required for the equipment of our soldiers, the Quartermaster Corps
purchasing 33,000,000 pairs of shoes, 6,500,000 pairs of gloves, and
nearly 3,000,000 leather jerkins, in addition to enormous quantities
of harness, saddlery, and other equipment. It was early recognized,
therefore, that it was as vitally necessary to save every foot of
leather as it was to conserve every pound of wool, so, in pursuance of
this policy, the Hide and Leather Control Board was formed. This board
not only put a check on the use of leather for non-military purposes
by restricting the variety of styles in civilian shoes and by similar
measures, but it guaranteed an adequate supply of leather to those
manufacturers engaged on army contracts. It also maintained a small army
of inspectors to examine the leather at the tanneries as well as the
finished products of the shoe, clothing, and harness factories, thereby
guaranteeing the quality of the material and frequently improving it.
Generally speaking, no action was taken which affected the hide or
leather business without calling into consultation the members of the
particular trade concerned and coming to an agreement with them as to the
quality and price. This procedure, which was followed throughout the war,
did much to eliminate all friction and misunderstandings, and enormously
speeded up production.
Hanging always over the heads of the board was the menace of a leather
shortage, and its members lay awake nights devising plans by which
such a calamity could be averted. To illustrate the seriousness of the
situation, it was estimated in July, 1918, that in another twelvemonth
something like 13,000,000 hides would be required for the use of the
army alone. As this is the entire output of hides in the United States,
it was realized that were the war to continue through the winter,
there would be no leather left in the United States by spring. Faced
by this critical situation, the board called to its aid the foremost
tanners, shoe and harness manufacturers in the country, and it was due
to their services in checking up the figures submitted by the trade, in
keeping down the manufacture of non-essential articles, in unearthing
thitherto unsuspected sources of leather supply, and in introducing more
economical methods of cutting, that during the latter months of the war
the army rarely lacked for leather equipment. I have already told how
great economies in the consumption of leather were effected by the
substitution of cotton webbing in the manufacture of certain articles.
During the second spring of the war the women of America suddenly found
that they were no longer able to obtain the extremely high-topped boots
which were then the fashion, while men had to content themselves with
plain instead of “wing” tipped shoes. The leather thus saved was used in
the manufacture of footwear, gloves, and jerkins for the men who were
offering their lives in the trenches in order that the people at home
who wore the high-topped boots and the wing-tipped shoes might continue
to live in safety. Many persons have wondered why officers serving in
the United States were not authorized to wear the Sam Browne belt. I can
give them one of the reasons. It was because the necessary leather could
not be spared for a purpose which was, after all, purely ornamental.
As a result of this admirable system of supervision and control the
Quartermaster Corps was not only able to fill with reasonable promptness
the requirements of our troops overseas, but when the Armistice was
signed, it had enough leather equipment, either manufactured or in
process of manufacture, to supply an army of 5,000,000 men.
In none of its innumerable forms of endeavor did the Quartermaster Corps
more strikingly demonstrate its genius as a manufacturer than in the
design and production of the army shoe. Before the war our soldiers wore
a machine-sewed shoe of russet calf lined with duck, very similar to
civilian footwear of the better grade. Shortly after the beginning of
hostilities, however, the War Department adopted a new and much stouter
shoe. This new model had a much heavier upper than the old one, with
the flesh or rough side out and the grain side in, and with no lining,
while, instead of a single sole, as in the old shoe, two heavy soles were
used, the bottoms of which were thickly studded with hobnails. But even
these, formidable in appearance as they were, did not prove stout enough
to stand up under the incredible wear of trench warfare, so there was
finally developed the so-called “Pershing shoe.” These really should have
been classified as tanks instead of shoes, for they could go anywhere,
they could withstand any amount of use or abuse, and they were, literally
speaking, armored. The “Pershing shoe” has three outer soles which are
fastened to an inner sole of outer-sole quality and thickness, first
by nailing, then by screws, and finally by stitching with heavy linen
thread; the toe is reinforced with a moulded steel plate; both sole and
heel bristle with hobnails, and, as a final touch, the heel has a heavy
steel horseshoe around its edge. It was by long odds the best shoe worn
by any army. In fact, no such footwear was ever produced before. The pity
was that it did not reach our troops sooner.
