|Peace--500,000|War--5,000,000
| men. | men.
-------------------------------------------+--------------+--------------
Surgical dressings | $3,059,525| $121,230,924
Textiles, hospital supplies | 880,124| 70,682,673
Miscellaneous hospital supplies | 230,477| 12,626,848
Medicines, etc | 1,969,901| 18,431,614
Hospital furniture and equipment | 500,000| 16,600,184
Surgical instruments | 200,000| 34,727,863
Dental instruments, equipment, and supplies| 150,000| 6,256,482
X-ray, equipment, and supplies | 200,000| 5,004,900
Field supplies | 300,000| 3,604,695
Veterinary | 701,692| 6,656,894
Laboratory | 852,673| 7,858,004
Stationery | 159,183| 2,228,634
+--------------+--------------
Total | 9,203,575| 305,909,715
-------------------------------------------+--------------+--------------
Civilian experts in various lines of medical supplies were brought
into the organization to supply the wide range of specialized
knowledge required in such a universal buying program as the Medical
Department was about to conduct. Before the war the Army's purchases
of instruments for oral and brain surgery, orthopedic supplies, Dakin
outfits, and other special apparatus were practically negligible.
During the war period these purchases amounted to millions of dollars.
It may be seen readily that the purchasing office had to possess more
than a superficial understanding of the materials to be bought.
Orders customarily went to the lowest bidders, with a careful review in
Washington of all prices named in contracts. The inspection of material
was an important phase of the work. This inspection was handled through
the New York Medical Supply Depot, which called in as assistants the
United States Board of Customs Appraisers at New York City. That corps
of men had had long years of experience in inspecting and determining
the value of surgical supplies, as most of these supplies in the past
had come through the customhouse from foreign countries. The inspection
of drugs was handled by the Medical Department's laboratories, the Army
Medical School, and by the Bureau of Standards, which rendered valuable
assistance in examining and testing samples. In addition the Medical
Department maintained a corps of inspectors to travel from one factory
to another, keeping in close touch with the progress and assisting in
procuring raw materials and expediting deliveries.
The medical supplies were divided under the following classifications:
(_a_) Hospital equipment, such as beds, bedside tables, enamelware, etc.
(_b_) Surgical dressings.
(_c_) Surgical instruments.
(_d_) Medicines, antiseptics, and disinfectants.
(_e_) Field supplies (chests and units for extended field service).
(_f_) Dental supplies.
(_g_) Veterinary supplies.
(_h_) Laboratory supplies.
(_i_) Motor ambulance supplies.
(_j_) X-ray supplies.
The New York depot was intrusted with the purchase of miscellaneous
hospital equipment and dental and X-ray supplies. The St. Louis depot
purchased the veterinary supplies, and the field medical supply depot
at Washington purchased the laboratory and field supplies. The motor
ambulance supply depot, established at Louisville, Ky., purchased
ambulances and ambulance spare parts. Appreciating the necessity for
a certain amount of cooperation where the purchase of conflicting
articles by the various depots was concerned, the general purchasing
office of the Medical Department was organized at Washington. This
purchasing office bought all surgical dressings, surgical instruments,
and medicines and such items as were used in the field, post,
veterinary, and dental stations.
In connection with the production of surgical instruments in this
country it was necessary for the Medical Department to educate in
the manufacture of these instruments certain concerns which had been
engaged in the production of similar devices. Men skilled in the
manufacture of instruments, with long years of experience, were sent
to these factories to work out with the forces there satisfactory
processes. It was necessary to recruit toolmakers, jewelers, and
cutlery manufacturers in order to build up a sufficient supply of
forged and finished instruments.
Surgical needles, for instance, had never been made in this country,
but had all been obtained in England. As a war measure the British
Government placed this item on its list of restricted exports. After
long and continued effort the general purchasing office developed
American sources of supply of needles with remarkable success.
In one month we shipped 65 tons of surgical instruments to France. A
few of the principal instruments, quantities purchased, and the prices
paid were as follows:
Average
cost, each.
1,301,476 hæmostatic forceps $1.04
284,600 tissue forceps .59
348,500 minor operating knives .57
225,000 probes .047
309,548 surgical scissors .741
2,102 general operating cases 159.55
3,400 small operating cases 45.30
10,000 instrument cases for officers' belts 5.28
300,000 enlisted men's belt cases 1.35
Each general operating case contains more than 50 instruments and the
small operating case more than 30 instruments, and in these two items
alone are more than 207,000 forgings, practically all handwork.
The quantity of surgical dressings used in peace times was relatively
small, so that the sources for supplying this material had to be
increased enormously. To do this the Government went out into the
cotton goods industry and induced such concerns as curtain makers and
manufacturers of waists and white goods to make bandages for surgical
uses. The Government obtained the raw material, gray gauze, and
turned it over to the various manufacturers for bleaching, cutting,
sterilizing, and packing in the necessary cartons.
Among other items during the last year of the war a total of 12,000,000
individual dressing packets were purchased and 795,000 boxes of gauze
bandages, 574,400,000 yards of bandage, 10,000,000 first-aid packets,
and 108,000,000 yards of gauze. During the same period a total quantity
of 3,814,000 pounds of absorbent cotton was also bought.
Among the miscellaneous items obtained were approximately 1,600,000
blankets, 258,000 litters, and over 1,000,000 clinical thermometers.
The rate of output of clinical thermometers was not all that the
Medical Department thought it should be, and as a result a large
quantity of thermometers was obtained on mandatory orders.
The heaviest buying period during the war was between July 1 and
November 30, 1918. The supplies purchased or ordered in that period
were the following, with their costs:
Medicines, antiseptics, and disinfectants $19,728,715
Hospital furniture and equipment 8,220,297
Hospital supplies, textiles 69,321,787
Hospital supplies, miscellaneous 1,808,465
Surgical instruments 6,576,238
Surgical dressings 75,762,383
X-ray equipment and supplies 2,466,089
Dental equipment and supplies 4,932,178
Laboratory equipment and supplies 2,301,683
Veterinary equipment and supplies 3,258,119
Motor ambulances and supplies 25,625,000
It is interesting to note that the purchases made in France for the
Medical Department consisted mostly of large and bulky items, mainly
hospital furniture and equipment, which, if transported from the United
States, would necessitate the use of considerable valuable cargo space.
Foreign purchases were made primarily to save ship space and not
because of any shortage or failure to function in this country.
Although America is famous throughout the world for her dentists and
dentistry, yet the participation of this country in the war created a
demand for dental supplies that the American manufacturing facilities
in existence in 1917 were unable to fill. For that reason it was
necessary to extend the production capacity. The manufacturers in the
trade rose to the occasion, and as a result the Government was able
to supply to the A. E. F. from the United States all dental materials
required, the only purchases made in France being of exceedingly bulky
apparatus.
The total amount allotted for dental supplies for an army of 5,000,000
men in 1919 was $6,256,482. During the five months between July 1 and
November 30, 1918, the dental purchases amounted to approximately
$5,000,000.
The six leading dental items purchased by the Medical Department and
the quantity and cost of each were as follows:
-------------------------+--------------+--------
Items. | Quantity. | Cost,
| | each.
-------------------------+--------------+--------
Tooth-extracting forceps | 47,319 | $2.86
Dental Chairs: | |
Hospital Equipment | 1,112 | 167.06
Portable | 3,200 | 49.00
Lathes: | |
Unique | 110 | 10.00
Electric | 70 | 43.96
Fountain cuspidors | 1,253 | 32.51
Burs | 3,836,776 | .081
Engines: | |
Portable | 1,790 | 63.00
Electric | 814 | 122.80
-------------------------+--------------+--------
CHAPTER VI.
SALVAGE.
Tables of statistics are apt to be tiresome affairs; but in the annals
of the War Department, as part of the record of the American Army in
the great war, there is a table of statistics that is replete with
human interest. This is the table which depicts the activities of the
salvage operations of the Army, both at home and abroad.
Until the war came to America and brought to us the necessity of being
provident, thrift and economy could not be called characteristic
American qualities. As virtues in the individual we were apt to despise
them. Paris can live on what New York throws away, runs the old saying.
For the prudent man we invented opprobrious names. Such names and
phrases were but the surface outcroppings of a national tendency to be
wasteful.
But the war came along to put a stop to waste and to raise thrift high
in the esteem of America. Partly because of the mounting prices of food
and clothing and partly because of well-organized and well-conducted
propaganda on the part of various agencies of the Government, chief
among them being the United States Food Administration and the Liberty
Bond and War Saving Stamp organizations of the Treasury Department,
America began to practice economy in the use of materials.
How much of the credit for the change can be claimed by the Government
itself we may never know; but this may be said--in urging the people
to save materials in their own homes, the Government did not, as it
had done in previous wars, allow the traditional wastes of military
campaigns. The Government practiced what it preached. It cleaned up its
own back yard and utilized every scrap of useful material. It mended
the shoes and clothing of the Army; it darned the socks; it tinkered
the tin cans; it starved the garbage pails by economy in the mess
kitchens and recovered the valuable components of garbage at rendering
plants; it collected the junk; it swept the stables and put the manure
on the land, and then produced crops from the increased fertility.
All of these adventures in conservation and reclamation were known to
the Army simply as Salvage; which after all was but the scientific
attention which the Army paid to the "p's" and "q's" of military
housekeeping--it was household economy on the scale of a family of
3,500,000 members.
The figures of the Army's thrift are most impressive. The figures of
our war salvage are as follows:
_Financial summary of the activities of the salvage service in
France for 1918._
------------------------------+--------------------------
Depots and shops. | Kitchen economics branch.
----------+-------------------+-----------+--------------
Month. | Value of output. | Month. | Recoveries.
----------+-------------------+-----------+--------------
January | No record | May | $1,350.65
February | No record | June | 17,881.03
March | $850,000.00 | July | 74,167.31
April | 900,000.00 | August | 23,581.20
May | 1,500,000.00 | September | 35,677.03
June | 2,000,000.00 | October | 109,013.84
July | 3,500,000.00 | November | 120,158.63
August | 5,500,000.00 | December | 92,685.43
September | 7,251,512.40 | +--------------
October | 8,007,980.39 | Total | 474,515.12
November | 8,072,042.08 | |
December | 9,436,839.14 | |
+-------------------| |
Total | 47,018,374.01 | |
----------+-------------------+-----------+--------------
_Battle-field recoveries._
October $8,000,000.00
November 4,000,000.00
December 3,100,000.00
-------------
Total 15,100,000.00
_Capitulation of salvage activities in France for year 1918._
Value of output, depots and shops $47,018,374.01
Battle-field recoveries 15,100,000.00
Kitchen economies 474,515.12
Waste sales 39,680.23
Rubber salvaged, 1,591,585 pounds, at estimated
value of 10 cents per pound 159,156.50
Wool cloth shipped to British, 359,920 pounds,
at estimated value of 20 cents per pound 71,984.00
Lumber salvaged, 1,737,940 board feet 69,025.20
--------------
Total 62,932,735.06
_Financial summary of the activities of the salvage service in
the United State from Apr. 1 to Dec. 31, 1918._
-------------------+----------+-------------+---------------+--------------
| | Estimated | Estimated |
Activity. | Total | cost | value |Estimated net
| articles.| of service. | reclaimed | saving.
| | | articles. |
-------------------+----------+-------------+---------------+--------------
Clothing, shoe, | | | |
and hat repair |12,635,458|$7,103,940.00| $37,632,158.05|$30,528,218.05
Cot repair | 486,892| 779,027.20| 1,752,811.20| 973,784.00
Canvas repair | 122,480| 611,900.00| 3,023,418.79| 2,411,518.79
+----------+-------------+---------------+--------------
Total | | | | 33,913,520.84
| | | |
Dry-cleaning | | | |
operations | 4,686,415| 2,247,292.52| |[35]166,233.29
Government laundry | | | |
operations |72,263,964| 1,888,823.93[36]3,115,847.31| 1,227,023.38
+----------+-------------+---------------+--------------
Grand total | | | | 35,306,777.51
|
DISPOSITION OF WASTE MATERIAL |
|
Estimated value of material turned over to organisations | 941,709.00
Cash sales: |
Scrap material from June 1 to Dec. 31 $1,194,395.01 |
Garbage, May 1 to Dec 31 414,832.60 |
Dead animals, May 1 to Dec. 31 7,043.91 |
Manure, May 1 to Dec. 31 225,227.29 |
Condemned hay, straw, etc., May 1 to 50,158.92 |
Dec. 31 |
--------------+
Total | 1,891,657.73
Farm products invoiced to quartermaster, May 1 to Dec. 31 | 107,271.79
+--------------
Estimated net saving to Government | 38,247,416.03
------------------------------------------------------------+--------------
[35] On articles dry cleaned in Government shops.
