MAINTAINING THE ARMY IN FRANCE
To receive, care for and handle the army in France made necessary
prodigious works that, like everything else in the prosecution of
the war, had to be planned and executed at the highest possible
speed. While the making of the army, the building of cantonments,
the development of flying fields, the creation of an industry for
the supplying of munitions, the building of shipyards and ships, the
expansion of the navy, and all the multitude of wartime tasks to which
the nation at once turned its energies were being pushed breathlessly
forward, a vast development of facilities had to be begun and carried
on in France before our army and its supplies could even be landed upon
French shores and transported to the front.
The chief ports of France were already being utilized to their utmost
capacity by France and England, and for either of these nations to give
up any portion of the port facilities they were using would have meant
a serious detriment to their war effort. Therefore it was necessary for
the United States to develop sufficiently for our needs the smaller
and more backward harbors and port towns. Our shipments of troops and
supplies began to land in France at the end of June, 1917, and at once
the ports it was possible for America to use became badly congested
because of the lack of unloading facilities. In response to the sore
need of our war associates and their urgent request our khaki-clad men
were sent over in a constantly increasing stream that grew month by
month to ever larger proportions. With each 25,000 men it was necessary
to dispatch simultaneously enough supplies of every sort to maintain
those men for four months. And at the same time had to be shipped the
varied kinds and immense amounts of material for the development of the
ports, the building of storehouses, the making of camps, the providing
of railways and rolling stock, and all the rest of the work to be done.
As the vessels carrying all these war necessities crowded into the
small and undeveloped French ports in the summer of 1917 they had to
wait their turns at the docks. It often happened that a ship would
discharge the most needed part of its cargo, give up its place to some
other ship which also carried sorely needed supplies and wait for
another turn to land the rest of its load. Sometimes, so great was the
congestion because of the lack of berthing and unloading facilities, a
ship would find it better, rather than wait for another opportunity,
to return to the United States with part of its original cargo still
aboard, reload and cross the ocean again, when it would appear at the
French port by the time its next turn came around.
By the following summer, a year after these things were happening, so
enormous were the developments and improvements this country had made,
that with 250,000 and sometimes even 300,000 soldiers per month pouring
into the French ports, with all the vast amounts of food, equipment,
clothing and munitions for their use that went in with them, and
with all the huge and varied quantities of construction material also
being landed, the port facilities were equal to all needs and docks,
warehouses and unloading machinery were ready for the still greater
demands upon them which would presently have followed if the war had
not come to an end.
A great part of the material for this development had to be shipped
from the United States, as well as the tools with which the work was
done. The piles for the building of the docks, the lumber for the
barges on which to place the pile drivers, the material for long blocks
of storehouses, the rails and cars and locomotives for the making and
operating of hundreds of miles of track, lumber for the building of
barracks for the thousands of workmen, dredges, cranes, steam shovels,
tools and materials of every sort--almost all had to be shipped from
the United States and unloaded at the small, congested French ports,
which were being enlarged and developed all the time that this work of
unloading was going on in the cramped and crowded space.
In all, more than a dozen French ports were used by the American
Government and in each one more or less expansion and development
had to be done to make it serviceable, and in all the more important
ones a very great amount of development work was instituted and
carried through at breakneck speed. So much was done that through the
last months of the war it would have been of little strategic value
to the Germans if they could have gained possession of the Channel
ports of France, for which they had striven mightily in order to cut
off communications between England and the British armies in the
field, for by that time there was room for them also at the more
southerly ports. St. Nazaire was opened first and was followed by
Bordeaux, Brest, Le Havre, La Rochelle, Rochefort, Rouen, Marans,
Tonnay-Charente, Marseilles and others.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE DOCKS IN A FRENCH PORT DEVELOPED BY THE
UNITED STATES]
St. Nazaire, through which poured immense numbers of American troops
and vast quantities of supplies, in the early summer of 1917 was a
sleepy little fishing village with a good natural harbor which was used
only by occasional tramp steamers and coastwise shipping. The berthing
and unloading facilities were meager, small, old and dilapidated. The
harbor basin was dredged and enlarged, piers were built affording
three times the former berthing capacity, the unloading facilities
were multiplied by ten. At Bordeaux, in June, 1917, there were berths
for seven ships and no more than two ships per week could be unloaded.