Before we had been at war a month a most troublesome fact came to light
in connection with the question of shoes. It was found that the old
schedule of sizes was entirely wrong and did not begin to meet the new
conditions. In the old army the individual men were carefully selected
according to a certain standard of measurement, and it was, therefore,
a simple matter to fit them with shoes from a comparatively restricted
range of sizes. But the millions of men who were called to the colors
by the draft represented all types except the physically defective. In
the ranks of the recruits a 250-pound policeman who had spent the better
part of his life on his feet would be found shoulder to shoulder with an
anæmic-looking little clerk who had spent most of his life perched on an
office-stool. A man whose feet had always been incased in the flexible
pumps of a professional dancer might find himself rubbing elbows with
a cow-puncher who wore high-heeled Mexican boots and who had always
lived in the saddle. As the raw levies began to round into shape at the
training-camps, it was found that clerks, professional men, and others
who had not been accustomed to working in the open air developed in size
with amazing rapidity. This was particularly true of the men’s feet, for
after a few long hikes with a full pack, a recruit could not squeeze his
feet into shoes of a size which he had theretofore worn with perfect
comfort. This meant that an entire new series of models and lasts had to
be made, running up to unheard-of sizes, as, for example, 17-EEE! The
standard sizes of the army shoe at present range in length from 5 to 15
and in width from A to EE, thus making it necessary to carry each style
of shoe in _one hundred and twenty sizes_.
Now, no article of clothing can cause such acute discomfort and so
quickly affect a man’s disposition, and consequently his morale, as
an ill-fitting shoe. The Germans were the first to appreciate the
importance to an army of caring for the men’s feet, and with their
customary thoroughness took steps to prevent foot-trouble from the
very beginning of the war. I remember remarking, when I was with the
Ninth German Army during the first weeks of the invasion in 1914, that
following each regiment of infantry was a huge motor-truck carrying a
complete pedicure establishment—a sort of chiropodist’s office on wheels.
Whenever a soldier developed a bunion or a corn or an ingrown nail,
whenever his boots pinched his toes or chafed his heel, he fell out of
the ranks and waited for the pedicure wagon—I don’t remember the German
name for it—to come along, climbed up, sat in a chair, and the attending
chiropodist tended his feet and, if necessary, issued him another pair
of boots. “The feet of the soldiers?” said a German general to whom I
mentioned the matter. “They no longer belong to them after the Empire
goes to war—they belong to the Emperor. A soldier is no more permitted
to abuse his feet than he is to abuse his rifle. They must always be in
condition for marching and for fighting the Emperor’s battles.”
Profiting by the example of our enemy, we exercised the utmost care in
fitting our men with footwear. As the result of examinations conducted at
a number of training-camps, it was found that out of nearly 60,000 men
examined, slightly more than 71 per cent were wearing shoes which were
too long and nearly 10 per cent shoes which were too short, only one man
in five having shoes of the proper size. These figures were sufficient
to demonstrate to the War Department the necessity for extraordinary care
in the fitting of soldiers’ shoes, and led to the establishment at Camp
Meigs, D. C., and Jefferson Barracks, Mo., of schools for foot-measuring
and shoe-fitting. Two officers from every camp and cantonment in the
United States were detailed to take this course of instruction, which
lasted five days and consisted of lectures, demonstrations of the various
appliances, and practical training, the latter being acquired by each
officer actually measuring and fitting a thousand men with army shoes
under the direction of competent instructors.