[36] Receipts and operating credits.
A consolidation of these figures shows that the total amount returned
to the Government in money value by the savings of the salvage service
of the Army for the single calendar year of 1918 was $101,180,151. With
this figure some interesting comparisons may be made.
In 1912, to meet every expense of the American standing Army,
Congress appropriated $99,676,767.43; in 1913 the appropriations were
$100,292,855.04. Salvage, reclaiming the materials once wasted and
using them over again, saved enough in 1918 to have maintained the
entire Military Establishment in 1912 or 1913.
But there is even a more striking comparison. During the fiscal year of
1898--the Spanish-American War year--the entire appropriations for the
support of the Army amounted to $70,394,739.96. Salvage in 1918 saved
$30,000,000 more than was appropriated to fight the Spanish-American
War up to July 1, 1898, at which date the fighting was nearly over.
Take the cost of clothing the Army raised to fight against Spain, and
add to it the appropriations for clothing the Army and equipping it
with shoes, leather and rubber goods, and textile equipment for the
years 1913, 1914, 1915, 1916, and 1917, and you have a total Government
expenditure of $100,050,271.65. The savings of salvage in 1918 could
pay this entire cost with $1,129,880 to spare.
It cost $20,280,000 for the clothing and equipage of the Army for
the year ending June 30, 1917, at which date the war with Germany
had begun. Salvage in the United States alone in 1918 saved to the
Government $17,967,416 more than this appropriation.
Salvage undertakings touched intimately every soldier in the Army. This
service which taught economy in the use of materials could with equal
facility operate a laundry or dry-cleaning plant, or run a farm, or
drive a good bargain in the sale of junk, or return goods that did not
meet specifications and be reimbursed for them.
Wherever the experts of the service saw a leak through which the
Government's money might flow out, they plugged it. An innovation in
warfare as we knew it, it had to fight its way against prejudice at
the start, but it developed what formerly was waste and a liability
into a tremendous asset. Yet when the armistice came salvage had only
commenced to show its possibilities. It had merely scratched the
surface, but it had opened up unlimited fields for utilizing worn-out
or unserviceable products or by-products of war. It had saved thousands
of tons of shipping space in the transportation of supplies to the
American Expeditionary Forces by using over again in France the things
that otherwise would have had to be replaced by new; it saved this
tonnage at the time when every ton saved counted heavily. In this and
in the saving of materials at a time when all the raw materials of the
earth would scarcely meet the insatiable demands of Moloch, the value
of salvage can scarcely be measured by the money figures of its record.
SALVAGE IN THE UNITED STATES.
War salvage in the United States started on October 5, 1917, when the
conservation branch was created in the Quartermaster Department. It
started with an executive force of two commissioned officers and one
stenographer. When the armistice was signed about 13 months later, the
salvage service in the United States alone had a force of approximately
500 commissioned officers, 20,000 enlisted men, and 2,000 civilian
employees.
In this period the method of clothing and feeding the American soldier
had been revolutionized. The old way was to issue a uniform to a
soldier and hold him responsible for the repair and cleaning of it.
He owned his uniform and had to keep it in good condition at his own
expense out of the $15 per month the Government paid him. The new way
was for the Government itself to retain ownership of the uniform and
to repair and clean it at public expense. The soldier was required to
pay only for his laundry work at a uniform charge of $1 per month, much
under what he would have had to pay at commercial rates.
Formerly the soldier had to repair his own shoes. The soldier prefers
repaired shoes to new ones for campaign service because the former
are broken in and are comfortable. After the salvage service was
established the Government retained ownership of Army shoes and
repaired them at Government expense.
Once the Army seldom conducted sales of the boxes and crates in which
supplies were packed. Salvage undertook such sales, thereby bringing
considerable revenue to the Army.
But in these and similar economies, it was not so much the saving
of money that was important as it was the saving of materials at a
time when the supply of all materials was scarcely adequate to the
war demands. When our troops first reached France the officers were
surprised at the emphasis placed upon salvage operations by the British
and French armies. They were soon to learn that salvage was stressed
because it supplied materials which were scarce. Glycerine, a component
of high explosives, had become so short in supply that the British
Ministry of Munitions paid as much as $1,250 a ton for it. The British
army distilled its garbage and procured from the operation glycerine at
a cost of $250 per ton. This was a financial saving of $1,000 a ton;
but, more important, it supplied glycerine at the time when money did
not count. The British Ministry of Munitions got the glycerine, which
meant explosives for use against the Germans, which was the main thing.
The British appreciated the importance of salvage so much that one of
the officers sent with the British mission to the United States early
in the war was a salvage expert, included in the mission so that we
might early have the benefit of the British experience in this work.
Although the salvage service of America was authorized in the autumn
of 1917, it was not until winter was declining into the spring of 1918
that the service became a working organization fully clothed with
authority. Consequently its record was accomplished within a period of
9 or 10 months. The purpose and ideals of the service were embodied
in its code, known as special regulations No. 77, promulgating rules
and regulations for the conservation and reclamation of Army supplies
and materials. The principal provisions of these regulations were as
follows:
(_a_) The repair of clothing and equipage.
(_b_) Laundering and dry cleaning of clothing and equipage.
(_c_) Supervision of contracts for the renovation of clothing
and equipage.
(_d_) The development of agricultural, mineral, and forest
lands for the benefit of the Army.
(_e_) The organization, discipline, and training of men of
special units, companies, battalions, and regiments for salvage
work.
These regulations likewise--
(_a_) Created salvage companies of 7 officers and 588 enlisted
men each, based on a camp strength of 27,000 troops where all
salvage utilities exist.
(_b_) Provided methods of receiving and disposing of clothing
and equipage turned in for renovation.
(_c_) Provided methods for the conservation of food and the
reduction of waste through a systematic check on the disposal
of garbage.
(_d_) Fixed the responsibility of organization in connection
with salvage work.
(_e_) Provided definite rules and instructions to be followed
by organization commanders and their commands in the care of
clothing and equipage in order that the cost of maintenance
might be reduced to a minimum and that usefulness might be
conserved to the utmost, consistent with the health and well
being of the troops.
(_f_) Provided a basis for the operation and financing of camp
laundries and dry-cleaning plants operated in connection with
base salvage plants.
(_g_) Provided a uniform monthly laundry charge of $1 per
enlisted man at each camp and station where there was a
Government-operated laundry, as well as a uniform charge for
service rendered to officers, civilians, hospitals, and other
camp agencies.
Thus it may be seen that special regulations No. 77 were not only a
charter for the salvage service but a code of conduct in economy and
thrift for the soldier of the American Army. Although the regulations
did not become official until midsummer of 1918, they had a profound
effect in the few months before the fighting in Europe came to an end.
Prior to July 1, 1918, all reports of garbage collection, etc., in the
military camps in this country indicated that the American soldier in
training wasted on the average of 2 pounds of food per day. This was
not excessive, judged by civilian standards, since our large cities, a
great part of whose population are fed not nearly so well as soldiers
were fed in the camps, show a food waste nearly as great. But the
camp waste of food was regarded as excessive by the salvage officers.
Special regulations No. 77 contained minute directions for conserving
food in the camp kitchens. The result of these regulations was that in
the four-month period beginning July 1, 1918, the average mess waste
per man in the camps fell to 0.3 of a pound per day. Since there was an
average strength of 1,500,000 men in training during these four months,
the reduction of waste amounted to many thousands of tons of food.
These regulations also set up a salvage equipment for the use of the
Army. As a rule each camp had a shoe-repair shop large enough to fix
400 to 500 pairs of shoes per day; a clothing-repair shop large enough
to take care of the everyday mending of 30,000 troops; a hat-repair
shop sufficient in size to restore the headgear of 30,000 men; and
other miscellaneous shops.
But at the change of seasons there could be expected an exceptionally
large turn in of worn-out clothing, and to handle these periodical
floods of garments large base salvage plants were established at Fort
Sam Houston, Tex.; Washington, D. C.; Atlanta, Ga.; New York City;
Philadelphia; El Paso; and Newport News, Va.; with a base salvage plant
for rejuvenating shoes at Jeffersonville, Ind. Smaller base plants
were established at Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, and at the
United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., and at
Alcatraz Island, Calif. Other base plants to receive and classify and
dispose of waste materials were established at New York, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Fort Sam Houston, and Atlanta.
The shoe-salvage base plant at Jeffersonville Depot was more than a
repair shop in the accepted sense of the term, for it became one of the
most complete shoe factories to be found anywhere in the country. When
this shop was being projected as a plant to take care of the overflow
of worn shoes from the camps and depots, the United Shoe Machinery Co.
agreed to furnish machinery sufficient to repair 2,000 pairs of shoes
a day, supplying this equipment for a period of six months without any
expense to the Government, except upkeep and the cost of supplies.
At the Jeffersonville shop shoes went through the mill from department
to department much as machines are assembled in the familiar
quantity-production manner. Shoes arriving were first counted, and then
sorted and graded as follows:
Class 1. Unrepairable.
Class 2. Inner soles required.
Class 3. Regular run of repairs (half soles or full soles,
heels, patching of uppers, and other minor repairs).
Class 4. Civilian.
The shoes arriving at this plant were in a condition that would have
resulted in their being discarded altogether in the old days. The
experience at Jeffersonville showed that 65 of each 100 pairs arriving
at the factory could be repaired, and repaired cheaply. In January,
1919, of 132,112 pairs of shoes sorted, 45,000 were in irreparable
condition and had to be thrown away. There were 11,475 pairs of class 2
shoes, 74,362 pairs of class 3, and 1,175 pairs of class 4.
From the sorting room the shoes went to the wash room, where they were
disinfected and cleaned in a bath containing a solution of 40 ounces of
formaldehyde and 1 pound of castile soap to each 10 gallons of water.
After being washed the shoes were placed on rolling racks, each rack
holding 24 pairs of the same size and width. The loaded racks were
wheeled to the lasting section where lasts were inserted according to
sizes.
