GETTING THEIR STRIDE
That part of France which became America in July, 1917, was of about the
shape of a long-handled tennis-racket. The broad oval was lying just
behind the fighting-lines. The handle reached back to the sea. Then, to
the ruin of the simile, the artillery-schools, the aviation-fields, and
the base hospitals made excrescences on the handle, so that an apter
symbol would be a large and unshapely string of beads.
But France lends itself to pretty exact plotting out. There are no lakes
or mountains to dodge, nor particularly big cities to edge over to. In
the main, the organizing staffs of the two nations could draw lines from
the coast to the battle-fields, and say: "Between these two shall
America have her habitation and her name."
The infantry trained in the Vosges. The artillery-ranges were next
behind, and then the aviation-grounds. The hospitals were placed
everywhere along the lines, from field-bases to those far in the rear.
And because neither French train service nor Franco-American motor
service could bear the giant burden of man-and-supply transportation,
the first job to which the engineer and labor units were assigned was
laying road-beds across France for a four-track railroad within the
American lines.
In those days America did not look forward to the emergency which was to
brigade her troops with French or British, under Allied Generalissimo
Foch. Her plans were to put in a force which should be, as the English
say of their flats, "self-contained." If this arrangement had a fault,
it was that it was too leisurely. It was certainly not lacking on the
side of magnificence, either in concept or carrying-out.
The scheme of bringing not only army but base of supplies, both
proportionate to a nation of a hundred million people, was necessarily
begun from the ground up. The American Army built railroads and
warehouses as a matter of course. It laid out training-camps for the
various arms of the service on an unheard-of scale. As it happens, the
original American plan was changed by the force of circumstances. Much
of the American man-power eventually was brigaded with the British and
French and went through the British and French soldier-making mills. But
the territory marked America still remains America and the excellent
showing made by the War Department in shipping men during the spring and
early summer of 1918 furnished a supply of soldiers sufficient to make
allotments to the Allies directly and at the same time preserve a
considerable force as a distinctly American Army. It is possible that
the fastest method of preparation possible might have been to brigade
with the Allies from the beginning. But it would have been difficult to
induce America to accept such a plan if it had not been for the
emergency created by the great German drive of the spring of 1918.
American engineers were both building railroads and running them from
July on. The hospital units were installed even earlier. The first work
of an army comes behind the lines and a large proportion of the early
arrivals of the A. E. F. were non-fighting units. At that there was no
satisfying the early demands for labor. As late as mid-August General
Pershing was still doing the military equivalent of tearing his hair for
more labor units and stevedores. A small number of negroes employed as
civilian stevedores came with the First Division, but they could not
begin to fill the needs. Later all the stevedores sent were regularly
enlisted members of the army. While the great undertaking was still on
paper and the tips of tongues, the infantry was beginning its hard
lessons in the Vosges. The First Division was made up of something less
than 50 per cent of experienced soldiers, although it was a regular army
division. The leaven of learning was too scant. The rookies were all
potentiality. The training was done with French soldiers and for the
first little while under French officers. A division of Chasseurs
Alpines was withdrawn from the line to act as instructors for the
Americans, and for two months the armies worked side by side. "You will
have the honor," so the French order read, "of spending your permission
in training the American troops." This might not seem like the
pleasantest of all possible vacations for men from the line, but the
chasseurs seemed to take to it readily enough. These Chasseurs
Alpines--the Blue Devils--were the finest troops the French had. And if
they were to give their American guests some sound instruction later on,
they were to give them the surprise of their lives first.
The French officer is the most dazzling sight alive, but the French
soldier is not. Five feet of height is regarded as an abundance. He got
his name of "poilu" not so much from his beard as from his perpetual
little black mustache.
The doughboys called him "Froggy" with ever so definite a sense of
condescension.
"Yes, they look like nothing--but you try following them for half a
day," said an American officer of the "poilus."