* * * * *
The coal which was required for heating and cooking in the various camps
and cantonments both in the United States and France, the coke which was
used at our arsenals in the production of ordnance, the gasoline which
drove our trucks, tractors, tanks, and airplanes, and the oils which
lubricated them, were all procured through the Fuel Branch of the Fuel
and Forage Division of the Office of the Quartermaster-General, which
in October, 1918, was converted into the Raw Materials Division of the
Office of the Director of Purchase and Storage, without, however, in
any way affecting its functions. From its creation by the President
in August, 1917, until the close of the war, the United States Fuel
Administration worked in closest harmony with the Fuel Branch of the
Quartermaster Department in supplying the enormous fuel requirements
of our fighting forces. The procedure was roughly as follows: The Fuel
Branch first ascertained the probable requirements of every camp, post,
and station for each month of the fiscal year, and upon receipt of these
estimates it would request the Fuel Administration to allocate to the
respective camps the tonnages required. Pursuant to these requests, the
Fuel Administration would instruct its District Representatives to place
the necessary orders with the various coal-shippers, the regulation of
shipments and similar matters thenceforth being handled by the District
Representatives directly with the Camp Quartermasters. With the abolition
of the Fuel Administration at the end of the war, the task of supplying
the army with coal and coke devolved upon the officers in charge of the
various General Supply Zones into which the United States is now divided.
The prime importance to the army of gasoline and lubricants was made
clear by General Pershing when he placed them, with food and forage,
in the first division of the automatic supply cable which governed and
controlled the movement of all supplies that had to go forward daily to
the combat troops on the line. To procure and maintain an adequate supply
of petroleum products, and to devise and standardize these products,
there was created the Oil Branch of the Fuel and Forage Division of
the Quartermaster Corps. Many interesting problems were successfully
solved by the Oil Branch, which received assistance of the greatest
value from the producers and refiners. Though the oil producing and
refining concerns of the United States have repeatedly been characterized
by politicians and by the press as “soulless corporations,” their
patriotism throughout the great emergency was shown by the fact that
their interest and efforts did not end with providing what the government
asked for, but every one connected with them, from their presidents down,
regarded the matter of supplying the army as a personal responsibility,
suggesting many valuable changes, improvements, and economies based on
their technical knowledge and experience.
For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the oil industry, I ought to
explain that there are many grades of gasoline, differing in character
or in method of production. Commercial gasoline, for automobile use,
included grades known as “straight-run,” “casing-head,” “blended,”
“pressure still,” and “cracked.” In order to standardize gasoline for
army use the Fuel and Forage Division worked out, with the co-operation
of the refiners, certain specifications, with the result that a gasoline
called “Quartermaster Specification” was adopted as a standard fuel. It
is known as “428° gasoline,” and is used for motor cars, trucks, tanks,
and cycles. For aviation purposes three other grades were produced;
two of which, 257° “Fighting Naphtha” and 302° “Export Aviation,” were
furnished only to the American Expeditionary Forces. “Fighting Naphtha”
is the highest refinement of gasoline ever produced in quantity, being
produced by “rerunning” Export Aviation and taking off the “cream”
of that extremely high-grade fuel. To distinguish it as the finest
motor-fuel in existence and to prevent its indiscriminate use, a small
amount of aniline dye was added to color it red. Its use was confined
to scout and battle planes, thus giving our flying-fighters an immense
superiority over those of our allies or of the enemy, and thereby lending
them the confidence which is required for daring deeds. Indeed, many a
Hun flier was brought to earth, many a D. S. C. was won, as much by the
qualities of the scarlet fuel as by the courage of the aviator. Who says
that there is no romance in gasoline?
