contingent of the American Expeditionary Forces, the War Department
appealed to the Bureau of Mines to provide 25,000 masks within three
weeks. Emboldened by the valor of ignorance, the officials of the bureau
jauntily undertook the task, making arrangements for the fabric to be
produced by a rubber company at Akron, Ohio, and for the masks to be
assembled at a factory in Brooklyn. Instead of producing 25,000 masks in
three weeks, however, the best they could do was to produce 20,000 in
two months. These were immediately shipped overseas. But the rubberized
fabric of which they were made was easily penetrated by chlorpicrin
vapor, therefore affording very little protection, and they were returned
unused. “The only thing about them which is satisfactory,” General
Pershing is said to have remarked, “is the strap around the neck.” But
the experience thus gained opened the eyes of the authorities to the
gravity of the problem, so that when, in July, 1917, the army itself took
up the manufacture of gas-masks, it was with a more complete realization
of the magnitude of the task by which it was confronted. One of the
first steps taken by the War Department, upon assuming charge of mask
production, was to give a colonel’s commission to Mr. Bradley Dewey,
an officer of the American Can Company, and to place him in command of
the Gas Defense Service, as it was then called, but which, upon the
organization of the Chemical Warfare Service, became the Gas Defense
Division. Thanks to the energy, resourcefulness, and business ability
of Colonel Dewey, backed by the efficiency and enthusiasm of the great
organization which he created, the American forces in France were
protected against gas by masks which, as proved by actual field tests,
_gave twenty times the protection afforded by those worn by the Germans_.
[Illustration: MAN AND HORSE COMPLETELY PROTECTED AGAINST POISONOUS GAS.
In addition to the mask, the man is wearing an anti-mustard gas suit,
gloves, and boots. The horse is provided with boots and a gas mask.]
[Illustration: TYPES OF GAS MASKS USED BY AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN ARMIES.
U. S. Navy Mask (obsolete).
U. S. Navy Mask.
U. S. C. E. Respirator.
U. S. R. F. H. Respirator.
U. S. H. T. Respirator.
U. S. H. T. Respirator.
U. S. Model 1919 Respirator.
British Black Veil Mask.
British P. H. Helmet.
British Box Respirator.
French M. 2 Mask.
French Tissot Art. Mask.
French A. R. S. Mask.
German Late-type Mask.
Russian Mask.
Italian Mask.
British Motor-Corps Mask.
U. S. Rear Area Emergency Respirator.
U. S. Connell Mask.]
It is essential that a mask, or respirator, to use its correct name,
should remove all traces of gas or smoke from the air before it reaches
the eyes, nose, or mouth of the wearer. The principal features of the
mask of the “Box Respirator” type, as used by the American forces
throughout the war were:
(_a_) A canister of metal containing both neutralizing and absorptive
chemicals and a smoke filter. The air to be breathed passes in through an
inlet check valve and through chemicals and smoke filter.
(_b_) A flexible rubber-hose through which the purified air passes from
the canister to the face-piece.
(_c_) A face-piece, effectively covering the eyes, cheeks, lower
forehead, nose, mouth, and chin, provided with eye-pieces permitting
vision and a harness to hold the face-piece in place.
(_d_) An exhalation valve which affords easy discharge of exhaled air and
at the same time instantly closes upon inspiration.
(_e_) A knapsack slung from the neck or shoulder, in which the mask and
canister are carried.
In the box respirator type, the inhaled air, passing through the canister
and hose, went directly into the mouth through a rubber mouth-piece,
which in this manner offered protection to the lungs in the event of the
face-piece being damaged or not fitting. The mask was also provided with
a spring and rubber clamp which closed the nostrils and compelled the
wearer to breathe entirely through the mouth.
While the box respirator was in process of manufacture, much thought
and effort was devoted to developing a mask which would combine with
its safety and good vision a greater measure of comfort, it being
particularly desired to eliminate the nose-clip and the mouth-piece,
which are the box respirator’s most uncomfortable features. The
starting-point in these attempts was the French Tissot mask, several
modifications of which were put into production. The best mask of this
type was designed, curiously enough, by a New York corset manufacturer,
Major Waldemar Kops, whose name was given to his invention, which is
known as the K.T. or Kops-Tissot mask. One hundred and eighty-nine
thousand of the K.T. masks, which were radically different and far more
comfortable than the box respirator type, had been manufactured when
the Armistice was signed. The total number of masks produced by the Gas
Defense Division was more than three and a half million.