Next, machines cut off the worn portions of the old heels, after which
the shoes went to the stripping bench, where the old soles were removed
and the shank pieces skived to prepare a smooth joint for the new half
sole. The next process was welting. The welts were prepared, and tarred
felt was glued to the old inner sole to fill out uneven parts and
prevent squeaking. The next operation was to lay on the half sole in a
setting of rubber cement. Another machine rough rounded the soles to
conform with the shape of the shoes.
Then the shoes reached the stitching machines, where the soles were
sewed on, and then the leveling machines, which smoothed out the
wrinkles of the inner soles. The next step brought them to the heeling
machines, where the complete heels were attached in one motion. Next,
machinery for nailing soles and heels, and then the trimming machinery
for smoothing off the work. The final mechanical operation was on
the scouring and finishing machines. Meanwhile, if the shoes needed
patching on the uppers, this work was done by women operating sewing
machines.
The final process was to give the field shoe a thorough coat of
waterproof dubbin. A good polish was put on the russet shoes. A split
leather insole was inserted in each shoe to insure perfect smoothness
of the bottom. A pair of laces was tied to each pair of shoes, and then
the shoes were packed in boxes of 24 pairs each and turned in to the
Army stores.
The Jeffersonville shop repaired 222,135 pairs of shoes in seven months
of operation. Thousands of pairs of shoes were discovered to have been
fitted too short. This was shown by the fact that many of the shoes
were worn out entirely in the toes. A shoe that is too long will turn
up at the toes, while one that is too short will stub with nearly every
step taken.
On August 8, 1918, the Secretary of War authorized the expenditure of
$5,287,852 for the construction of laundries to serve from 20,000
to 40,000 men in each of 20 camps and posts. About this same time
repair shops were authorized at each of the training camps and special
dry-cleaning plants at Atlanta, Fort Sam Houston, El Paso, and Alcatraz
Island. Before the armistice was signed many of these plants were
in operation. In addition to these the salvage service eventually
operated printing plants, wagon repair shops, and carpentry shops, so
that at the time the armistice was signed there was hardly anything
of quartermaster issue not subject to rehabilitation by the salvage
division.
Each shoe-repair shop at the training camps had equipment sufficient
to repair 500 pairs of shoes per day, utilizing the services of 40 to
50 men. When the shops were officially authorized, an inventory of the
Army's old shoes showed there were approximately 1,500,000 pairs on
hand in need of rehabilitation. In order to assist the camp shops in
the work, the salvage service brought between 50 and 55 shoe factories
into the reclamation effort, these private factories repairing about
500,000 pairs until the camp shops were able to catch up.
Because of the shortage of linen thread it was decided to use nails
for attaching half soles, particularly in the repair shops in France.
More than 2,500 nailing machines were bought and shipped to the
American Expeditionary Forces. The American Expeditionary Forces
adopted the English system of company cobblers and regimental repair
shops. Upward of 11,000 cobblers' kits were shipped to France. In July,
1918, the American Expeditionary Forces requested machinery for a base
shoe-repair plant in France. This machinery was shipped considerably
before hostilities ceased.
The service maintained a corps of civilian instructors, who traveled
from camp to camp and improved the efficiency of the Army cobbling. The
accumulation of worn shoes at the embarkation camps was sent to various
contractors for repairs. By November, 1918, the shoe-repair facilities
of the Army had reached full operation, 500,000 pairs of shoes being
repaired that month, a figure representing all the repairing required
by 1,500,000 men. All shoe-repairing activities were under the
direction of Philip H. Fraher, who was assisted by Joseph Caunt, of
Pasadena, Calif., a retired shoe manufacturer with a wide experience
both in this country and in England.
In its clothing-repair activities the salvage service dry-cleaned
uniforms and woolen equipment, repaired and renovated hats, and
reclaimed outer clothing and underclothing.
For the first time in dry-cleaning history, a method was worked out to
destroy all living organisms and a considerable amount of bacteria, a
process which is likely to have a lasting effect in the dry-cleaning
industry. The specifications of this process were the result of
cooperative laboratory research by the Bureau of Standards, the Public
Health Service, and the salvage division. In addition to destroying
germs and bacteria the process also thoroughly cleansed the garments.
Experts from the salvage division were on hand to see to it that the
various contractors lived up to the standard specifications. The
authorized Government-owned dry-cleaning plants, which were to be the
last word in what such establishments should be, were not completed,
due to the signing of the armistice. Dr. Harry E. Mechling, a graduate
physician and president of the Swiss Cleaners & Dyers, of Louisville,
Ky., was in charge of the Army's dry-cleaning activities.
In the repair of clothing the service received much assistance from the
Red Cross. Local Red Cross units in the vicinity of camps worked in
conjunction with the officers of the salvage service in the reclamation
of such garments as woolen shirts, underclothing, sweaters, helmets,
socks, and gloves.
The base salvage plants at Atlanta and Fort Sam Houston reached a high
state of efficiency in the repair of clothing. Shipment after shipment
was made from such congested centers as Newport News and Hoboken to
these plants, and within a comparatively short time the property was
ready for reshipment and reissue. Capt. Harvey A. Rosenthal, a graduate
of the first officers' training school, and in civil life in the
clothing business, was in charge of clothing repairs.
All of the camps had shops for renovating and repairing hats. The
average cost for repairing a hat was 35 cents, whereas the lowest
contract price was 65 cents, and the quality of work at the Government
shops was far better than that obtained from private contractors.
The following table gives an idea of the approximate saving to the
Government in hat-repair operations:
-----------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------
| | Cost of |
Place. | Quantity. | repair of | Estimated
| | each. |total cost.
-----------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------
Government shop | 181,764 | $0.35 | $63,617.00
Contract | 539,495 | .65 | 350,671.00
|-----------+-----------+-----------
| 721,259 | | 414,288.00
-----------------------------+-----------------------+-----------
Estimated value of hats made serviceable $1,000,746
Estimated net saving 586,468
Cost of 721,259 new hats 1,334,329
Mr. E. Leroy Cummings, of the John B. Stetson Co., of Philadelphia, was
in charge of hat-repair activities.
Extensive repairs to canvas materials were confined to the base plants
at Philadelphia, El Paso, Fort Sam Houston, and Atlanta, and, on a
smaller scale, at Jeffersonville. Minor repairs were conducted at camp
shops, some of which were only in the course of construction when
the armistice was signed. Tents were generally reconditioned while
standing. Patches to tents were attached by means of a nitrocellulose
cement, the best cement for the purpose which the salvage service
found, being called vanite. Experiments at the Bureau of Chemistry
resulted in the adoption of three waterproofing compounds named
Preservol, Candeline, and Truscon. These compounds were applied to both
standing tents and tents which had been taken down, with complete and
effective results.
Laundering was not a new activity for the War Department, since when
the war was declared the Government already owned 14 small steam
laundries. Later the Government went into the laundry business on
the scale demanded by the great chain of training camps, building
cantonment laundries at a cost of approximately $300,000 each.
Experienced laundrymen were placed in charge of camp laundries. Through
the cooperation with the Government's insect experts of the Bureau
of Entomology, laundering processes were worked out successfully to
disinfect all clothing while washing it and to free it from vermin
without shrinking fabrics or causing other damage. Government laundries
during the war operated 24 hours per day with three labor shifts and
cleaned an average of 10,909,850 pieces of clothing monthly, with gross
receipts of over $500,000 per month, approximately half of which was
profit.
One of the most interesting features of laundry activity was the
development of mobile laundry units for overseas use near the front.
The men to operate these units were trained in a special school at Camp
Meigs, D. C. Each mobile unit required a crew of 37 men. The men of the
Army nicknamed these special troops the "Fighting Chinamen."
The need of the American Expeditionary Forces for wash-up and delousing
stations at the front, so that even troops engaged in battle might have
clean clothes, called the mobile laundry units into being. The first
experimental equipment was designed and constructed early in 1918.
After that the salvage service produced 50 others, 32 of which were
shipped to France.
Each unit consisted of a large steam tractor and four trailers, an
outfit which on the road made up a train over 100 feet long. The
trailers could be placed together in the field to form a building 30
feet long and 28 feet wide, the tractor acting as the power plant. On
the trailers were washing machines, wringers, drying machines, tanks
for water and soap, a pump, and a dynamo to supply electric lights. One
of these plants working 24 hours per day could do the washing of 10,000
men. This unit was designed by officers of the salvage division.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE ARMY'S MOBILE LAUNDRIES.]
[Illustration: INTERIOR VIEW OF MOBILE LAUNDRY.]
[Illustration: SALVAGING ARMY HATS IN FRANCE.
This photo was taken at Tours, France, 1 February, 1918.]
[Illustration: SALVAGING ARMY SHOES IN FRANCE.
Picture taken at Tours in March, 1918, showing a few shoes worn out by
the soldiers overseas.]
Army laundry activity was in charge of three New York laundrymen:
J. E. Dann, president of the Pilgrim Laundry, of Brooklyn, and his
assistants, William Longfelder, of H. Kohnstamn & Co., and E. D.
Tribbett, of the American Laundry Machinery Co.
Wherever possible waste materials were reclaimed for use by the Army
instead of being sold as junk. This was particularly true of bags and
burlap. Hundreds of thousands of bags and great quantities of burlap
furnished by the salvage division were utilized for army purposes.
Without salvage, all of this would have been thrown away or sold at
junk prices. When the fighting ended the base salvage plant at Chicago
was being equipped to repair about 15,000 bags daily.
The purpose of garbage separation was threefold--the reduction of mess
waste, the increase in revenue to the Government, and the recovery of
glycerine contents for military purposes. Before the war with Germany
the Army regulations required the burning of garbage at camps. When the
great training camps were established, the Government adopted generally
the policy of selling garbage to contractors, except at Camps Fremont,
Hancock, McClellan, Sevier, and Shelby, where it was incinerated.
Originally contracts had been let on a per-man basis, the contracts
extending for several months, comparable to municipal contracts for
the disposal of garbage. Later on, however, the policy was adopted
of letting contracts for periods of one month only, since the number
of men at the camps was continually increasing, and the garbage
grew correspondingly bulkier. It is estimated that this change in
contracting saved the Government considerably over $400,000. Contract
sale prices ranged from 1 cent to 9 cents per man per month, the latter
price in most cases including the manure from the stables.
With a view to obtaining glycerine, the War Department authorized the
construction of 16 garbage-rendering plants at the larger concentration
centers, but only one, that at Camp Lee, was actually constructed,
since it was determined later by an investigation of our national
resources that the amount of glycerine to be obtained in this manner
did not justify the expenditure of the money. Also the project of
establishing piggeries at camps was abandoned, after investigation by
the salvage service, since it would have required 18 months to clear
the investment, and in the meantime the Government would have been
deprived of revenue from the sale of garbage.
The disposition of waste materials was under the direction of Louis
Birkenstein, of Chicago, assisted by R. D. Cunningham, of Troy, N. Y.
In response to an insistent demand that farms be operated at various
camps, the salvage division, on May 15, 1918, secured $60,000 from the
vocational fund for the training of soldiers and allotted sums to 15
camps.
On November 4, 1918, Congress appropriated $250,000 for the same
purpose, but little of this money was expended. The total acreage under
cultivation in 1918 was 3,483, and the equivalent revenue derived
from the camp farms amounted to $108,000. The farm work was under the
direction of Capt. Henry G. Parsons, a practical and scientific farmer.
Salvage activities, in general, in the United States were under the
direction of Philip W. Wrenn, who was chief of the salvage division
during the most active period of its existence.
SALVAGE IN FRANCE.
