the soldier answered in a hoarse whisper, adding
disgustedly: “An’ that ain’t the woist of it, cap’n. I hear they’s goin’
to give us dawgs!”
* * * * *
Though Americans have always been the greatest photographers in the
world, the Yankee abroad being readily distinguishable by his ever-ready
kodak, it is a rather surprising fact that it needed the World War to
convince the American military authorities of the vital importance to
the army of the camera. Upon our entry into the war, however, the War
Department, following the example of the European armies, established a
photographic section, with a personnel of forty-odd officers and nearly
800 men, as a part of the Signal Corps. The duty of this section was
to take pictures, both still and motion, of every phase of America’s
participation in the war, both on the fighting front in Europe and in the
training-camps at home; for the information of the intelligence officers
of the A. E. F., for the guidance of the artillery, for purposes of
instruction in the schools and cantonments, for propaganda use at home
and in foreign countries, and for illustrating the official history of
the great conflict.
The photographic section was divided into two branches, land and
air, the latter being, perhaps, from a military standpoint, the more
important of the two for the reason that airplanes were used primarily
for reconnaissance work and were, when equipped with cameras, literally
the eyes of the army. The airplane being the eye of the army, the camera
may be said to have been the pupil of the eye. In order to provide the
large and highly trained personnel required for this service, there was
established at Rochester, New York, a School of Aerial Photography—the
largest in the world—where candidates received, in addition to a thorough
military training, a course of instruction in everything relating to
modern photography, from the manufacture of plates and films through
the selection and use of lenses, shutters, and light-filters, to the
printing of the picture itself. In addition to becoming familiar with
these details of commercial photography, they were instructed in all
the special phases of military photography, such as map-plotting,
mosaics, enlargements, and the study of topography from a negative made
many thousands of feet in the air. As in that chapter dealing with the
Air Service I have described in considerable detail the methods and
instruments used in aerial photography, it is enough to say here that
the aerial branch of our Photographic Service attained such a degree of
efficiency that, in the closing months of the war, it became virtually
impossible for the Germans to dig a dozen yards of new trench, to
transfer a platoon, to change the position of a machine-gun, without
being detected by the all-seeing eyes of our cameras.
The mother school for land photography was located at Columbia
University, in New York, where the students received the same thorough
training which was given to the aerial operators at Rochester, with
instruction in motion-picture photography added. The students at this
school were the pick of the newspaper photographers and motion-picture
operators of America. Among them were men who had “snapped” presidents
and potentates, celebrities and notorieties, prize-fighters, reformers,
murderers, prelates, politicians and statesmen, leaders of society,
Society and near-society; who had “filmed” presidential inaugurations,
Newport weddings, railway disasters, yacht-races, South Sea cannibals,
Mexican revolutions, and Heaven knows what besides. Their courage and
resourcefulness were precisely the qualities which were required of army
photographers, for there was nowhere that they would not go, nothing
that they would not do, and the more danger there was in their work
the more it appealed to them. When a new type of gun was being fired
for the first time and the gun crew took refuge in the bomb-proofs as
a precaution against accident, the army movie-men moved their machines
up close in the hope that if the gun exploded they would get a picture
of the explosion. One of the Signal Corps operators, Captain Edward N.