The mask-makers were confronted at an early period with the problem of
finding a charcoal of sufficient density to absorb the toxic fumes, the
wood-charcoal which was used in most of the French and British masks
being very far from satisfactory. After considerable experimentation
it was discovered that a charcoal having sufficient absorptivity could
be produced from the shell of the cocoanut, whereupon officers were
despatched to the Hawaiian Islands and the British West Indies to arrange
for large shipments of cocoanut-shells to the United States. The supply
thus obtained proved entirely inadequate, however, whereupon the Chemical
Warfare Service issued an appeal to the American public to save the
shells of Brazil nuts, hickory-nuts, and walnuts, the pits of peaches,
prunes, apricots, and cherries, and the seeds of dates, the collection of
the pits and shells being undertaken by the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts,
and kindred organizations. Placards and receptacles were put in public
places throughout the country and almost immediately fruit-pits began to
pour in by the ton, every family making it a point of honor to save its
pits “for the boys fighting overseas,” as they proudly put it. There were
numberless cases of old ladies who sent in by mail a few peach-pits which
they had conscientiously saved and which they had cleaned as carefully as
though they were jewels. As it required 7 pounds of pits and shells to
make the charcoal for a single mask, 3,500 tons were used in the million
masks which we sent overseas.
[Illustration: 1,500 TONS OF PEACH-PITS USED FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF
CHARCOAL FOR USE IN GAS MASKS.
The result of the appeal of the Gas Defense Division for nutshells and
fruit-pits.]
[Illustration: TESTING RESPIRATORS OUTSIDE THE GAS CHAMBER.]
[Illustration: TESTING GAS MASKS INSIDE THE GAS CHAMBER.]
Because it was realized that the slightest flaw or imperfection in a
finished mask might well mean the death in agony of an American soldier,
an extremely rigid system of inspection was devised. It was discovered,
for example, that all thread holes must be filled with gelatine, in
order to prevent the gas from being carried through by the thread; that
wrinkles in the band around the face and head permitted gas to leak
inside the face-piece; that the mouth-piece must be reinforced with
bushings so that the soldier would not bite it in the excitement of a gas
attack and thereby cut off his own breath. Only the most painstaking
and conscientious women—usually those having husbands or sons at the
front—were chosen for the work of final inspection, and, even after they
had examined each mask in every detail it was again inspected over a
bright light in a dark booth for small pinholes which might have escaped
the ordinary visual inspection. And, in order to make the inspectors
doubly careful, they were frequently required to go into the gas-chambers
wearing masks chosen at random from those they themselves had passed. To
obtain absolute results as to the protection afforded by a mask, however,
breathing tests in a gas-chamber had to be employed. This testing was
done by enlisted men of the Gas Defense Division, who spent many hours
each day testing masks and canisters in the gas-chambers, sometimes
working in a concentration of phosgene as high as 1 per cent. Without
hope of glory or promotion, without the lure of decorations, these men
day after day, month after month, risked their lives in order that their
fellows at the front might have a better chance to live. Though they wore
silver instead of gold chevrons, they are as deserving of thanks and
admiration as the men who broke the Hindenburg line or battled in the
Forest of the Argonne.
Though the earlier gas-masks were manufactured in Brooklyn, and later in
Philadelphia, the operations of the division expanded so rapidly that
by November, 1917, it became evident that it was no longer practicable
for a commercial organization to carry on the manufacture of this new
and vitally important article of equipment in the quantities demanded
by the new army programme, and it was consequently deemed advisable to
establish a government-owned and controlled organization. In pursuance
of this policy, the work of mask manufacture was transferred in November
to Long Island City, the plant expanding in seven months from a floor
space of 157,000 square feet to 1,000,000 square feet, or 23 acres.