Salvage in France was under the direction of the chief quartermaster
with the American Expeditionary Forces. At first, it was undertaken
in a smattering way, but as the American Army grew in size, salvage
increased, until the salvage service became one of the features in the
field, with thousands of men and women working in salvage activities,
with salvage plants, branches, and depots, large and small, saving,
repairing, conserving, and putting into shape, ready for reissue,
materials of all sorts and descriptions. The word "salvage" became the
watchword and pride of many an organization at the front.
Each field army had its chief salvage officer. Each division of troops
had its salvage organization under a salvage officer. Each organization
had its salvage dump, in which it took a just pride, and there was a
spirit of friendly rivalry between different organizations as to which
could save the most for the Government.
In the flood times of battle, when waste materials piled up on the
fields, the regular salvage specialists were assisted in various
ways. In some divisions the regimental bands were designated to act
as emergency salvage companies. Sometimes after an engagement whole
battalions and regiments were enlisted to clean up an area, and
there is one instance on record where a wise general of the American
Expeditionary Forces turned out his entire field army to clean up for
salvage the area which it had just won from the enemy. The salvage
service in France handled not only the recovery of quartermaster
supplies, but it also collected and disposed of all materials captured
from the enemy, including ordnance materials, and also all materials
abandoned by our own troops and found on the battle fields. When troops
moved into combat they took with them only such equipment as they
could carry on their backs or on the meager transportation facilities
allowed. Thus they frequently left behind them an enormous quantity of
their possessions; including personal baggage. The salvage units went
through such areas, visited every billet, and collected all Government
and personal property and cared for it. As an indication of the
magnitude of this work, there was one salvage dump in France 40 acres
in area piled as high as goods could be thrown from trucks.
The salvage operations in France were conducted over an area of 4,000
square miles, and there were approximately 4,000 men in the salvage
service field force. The various salvage depots and shops in France
occupied a floor space of 736,000 square feet and had a personnel of
11,632 on December 31, 1918. Even before the war, the Quartermaster
Corps of the Army was a good-sized organization, yet there were more
French women and girls mending clothing for the American Army in France
at one time than there were commissioned officers and enlisted men in
the whole Quartermaster Service before the war.
Clothing generally for the American troops in France was repaired at
special shops and at the homes of seamstresses in the small towns
and communes. Each town had a forewoman who distributed the damaged
clothing, after it had been disinfected and laundered, and kept all
counts. There were 880 of these home workers, nearly all of them from
needy families. The best record for darning socks was made by an old
French grandmére, aged more than 80.
Numerous soldiers were discovered in the American Expeditionary Forces
who were unfit physically for the hard service on the front line. These
were permitted to go into the various salvage depots and shops, where
they learned to be shoemakers, harness makers, saddle makers, wood
workers, painters, metal workers, tailors, laundrymen, electricians,
mechanics, checkers, warehousemen, etc., occupations in which many
of them expected to engage after their separation from the military
service.
The salvage troops in France were in five classes--the salvage
headquarter detachments, depot battalions, field salvage battalions,
laundry units, and the clothing and bathing units. One of the last
named was attached to each division to handle field bathhouses and
delousing and disinfecting plants, to receive old clothes, and to issue
new or reclaimed serviceable garments.
The ordnance property salvaged in the field in the period between
January 1, to October 31, 1918, included 5,000,000 rounds of small-arms
ammunition, 71,909 shell of the 75-millimeter size, and 16,195 of the
155-millimeter size, more than 32,000 rifles, and 21,000 machine guns
and automatic rifles. The unexploded or "dud" shell is a menace to
life, and the duty of destroying these in immense quantities fell to
the salvage service.
Some of the salvage squads in the field were composed of men who
through lack of education or lack of knowledge of the English language
were unable to do front-line service. They were largely composed of
American troops of alien birth.
The divisional salvage squads sorted the materials at the railhead
dumps for shipment to the various depots. When trucks brought up
supplies to the front and unloaded, the salvage detachments there
filled them up again with all sorts of materials which had been picked
up, and the trucks carried their loads back to the railheads, the
railroad stations of the division. This queer conglomeration of trash
consisted of everything from a hairbrush to a 77-millimeter enemy
gun. To show the sorts of articles that are picked up in an area over
which an army has fought, there is given here the following list of
items selected at random from the check of a salvage shipment from the
railhead of the Twenty-sixth Division on August 12, 1918:
1,100 pairs of leggins.
21 pairs of shoes.
30 leather gun cases.
21 bags of harness.
350 mess kits.
750 condiment cans.
750 bacon cans.
150 first-aid packets.
50 feed bags.
300 pistol holsters.
1 wagon bed.
275 German rifles.
3 boxes tent poles.
7 boxes gun repairs.
150 rifle grenade throwers.
4 German machine guns.
200 German canteens.
6,000 gas masks.
50 saddlebags.
1,400 canteens.
200 caps.
900 helmets.
1,025 pack carriers.
750 canteen covers.
1 wagon.
76 wagon parts.
1 ammunition cart.
4 ration carts.
17 wagon wheels.
4 boxes artillery material (telephones, etc.).
1,400 American canteens.
400 American rifles.
47 German automatic guns.
75 gun bolts.
100 respirators.
The kitchen economics branch of the salvage branch of the American
Expeditionary Forces in the recovery of fats and glycerine and other
kitchen by-products during the month of September, 1918, saved
$57,404.19 to the Government. The value was increased in October to
$109,013.84, and in November to $120,158.63. In addition to this
saving, kitchen salvage in October produced over 25,000 pounds of
grease and over 14,000 pounds of dubbin for waterproofing shoes. This
branch of the service also had the disposition of unserviceable food
supplies, entailing the salvage of large quantities of flour, sugar,
rice, and beans damaged in transportation or injured by exposure to
weather so as to become unfitted for troops. Such vegetables as peas
and canned corn, unsatisfactory for use, were dried and ground and sold
for chicken feed or hog feed, bringing in a considerable revenue.
The question of laundering for the field hospitals, particularly after
hard fighting, was a vital one. During the month of December, 1918,
a total of 7,811,566 pieces of laundry was handled by the laundry
branch of the salvage service. This included 3,700,000 pieces for the
hospitals alone. The American Expeditionary Forces were required to
establish three large shops for mending clothing sent to the laundries.
[Illustration: OUTPOST AND FIELD WIRE SALVAGED FROM BATTLE AREA,
GIEVRES, FRANCE.]
[Illustration: PORTION OF OPEN STORAGE YARD. SAPPINETS FOR TEMPORARY
LINES IN FOREGROUND, CABLE REELS IN BACKGROUND.]
[Illustration: GERMAN PRISONERS WORKING FARM LAND.]
[Illustration: 100 SOLDIERS HARVESTING SNAP BEANS AT CAMP GORDON FARM
NEAR ATLANTA, GA.]
The salvage service in France rendered a peculiar service in being the
repository for lost articles. The baggage branch of the salvage service
worked in close cooperation with the Army transportation service,
railroad transportation service, the central records office, the graves
registration service, the effects depot, the French railroad officials,
and other agencies which might assist them to recover and handle all
lost baggage for the members of the American Expeditionary Forces or
for their heirs in the United States.
The garden service of the American Expeditionary Forces was operated
as a separate branch of the Quartermaster Corps, but a word about its
work may not be amiss here. In addition to gardens at the camps and
hospitals in France, there was a large central farm at Versailles,
near Paris, where American officers and men were assembled to learn
intensive farming before being sent to the various stations to assume
charge of garden work. This service was composed entirely of men who
had been wounded or gassed, or were otherwise physically unfit for
service at the front. The garden operations provided welcome additions
of fresh vegetables to the American Expeditionary Forces' diet and
also gave many Americans an insight of the French methods of intensive
farming.
The 85,000 German helmets used in advertising the American Government's
fifth war loan--the Victory loan of April, 1919--were all collected and
shipped to the United States by the salvage service of the American
Expeditionary Forces. In fact the immense quantities of dunnage and
junk collected by the service are expected to be of untold historic
value as time goes on. Various historical societies and museums are
taking steps to secure collections of this war material.
Civilians in Europe are now wearing shoes built originally for American
troops, later worn out by them, and still later reconditioned by the
salvage service in France. A large number of these shoes recently sold
for approximately $4.30 a pair. Since the average total cost to repair
shoes was $1.05 a pair, the Government realized a net gain of $3.25
from every pair of these shoes.
In connection with the conservation of waste materials the salvage
service conducted a considerable manufacturing enterprise in France.
It turned waste into a large number of small articles, such as metal
markers for graves or effects of deceased soldiers, sheet tin (this
from discarded tin containers) for lining the stables at the remount
depots, large shipping bags, cement sacks, collar ornaments, divisional
insignia, brassards, overseas caps, guidons, curtains for engine cabs,
and many other things. The service took discarded campaign hats and
old uniform and overcoat cloth and made hospital slippers with cloth
tops and felt soles.
Such things as waste cotton scrap, waste paper, shredded rope, tin
cans, and woolen rags collected in France were saved and sold, but
nothing was sold that could be utilized for repairing or manufacturing
purposes. Leather scrap was used to make leather straps or shoe laces,
and the worst of the leather scrap was burned at the power plants of
the salvage depots as a fair substitute for coal. Old harness, books,
small scraps, leather washers, and the like, canvas and burlap scrap,
went to the camouflage screen makers. Woolen rags were shredded and
used over again for making cloth. Cotton rags too poor for other
purposes went to the paper mills. Rubber scrap became new rubber
material. Nothing which had a value was allowed to go to waste.
The salvage depot at Tours, France, alone in the period from
March to November, 1918, inclusive, produced goods to the value
of $19,383,353.58, at a total expense of $268,955.37, giving the
Government a net profit of $19,114,398.21.
The value of all this work went far beyond the value of the figures
in dollars and cents, which is the only concrete way in which it can
be expressed. The saving in raw material alone which it effected was
an important factor in the war; yet of even greater service was the
salvage production of materials, particularly ordnance materials, which
took much time to manufacture at home and after that required a long
haul to get them to the American Expeditionary Forces. Some of the
materials recovered on the battle field were scarce and hard to get,
and every pound of them recovered added that much to the power of the
American Army in France.
BOOK VI.
THE CONSTRUCTION DIVISION.
CHAPTER I.
CANTONMENTS AND CAMPS.
As soon as America had arranged to raise an army by selective
conscription, the Government proceeded to provide living quarters for
the soldiers to be mobilized for training.
This was a job magnificent in its proportions, carried out with a speed
that was little short of magical. At 16 points, widely scattered over
the country, the construction expert and the civil engineer struck the
earth with their potent wands; workmen swarmed forth; the staccato
of myriads of hammers and the whine of saws merged into a rolling
chorus of industry; and 16 new cities arose--almost overnight, it
seemed--built of wood to be sure, raw and unpainted it is true, but
snug and taut and equipped with every necessary convenience known to
the dwellers of modern American cities.
The United States had been wont to measure other public works by that
of the Panama Canal, which had been the largest construction operation
ever undertaken by America, or any other nation, prior to the great
war. The construction cost of the Panama Canal was approximately
$375,000,000 and the operation continued over a period of 10 years. The
16 cantonments for the National Army and the 16 camps for the National
Guard cost about seven-tenths as much as the Panama Canal, but they
were completed in shorter time than it takes to build an ordinary
suburban dwelling house.
