FEEDING AND EQUIPPING THE ARMY
The Quartermasters Corps, which formerly totaled 500 officers and 5,000
enlisted men, with its facilities and routine adapted to the feeding
and equipping of an army of 127,000 men, had at once not only to meet
the needs of the vastly expanding forces and to keep abreast of the
actual growth and immediate demands of the army as it came into being,
but it had also to anticipate and prepare to meet what would be the
much greater needs of a much larger army six or eight months in advance.
While a million and a half of men were being examined, classified and
called to service and more than thirty cantonments and camps were being
built in which to house and train them and other construction projects
were being rushed forward, the Quartermasters Corps had to provide
their uniforms and clothing and accumulate in storage the food for
their subsistence. At the same time, it had to make sure that it could
meet the constantly enlarging needs of the coming months when the army
would grow like a Jonah’s gourd with every passing week. Production had
to be stimulated and turned aside from its usual channels and enormous
quantities of material used for new purposes. It was an emergency
that required the practical making over of the methods and purposes
of American industry and in the process the Quartermasters Corps had
to be both the directing and supervising agency and the channel of
communication between industry and the army.
A soldier’s outfit of clothing for a year cost $65.51 and numbered
twenty-three different items of a dozen different branches of
manufacturing industry. The initial equipment for one man’s shoes
alone cost $14.25. During the sixteen months from April 1st, 1917,
to the end of July, 1918, the army was supplied, among other things,
with 27,000,000 pairs of shoes, field and marching; 29,800,000 pairs
of breeches, light and heavy; 19,800,000 coats, both wool and cotton;
192,200,000 shirts, undershirts and drawers, for both summer and
winter wear; 156,600,000 pairs of stockings of cotton and light and
heavy weight wool; and 21,000,000 blankets. And by the end of July the
Corps already was taking measures to provide the clothing necessary
during the coming year for the army of 5,000,000 men for which the War
Department was preparing. That meant it must have on hand whenever
and wherever they should be required, among many other things, all of
which at the signing of the armistice it had either ready or in sight,
17,000,000 blankets, 28,000,000 woolen breeches, 34,000,000 woolen
drawers, 8,000,000 overcoats, 33,000,000 pairs of shoes, 110,000,000
pairs of stockings, 9,000,000 overseas caps, 25,000,000 flannel shirts.
Ten great storage depots were maintained in as many different regions
of the country where huge quantities of equipment were kept and from
which the camps in that district were supplied. Other storage plants
had to be kept full at the ports of embarkation from which the troops
bound for overseas service were outfitted. On the other side of
the Atlantic stock depots were maintained with complete equipment
for ninety days’ supply for all the troops, numbering finally over
2,000,000, that were sent overseas. As an indication of the enormous
quantities of clothing which had to be sent across the Atlantic, on the
first of July, 1918, there were, along with similar large quantities
of other supplies, on docks in the United States ready for shipment,
2,700,000 blankets, 840,000 pairs of spiral puttees, 7,500,000 pairs
of stockings, 1,400,000 pairs of field shoes, 203,000 pairs of hip
rubber boots, 713,000 overseas caps, 697,000 woolen breeches, 709,000
overcoats.
A force of inspectors kept the output of the manufacturing contractors
constantly under rigorous watch and whenever supplies were not up to
the specified standard they were rejected. Because it is of the first
importance that a soldier’s feet be always in the best condition, great
care was taken in properly fitting each individual. A scientific means
was devised of measuring the soldier’s foot when he received his first
pair of shoes and of testing the fit so that he could be sure of entire
comfort in his foot-gear, no matter what the length of the hikes he
should take. And after being perfectly fitted the first time, with
each successive pair--each year in the service in the United States he
received three pairs and four pairs for each year abroad--he had only
to ask for another exactly similar.
