THE SCHOOLS FOR OFFICERS
The first economy effected after the broad sweep of training was in
swing was to segregate the officers for special training, and these
officers' schools fell into two types.
First, there was the camp for the young commissioned officers from
Plattsburg, and similar camps in America, to give them virtually the
same training as the soldiers had, but at a sharper pace, inclusive also
of more theory, and to increase their executive ability in action;
second, there was the school established by General Pershing, late in
the year, through which non-commissioned officers could train to take
commissions.
Of the first type, there were many, of the second, only one.
The camp for the Plattsburg graduates which turned its men first into
the fighting was one having about 300 men, situated in the south of
France, where the weather could do its minimum of impeding.
These youngsters arrived in September, and they were fighting by
Thanksgiving. The next batch took appreciably less time to train, partly
because the organization had been tried out and perfected on the first
contingent, and partly because they were destined for a longer stay in
the line before they were hauled back for training others. This process
was duplicated in scores of schools throughout France, so that the
Expeditionary Force, what with its reorganization to require fewer
officers, and its complementary schools, never lacked for able
leadership.
The first school was under command of Major-General Robert Bullard, a
veteran infantry officer with long experience in the Philippines to draw
on, and a conviction that the proper time for men to stop work was when
they dropped of exhaustion.
His officers began their course with a battalion of French troops to aid
them, and they were put into company formation, of about 75 men to the
company, just as the humble doughboy was.
They were all infantry officers, who were to take command as first and
second lieutenants, but they specialized in whatever they chose. They
were distinguished by their hat-bands: white for bayonet experts, blue
for the liquid-fire throwers, yellow for the machine-gunners, red for
the rifle-grenadiers, orange for the hand-grenadiers, and green for the
riflemen. These indicated roughly the various things they were taught
there, in addition to trench-digging and the so-called battalion
problems, recognizable to the civilian as team-work.
Their work was not of the fireside or the library. It was the joint
opinion of General Pershing, General Sibert, and General Bullard that
the way to learn to dig a trench was to dig it, and that nothing could
so assist an officer in directing men at work as having first done the
very same job himself.
They had a permanent barracks which had once housed young French
officers, in pre-war days, and they had a generous Saturday-to-Monday
town leave.
These two benefactions, plus their tidal waves of enthusiasm, carried
them through the herculean programme devised by General Bullard and the
assisting French officers and troops.
They began, of course, with trench-digging, and followed with live
grenades, machine-guns, automatic rifles, service-shells, bayonet work,
infantry formation for attack, and gas tests. Then they were initiated
into light and fire signals, star-shells, gas-bombing, and liquid fire.
Last, they came in on the rise of the wave of rifle popularity, and
trained at it even more intensively than the first of the doughboys.
"The rifle is the American weapon," was General Pershing's constant
reiteration, "and it has other uses than as a stick for a bayonet."
But efficacious as schools of this type were, there was a need they did
not meet, a need first practical, then sentimental, and equally valuable
on both counts.
This was the training for the man from the ranks. The War College in
America, acting in one of its rare snatches of spare time, had ordered a
school for officers in America to which any enlisted man was eligible.
General Pershing overhauled this arrangement in one particular: he
framed his school in France so that nothing lower than a corporal could
enter it. This was on the theory that a man in the ranks who had ability
showed it soon enough, and was rewarded by a non-com. rank. That was the
time when the way ahead should rightfully be opened to him.
This school commenced its courses just before Christmas, with everything
connected with it thoroughly worked out first.
The commissions it was entitled to bestow went up to the rank of major.
Scholars entered it by recommendation of their superior officers, which
were forwarded by the commanders of divisions or other separate units,
and by the chiefs of departmental staffs, to the commander-in-chief.
Before these recommendations could be made, the record of the applicant
must be scanned closely, and his efficiency rated--if he were a
linesman, by fighting quality, and if in training still or behind the
lines, by efficiency in all other duties.
Then he entered and fared as it might happen. If he succeeded, his place
was waiting for him at his graduation, as second lieutenant in a
replacement division.
Enormous numbers of these replacement divisions had to be held behind
the lines. From them, all vacancies occurring in the combat units in the
lines were filled. And rank, within them, proceeded in the same manner
as in any other division. Their chief difference was that there was no
limit set upon the number of second lieutenants they could include, so
that promotions waited mainly for action to earn them.
Within the combat units, the vacancies were to be filled two-thirds by
men in line of promotion within the unit itself, and one-third from the
replacement divisions.
The replacement division's higher officers were those recovered from
wounds, who had lost their place in line, and those who had not yet had
any assignments. To keep up a sufficient number of replacement
divisions, the arriving depot battalions were held to belong with them.
This school was located near the fighting-line, and its instructors were
preponderantly American.
It put the "stars of the general into the private's knapsack," and
began the great mill of officer-making that the experiences of other
armies had shown to be so tragically necessary. Needless to say, it was
packed to overflowing from its first day.