The science of warfare had made mighty strides since America's last
great war, that of 1861 to 1865, but in no respect more than in those
matters relating to the individual soldier's comfort and bodily
welfare. The soldier of 1863 lived in a tent, or in the chance shelter
of a billet. When the weather was cold he might alternately toast and
congeal at his camp fire, and at night he rolled himself in his blanket
and reposed on a pallet of straw.
His grandson warrior who went to the training camp in 1917 found life
comfortable in a substantial barrack, warmed with steam heat or stoves.
A good mattress on a hygienic metal bed wooed his slumbers after a hard
day of training.
The soldier of 1861 bathed where he could and when he could. He of 1917
kept clean daily under the shower bath. The soldier of 1861 slaked his
thirst at neighboring wells or streams; and water-borne diseases, such
as typhoid fever, reaped a harvest of lives. His successor drank water
which was tested and filtered, sterilized when necessary, and the once
fatal epidemics of armies were kept away from his cantonment. This
water, moreover, came to him in a pipe under a pressure sufficient
to throw a stream from a nozzle clear over his barrack, an efficient
safeguard against the fire that might destroy his wooden city.
The soldier in the Civil War washed out his own clothing on the
infrequent occasions when he possessed both water and leisure. The
National Army recruit received his khaki immaculate from a modern
laundry equipped with the latest types of labor-saving machinery. The
latter's grandfather suffered from scurvy because of the limitations of
his diet. The soldier of 1917 ate tender beef and green vegetables kept
fresh in ammonia-cooled refrigerators. The fighter of 1861 relished the
hoecake baked in the ashes; his successor partook of white bread fresh
from camp ovens.
The camps of 1861 were arranged in haphazard fashion; those of 1917
were laid out by expert city planners. In the spring the soldier of
1861 waded and toiled through mud; the soldier of 1917 walked dry-shod
upon walks or drove his autotruck upon macadamized or concrete or brick
camp roads. The illumination of the camps of 1861 was the light of the
stars and the bivouac fires; the 1917 barracks were built along streets
radiant with electrical incandescence. For amusement the soldiers of
1861 had their campfire choruses and rough military sports, but the
private in the National Army had the theater, the motion picture, a
library of good reading matter, the Y. M. C. A. and similar clubhouses,
the gymnasium, the post exchange where he could buy periodicals, candy,
fruit, and other small luxuries.
And so the contrast might be carried along. The marvel of the
cantonments of 1917 was not that a grateful Republic gave to its
conscripted soldiers the conveniences of existence enjoyed by all urban
communities, but that it provided them in such short time. Ninety days
after the first spade struck into the ground the cantonments were ready
to receive two-thirds of their men, while one or two of the largest of
all were complete in every essential respect.
The houses of the National Army and the National Guard went up at the
rate of $2,000,000 a day. It is almost impossible to visualize this
speed or to comprehend the feat of nailing fifteen hundred and some odd
million board feet of lumber into place in about three months, or that
of stringing wire in that time in length sufficient to reach from New
York to San Francisco and back and westward again to Cleveland, or that
of tacking enough rain-tight roofing paper to make a canopy for the
island of Manhattan, another for Atlantic City, with nearly a square
mile of it left over.
The cantonment job took so many nails and spikes that it created an
actual shortage in that industry. All of the factories in the United
States that make metal pipes could not turn out enough to supply the
needs of the water, sanitary, and heating systems of the cantonments,
and so wooden pipes made from staves were used in most of the camps for
piping water.
In the matter of lumber alone it has been computed that the total
amount ordered and mobilized by the Washington office for the 32 camps
would build a board walk 12 inches wide and 1 inch thick to the moon
and half way back again. In addition to this vast quantity of lumber
there were used in the camps and cantonments about 100,000,000 square
feet of wall board--wall board being universally used instead of lath
and plaster to line and ceil rooms--12,000,000 square feet of window
glass, and 100,000,000 square feet of roofing. The 2,000,000,000
eight-penny nails used, if placed end to end, would girdle the earth
three and one-half times. The heating systems would make a single steam
radiator 100 miles long, while the heating boilers were equivalent to
one boiler 6 feet in diameter and 3 miles long.
The rate of the flow of materials to the army of 200,000 workmen on
the cantonment jobs gives an inkling of the speed with which they put
lumber and nails together to make barracks. It took 12 heavy freight
trains a day, 50 loaded cars to the train, to keep wood and metal
supplies at the builders' elbows. These builders erected the camps
at the rate of 30,000 tons of material a day. America had never seen
construction progress to equal that.
We liken swift building to the mushroom's growth, but almost always
this figure of speech is used as hyperbole. Some of the feats of the
cantonment builders, however, equaled the growth of the mushroom in
fact. In more than one instance at spots where the sod sparkled with
dew at dawn, when the builders put away their tools at sunset there
stood structures roofed and inclosed, needing only a few interior
touches each to be ready to shelter 200 men.
Efficiency in war is a matter of teamwork. Every vital branch of
the military organization must do its part well if the whole effort
is not to fail. The weak link in the chain might well have been the
construction organization of the Army, for here was an emergency job
on a scale beyond anything in the experience of our greatest builders.
America in her first 18 months of war was able to send to France across
3,000 miles of dangerous water more men than the United Kingdom in
a similar period could send to the front over the netted and laned
40 miles of English Channel. No slight share of the credit for this
achievement must go to the cantonment builders, who despite great
difficulties had the housing ready for the new armies when they were
called forth for training.
As soon as the United States entered the war the Government sent out
the call for technical experts of all sorts. For a quarter of a century
the United States had been specializing in technical training for
its young men, and now in the hour of need the ability existed to
conduct the war, which in its first year was to be largely a matter
of construction and manufacture of equipment. There was a wonderful
outpouring of these men of action, the technicians who had been
building the bridges and skyscrapers of the Nation, developing its
mines, providing its water systems, designing its machinery, organizing
and commanding its trained and untrained workers, engaging in public
and private works of every description and magnitude.
The Army prior to the 6th of April, 1917, consisted of a relatively
insignificant force of men. For this Army the construction of barracks
and other quarters had been in the hands of the Quartermaster General.
The officer in charge of the Construction and Repair Division of the
Quartermaster General's Office was relieved of his former duties and
placed by the Secretary of War in charge of a new and almost entirely
independent division, reporting directly to the Secretary, called
the Cantonment Division, and charged with providing the necessary
construction and camp facilities for the National Army and the National
Guard. This was in May, 1917, at which time the commissioned personnel
of the division consisted of only three officers. This step was
recommended by the General Staff, acting in accordance with the advice
of civilian construction experts on the Council of National Defense.
One year later the personnel of this division had grown to 263 officers
and 1,100 civilians in Washington, the best constructors, engineers,
draftsmen, managers, purchasing agents, and other specialists
obtainable by the Government; there were hundreds of other officers and
civilian experts in the field for this organization; it had an enlisted
personnel of some 16,000 men and employed over 200,000 laborers and
craftsmen; it had jobs on hand, complete and incomplete, aggregating
$600,000,000, or nearly twice the cost of the canal at Panama, while
future works then being planned and later actually undertaken came to
another $600,000,000; it had now become the Construction Division of
the Army, attached directly to the office of the Secretary of War,
charged with all the army construction within the United States. Such
was the expansion of one branch of the Army to meet the emergency.
Construction operations for the Army overseas, conducted principally
with troop labor, was in charge of the Corps of Engineers.
Congress passed the selective service bill on May 18, 1917. Before
the end of May the military authorities had decided to call the first
levies of the National Army on September 1. The little Cantonment
Division, which had in the week after its birth grown to a personnel
of 30 officers and numerous civilian experts, received orders to
have the camps--16 complete cities to accommodate 40,000 inhabitants
each and 16 tent camps, with many incidental buildings and public
utilities--ready in 90 days.
Actually the time allowed for construction was much shorter than
that, for the last site was not approved until July 6. About 60 days
later, on September 4, the National Army cantonments were ready for
430,000 men, two-thirds of the first draft. Although some construction,
subsequently authorized, was not entirely complete until later, the
cantonments nevertheless were at all times prepared to receive the
conscripted soldiers faster than the Army could assimilate them.
However irksome to the impatient construction officers the interval
between the time when the cantonments were ordered and the day when the
last sites were approved, it was not time wasted by any means. There
was much preliminary work to be done. The magnitude of the task ahead
was appalling. Yet the Cantonment Division, with scarcely anything
to start with, with not even the ground selected for a single camp
site, must design and adopt types for buildings, mobilize materials,
standardize everything possible, adopt an emergency contract that
should protect the Government from the grafter and the profiteer,
locate stores of materials, commandeering them if necessary, and also
discover manufacturing plants capable of turning out supplies as
rapidly as they were needed, build up an organization to handle the
work in every detail, and be ready to start hammering in the nails on
the day the materials arrived on the jobs. Actually these officers had
something less than 20 days in which to accomplish this feat.
There had been, however, a measure of pioneering in several of these
directions. The Council of National Defense had an organization of
civilian experts in many lines gathered together in Washington to
give advice to the military authorities. Through its committees the
council prepared a form of contract upon what came to be known as
the "cost-plus with sliding scale and fixed maximum fee" plan, which
limited the cantonment contractor in each case to a maximum fee of not
more than $250,000, the Army itself retaining control of the cost of
materials and the wages paid to labor.
Since the cantonments cost anywhere from $8,000,000 to more than
$12,000,000 each, the average fee to the contractor was slightly less
than 2½ per cent, out of which the contractor had to pay overhead
expenses, such as his main office expenses and the like; so it will be
seen that the United States drove a close bargain with its cantonment
builders in spite of the breathless haste to get the work done.
It was not until the 1st of June that the war authorities decided upon
wood construction for the 16 National Army cantonments and canvas
tentage for the 16 camps of the National Guard. According to the
original plan, so far as could be foreseen, the cantonments were to be
permanent camps to receive fresh contingents of selectives as long as
the war should last, whereas after receiving its training the National
Guard would go to France and leave its American camps deserted. The
wood construction was much more expensive than tentage--amounting to
$215 per man of the first draft, as it proved--but it was permanent;
once installed it made no further demands for materials, and in
convenience and comfort, especially in winter, it was far superior to
tentage.
Meanwhile the Cantonment Division had designed a model barrack
building, 43 feet wide and 140 long, to house 150 men, or one company,
as the company was in the spring of 1917. Here, in the adoption of
this model and general camp plans, there might easily have occurred in
Washington a fatal indecision. Both the British and the French armies
had found by experience that a company of 250 men was a more convenient
size for trench warfare than a smaller one. There was some question
whether the American Army would be guided by this experience. Gen.
Pershing was to decide this matter, but he did not reach Europe until
June 15. A weak executive control in Washington might have justified
itself in waiting for this decision before starting in at full
speed to build the cantonments. Those in charge of the program took
upon themselves the responsibility of building the 150-man barrack,
trusting to their own ability to adjust the buildings later to changed
conditions. As a matter of fact, when the company unit was enlarged
to 250 men, it was readily possible to house two companies in three
barracks, leaving space in two of them for the kitchen and mess room.
Still later the Construction Division built smaller barracks for 66 men
each, providing four such barracks to the company.
Before a single site was selected the experts in Washington had
designed the buildings and mapped out the future cities. America,
leaving behind her the decorative atrocities of the old Victorian
days, had been seeking beauty; and this yearning had produced a new
profession, that of town planning. Town planners in the Construction
Division grouped the 1,500 buildings required by each cantonment into
two typical arrangements, known as the straight-line and the U-shape
layouts. Later at each cantonment there was a town planner who adapted
one or the other of these plans to his local camp topography.