The American army has always been a well fed army. In the pre-war days,
when it was the smallest army maintained by any large state, experts
from other nations, versed in the quantity and quality of army rations,
said that the American was the best fed of all armies. And this was
still true during the great war, though its numbers leaped on by magic
strides. Whether in training at home, in camp on the other side, or
on the battle front, the American soldier had better food and more of
it than the soldier of any other nation. For instance, extra rations
from American supplies were issued to American soldiers when brigaded
with those of any other army, in addition to those supplied by the
commissariat of the army with which they were working. No experiments
were made upon the doughboy in the matter of food and experts saw
to it that his ration was agreeable to the taste, well-balanced and
nutritious. That it was good was proved by the fact that the average
soldier gained from ten to twelve pounds in weight after entering the
service.
Food experts were constantly busy devising the best means of preserving
the food until it reached the army kitchens, whether in the home camps
or behind the lines at the front. A part of their mission was also
to eliminate waste. Coffee roasting plants were installed in all the
large camps at home and overseas, for the double purpose of giving
the soldier better coffee--coffee made within twenty-four hours after
the bean had been roasted--and to prevent the waste, about two cents
on each pound, which results when the roasted coffee is kept for
long periods and so deteriorates in strength and quality. A school
was established to which men were sent to learn the art of roasting
coffee properly and after they became expert they were detailed to
the different camps at home and abroad to take charge of the coffee
roasting plants. Lemon drops were found to be a desirable part of the
army ration, as they supply needed factors of food, help to quench
thirst and are much enjoyed by the soldiers. To make sure that the
drops supplied should be of the best quality a formula was prepared
calling for pure granulated sugar and the best quality of fruit and the
candy makers taking the contract were held strictly to that standard.
The same care was taken to see that manufacturers of chocolate candies
should use the best cocoa beans in making them. The candy ration for
troops on overseas service was a half pound every ten days for each
soldier, and a great deal of this was made, toward the end of the war,
in factories which the Quartermasters Corps established in France.
The American soldier’s daily ration consisted of twenty-seven articles
of food, weighing altogether about four and a half pounds and costing
about 50 cents per man, and it had to be ready for him regularly and
promptly every day, wherever he might be. No second grade material
of any kind was bought and constant inspection of raw materials, of
processes and places, of preparation and of army kitchens kept the
food up to the standard demanded. It was bought in enormous quantities
and, in order to stabilize prices in all sections of the country, part
of the supplies was secured through the Food Administration and the
remainder by means of a system of zone buying. During the ten months
from September 1st, 1917, to the end of June, 1918, 225,000,000 pounds
of sugar were required and from the 1917 crop of vegetables and fruits
the army bought and used 75,000,000 cans of tomatoes and 20,000,000
pounds of prunes. From the listed amounts of thirty articles of food
demanded for the subsistence for one year of an army of 3,000,000 men,
the approximate size of the American army before the September draft,
the following items are taken. They will give an idea of the size of
the task which the Quartermasters Corps undertook in the feeding of our
soldiers at home and abroad: Fresh beef, 478,515,000 pounds; bacon,
48,000,000 pounds; potatoes, 782,925,000 pounds; jam, 7,665,000 cans;
flour, 915,000,000 pounds; coffee, 61,320,000 pounds; tea, 7,665,000
pounds; canned pork and beans, 4,000,000 cases; canned tomatoes,
6,000,000 cases; evaporated milk, 2,992,500 cases; butter, 15,330,000
pounds. More than six thousand different packers supplied the canned
vegetables bought for the army in the summer of 1918, approximately
300,000,000 cans, enough to girdle the earth if the cans were laid in
line, end to end.
The necessity of conserving shipping space led to the use of dehydrated
vegetables, of which the Quartermasters Corps in the summer of 1918
contracted for 16,000,000 pounds. The soldiers of the American
Expeditionary Force received a ration of 16 ounces of pure wheat
flour per day each. No wheat saving substitute was used there, for
the reason that field bakers must work swiftly and can not afford to
experiment with flour mixtures. At the training camps in the United
States kitchens were stationary and bakers definitely located and
here the prescribed amount of substitutes was used, with satisfactory
results. The Subsistence Division of the Corps worked out a special
reserve ration for use in the trenches and under first line conditions
in France. It was carried in containers proof against rats, water and
poisoning in gas attacks. Schools were established for army cooks and
bakers, so that only skilled and experienced men should serve the food
from army kitchens.