* * * * *
Though this is the greatest horse-breeding nation in the world, and
though Americans fondly think of themselves as a nation of horsemen,
no one of the warring countries found itself so utterly unprepared in
respect to remounts as the United States. The importance with which the
War Department had regarded the question is best illustrated by the fact
that at the outbreak of the war remount matters were in charge of one
officer, with two civilian clerks, as a subsection of the Transportation
Branch of the Quartermaster-General’s Office. For a number of years prior
to the war repeated efforts had been made by enthusiastic horsemen, both
in the army and out of it, to induce the government to undertake the
breeding of cavalry and artillery mounts on a large scale, or at least to
encourage their breeding by farmers, as has been done for centuries by
certain of the European nations. But the parsimony of Congress, combined
with the lack of vision of officers high in the military councils of the
nation, blocked all these plans, and though one or two government studs
were established with animals presented by public-spirited breeders,
so little of real value was accomplished that of the 458,000 animals
purchased during the war by the Remount Service, only about 5,000 were
horses bred specially for military purposes.
Upon the outbreak of the war it became necessary, therefore, to scour the
country for suitable animals, which had, perforce, to be purchased in
the open market, which had already been gone over with a fine-tooth comb
by British, French, Italians, and Russians, all of whom had maintained
remount commissions in this country from the very beginning of the
conflict. Fortunately for us, under the circumstances, the requirements
of the Expeditionary Forces were confined to officers’ mounts, artillery
horses and mules, only one regiment of cavalry, in addition to the
headquarters troops of the various divisions, being sent overseas. There
were, however, demands for large numbers of horses for the use of the two
cavalry divisions which were in process of organization in this country,
and for the cavalry regiments which were kept on patrol duty along the
Mexican border.
As soon as it became apparent that it would be necessary for the
government to make large purchases of horses and mules, hundreds of
horse-breeders, racing and hunting men and polo-players offered their
services as purchasing agents. Some fifty of these gentlemen, as
shrewd judges of horse-flesh as the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, the
hunting-fields of Long Island and Virginia, and the show-rings and
race-courses of the great cities could produce, were given commissions as
captains in the Quartermaster Corps, and were sent to the headquarters
of the various purchasing zones for a short period of practical
instruction in the type of horse required by the army, and in army
methods generally, before being sent on the road to purchase animals. How
efficiently and conscientiously these officers, unaccustomed to military
methods, performed their duties is shown by the exceptionally high class
of animals which they purchased and shipped to the various auxiliary
remount depots, where they were trained and conditioned for army use. As
the dearth of tonnage placed a limit on the number of animals which could
be shipped overseas, a number of remount officers were sent to Europe,
where large purchases of live stock were made, about 110,000 horses and
10,000 mules being bought from the French, some 12,000 horses and 6,000
mules from the British, and upward of 12,000 mules—the big, 16-hand
Andalusians—in Spain.
At the beginning of the war there were only three remount depots in the
United States—at Front Royal, Virginia, Fort Keogh, Montana, and Fort
Reno, Oklahoma—together with auxiliary depots at Fort Bliss and Fort
Sam Houston in Texas, but with the rapid expansion of the forces it was
found necessary to establish an auxiliary remount depot adjacent to each
of the thirty-three camps and cantonments of the National Guard and the
National Army. This naturally necessitated an enormous increase in the
Remount Service personnel, which shortly before the Armistice numbered
400 officers and 19,000 enlisted men. As the war progressed it became
increasingly difficult for the Remount Service to meet the demands
made by the auxiliary depots for officers, for the available supply
of amateur horsemen who had volunteered their services quickly became
exhausted, many of them going into other branches of the army. In order
to meet this demand camps were organized at Camp Joseph E. Johnston, near
Jacksonville, Florida, and at Camp Shelby, Hattiesburg, Mississippi,
where enlisted men who possessed the necessary qualifications were
trained for commissions as officers. There was also established at Camp
Johnston a mobilization camp for the organization and training of Field
Remount Depots, but as this organization did not prove sufficiently
flexible, there was authorized a smaller unit, known as a Field Remount
Squadron, consisting of 6 officers and 157 enlisted men, it being
estimated that one squadron would be required for every replacement
of 400 animals. And replacements were, of necessity, frequent, it
having been estimated that the average life of a horse in France was
only sixteen days. There were organized at Camp Johnston a total of
sixty-three Field Remount Squadrons, three wagon companies, and twelve
pack-trains, of which all but seventeen squadrons saw service abroad.