The selection of camp sites was in the hands of boards of officers
designated by the commanding officers of the six Army departments.
Early in May these boards set forth on their quest. Then ensued a
lively bidding on the part of American cities to secure cantonments
for their own neighborhoods. The Government took the utmost advantage
of such inducements as were offered. The city of Tacoma, Wash., sold
its municipal bonds to the amount of $2,000,000 and with the proceeds
bought 61,000 acres at American Lake and presented the land to the
Army. This tract became the site of Camp Lewis, most beautiful of all
the cantonments.
[Illustration: Start at 7 a. m.]
[Illustration: 10.30 a. m.]
[Illustration: 1 p. m.]
[Illustration: 5 p. m.]
A DAY'S WORK IN BARRACK CONSTRUCTION.
[Illustration: CAMP GRANT AT ROCKFORD, ILL.
This photograph, taken from kites at an elevation of 1,000 feet, shows
a typical cantonment, of which sixteen were built to train the National
Army in 1917.]
The site for Camp Upton, at Yaphank, Long Island, 15,198 acres, was
provided for the Government at an annual rental of $1 per acre. San
Diego, Calif., gave 8,000 acres at Linda Vista to the Government rent
free for five years. This became the location of Camp Kearney for the
National Guard. Camp Fremont, another National Guard training center,
was pitched on 7,203 acres of ground donated rent free for one year by
the city of San Francisco. Louisville gave the site of Camp Zachary
Taylor for the National Army rent free for two years. And there were
numerous other similar inducements.
In all the National Army cantonments occupied 167,741 acres which the
Government obtained at an average annual rental of $3.93 per acre
after the second year of occupancy. The National Guard camps covered
78,639 acres, at a rental of $112,042 the second year of occupancy and
thereafter.
The clearing of the sites was no mean part of the cantonment job. The
site of Camp Upton at Yaphank, Long Island, proved to be covered with
underbrush, and when this was cleared off it was discovered that the
remains of an old forest were still there, and stumps were thickly
scattered over the entire site. These had to be blasted or pulled out
before any building operations could proceed. The sites in character
ranged from the sandy loam of Camp Devens, in Massachusetts, to the red
clay of Virginia and South Carolina; from the farm lands of Michigan
to the prairie on which was built Camp Travis, Tex. Some were flat;
some rolling; all were different in shape and extent; and the layout of
the camp and the arrangement of the buildings in each case had to be
adapted to the local conditions by the constructing quartermaster on
the job.
To give a picture of a typical cantonment, let us take Camp Grant, at
Rockford, Ill., as an illustration. It cost approximately $11,000,000;
it could accommodate 45,000 men and 12,000 horses; its buildings
numbered 1,600. Water was supplied from six wells drilled 175 feet
deep. There were 38 miles of water main, while the reservoir tanks
could hold 550,000 gallons. Its electric lighting system entailed the
use of 1,450 miles of copper wire, 1,200 poles, and 35,000 incandescent
lamps.
During the construction period 50 carloads of building material were
unloaded at Camp Grant every day, and an average of 500,000 board feet
of lumber was put up every day over a period of weeks. In the Camp
Grant schedule we find such items as 50,000,000 feet of lumber, 700
tons of nails, 4,000,000 square feet of roofing, and 3,000,000 square
feet of wall board.
Only a builder of secure financial standing could handle such a
construction contract. Frequently his pay roll and current bills
for supplies amounted to half a million dollars in a week. Let the
Government delay a few days in its payments to him and he might find
himself obliged to raise a million dollars in cash on the instant to
meet his immediate obligations.
To avoid such embarrassments the Construction Division adopted the
policy of paying its bills the day and sometimes the hour they were
incurred. At each cantonment job it stationed a disbursing officer with
a checkbook. This officer reported by telegraph each night, and the
next morning there was deposited to his credit in the Treasury a sum of
money sufficient for his immediate needs. On numerous occasions this
officer paid for materials the instant they were unloaded from the cars
and checked. The Government maintained an auditing organization at each
job. This organization checked and inspected all material as it was
received, comparing the delivery in each case with the original order,
and counted the workmen at least twice a day.
An intense rivalry sprang up in the construction of the 16 cantonments.
Sixteen teams, with an average of 10,000 men on each team, began racing
for the goal, which was to be 80 per cent completion by September 5,
the date when the first contingents of selective soldiers were to be
received by the cantonments. It was more exciting than any campaign
in any professional baseball league, because the time was shorter and
the stake vastly greater. The Cantonment Division kept alive this
spirit of rivalry by posting each day in each cantonment the figures
showing the rates of construction at all of them. The team, from the
superintendents down to the humblest unskilled laborers, discussed
these ratings as fans talk about the baseball averages.
The race was a close one, being won by Camp Taylor at Louisville,
which was 79.4 per cent complete on the day the contest ended, lacking
only six-tenths of 1 per cent of coming up to the maximum 80 per cent
of completion regarded as possible in the time available. But other
construction gangs were pressing that at Camp Taylor closely: Camp
Travis, with 78.6 per cent of completion at the end of the contest;
Camp Lee, 78.5 complete; Camp Devens, 74; Camp Lewis, 72; and Camp
Sherman, 70. The Camp Lewis percentage was taken on August 31.
All construction work, including numerous additions not contemplated
in the original plans, was virtually complete by November 30. These
additional structures included cantonment base hospitals, on which the
Government spent $10,000,000 for the National Army and $7,500,000 at
the National Guard camps. With one or two exceptions these hospitals
each had facilities for 1,000 patients at once, being the largest in
the United States, at that time.
At several of the cantonments the water problem was simplified by the
near presence of water mains of the systems of adjacent cities. At
the other camps, however, it was necessary to construct independent
water systems sufficient to furnish 55 gallons of water daily to each
of 45,000 men. This is nearly twice as much water as was then being
furnished to the average European army camp, and it meant in each case
a system of centrifugal pumps and gravity tanks with a capacity of
2,250,000 gallons daily.
The local water supply was secured either from running streams or from
dug wells. If the purity of the water was in doubt it was sterilized by
the chlorine process and sometimes filtered in addition. The purity of
the water and the care exercised in screening kitchens, mess halls, and
later the dormitories themselves, from flies is seen in the hospital
record for the first year of the war. Of all the soldiers who sought
hospital treatment for sickness during that first year, only one
patient in 5,000 was suffering from a water-borne disease.
In each cantonment there were about 1,500 wooden buildings, presenting
a constant fire menace. As a protection from such disasters each
cantonment organized its own fire department with modern motor
equipment stationed in three or more fire houses. The men of the fire
companies were usually those who had had previous training as members
of city fire departments. There was not a single serious fire at the
cantonments during the war period.
Besides keeping soldiers well and clean, the camp facilities provided
them with opportunity for moral and healthy amusement. Various
organizations combined to supply the camps with amusement facilities.
There were the library buildings, the Red Cross buildings and halls,
the Y. M. C. A. buildings, the Knights of Columbus buildings, the
Salvation Army buildings, Y. W. C. A. buildings, and the Jewish Welfare
Board buildings.
Although the American soldier bought liberally of Liberty bonds, took
out War Risk insurance, and sent to his family the greater portion of
his monthly pay, still he had a small amount of money to spend for
little luxuries or necessities. These included small supplies such as
candy and fruits, and they were on sale at the usual post exchange or
company store. This was a small building, usually with a broad covered
porch or shelter around three sides, so that the men in bad weather
could be dry as they waited in line for their turn at the windows. The
Y. M. C. A., K. of C., Red Cross, Y. W. C. A., Jewish Welfare Board,
and Salvation Army buildings offered reading and writing rooms and
general gathering places; yet these were insufficient for a total camp
population averaging 40,000. Hence the Commission on Training Camp
Activities built through the agency of the Construction Division a
Liberty Theater at each camp.
The Liberty Theaters were of temporary construction, but in size
compared favorably with the largest theaters in our modern cities. To
provide these amusement facilities the Construction Division put up
approximately 5,000,000 board feet of lumber, 9,000,000 square feet of
wall board, and 40,000 square feet of roofing.
The average large city laundry was insufficient in capacity to handle
the laundry work of an average of 6,000 people per day, which was the
requirement to keep some 40,000 men in clean clothing. Consequently
the camps and cantonments were provided with their own laundries
built by the Construction Division. This put such a demand upon the
manufacturers of laundry machinery that it created a shortage, and
later there was a shortage of soap and powder. The 30 laundries built
used up 13,000,000 board feet of lumber and 300,000 square feet of wall
board.
The householder may throw his old shoes into the trash box and sell his
old suit to the ragman, but the Army threw nothing away. Consequently
the Construction Division was called upon to build reclamation plants
at many stations. Usually one large plant was built at a center
convenient to several camps, and to this center were sent the worn-out
uniforms, shoes, leggins, and all other equipment.
Every camp of considerable size in the United States was provided
with model bakeries. The total capacity of all the baking equipment
installed by the Construction Division would turn out 1,000 tons of
bread per day. This is a total of 2,000,000 loaves of 1 pound each.
Each camp bakery oven would take care of 4,500 men per day in two
8-hour shifts, or it could bake 5,000 loaves in 24 hours.
There were required at all the camps and cantonments numerous
storehouses for materials to be used immediately by the troops. The
Construction Division built 789 of these small storehouses at the
National Army cantonments alone.
The question of cold-storage facilities for the camps offered a knotty
problem. Certain camps generally relied upon cold-storage space
obtained near by, or else upon refrigerator cars iced in the vicinity,
but in the other camps it was necessary to build special refrigeration
plants. These had an ice-making capacity ranging from 6 to 35 tons
daily. The ice consumption of the American soldiers in the United
States proved to be 2¾ pounds per man per day.
The kitchens in the camps and hospitals would be paradise to any woman
who had drudged with old-fashioned methods and equipment in cooking.
As far as possible the Army's housekeeping was done by machinery. The
bread slicer in common use would cut 200 slices of bread per minute
and stack the slices automatically, the loaves feeding automatically
into the slicer. The meat choppers would cut up 20 pounds of meat or
vegetables in five minutes, and the electrically operated potato peeler
would peel 40 pounds of potatoes in three minutes. The meat slicers
would cut meat at the rate of 40 slices to the minute. Vegetables
were cooked and meats roasted by high-pressure steam. The vegetable
cooker could turn out 35 gallons of cooked product in 15 minutes. The
dish-washing machines could wash, dry, and sterilize 10,000 dishes per
hour. At the hospitals the food was taken from the central kitchen to
the outlying wards in mobile fireless cookers, designed to keep the
food hot until served.
To prepare food for 45,000 men, 350 kitchens were required by each
cantonment. The National Army in training used 9,000 hotel ranges.
In most of the cantonments, particularly those in the South, the
heating of quarters in winter was accomplished by means of room heaters
and cannon stoves. The constructors installed 75,000 of these. The
officers' quarters everywhere and four entire cantonments in the
North--Devens in Massachusetts, Grant in Illinois, Custer in Michigan,
and Dodge in Iowa--were heated by steam either from central heating
plants or by means of ordinary boilers such as are used in residences.
The total surface of the steam radiators installed would make five
gigantic stoves 300 feet square and as high as the Woolworth Building
in New York.
Besides the camps and cantonments used by the line troops, the
Construction Division also built various special camps required by the
mobilization, training, and transportation of the Army. These included
the quartermaster training camp at Jacksonville, Fla., accommodating
approximately 35,000 men; and the camps for the Engineering Corps,
camps for heavy and light artillery training schools, and for other
special units.