But the Quartermasters Corps, while it was feeding and clothing the
army, did not forget to be thrifty and it instituted and developed
a remarkable system of conservation and reclamation that eliminated
wastefulness and turned waste products into wealth. It reduced army
waste of food stuffs, including bread, cooked meat and bones, to
three-fifths of a pound per day per man, a figure much lower than the
average waste of the civilian population in the cities of the United
States.
Every camp, both in the United States and overseas, had its repair
shops where every article of clothing--hats, shoes, overcoats,
stockings, leggins, breeches, coats, gloves--that could be made to
give farther service was put into shape. In one month in the summer
of 1918 more than a million articles of clothing and equipment
were repaired. Fats were extracted from garbage, manure was sold,
waste materials of various sorts were sold or turned over to one or
another army organization that could find use for them. A school was
established with a three months’ course at which several hundred men
were constantly in training to take charge of the repair, dry cleaning
and laundry shops of the army and of the prevention of waste in the
handling of food in the camps and the reclamation of values from
garbage and waste materials.
Out of the importance of this work of reclamation and conservation
came the formation of the Field Salvage Service. The members of this
Service, after training at a school for this special work, were sent
overseas to collect, classify and dispose of the wreckage of guns,
shells, tools, all the implements of war that strew a battlefield after
an engagement, and which, in former wars, would have been considered
of no value. The Salvage Service also operated through all our lines,
from the front trenches back through the training camps and lines of
communication to every base port, collecting worn or damaged articles
of every sort, and turning them to some kind of use. Even empty tin
cans were collected and tin and solder salvaged.
The Service had in active operation in France at the end of hostilities
four depots, twenty shops and sixty-six laundries and disinfectors. Of
all the items it received for renovation and repair it recovered 91
per cent. and utilized the remaining nine per cent. for raw material
in repair work. The value of its work during the last month of war was
estimated at over $12,300,000, or more than $4,000,000 per day.
Under the care of the Quartermasters Corps was developed the Motor
Truck Service, which later became a separate Corps--the “Gas Hounds,”
as it was called both in and out of the army. At the beginning of
our participation in the war the Corps had only 3,000 trucks, most
of them in bad condition after hard service on the Mexican border.
During the nineteen months of war there were shipped to France 110,000
vehicles and 15,000 tons of spare parts, and in mid-summer of 1918
the Service had 2,700 officers and 77,000 men. The Motor Transport
Corps became of the first importance as a means of transport of troops
and supplies, both in the United States and overseas, but especially
so in France. Its work in moving men, munitions and supplies to the
front was of such great consequence that it deserves the credit of
having been an important factor in the winning of the war. In order to
assure the quantity production that was urgently needed designs were
standardized and all branches of the automotive industry united for
their manufacture in close coöperation. Training camps were established
to provide officers and men for the operation and maintenance of the
Service both in the United States and in France and training was given
also at several immense base repair shops. The courses varied from two
to eight weeks and 15,000 men were in training at one time.
The American army was the best paid of all the armies of the contending
nations. The private and the non-commissioned officer received from
two to twenty-five times the pay of privates and non-commissioned
officers in the British, French, Italian and German armies. Except for
the grades of Lieutenant-General and General in the British forces,
the pay of the American officers was also considerably greater than
officers received in any of the other armies. The payroll amounted
to $40,000,000 per month for every million of officers and men
abroad, and was almost as much more for the forces at home. The rapid
and tremendous expansion of the payroll, coming at the same time
that the Quartermasters Corps was, by necessity, greatly expanding
and reorganizing its personnel and was undertaking the huge tasks
of providing food, clothing and equipment for the army, somewhat
demoralized the system of payment for the first year of war effort.
But an individual pay card system was devised which simplified the
vexatious problem.
The personnel of the Quartermasters Corps expanded from five hundred
officers and 5,000 enlisted men to 9,000 officers, 150,000 enlisted
men and 75,000 civilian employees, while the entire Corps was
reorganized, several new divisions created and their work specialized,
and finally, so enormous and varied were the tasks which came under its
supervision that several of them were transferred to other offices of
the War Department or new corps were developed to take charge of them.
The total expenditures and obligations of the Quartermasters Corps for
the war amounted to about $7,000,000,000.