They have a short, choppy stride, far different to the gangling gait of
the American soldier. The observer who looks them over and decides they
would be piffling on the march, forgets to see that they have the width
of an opera-singer under the arms, and that they no more get winded on
their terrific sprints than Caruso does on his high C's.
And after they had done some stunts with lifting guns by the bayonet
tip, and had heaved bombs by the afternoon, the doughboys called in
their old opinions and got some new ones.
All sorts of things were helping along the international liking and
respect. The prowess of the French soldiers was one of the most
important. But the soldiers' interpretation of Pershing's first general
order to the troops was another. This order ran:
"For the first time in history an American Army finds itself in European
territory. The good name of the United States of America and the
maintenance of cordial relations require the perfect deportment of each
member of this command. It is of the gravest importance that the
soldiers of the American Army shall at all times treat the French
people, and especially the women, with the greatest courtesy and
consideration. The valiant deeds of the French Army and the Allies, by
which together they have successfully maintained the common cause for
three years, and the sacrifices of the civil population of France in
support of their armies command our profound respect. This can best be
expressed on the part of our forces by uniform courtesies to all the
French people, and by the faithful observance of their laws and customs.
The intense cultivation of the soil in France, under conditions caused
by the war, makes it necessary that extreme care should be taken to do
no damage to private property. The entire French manhood capable of
bearing arms is in the field fighting the enemy, and it should,
therefore, be a point of honor to each member of the American Army to
avoid doing the least damage to any property in France."
Veteran soldiers take a general order as a general order, following it
literally. Recruits on a mission such as the First Division's took that
first general order as a sort of intimation, on which they were to build
their own conceptions of gallantry and good-will. Not only did they
avoid doing damage to French property, they minded the babies, drew the
well-water, carried faggots, peeled potatoes--did anything and
everything they found a Frenchwoman doing, if they had some off time.
They fed the children from their own mess, kept them behind the lines at
grenade practice, mended their toys and made them new ones.
These things cemented the international friendliness that the statesmen
of the two countries had made so much talk of. And by the time the war
training was to begin, doughboys and Blue Devils tramped over the long
white roads together with nothing more unfriendly left between them than
rivalry.
The first thing they were set to do was trench-digging. The Vosges boast
splendid meadows. The Americans were told to dig themselves in. The
method of training with the French was to mark a line where the trench
should be, put the French at one end and the Americans at the other.
Then they were to dig toward each other as if the devil was after them,
and compare progress when they met.
Trench-digging is every army's prize abomination. A good hate for the
trenches was the first step of the Americans toward becoming
professional. It was said of the Canadians early in the war that though
they would die in the last ditch they wouldn't dig it.
No army but the German ever attempted to make its trenches neat and
cosey homes, but even the hasty gully required by the French seemed an
obnoxious burden to the doughboy. The first marines who dug a trench
with the Blue Devils found that their picks struck a stone at every
other blow, and that by the time they had dug deep enough to conceal
their length they were almost too exhausted to climb out again.
The ten days given over to trench-digging was not so much because the
technic was intricate or the method difficult to learn. They were to
break the spirit of the soldiers and hammer down their conviction that
they would rather be shot in the open than dig a trench to hide in. They
were also to keep the aching backs and weary shoulders from getting
overstiff. Toward the end of July the first batch of infantrymen were
called off their trenches and were started at bomb practice. At first
they used dummy bombs. The little line of Blue Devils who were to start
the party picked up their bombs, swung their arms slowly overhead, held
them straight from wrist to shoulder, and let their bombs sail easily
up on a long, gentle arc, which presently landed them in the practice
trenches.
"One-two-three-four," they counted, and away went the bombs. The
doughboys laughed. It seemed to them a throw fit only for a woman or a
substitute third baseman in the Texas League. When their turn came, the
doughboys showed the Blue Devils the right way to throw a bomb. They
lined them out with a ton of energy behind each throw, and the bombs
went shooting straight through the air, level above the trench-lines,
and a distance possibly twice as far as that attained by the Frenchmen.