Dredging and construction made it possible for seven ships at the
existing pier to discharge their cargoes at the same time and inside
of eight months docks a mile long, which the French told the American
engineers could not possibly be finished in less than three years,
were built on swampy land, concrete platforms, railroad tracks, and
immense warehouses were erected and huge electric cranes were set up
for lifting cases of goods from ships to cars. Approximately 7,000,000
cubic feet of lumber were used in this construction, nearly all of it
shipped from the United States. In less than a year it was possible to
unload, instead of two ships in a week, fourteen ships all at the same
time. The amount of development, of dredging and construction, that
had to be done at these two ports alone indicates the size of the task
which awaited the United States Government overseas before our men and
their supplies could even be landed in France.
There were very few supplies available in Europe for the American Army.
Practically everything for their maintenance had to be shipped from
the home base, and no chances could be taken with the possible cutting
of the line of supply by enemy operations at sea. Therefore, for every
soldier sent to France there went an amount of food and clothing
sufficient to meet his needs for four months--an immediate supply for
thirty days and a reserve for ninety days. The supply was kept at that
level by adding to the amount already sent, with each fresh unit of
25,000 men embarked from America, the increase needed for them. As our
Army overseas grew to 500,000, to 1,000,000, to 2,000,000, and with
each new leap of the numbers subsistence and clothing for their four
months’ use also crossed the ocean, great cities of warehouses sprang
up, almost overnight, for the storing of these immense quantities of
goods. Each port had its base supply depot a few miles back from the
shore where were stored the materials as they were unloaded from the
ships. Here was kept, in the depots of all the ports, a part of the
reserve sufficient to maintain the entire Army, whatever its size at
any given time, for forty-five days. Well inland, midway between the
base ports and the front lines, was another series of warehouse cities
to which the goods were forwarded from the base warehouses and from
which they were distributed to the final long line of storage depots
immediately behind the battle zones. In the intermediate warehouses
was kept constantly a thirty days’ supply for all the American forces
in France and in the distributing warehouses behind the front and
at hospital, aircraft and other centers of final distribution there
was always on hand a sufficient supply for fifteen days. Most of the
material for all this vast network of storage houses had to be shipped
from the United States. This was especially true of the base supply
depots and the early construction. Later, much of the wood was cut by
American engineering troops in French forests. Let two or three of
these warehouse cities afford an idea of the immensity of the task of
housing the supplies for our armies.
At the St. Nazaire supply depot nearly two hundred warehouses afforded
16,000,000 square feet of open and covered storage. Back of Bordeaux
there was wrought in a few months a transformation from miles of farms
and vineyards to long rows upon rows of iron and steel warehouses,
each fifty by four hundred feet and affording, all told, nearly ten
million feet of storage. At Gievres, what was a region of scrub growth
upon uncultivated land became in a few months an intermediate supply
depot of three hundred buildings, covering six square miles, needing
20,000 men to carry on its affairs and having constantly in storage
$100,000,000 worth of supplies.
These and all the other depots had to have their barracks for the
housing of the thousands of men for their operation. In each one a
sufficient supply of pure water had to be developed, for nowhere in
France was there enough wholesome water for American needs. Usually
either artesian wells were sunk or existing sources were enlarged
and purified, and reservoirs, tanks and piping were installed. One
water-works and pumping station had a capacity of 6,000,000 gallons
a day. Let a supply depot at which 8,000 enlisted men were employed
illustrate them all. Rows of neat, two-story barracks housed the
men and a huge mess hall, which served also as church, theater and
entertainment hall, accommodated 3,100 men at a sitting and allowed
6,200 to dine in an hour. Planned on scientific principles, its
overhead service, from which the food was heaped on the mess kits of
the doughboys, enabled them to pass quickly in an unbroken line from
the serving stations, of which there was one for each company, to the
dining tables. Four smaller dining halls seating 500 each added the
accommodations necessary for the entire camp. The food was cooked in
two large, concrete-floored kitchens, each 312 by 60 feet and having
thirteen big stoves, and in two smaller kitchens of three stoves
each. An underground sewer carried the camp refuse to the sea, there
were plenty of hot and cold shower baths and the whole was lighted by
electricity.