The enlisted personnel of these squadrons consisted of drafted men who
were carefully selected because of their knowledge of horses, most of
them having been farmers, ranchmen, cow-punchers, and, in a few cases,
jockeys. Provision was also made for training the enlisted specialists
attached to each squadron, schools being established for horse-shoers,
saddlers, farriers, teamsters, and squadron clerks. Indeed, there was
no more interesting sight at a cantonment than the Remount Depot, where
bronco-busters, fresh from the ranges, could be seen breaking unruly
horses in the “bull-pens,” while veteran packers and plainsmen gave
instruction to classes of raw recruits in the art of harnessing and
driving a six-horse “swing” or of throwing the “diamond hitch.”
* * * * *
The chief function of the Quartermaster Corps might be described, I
suppose, as spending. It was, in fact, barring the Ordnance Department,
the greatest spending agency in America, if not in the world, during
the war. Not many persons are aware, however, I imagine, that it has a
division whose sole purpose is saving. I refer to the Salvage Division.
This was the only organization in the army which turned waste into
profit. It was a ragpicker, a garbage-collector, a junk-dealer, and an
ole-clothes man combined. While certain departments of the government
seized on the great emergency to spend money like a drunken sailor, as
the politicians put it, the Salvage Service was as systematic a saver as
the late Russell Sage. And, like that famous financier, it was able to
show something for its savings—to be exact, something over $100,000,000.
It had a perfect passion for economy. It saved everything, from the
pieces clipped from a soldier’s overcoat when it was shortened to the
food which he left on his plate. Nothing was too large or too small
to escape it. Indeed, the members of the Salvage Service should have
adopted for their shoulder-badge a design showing an ever-open eye.
If a locomotive was utterly demolished in a railway wreck the men of
the Salvage Service appeared on the scene almost before the wheels had
stopped turning and collected the splintered remnants. If a soldier
tossed a pair of worn-out socks into the garbage-barrel, the Salvage
Service fished them out and used them for something or other. In France
it saved and sorted the millions of sand-bags which lined the parapets
of the trenches; it untangled and rerolled for future use the millions
of feet of twisted, rusted barbed wire which formed the entanglements
in front of the trenches; it gathered and sorted and sent back for
reloading the empty shells from the field-guns; it fumigated and cleaned
and pressed the soldiers’ uniforms; it washed their shirts and socks and
underwear; it mended their shoes; it transformed their obsolete campaign
hats into felt slippers, and both in this country and abroad it collected
the waste from the mess-tables as well as introducing various methods of
food-saving; it operated hundreds of camp and mobile laundries, where for
a dollar a month a soldier could have washed all the clothing he wished;
it ran farms and truck-gardens at the camps and cantonments in order to
supply the troops with fresh vegetables; it maintained printing-shops,
wagon-repair shops, carpentry-shops, and paint-shops, and just as the
Treasury Department appealed to the country to “Buy! Buy! Buy!” so the
Salvage Service, by means of posters and placards, appealed to the army
to “Save! Save! Save!”
In the happy, careless, easy-going days before the war, the question of
repairing the worn shoes and clothing of the soldiers was not considered
of sufficient importance to merit even passing attention from the War
Department. The army was small, material was plentiful, and the clothing
belonged to the soldier. The government issued a man a uniform and out
of his pay required him to keep it clean and in repair; if his clothing
did not present a neat appearance, he received a reprimand or a court
martial. When his shoes wore out he had to have them mended at his own
expense—all out of the munificent salary of fifteen dollars a month!
But under the new system, introduced at the beginning of the war, the
soldier’s clothing is the property of the government, and the government
undertakes to keep it clean and in repair. And that is where the work of
the Salvage Service comes in.
[Illustration: AMERICAN SALVAGE DUMP IN FRANCE.
“The salvage service had a perfect passion for economy.”]