When the Armistice was signed the Gas Defense Division had a personnel
of 274 officers, 2,353 enlisted men, and 13,000 civilians. Much of the
work was done by women, and, as a traitor could have worked irreparable
damage by tampering with the masks, the employees were selected only
after the closest investigation by the Military Intelligence Division of
their antecedents and affiliations. From the very outset the officers in
charge of mask production conducted a campaign for efficiency based on
patriotism. The walls of the factory were hung with copies of a poster
depicting a soldier dying from gas as the result of a defective mask; it
bore the grim and suggestive title “The Last Inspection.” Lectures and
motion-pictures were used to emphasize the horrors of death by gas. And
everywhere were placards bearing the admonition: “Remember that _your_
carelessness may cost the life of _your_ husband, _your_ son, _your_
brother.”
* * * * *
It is not generally appreciated, I think, that gas warfare has tactics
all its own. For example: In preparing for an infantry attack the Germans
were accustomed to first concentrate all their guns on our batteries.
After a brief but intensive bombardment of our artillery positions a
portion of the German batteries would abruptly switch their fire onto our
infantry, using, of course, a large proportion of gas-shell. Meanwhile
the German infantry officers had been notified as to the kinds of gas
their batteries were using, and where. Hence, when the German storming
troops swept forward they did not wear masks, for their officers knew
that a non-persistent gas had been used against the point which was to
be attacked. Our troops, being ignorant of this, however, had donned
their masks when the first gas-shell came over, and were, therefore, both
fatigued and hampered when they were called upon to resist the assault.
And here is another example of gas tactics: Word having reached the
French that the Germans were planning to attack a certain sector near
Rheims, the troops holding this portion of the line were quietly
withdrawn from the front trenches the night before the attack was to
take place, a few autoriflemen being left to simulate a defense. Before
the troops departed, however, they placed mustard-gas shells, which had
been fitted by the artillery with electrically controlled fuses, in the
dugouts. The French gunners had, meanwhile, ascertained to a foot the
range of the trenches which were being evacuated. At daybreak came the
expected German attack. As the helmeted figures came swarming across No
Man’s Land in the dim light of early dawn the few remaining Frenchmen set
off green rockets as a signal to the artillery and took to their heels.
No sooner had the Germans occupied the evacuated trenches, therefore,
than the French batteries turned loose on them a hurricane of steel,
putting down a barrage which completely cut them off from their own
lines. The Germans naturally sought shelter from this shell-storm in the
deserted dugouts. At about the same moment a French artillery officer
pressed his finger upon a button, an electric current leaped along a
buried wire, the shells in the dugouts were blown asunder, liberating the
poison-gas—and the Germans perished almost to a man.
[Illustration: ADVANCING UNDER GAS.
This photograph was not taken in real action but at the Army Gas School
in France.]
[Illustration: TRAINING FOR GAS WARFARE.
Troops wearing gas masks charging in open order in practice at Long
Island City.]
[Illustration: CUTTING THEIR WAY THROUGH BARBED-WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS WHILE
TRAINING WITH GAS MASKS.]
As the result of the experiments at American University, Lakehurst, and
Edgewood, and the experiences of our troops in the field, several new
gases of incredible deadliness were invented as well as numerous new
methods of using them, many of which would certainly have been utilized
had the war continued. But the League of Nations being still confined
to paper, and universal disarmament being still in the distant future,
it is as well, I feel, not to particularize about them. It is enough
to say that, thanks to the work of the Chemical Warfare Service, there
are stored away in the vaults of the War Department certain plans and
formulas which, in the event of another war—which God forbid!—would give
us a weapon of undreamed-of potency and terror. Speaking from first-hand
knowledge, I can assure any potential enemies of the United States that
the chemical warfare which we are prepared to wage should the necessity
ever arise again would make our recent gas activities, vast as they were,
seem like a joke.
IV
THE “Q. M. C.”
Some years ago there was exhibited at the Grand Salon in Paris an immense
mural painting, intended, if I remember rightly, for one of the walls of
the Panthéon. I think it was by Détaille, but of that I am not certain
nor does it matter. The canvas, which reached from floor to ceiling, was
of such vast dimensions that the gallery, huge as it is, did not permit
of a satisfactory perspective; it was characterized, moreover, by such a
wealth of detail that one might look at it from dawn to dusk and yet not
grasp it all. So in attempting to depict, even in the sketchiest fashion,
the operations and activities of the Quartermaster Corps, I find myself
embarrassed by the same limitations. The composition is too vast for
proper perspective, too rich in variety and detail to be grasped by the
imagination. The best that I can hope to do, therefore, in the limited
space at my disposal, is to hurry you along, like the guides who used
to conduct visitors through the galleries of the Vatican in an hour,
pointing out a picturesque feature here and calling your attention to
something of interest there—touching only on the high spots, as it were.