Cooper, with his assistant, Sergeant Adrian Duff, while attached to the
Twenty-Sixth Division, crawled out into No Man’s Land just before an
attack was scheduled to take place, and, though exposed to both German
and American fire, set up their machine in order that the people at home,
seated comfortably in motion-picture theatres, might actually see the
boys going “over the top.” On another occasion this same young officer
became separated from the troops to which he was attached and found
himself under the fire of a German machine-gun, but in spite of the hail
of bullets he stuck to his work, made his pictures, and returned to the
American lines herding in front of him a group of Germans whom he had
captured single-handed at the point of an empty revolver. A camera-man
whom the French Government detailed to accompany me along the Western
Front in 1916 was seriously wounded by a German shell just as we were
leaving Verdun. His assistant helped me to give first aid to his chief
and then, though the road was being heavily bombarded, coolly set up his
machine and turned the crank while the wounded man was being lifted into
an ambulance. It is a striking commentary on the scepticism of American
audiences that, when I showed that picture in the United States, fully
half of the people who saw it insisted that it had been faked. Another
officer of the photographic section who, before our entry into the war,
as the representative of a Chicago newspaper had accompanied the German
Armies during the invasion of Poland, was present at the capture of
Warsaw. When the Kaiser reviewed the troops after his triumphal entry
into the captured city, the American pushed his way through the cordon
of soldiers and police agents which surrounded the imperial motor-car,
set up his machine within six feet of the astonished Emperor, and
proceeded to take a “close-up” of the All Highest, who was so amused
by the effrontery of the performance that he insisted on shaking the
photographer’s hand!
[Illustration: MOTION-PICTURE OPERATORS OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC SECTION OF
THE SIGNAL CORPS GOING INTO ACTION ON A TANK
There was nowhere they would not go, nothing that they would not do, and
the more danger there was in their work the more it appealed to them.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: AN OFFICER OF THE SIGNAL CORPS OPERATING A TELEPHONE AT
THE FRONT.
This instrument was so compact that it could be carried as part of the
equipment of a soldier and quickly put into operation.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
Motion-pictures were used in the training of troops far more generally
than the public realized. A series of pictures taken at the Military
Academy at West Point and exhibited at every camp and cantonment in
the United States did more in a few hours to acquaint the troops with
military etiquette and the evolutions of the squad, the platoon, and the
company than any number of drills and lectures could have done. “Animated
drawings,” as they are called—like those of Mutt and Jeff and the
Katzenjammer Kids—were made under the direction of the Signal Corps for
the purpose of familiarizing the men with the mechanism of the service
rifle, the automatic pistol, and the various types of machine-guns. By
running these pictures slowly, every stage of the operation of loading
and firing was made clear, from the insertion of the cartridge into
the clip or belt to the bullet leaving the muzzle. But the greatest
value of the motion-picture, when all is said and done, was in keeping
up the morale of the American people by combating the insidious and
undeniably clever propaganda which was carried on in this country by
the Germans. Enemy agents spread reports that the drafted troops were
being ill-treated in the camps, that they lived in wretched quarters,
were poorly fed, and suffered from lack of proper clothing. To answer
these charges a score of movie-men were despatched to the various camps,
the pictures which they took and which were exhibited throughout the
country showing the clean and comfortable barracks, the men seated at
their bountiful and appetizing meals in the mess-halls, the football and
baseball games, the camp theatres, and the other features of cantonment
life, thus providing a convincing refutation of the German insinuations.
Parents who had heard the widely circulated tales of the unsanitary and
immoral conditions to which their boys were exposed in France could go
to their local motion-picture houses and see for themselves the clean
dormitories, the Y. M. C. A. and Knights of Columbus huts, the social
gatherings, the splendidly equipped hospitals, incidents of life in the
back areas and in the trenches, and not infrequently the faces of their
loved ones themselves, sun-bronzed and happy, wearing “the smile that
won’t come off.” If the photographic section of the army had accomplished
nothing else, its existence would have been justified a thousand times
over by the service which it performed in fighting the propaganda of
the Hun and in bringing cheer and comfort to the parents, wives, and
sweethearts whom the boys had left behind them.
* * * * *
As a result of the researches and experiments which it carried on during
the war, the Signal Corps has, in addition to its countless other
achievements, produced several devices which are of such an astounding
nature as to strain almost to the breaking-point the credulity of
the layman. I am not permitting myself to indulge in the slightest
exaggeration when I assert that these devices place in the hands of
the United States weapons which would render this country wellnigh
invulnerable in the event of our ever becoming involved in another war.