Camp Joseph F. Johnston at Blackpoint, the quartermaster camp near
Jacksonville, is a good example of one of these special training camps.
This consisted of quarters for 150 officers, 32 barracks to house 200
men each, together with barracks for wagon companies, pack companies,
truck companies, and a bakery company, as well as stables for 1,200
animals and 50 riding horses, together with storeroom buildings and
truck and auto garages.
Camp Holabird, near Baltimore, used for teaching men to repair and
crate motor trucks and vehicles, had accommodations for about 7,500
men. Another special camp was Camp Humphreys, for the training of
men in the Corps of Engineers, located a few miles down the Potomac
River from Washington. This camp could accommodate 33,000 men in 1,350
buildings located on a camp area of 2,500 acres. Every foot of this
site had to be cleared of timber and underbrush during one of the
severest winters of recent years. All material had to be hauled in
trucks over fearful roads pending the construction of a 5-mile spur of
railroad track, yet the job was completed approximately on time.
Other special camps included Camp Bragg for training Field Artillery,
located at Fayetteville, N. C., with quarters for 11,000 men; Camp Knox
at Stithon, Ky., for 30,000 men, having an area of nearly 60,000 acres
for training troops in the use of Field Artillery; and Camp Franklin,
located on part of the Camp Meade cantonment reservation, a special
camp for Signal Corps instruction, with accommodations for 11,000 men.
Then there was the Coast Artillery training cantonment, Camp Eustis at
Lee Hall, Va., which had accommodations for 17,000 men; Camp Meigs at
Washington, D. C., a quartermaster camp, providing accommodations for
4,000 men; and Camp Benning, at Columbus, Ga., an infantry school of
arms, to accommodate 5,040 men, on a camp area of 98,000 acres. At Camp
Raritan, at Raritan River, N. J., the Ordnance Department established a
training school for 6,250 men.
_Camps and cantonments built by Construction Division._
Key: (A) - Maximum capacity.
----------------+------------------+------+-----------+----------------------
| | |Approximate|
Name. | Location. | (A) | cost. | Contractors.
----------------+------------------+------+-----------+----------------------
Camp Beauregard |Alexandria, La. |29,121| $4,300,000|Stewart McGehee,
| | | | Hudson Construction
| | | | Co., J. W. Snyder.
| | | |
Camp Bowie |Fort Worth, Tex. |41,879| 3,400,000|J. W. Thompson,
| | | | H. G. Bush.
| | | |
Camp Bragg |Fayetteville, N.C.|11,831| 11,000,000|James Stewart Co.
| | | |
Camp Cody |Deming, N. Mex. |44,959| 3,800,000|J. W. Thompson Co.,
| | | | H. G. Bush.
| | | |
Camp Custer |Battle Creek, Mich|49,014| 13,000,000|Porter Bros., R. G.
| | | |Phelps, W. E. Wood Co.
| | | |
Camp Devens |Ayer, Mass. |36,832| 11,800,000|Fred T. Ley Co.,
| | | | Coleman Bros.
| | | |
Camp Dix |Wrightstown, N. J.|42,806| 12,300,000|Irwin & Leighton Co.,
| | | | J. S. Rogers Co.,
| | | | J. W. Ferguson & Co.
| | | |
Camp Dodge |Des Moines, Iowa |49,229| 10,800,000|Charles Weltz Sons.
| | | |
Camp Doniphan |Lawton, Okla. |46,183| 2,706,000|Selden-Breck
| | | | Construction Co.,
| | | | Trope & Carney.
| | | |
Camp Abraham |Lee Hall, Va. |16,759| 11,700,000|Winston & Co.
Eustis | | | |
| | | |
Camp Fremont |Palo Alto, Calif. |30,000| 2,556,000|Lindgren Co.,
| | | | E. A. Hettinger.
| | | |
Camp Funston |Fort Riley, Kans. |42,806| 10,500,000|George A. Fuller
| | | | Construction Co.,
| | | | Henry Bennet & Son,
| | | | Gray Construction Co.
| | | |
Camp Gordon |Atlanta, Ga. |46,612| 11,100,000|Arthur Tufts Co.,
| | | | Mackie Construction
| | | | Co., Southern-Ferro
| | | | Construction Co.
| | | |
Camp Meade |Odenton, Md. |52,575| 16,200,000|Claiborne Johnson Co.,
| | | | Smith, Houser &
| | | | McIsaacs.
| | | |
Camp Meigs |Washington, D. C. | 3,774| 655,000|Philip F. Gormley,
| | | | Frank L. Wagner.
| | | |
Camp Merritt |Dumont, N. J. |39,079| 14,500,000|McArthur Bros. Co.,
| | | | W. H. Fissell & Co.
| | | |
Camp Mills |Garden City, L. I.|25,000| 13,000,000|Clough-Bourne Co.
| | | |
| | | |{Westinghouse-Church-
| | | |{ Kerr Co., Hampton
Camp Hill |Newport News, Va. | 5,852|}16,125,000|{ Roads Engineering
Camp Stuart | do. |24,234|} |{ Construction Co.,
| | | |{ Boyle-Robertson
| | | |{ Construction Co.
Camp Oglethorpe |} | | |{
Fort Greenleaf|} |24,457| $5,600,000|{Park-Grimes Co.
Forrest |} | | |{
| | | |
Camp Pike |Little Rock, Ark. |55,010| 12,700,000|James Stewart & Co.
| | | | (Inc.),
| | | | Stewart McGehee Co.
| | | |
Camp Polk |Raleigh, N. C. | [37] | |Holliday-Krouse Co.
| | | |
Camp Sevier |Greenville, S. C. |41,693| 6,508,000|Gallivan Building Co.
| | | |
Camp Shelby |Hattiesburg, Miss.|36,010| 5,400,000|T. S. Moudy Co.,
| | | | Richard McCarthy Co.
| | | |
Camp Sheridan |Montgomery, Ala. |41,593| 3,500,000|Algernon Blair,
| | | | Paschen Bros.
| | | |
Camp Sherman |Chillicothe, Ohio |49,112| 12,900,000|Thomas A. Bently &
| | | | Sons, D. W.
| | | | McGrath & Sons.
| | | |
Camp Taylor |Louisville, Ky. |45,424| 8,000,000|Mason & Hanger,
| | | | Alfred Struck Co.
| | | |
Camp Travis |San Antonio, Tex. |42,809| 8,200,000|Stone & Webster,
| | | | McKenzie Construction
| | | | Co.
| | | |
Camp Upton |Yaphank, L. I. |43,567| 13,500,000|Thompson-Starrett Co.,
| | | | Mark C. Tredennick
| | | | Co., C. H. & R. C.
| | | | Peckworth (Inc.).
| | | |
Camp Grant |Rockford, Ill. |62,675| 14,400,000|Bates & Rogers
| | | | Construction Co.,
| | | | Ross T. Beckstrom
| | | | Co., Henry Erickson
| | | | Co.
| | | |
Camp Green |Charlotte, N. C. |48,305| 4,300,000|Consolidated
| | | | Engineering Co.,
| | | | J. A. Jones Co.
| | | |
Camp Hancock |Augusta, Ga. |45,099| 6,000,000|T. O. Brown Co.,
| | | | William Crawford.
| | | |
Camp Humphreys |Belvoir, Va. |32,434| 12,745,000|Phillip F. Gormley Co.
| | | |
Camp Jackson |Columbia, S. C. |44,009| 10,000,000|Hardaway Construction
| | | | Co., Columbia Lumber
| | | | & Manufacturing Co.,
| | | | H. B. Hann.
| | | |
Camp Jackson, | do. | [37] | |Hardaway Construction
No. | | | | Co.
| | | |
Camp Johnston |Jacksonville, Fla.|18,265| |T. A. Bentley & Sons.,
| | | | J. Y. Wilson.
| | | |
Camp Kearney |San Diego, Calif. |32,066| 5,838,000|W. E. Hampton Co.,
| | | | John Roberts Co.
| | | |
Camp Knox |Stithton, Ky. |27,805| 18,733,184|John W. Griffith &
| | | | Sons.
| | | |
Camp Las Casas |San Juan, |13,265| 2,500,000|Purdy & Henderson Co.
| Porto Rico | | |
| | | |
Camp Lee |Petersburg, Va. |60,335| 16,500,000|Rhinehart & Dennis
| | | | (Inc.), Harrison
| | | | Construction Co.,
| | | | John T. Wilson & Co.
| | | | (Inc.).
| | | |
Camp Lewis |American Lake |46,232| 8,400,000|Hurley Mason Co.,
| (Tacoma), Wash. | | | The Construction Co.
| | | |
Camp Logan |Houston, Tex. |44,899| 3,300,000|American Construction
| | | | Co., Horton & Horton.
| | | |
Camp McArthur |Waco, Tex. |45,074| 4,000,000|Fred A. Jones
| | | | Construction Co.,
| | | | Blome & Sinek Co.,
| | | | Edgar H. Bruyere.
| | | |
Camp McClellan |Anniston, Ala. |57,746| 9,800,000|John O. Chisholm &
| | | | Co., Labarre & Erwin,
| | | | A. W. Stoolman.
| | | |
Camp Wadsworth |Spartanburg, S. C.|56,249| 4,000,000|Fiske Carter Co.
| | | |
Camp Wheeler |Macon, Ga. |43,011| 3,200,000|W. Z. Williams.
----------------+------------------+------+-----------+----------------------
[37] Abandoned.
CHAPTER II.
MISCELLANEOUS CONSTRUCTION.
Great as was the job of building the army camps and cantonments, it was
nevertheless only a part of the work which fell to the Construction
Division, and much the smaller part at that.
On November 11, 1918, the Construction Division was conducting 535
building operations in 442 localities in the United States. These
involved an aggregate expenditure of more than $1,000,000,000.
Including the various camps and cantonments, these activities were
being conducted or had been conducted in every State of the Union
but one. An average of more than 200,000 workmen, principally of the
building trades, had been engaged continuously for months.
In the executive administration of the work the organization required
1,487 officers and 12,355 civilian Government employees, of whom 2,555
were located at the offices of the division in Washington. Merely for
the maintenance and the operation of the various completed projects a
force of 16,359 enlisted men was required. In a little more than a year
the organization had grown from a handful of clerks and executives to
one of this size. The brigadier general who headed the Construction
Division had been a Captain when war was declared.
In this period the organization had housed a population equal to that
of the city of Philadelphia in 40 large camps, each in number of
inhabitants comparing in size to such cities as Racine, Wis., Cedar
Rapids, Iowa, or Wheeling, W. Va. It had constructed storage depots
and warehouses that would cover 890 acres. It had built hospitals with
beds for 128,378 patients. It had purchased and nailed up 2,647,605,426
board feet of lumber, enough to stretch around the Equator twenty
times in boards 12 inches wide and 1 inch thick. Loaded on freight
cars to their capacity this lumber would require a train reaching from
Washington, D. C., to Kansas City. It had used enough brick to build an
18-foot road from Kansas City to Chicago. It had constructed 645 miles
of railroads and made 1,081 miles of wagon roads, mostly of concrete.
These are only a few of the high points in this building record.
There are few undertakings of mankind in all history which can be
compared with this enterprise. The price paid for the Panama Canal
and the Canal of Suez, the cost of damming the Nile and tunneling the
Alps, and the money spent on building the Government railway into the
heart of Alaska might be lumped together and still the aggregate would
not equal the cost of providing the buildings, exclusive of those of
the training camps, which the American Army had to have in the United
States after it went to war.