To begin with, let me give you some conception of the subject’s magnitude
and importance. The total cost of the war to the United States, plus
the estimate of the amount which would be required to carry it on to
July 1, 1919, was approximately $16,500,000,000, while the total
expenditures and estimates of the Quartermaster Corps for the same
period were something over $8,500,000,000. Thus it will be seen that
_the expenditures and requirements of the Quartermaster Corps comprised
more than half of the total expenditures and requirements of the entire
army_. The purchases which it made were remarkable not only for their
unprecedented volume but for their amazing variety. It supplied the
armies of the United States with practically everything they required,
save only ordnance, its purchases running all the way from coal to
needles, from lemon-drops to rolling kitchens, from sheet-music to beef
and mutton on the hoof. At one time it constituted the entire wool trade
of the United States, if not, indeed, of the whole Western Hemisphere,
for it optioned every pound of wool in sight and sent its agents out
with orders to buy up the excess wool of the earth. It purchased enough
cotton goods to make a sheet which would cover the District of Columbia
four times over. It controlled the leather trade of the nation. It
operated the largest shirt-factory in existence. It developed the most
highly specialized shoe ever made, purchased 33,000,000 pairs of them,
carried them in 120 sizes, and opened schools to teach its officers
the science of shoe-fitting. By enlisting the co-operation of a score
of universities it established a great correspondence school for the
education of quartermaster officers. It had other schools, a whole
system of them, where training was given in cooking, baking, butchery,
and coffee-roasting. It purchased every stock of rubber boots and
rain-coats in the United States. It established and operated farms and
truck-gardens at the various camps and cantonments. By organizing a
Salvage Service for the reclamation of articles which would otherwise
have been thrown away it saved 151,000,000 of the taxpayers’ dollars. The
army needed horses and mules—thousands and thousands of them—whereupon
the Quartermaster Corps gave commissions to half a hundred of America’s
best-known sportsmen and gentlemen riders and sent them to the West, to
Spain, to the Argentine, to purchase animals. General Pershing cabled
that he wanted sheet-music for the 390 bands of the A. E. F., whereupon
the Quartermaster Corps, not being itself musically inclined, looked
about for a man who was. It was discovered that the most successful
composer of popular music in America had enlisted in the Coast Guard,
but the Quartermaster Corps borrowed him, told him to select the sort
of music that he thought the boys in France would like, and send it to
Pershing. He did. It cheered up the army overseas and cost the government
$50,000. It was cheap at the price. The Quartermaster Corps educated
manufacturers in the production of articles strange to their experience,
and in some cases it developed entirely new industries. It was a
shipmaster, a wool-grower, a coal-operator, a clothier, a builder of
vehicles, a school-teacher, a reformer of labor conditions, an inventor
of new products, and an originator of new methods. To the miners of
Pennsylvania, quarrying coal in the low-roofed galleries by the light of
their flickering lamps, to the fruit-pickers in the sun-drenched orchards
of Hood River and the Santa Clara, to the pallid clothing-workers,
bending over their machines in the stifling sweat-shops of the New York
Ghetto, to the great manufacturers of New England, and to the beef barons
of the Middle West, “Quartermaster Corps, United States Army,” was a
phrase to conjure with.
