BACK WITH THE BIG GUNS
THE American Expeditionary Force which went into the great
training-schools of France and England was like nothing so much as a
child who, having long been tutored in a programme of his own make, an
abundance of what he liked and nothing of what he didn't, should be
thrust into some grade of a public school. He would be ridiculously
advanced in mathematics and a dunce at grammar, or historian to his
finger-tips and ignorant that two and two make four. He would amaze his
fellow pupils in each respect equally.
And that was the lot of the Expeditionary Force. The French found them
backward in trench work and bombing, and naturally enough expected that
backwardness to follow through. They conceded the natural quickness of
the pupils, but saw a long road ahead before they could become an army.
Then the Americans tackled artillery, hardest and deepest of the war
problems, and suddenly blossomed out as experts.
Of course, the analogy is not to be leaned on too heavily. The Americans
were not, on the instant, the arch-exponents of artillery in all Europe.
But it is true that in comparison to the size of their army, and to the
extent to which they had prepared nationally for war, their artillery
was stronger than that of any other country on the Allied side at the
beginning of the war, notwithstanding that it was the point where they
might legitimately have been expected to be the weakest.
Hilaire Belloc called the American artillery preparation one of the most
dramatic and welcome surprises of the war.
It must be understood that all this applies only to men and not in the
least to guns. For big guns, the American reliance was wholly upon
France and England, upon the invitation of those two countries when
America entered the war.
And the readiness of America's men was not due to a large preparation in
artillery as such. The blessing arose from the fact that the coast
defense could be diverted, within the first year of war, to the handling
of the big guns for land armies, and thus strengthen the artillery arm
sent to France for final training.
Artillery was every country's problem, even in peace-times. It was the
service which required the greatest wealth and the most profound
training. There was no such thing as a citizenry trained to artillery.
Mathematics was its stronghold, and no smattering could be made to do.
Even more than mathematics was the facility of handling the big guns
when mathematics went askew from special conditions.
These things the coast defense had, if not in final perfection, at least
in creditable degree. And the diversion of it to the artillery in France
stiffened the backbone of the Expeditionary Force to the pride of the
force and the glad amazement of its preceptors.
One other thing the coast defense had done: it had pre-empted the
greater part of America's attention in times of peace and
unpreparedness, so that big-gun problems had received a disproportionate
amount of study. The American technical journals on artillery were
always of the finest. The war services were honeycombed with men who
were big-gun experts.
So when the first artillery training-school opened in France, in
mid-August of 1917, the problems to be faced were all of a more or less
external character.
The first of these, of course, was airplane work. The second was in
mastering gun differences between American and French types, and in
learning about the enormous numbers of new weapons which had sprung from
battle almost day by day.
The camp, when the Americans moved in, had much to recommend it to its
new inhabitants. There need be no attempt to conceal the fact that first
satisfaction came with the barracks, second with the weather, and only
third with the guns and planes.
Some of the artillerymen had come from the infantry camps, and some
direct from the coast. Those from the Vosges camp were boisterous in
their praise of their quarters. They had brick barracks, with floors,
and where they were billeted with the French they found excellent
quarters in the old, low-lying stone and brick houses. The weather would
not have been admired by any outsider. But to the men from the Vosges it
owed a reputation, because they extolled it both day and night. The
artillery camp was in open country, to permit of the long ranges, and if
it sunned little enough, neither did it rain.
The guns and airplanes supplied by the French were simple at first,
becoming, as to guns at least, steadily more numerous and complicated as
the training went on.
The men began on the seventy-fives, approximately the American
three-inch gun, and on the howitzers of twice that size.
The airplane service was the only part of the work wholly new to the
men, and, naturally enough, it was the most attractive.
Although the officers and instructors warned that air observation and
range-finding was by far the most dangerous of all artillery service,
seventy-five per cent of the young officers who were eligible for the
work volunteered for it. This required a two-thirds weeding out, and
insured the very pick of men for the air crews.
The air service with artillery was made over almost entirely by the
French between the time of the war's beginning and America's entrance.
All the old visual aids were abolished, such as smoke-pointers and
rockets, and the telephone and wireless were installed in their stead.
The observation-balloons had the telephone service, and the planes had
wireless.
By these means the guns were first fired and then reported on. The
general system of range-finding was: "First fire long, then fire short,
then split the bracket." This was the joint job of planes and
gunners--one not to be despised as a feat.