At all large supply stations and permanent camps there were huge
bakeries, each baking thousands of pounds of bread every day, coffee
roasting and grinding plants--one of these prepared 70,000 pounds of
coffee per day--ice and cold storage plants that made their own ice, of
which one had a daily capacity of 500 tons of ice and held 6,500 tons
of beef, big vegetable gardens cultivated by soldiers temporarily unfit
for duty at the front, hospitals, nurses’ and officers’ quarters.
Within a few weeks after our entrance into the war, and before the
first troops had sailed for France, a railroad commission was at work
there studying the transportation problem which would have to be solved
and preparing for the huge organization which would have to be set
up before we could give efficient aid. At first the American Army
was simply a commercial shipper over French lines, then American cars
and engines were sent over and operated by American personnel on the
French roads, under French supervision, and a little later most of the
American lines of communication were taken over by the American Army.
And hundreds of miles of railroads and switches were built and operated
at terminals, between base ports and supply depots, in the supply
stations, at the front, and between camps and other centers.
At first American locomotives were shipped in knocked-down parts and
set up again after their arrival in France. But this method consumed
too much time, when time cost high in human life and treasure. A
hurried search was made for ships with holds and hatches big enough
to receive such burdens. The first ship that went thus loaded carried
thirty-three standard locomotives and tenders tightly packed in bales
of hay. Each one was lifted from the rails beside the dock by a huge
derrick, as easily as a cat lifts a kitten, and on the other side was
lifted from its place in the hold to the rails, ready for express
service to the front, in forty-six minutes. In all, 1,500 locomotives,
either knocked-down or ready for service, were transported and 20,000
freight cars were taken over in knocked-down parts and erected again
at a big assembling station. There were constructed 850 miles of
standard gauge railroads for needs which the existing French railways
did not meet, of which 500 miles were built in the last five months
of the war. In addition, there were constructed 115 miles of light
railway, while 140 miles of German light railway were repaired and
made fit for operation. In order to carry our own lines across French
roads without interfering with traffic it was necessary to build many
miles of switches and cut-offs. Americans operated 225 miles of French
railways. The transportation system made use also of 400 miles of
inland waterways on which hundreds of barges towed by tugs sent over
for that purpose carried army supplies. This entire huge transportation
system was planned, developed, operated and manned by American railroad
men, from railway company presidents and general managers to brakemen,
and required the services of more than 70,000 men.
The aviation program called for big construction works in France, where
seventeen large flying fields, divided into several air instruction
centers, were developed. One of these aviation centers covered
thirty-six square miles and was a city complete in itself, as was each
of the other centers, with their barracks, dining halls, hangars,
repair and assembly shops, hospital, officers’ and nurses’ quarters,
welfare buildings. And all of these complete, self-contained cities,
each housing thousands of people, grew in less than a year upon farming
lands.
Hospitals were built upon a standardized system that could expand the
number of available beds by from one thousand to five thousand in one
day. When the armistice was signed there were in operation 219 base
and camp hospitals and twelve convalescent camps and the hospital
service was ready to provide a total of 284,000 beds. One of these
hospital centers, the huge institution at Beaune, afterwards utilized
by the “Khaki University,” was constructed in a few months, its 600
buildings of a permanent type including the necessary operating
rooms, laboratories, administration buildings, officers’ and nurses’
quarters, and buildings for patients for a series of ten hospitals,
each devoted to its own specialty and having its own staff of surgeons,
physicians, nurses and men. For the building of this hospital center
railways were run to the site and concrete mixers set up to provide the
material, and work was kept going at high speed day and night until it
was ready to receive patients.