They stood back waiting for the applause that did not come.
"The objects are two in bomb-throwing, and you did not make either,"
said the French instructor. "You must land your bomb in the
trenches--they do no more harm than wind when they fly straight--and you
must save your arm so that you can throw all afternoon."
So the baseball throw was frowned out, and the half-womanish,
half-cricket throw was brought in.
After the doughboys had mastered their method they were put to getting
somewhere with it. They were given trenches first at ten metres'
distance, and then at twenty. Then there were competitions, and war
training borrowed some of the fun of a track meet. The French had odds
on. No army has ever equalled them for accuracy of bomb-throwing, and
the doughboys, once pried loose from their baseball advantage, were not
in a position to push the French for their laurels. The American Army's
respect for the French began to have growing-pains. But what with
driving hard work, the doughboys learned finally to land a dummy bomb so
that it didn't disgrace them.
With early August came the live grenades, and the first serious defect
in the American's natural aptitude for war-making was turned up. This
defect had the pleasant quality of being sentimentally correct, even if
sharply reprehensible from the French point of view. It was, in brief,
that the soldiers had no sense of danger, and resisted all efforts to
implant one, partly from sheer lack of imagination in training, and
partly from a scorn of taking to cover.
The live bombs were hurled from deep trenches, aimed not at a point, but
at a distance--any distance, so it was safe. But once the bombs were
thrown, every other doughboy would straighten up in his trench to see
what he had hit. Faces were nipped time and again by the fragments of
flying steel, and the French heaped admonitions on admonitions, but it
was long before the American soldiers would take their war-game
seriously.
Later, in the mass attacks on "enemy trenches," when they were ordered
to duck on the grass to avoid the bullets, the doughboys ducked as they
were told, then popped up at once on one elbow to see what they could
see. The Blue Devils training with them lay like prone statues. The
doughboys looked at them in astonishment, and said, openly and
frequently: "But there ain't any bullets."
It was finally from the British, who came later as instructors, that the
doughboys accepted it as gospel that they must be pragmatic about the
dangers, and "act as if...." Then some of the wiseacres at the camp
pronounced the conviction that the Americans thought the French were
melodramatic, and by no means to be copied, until they found their
British first cousins, surely above reproach for needless emotionalism,
were doing the same strange things.
The state of mind into which Allied instructors sought to drive or coax
the Americans was pinned into a sharp phrase by a Far Western enlisted
man before he left his own country. A melancholy relative had said, as
he departed: "Are you ready to give your life to your country?" To which
the soldier answered: "You bet your neck I'm not--I'm going to make some
German give his life for his."
This was representative enough of the sentiments of the doughboys, but
the instructors ran afoul of their deepest convictions when they
insisted that this was an art to be learned, not a mere preference to be
favored.
After the live bombs came the first lessons in machine-gun fire, using
the French machine-gun and automatic rifle. The soldiers were taught to
take both weapons apart and put them together again, and then they were
ordered to fire them.
The first trooper to tackle an automatic rifle aimed the little monster
from the trenches, and opened fire, but he found to his discomfiture
that he had sprayed the hilltops instead of the range, and one of the
officers of the Blue Devils told him he would better be careful or he
would be transferred to the anti-aircraft service.
The veterans of the army, however, had little trouble with the automatic
rifle or the machine-guns, even at first. The target was 200 metres
away, at the foot of a hill, and the first of the sergeants to tackle it
made 30 hits out of a possible 34.
The average for the army fell short of this, but the men were kept at it
till they were thoroughly proficient.
One characteristic of all the training of the early days at camp was
that both officers and men were being prepared to train later troops in
their turn, so that many lectures in war theory and science, and many
demonstrations of both, were included there. This accounted for much of
the additional time required to train the First Division.
But while their own training was unusually long drawn out, they were
being schooled in the most intensive methods in use in either French or
British Army. It was an unending matter for disgust to the doughboy that
it took him so long to learn to hurry.