But—and herein lies their greatest significance and interest—they are,
beyond all question, the most important inventions, so far as their
effect on the peaceful interests of the nation are concerned, which
have been produced since Morse invented the telegraph, Bell perfected
the telephone, and Marconi amazed us with the wireless. Imagine the
value of a device which permits of a conversation being carried on
between a person on the ground and an aviator in the clouds as easily
as though they were seated opposite each other at a dinner-table! Such
is the radiotelephone, which I have described in detail in the chapter
on the Air Service but which was suggested and brought to a state of
perfection by officers of the Signal Corps. Conceive, if you can, of
another device which permits of nineteen separate and distinct telephone
and telegraph messages being transmitted simultaneously over a single
copper wire! Picture the advance in world-communication made possible by
the discovery, made by General Squier, the Chief Signal Officer of the
Army, that growing trees can be used as natural antennæ for both sending
and receiving radio messages! And, as a climax to this amazing list of
achievements, let your imagination attempt to grasp the military and
commercial significance of a device for the sending over telegraph wires
or cables of cipher messages which, though they can defy any system of
deciphering known to science, appear in plain language at the other end!
You may think, perhaps, that I am overenthusiastic; that I have used
too many adjectives and exclamation-marks. But suppose that I tell you
something about these inventions. Then, unless I am greatly mistaken, you
will be guilty of adjectives and exclamations yourself.
Owing to the difficulty of constructing in France enough telegraph and
telephone lines to meet the constantly increasing requirements of the
American Expeditionary Forces, as well as to relieve the great congestion
which prevailed on all of the existing lines, the scientists of the
Signal Corps turned their attention early in the war to the possibility
of sending several messages simultaneously over a single wire. Without
entering into the details of the long series of experiments which were
conducted by the Signal Corps, in conjunction with the American Telephone
and Telegraph Company at Camp Alfred Vail, New Jersey, or attempting to
describe in terms which would be intelligible to the non-technical reader
the device which was finally perfected, it may be said that the result
is accomplished through the application of radio, the wire serving as a
guide for the radio currents and conducting them with a minimum of power
and with a minimum of interference with other radio communications. This
device has now been brought to such a state of perfection that eight
telegraph messages and eleven telephone messages can be carried over a
single wire at the same time, the Morse messages being transmitted by
means of the multiplex telegraph apparatus—a system which was discovered
as early as 1910 and is now in general use by the large telegraph
companies—while the telephone conversations are guided by wireless
waves, which serve as carriers for the voice currents. By placing on
ordinary telegraph-wires wireless waves of very short length or of
very great frequency, officers of the Signal Corps have successfully
conversed over a line from Washington to Baltimore which was being used
at the same time for the transmission of duplex telegraph messages.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the performance was its extreme
simplicity, the feat being accomplished merely by placing on the line,
through proper connecting condensers, a pair of radiotelephone sets such
as are used for communicating between ground-stations and airplanes.
Whereas it was believed, until very recently, that it was impracticable
to hold more than four wired-wireless conversations over one wire or one
pair of wires, in addition to whatever ordinary telephone or telegraph
conversation might be on that wire, the Signal Corps has now demonstrated
that it is not only possible but entirely practicable to hold ten or more
extra telephone conversations without their interfering with each other.
Had this system been perfected while the war was in progress it would
have meant that ten telephone and two or more telegraph conversations
could have been carried on simultaneously with a point served only by a
single wire. In other words, by the application of this system one wire
will take the place of ten.
Another phase of science uncovered by the Signal Corps which figuratively
makes the mind of the layman stand still and gasp is the discovery,
due to the experiments of the Chief Signal Officer, General Squier,
that trees can be used as instruments in the receipt and transmission
of electrical messages, both telegraph and telephone, both by wire and
wireless. Think of it, my friends! The commonplace tree possesses those
very qualities that men have spent centuries of effort to embody in a
frail spider’s web of wire!