In fact, artillery is, of all services, the one most dependent on
co-operation. It is always a joint job, but the joining must be done
among many factors.
Its effectiveness depends first upon the precision of the mathematical
calculation which goes before the pull of the lanyard. This calculation
is complicated by the variety of types of guns and shells, and, in the
case of howitzers, by the variable behavior of charges of different size
and power. But these are things that can be learned with patience, and
require knowledge rather than inspiration.
It is when the air service enters that inspiration enters with it.
Observation must be accurate, in spite of weather, visibility, enemy
camouflage, and everything else. More than that, the observer in the
plane must keep himself safe--often a matter of sheer genius.
The map-maker must do his part, so that targets not so elusive as
field-guns and motor-emplacements can be found without much help from
the air.
Finally, the artillery depends, even more than any other branch of the
service, on the rapidity with which its wants can be filled from the
rear. The mobility of the big pieces, and their constant connections
with ammunition-stores, are matters depending directly on the training
of the artillerymen.
These, then, were the things in which the Americans were either tested
or trained. Their mathematics were A1, as has been noted, and their
familiarity with existing models of big guns sufficient to enable them
to pick up the new types without long effort.
They had a few weeks of heavy going with pad and pencil, then they were
led to the giant stores of French ammunition--more than any of them had
ever seen before--and told to open fire. One dramatic touch exacted by
the French instructors was that the guns should be pointed toward
Germany, no matter how impotent their distance made them.
Long lanes, up to 12,000 metres, were told off for the ranges. The
training was intensive, because at that time there was a half-plan to
put the artillery first into the battle-line. In any case it is easier
to make time on secondary problems than on primary.
Throughout September, while the artillerymen grew in numbers as well as
proficiency, the mastering of gun types was perfected, and the theory of
aim was worked out on paper.
Late in the month the French added more guns, chief among them being a
monster mounted on railway-trucks whose projectile weighed 1,800 pounds.
The artillerymen named her "Mosquito," "because she had a sting,"
although she had served for 300 charges at Verdun. It was not long
before every type of gun in the French Army, and many from the British,
were lined up in the artillery camp, being expertly pulled apart and
reassembled.
By the time the artillery went into battle with the infantry, failing in
their intention to go first alone, but nevertheless first in actual
fighting, they were able to give a fine account of themselves. By the
time they had got back to camp and were training new troops from their
own experience, they were the centre of an extraordinary organization.
The rolling of men from camp to battle and back again, training,
retraining, and fighting in the circle, with an increasing number of men
able to remain in the line, and a constantly increasing number of new
men permitted to come in at the beginning, ground out an admirable
system before the old year was out.
The fact that the artillery-school could not take its material raw did
not make the hitches it otherwise would, chiefly, of course, because of
the coast defense, and somewhat because American college men were found
to have a fine substratum of technical knowledge which artillery could
turn to account.
After all the routine was fairly learned, and there had been a helpful
interim in the line, the artillery practised on some specialties, partly
of their own contribution, and partly those suggested by the other
armies.
One of these, the most picturesque, was the shattering of the
"pill-boxes," German inventions for staying in No Man's Land without
being hit.
A "pill-box" is a tiny concrete fortress, set up in front of the
trenches, usually in groups of fifteen to twenty. They have slot-like
apertures, through which Germans do their sniping. They are supposed to
be immune from anything except direct hit by a huge shell. But the
American artillery camp worked out a way of getting them--with luck.
Each aperture, through which the German inmates sighted and shot, was
put under fire from automatic rifles, coming from several directions at
once, so that it was indiscreet for the Boche to stay near his windows,
on any slant he could devise. Under cover of this rifle barrage, bombers
crept forward, and at a signal the rifle fire stopped, and the bombers
threw their destruction in.
All these accomplishments, which did not take overlong to learn,
enhanced the natural value of the American artilleryman. He became, in a
short time, the pride of the army and a warmly welcomed mainstay to the
Allies.
Major-General Peyton C. March, who took the artillery to France and
commanded them in their days of organization, before he was called back
to be Chief of Staff at Washington, was always credited, by his men,
with being three-fourths of the reason why they made such a showing.
General March always credited the matter to his men. At any rate,
between them they put their country's best foot foremost for the first
year of America in France, and they served as optimism centres even when
distress over other delays threatened the stoutest hearts.