We can gain a picture of the size of this construction by considering
the building records of the United States. In this country there are
about 150 cities large enough and ambitious enough to keep annual
building statistics as the indices of their prosperity. In these
cities, whose populations range in size from that of New York down to
those of communities of 20,000 or 25,000 inhabitants, dwell nearly a
quarter of all the Americans. They are metropolitans, the people who
demand most of the builder for their comfort and luxury. Yet in no one
year had the building construction in these 150 largest American cities
combined approached in amount within $250,000,000 of the cost of our
military construction undertaken during the war.
The Government became not only the greatest of customers for the
building industry but almost the sole customer. This whole great
industry, one of the largest in the country, which had been busy
in its interminable task of providing the mansions of peace, was
suddenly converted under military direction into a machine for
building a titantic war plant. Before the Nation could mobilize
its material resources or train its human ones for war it must
have buildings--headquarters for its executives, barracks for its
men, structures for its various arsenals for the manufacture of
explosives and chemicals, warehouses for the storage of reserves of
material, terminals for the transfer of overseas shipments, schools,
laboratories, proving grounds for testing its weapons, hospitals,
embarkation depots, and a vast number of structures for less
conspicuous activities.
It was the work of the Construction Division to provide these
facilities. Exclusive of the cantonments themselves, this work fell
into projects ranging in size from small building groups costing a
few thousand dollars to enormous powder plants, huge terminal docks,
vast warehouses and other great undertakings costing $10,000,000,
$16,000,000, $25,000,000, $40,000,000, and as high as $70,000,000 for a
single project.
ORDNANCE CONSTRUCTION.
Perhaps the most striking of these undertakings were the various
construction jobs called for by the ordnance program. There were
more than 60 of these, and they ranged in cost from $100,000 up to
$70,000,000.
One of the larger of these projects was that of the Aberdeen proving
grounds on Chesapeake Bay, not far distant from Baltimore. This
reservation, with its area of 35,000 acres and its magnificent testing
and observation ranges, 75 miles in length, over the waters of the bay,
will undoubtedly be retained permanently by the Government. As the
plant exists to-day it has a capacity of testing 5,000 shell between
daylight and dark.
At Aberdeen the Construction Division built barracks to house 8,000
men, quarters for 230 officers, and all the accessories of convenience
and amusement which a community of that size should have.
Guns came to the proving grounds unassembled, so that it was necessary
to build an assembly plant. This building is 165 feet wide and 500 feet
long and cost $1,000,000. As an adjunct to the assembly plant there is
a machine shop which is one of the largest in the United States.
Mention should be made of the 25 miles of standard railway trackage
which the Construction Division put down at Aberdeen. This was
exclusive of the spur tracks for the heavy guns mounted on railway
carriages. These tracks approached the firing range on apparently
outlandish curves and at every variety of angle. The guns were fired
at these various angles to determine if the recoil would push the
carriages from the track or would spread the rails.
The development of aerial bombing and the necessity for testing our
own aerial bombs required the construction at Aberdeen of hangars and
quarters for an aviation squadron.
In addition to these facilities, the project involved the construction
of powder magazines, shell-loading plants, and warehouses. There were
built 15 miles of concrete roads and 30 miles of roads of other types.
Garage accommodations were provided for 100 trucks and automobiles.
The firing ranges required observation towers of various sorts. The
observation dugouts had to be of special strength, because certain of
the tests at Aberdeen involved the actual bursting of gun barrels,
making necessary specially heavy protection for the observers.
Aberdeen is equipped with a complete waterworks system and with a
hospital for 250 patients. An interesting laboratory constructed on the
grounds is that in which the so-called "dud" shell, or those which fail
to explode, are analyzed for their defects. The Aberdeen project was
started in December, 1917, and first tests were made within a month.
The entire project cost over $30,000,000.
One section of the Aberdeen reservation, about 4,000 acres of it, was
set apart for the uses of the gas-warfare organization of the Army
and was later known as the Edgewood Arsenal. The progress at Edgewood
is indicative of the manner in which chemical warfare increased in
importance during our period of belligerency. It was originally
estimated that $250,000 would provide a plant at Edgewood sufficient
for our chemical-warfare needs. The actual cost of the Edgewood Arsenal
at the date of the armistice, so great had been the expansion of
chemical warfare, was about $43,000,000. At that time there had been
constructed or were in process of construction filling plants that
could turn out 120,000 loaded gas shell per day. The equipment at
Edgewood includes a cantonment for 10,000 men, some of it of permanent
construction. There were built 10 miles of macadam road at Edgewood and
15 miles of railway, in addition to large warehouses and a dock where
loaded shell could be freighted upon lighters to deep water.
Another project made necessary by the expansion of chemical warfare
was the gas proving grounds at Lakehurst, N. J., the entire project
costing $1,500,000. The site of 5,000 acres provided space for two
target ranges, each 4 miles long. Extensive laboratories were built at
Lakehurst, and the proving ground was operated by a force of 1,500 men.
In addition to this there was located at Lakehurst a camp for 3,400
troops in training. All buildings for these facilities were provided by
the Construction Division.
In addition to Aberdeen and Lakehurst the Construction Division
built a proving ground at Clear Springs, Md., used for testing out
37-millimeter guns; another such institution at Port Clinton, Ohio,
for testing 155-millimeter and 240-millimeter howitzers; and others at
Scituate, Mass., and Savanna, Ill. The combined cost of these last four
projects was $6,507,520.
One important undertaking of the Construction Division was that of
providing warehouse depots for ordnance materials. These supplies
differ from ordinary Army supplies in the important particular that
they must be treated gently and handled with care. A quartermaster
storehouse can be of emergency construction type, that is, more or less
built of wood, but an ordnance storehouse, since it usually contains
high explosives, must be strictly fireproof. In undertaking the
creation in record time of a number of ordnance depots the Construction
Division faced not only the problem of the type of building required
but also the location of these buildings. It was necessary to locate
them at deep water in order to avoid frequent handling of the high
explosives, yet no depot could be situated in any thickly settled
center because of the danger to the civilian population. At most
deep-water points on the Atlantic coast which had railway connections
the available sites were already occupied. The result was that the
ordnance depots had to be built on marshes and meadows, on land which
for construction purposes had always been regarded as impossible. Yet
they had to be completed in as much of a rush as any buildings which
the Army demanded.
There are now five of these great ordnance depots on the Atlantic
coast built by the Construction Division: at Metuchen, N. J.; Curtis
Bay, Md.; Pig Point, Va.; Charleston, S. C.; and Pedricktown, Del. The
largest of these is the one at Metuchen, known as the Raritan Arsenal.
The Raritan site contains about 2,200 acres of salt marsh. High tides
used to submerge the whole area almost completely. Before any building
could be started the Construction Division had to build a dike 9 miles
long around the whole reservation. The entire project was perched on
piles, and these piles, by the tens of thousands, were driven into the
frozen ground during the severe winter of 1917-18. Labor was hard to
get and hard to keep. After the laborers' quarters had been built and
a few powder magazines had been erected, it became almost impossible
to keep men on the job because of the danger of working in a powder
arsenal.
Most of the Raritan buildings are of terra-cotta construction. There
are 85 completed magazines, each 51 feet wide and 218 feet long, for
the storage of shell, black powder, and miscellaneous items, this
number not including 12 magazines of sheet-metal construction, each
26 by 42 feet, for the storage of high explosives. When the armistice
was signed the Construction Division was building 60 similar magazines
intended for the storage of smokeless powder.
At Raritan was also located a school of instruction for ordnance
troops, with a cantonment to accommodate 10,000 men. A 150-bed
hospital was part of the equipment, as was also an assembly shop and a
motor-instruction school.
Along the river a dock was built 2,000 feet long. On the dock were
constructed several huge warehouses for the storage of material. Fifty
miles of railway were constructed. The project on the armistice date
was probably the best equipped ordnance depot in the world. It cost
about $14,000,000.
The next largest ordnance depot is that at Curtis Bay near Baltimore.
It is half the size of the Raritan project and cost about $7,000,000.
The Pig Point ordnance depot is located at Hampton Roads, about 12
miles from Portsmouth, Va. In order to obtain berthing facilities for
trans-Atlantic ships it was necessary to build a dock more than a mile
long out to deep water. The dock is said to be the longest wharf in
the United States south of Philadelphia. The Pig Point job cost about
$3,500,000.
The Charleston Arsenal cost $5,000,000; while $7,000,000 was the amount
provided for the arsenal at Pedricktown. The Pedricktown job, however,
was started late, and not over $2,000,000 had been spent when the
armistice was signed.
In addition to these five terminal depots the Construction Division
provided two other ordnance warehouses for the storage of miscellaneous
supplies--one at Middletown, Pa., costing $1,250,000, and the other at
Augusta, Ga., costing $250,000.
The description of the powder bag-loading plants, which were built by
the Construction Division, is contained in the chapter of this report
relating to the production of powder and other explosives. There were
three of these plants, one located at Woodbury, N. J., another at
Tullytown, Pa., and the third on the historic battle ground at Seven
Pines, Va. Since these plants were perforce located at isolated places
it was necessary in each case to provide housing accommodations for
the workers, many of whom were women. The Construction Division built
the houses at Tullytown and Woodbury while those at Seven Pines were
provided by the United States Industrial Housing Corporation.
These bag-loading plants cost from $4,500,000 to $6,000,000 apiece,
and they were erected in a remarkably short time. Work was started
on the Woodbury project on March 19, 1918, and the plant was ready
for operation on May 28, although the plant did not actually start
operating until June 15. The spade was first struck into the ground at
Tullytown on March 6, 1918, and on July 17 the 250 buildings of the
project were ready. The work at Seven Pines began April 24, and the
plant was ready for operation on August 24, 1918.
AVIATION SCHOOLS AND TESTING FIELDS.
The Signal Corps, needing a special type of construction, undertook the
work itself at the start of war, but by October, 1917, the Construction
Division had proved itself so efficient that all Army building work
in the United States, including that of the Signal Corps, was turned
over to it. The work for the Signal Corps entailed the construction
of the necessary buildings for flying fields, testing fields, aerial
photography, and gunnery schools, balloon observation schools, repair
and testing shops, and tremendous storage depots that had to be of
special fireproof construction because of the inflammable nature of the
oil and other materials used by the Signal Corps.
At the aviation fields a special type of portable hangar built of
steel, 65 by 140 feet, was adopted. For the big bombing planes larger
hangars were required but of the same-type of construction. At each
aviation field were barracks for a large number of men, together with
water and sanitary conveniences. There were 31 of these fields located
principally in the West or Southwest.
In addition to these there were four testing fields for the aircraft
service, located in the eastern half of the United States where the
flying machines and the engines were being produced. One of these was
at Dayton, another at Buffalo, a third at Detroit, and a fourth at
Elizabeth, N. J. The aerial gunnery school at Miami, Fla., was one of
the largest of the aviation-construction projects. This plant included
buildings, target ranges, steel hangars, photographic laboratories and
other equipment--all built at a cost of $1,500,000.
The balloon school at Lee Hall, Va., cost $1,000,000, and that at
Arcadia, Calif., $500,000. At each of these schools there were barracks
for the men, quarters for the laborers, and experimental buildings, not
to speak of the huge sheds, 200 or more feet in length, in which the
balloons were housed.
QUARTERMASTER BASES AND WAREHOUSES.