* * * * *
In those casual, comfortable, easy-going days before the Great War
startled us out of our national complacency, when the work of the
army consisted in garrisoning many small and widely scattered posts
and in doing police duty on the Canal Zone or in “the Islands,” the
Quartermaster Corps, the “Q. M.,” as it was familiarly called, occupied
much the same relation to our little military establishment that a
“general store” does to a village. By this I mean that it supplied most
of the army’s wants. It was charged, to put it briefly, with clothing,
feeding, housing, and paying the army, supplying it with horses, harness,
vehicles, and, in short, virtually everything else save only the actual
tools of war. It also manned and operated the steamers of the Army
Transport Service, was charged with the movement of troops on land, and
had jurisdiction to a large extent over motor transportation, especially
the movement of supplies. Though its business methods were as antiquated
as the quill pen and the copying-press, like the mules which drew its
wagons it jogged unconcernedly along. If the colonel’s wife needed some
shelves in her kitchen she sent for the quartermaster and they were put
up with neatness and despatch. When the junior officers at a post wanted
to attend a dance in town the quartermaster could always be depended upon
to provide a conveyance. The quartermaster ran the post exchanges and
canteens. If there was a delay in the delivery of the winter’s coal, if
the bread was poorly baked, if the milk was sour, if the men’s shoes did
not fit, if there was a leak in a barracks roof, if a horse developed
a spavin, if the pay-checks were not received on time, it was the
quartermaster who had to take the blame. He was all things to all men,
and if he did not do all things as well as they might have been done, it
was not his fault so much as the fault of the antiquated and cumbersome
system in which he had been trained.
But upon the outbreak of war this state of affairs underwent a sudden
change. It was no more possible for the Quartermaster Corps, as it
was then organized, to feed and clothe and transport overseas an army
of 5,000,000 men than it would be for a village merchant to meet
the demands which would be made upon him if oil were discovered in
the vicinity and the village expanded into a city overnight. At the
outbreak of the war the Office of the Quartermaster-General consisted
of five divisions—Administrative, Finance, Supplies, Construction, and
Transportation—but when our stupendous military programme began to assume
definite form it became increasingly apparent that no single department
could successfully direct so many and varied activities, and that the
Quartermaster Corps must confine itself to the huge task of purchase and
supply. The first step toward its reorganization along these lines was
the divorce of the Construction Division, which was made a separate
branch of the War Department under Colonel (later Brigadier-General) I.
W. Littell, who reported directly to the secretary of war. Though the
officers of this division, to which was assigned the tremendous task of
constructing the camps and cantonments for our new armies, continued
to wear the insignia of the Quartermaster Corps, and though they were
known as construction quartermasters, they had no connection with the
Office of the Quartermaster-General. During the first year of the war the
Transportation Division operated a considerable fleet of vessels engaged
in the transport of troops, animals, and supplies, but in April, 1918,
this division was abolished, the entire transportation service being
taken from the Quartermaster Corps and placed with the Purchase, Storage,
and Traffic Division of the General Staff. The next branch to be lopped
off was the Finance Division, the functions of which were transferred to
the newly organized Office of the Director of Finance, who assumed charge
of all financial matters for the army. In response to the constantly
increasing demands for motor transport, a Motor Transport Service was
added to the Quartermaster Corps in April, 1918, but was taken away from
it three months later and established as a separate branch of the army
under the title of the Motor Transport Corps. This is, however, strictly
an operating unit and should not be confused with the Motor and Vehicles
Division of the Quartermaster Corps. By this time the “Q. M.” had been
so completely transformed as to be almost unrecognizable to men who
had grown old in the service. Little remained of the old organization,
indeed, save the name, and even that all but disappeared when, in
October, 1918, the Office of the Quartermaster-General was merged in
the newly organized Office of the Director of Purchase and Storage. By
the concluding month of the war, therefore, the old Quartermaster Corps
had lost all control over construction, finance, and transportation, so
that of its original five divisions only the Administrative and Supplies
remained. The latter had been expanded, however, into nine purchasing
divisions and there had also been added to the organization—now commonly
referred to as “Purchase and Storage”—five storage divisions and a
Salvage Division. At the same time that the Office of the Director of
Purchase and Storage assumed the functions of the Quartermaster Corps it
also took over the procurement activities of the Medical Corps and of the
Corps of Engineers, as well as procuring certain standardized articles
for the Signal Corps and the Ordnance Department, thus bringing under a
single head all the purchase, storage, and distribution agencies of the
army. In order to make this extremely involved relationship a little
clearer, I ought to explain, perhaps, that the Office of the Director
of Purchase and Storage is one of the three chief operating branches of
the Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Division of the General Staff, the
others being the Office of the Director of Traffic and the Office of the
Director of Finance.