Hundreds of construction projects were constantly under way for the
housing, care, training and welfare of the army whose numbers were
growing by tens of thousands every week and would in a few months
more have amounted to four million men. There were receiving camps of
tents and wooden barracks and dining halls and welfare structures,
each of which had its water works and electric lighting and sewage
disposal plants, for the debarking men; training camps; schools for
the instruction of cooks, chauffeurs, Salvage Corps workers, Tank
Corps men, candidates for the Engineering Corps, cavalry officers,
coffee roasters, statistical officers, trench artillerymen, and for
scores of other specialties in fighting and in caring for the fighting
men, by intensive work through long hours every day; nearly a hundred
factories in which were made candy, chocolate, crackers, hard bread
and macaroni and coffee was roasted and ground, by which much tonnage
was saved per month and costs were reduced; huge salvage and repair
work; big laundry and sterilizing plants in one of which more than
half a million pieces were washed or sterilized per week; motor truck
depots and reconstruction parks--one of these latter transformed in two
months from a thousand acres of farm land into a great motor plant with
shops of steel and concrete covering 125,000 square feet, railways
and switches, storehouses and offices; and dozens of other structures
and developments in which great buildings had either to be erected or
leased and adapted to new purposes.
Upon the shoulders of the Engineering Corps of the United States
Army fell the task of achieving this miracle of construction and
development in France. At our entrance into the war it consisted of 256
commissioned officers and 2,100 enlisted men, in seven organizations.
A year and a half later it had expanded to 9,000 officers and 255,000
enlisted men, in 309 organizations of which each did a specialized
kind of work. A quarry regiment got out stone from French quarries;
forestry regiments, under the permission and supervision of the French
Government, went into French forests and cut down trees, set up saw
mills and carried on lumbering operations in order to help supply the
immense lumber needs of our construction projects and so lessen the
pressure upon the shipping service; highway regiments repaired roads
and built new ones; railroad regiments laid hundreds of miles of
railway track; a camouflage regiment composed of architects, painters,
sculptors and engineers protected and disguised army operations and ran
a factory for the making of camouflage material; map-making regiments
printed maps immediately behind the battle lines; others developed
water and electric power and installed plants for our manufacturing
necessities in more than three hundred localities; still others dug
trenches and tunneled under the enemy’s lines and built bridges in the
rear of the fleeing foe for the immediate passage of American troops
in pursuit; and sometimes they threw down picks and shovels and with
hastily seized rifles and bayonets showed themselves to be as good
fighters as workers.
All this vast and varied achievement in France, of which it is possible
to mention here only illustrative parts of a mere outline, was made
possible by the big, closely knit and smoothly working organization of
the two branches of the A. E. F., the Army and its Service of Supply.
At the head of it all, organizer and administrator as well as soldier
and general, was General Pershing, Commander in Chief. Under him the
five great divisions of General Head Quarters,--the section that saw to
it that all the needed elements of warfare, men, munitions, supplies,
and materials for construction, were landed in France; the section
that received and distributed all these elements; the section that
trained the personnel of every sort; the sections that operated the
troops and secured information concerning the enemy and safe-guarded
that concerning our own affairs,--carried on each its own work in a
great, widely ramifying organization, systematized and highly organized
down to its last detail. Running all these organizations on business
principles, in addition to the army officers who directed the phases
dealing with combat, were successful business and professional men
from private life in the United States who gave up big salaries and
important positions to work for their country in France on the pay
of an army officer. Among them and spending twelve, sixteen, even
twenty hours out of the twenty-four on the job of speeding each his
own particular work to success were engineers of international renown
who had put through mighty projects of bridging and damming rivers,
building railroads and tunneling the earth, experts in financial
law, in mechanics, in construction, in finance, manufacturers of
automobiles, leaders in steel industries, organizers of big business,
officials of important railway companies.