MAKING SAILORS OUT OF LANDSMEN
HALF A MILLION RECRUITED AND TRAINED IN EIGHTEEN MONTHS--"ONE OF
THE MOST STRIKING ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE WAR," SIR ERIC GEDDES
DECLARED--NAVY'S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM PAVED THE WAY--EVERY OFFICER A
TEACHER--NAVAL ACADEMY GREATLY ENLARGED--NO SHIP KEPT WAITING FOR
OFFICERS OR MEN.
Half a million men and thirty thousand officers were enlisted and
trained by the United States Navy in eighteen months. No navy in the
world ever had as large a personnel, or ever attempted to raise and
train as large a sea-force in so brief a time. Sir Eric Geddes, First
Lord of the British Admiralty, said:
The dauntless determination which the United States has displayed
in creating a large, trained body of seamen out of landsmen is one
of the most striking accomplishments of the war. Had it not been so
effectively done, one would have thought it impossible.
When the Archbishop of York, Honorary Chaplain-in-Chief of the
British Navy, visited Great Lakes, Ill., he was amazed quite as much
by the spirit of the personnel as he was by the vast extent of the
establishment, the largest naval training station in the world. The
Archbishop reviewed the cadets in the administration drill hall, a
structure large enough for three entire regiments to maneuver. Thirty
thousand blue-jackets were assembled in the hall, with three full
regiments, nine thousand men, and a band of three hundred pieces in
light marching order. After the preliminary ceremony "to the colors,"
they passed in review before the Archbishop, playing and singing "Over
There." The thousands massed in the center of the hall, sang "Columbia,
the Gem of the Ocean." Profoundly moved, the Archbishop turned and said
to Captain W. A. Moffett, the commandant, "Captain, now I know that we
are going to win the war."
When, a few days later, he visited Washington, the Archbishop told me
that the outstanding thing he had seen in America was the Great Lakes
Training Station. "If I had not seen it," he said, "I could not have
believed it possible that such a training camp for seamen could be
conducted a thousand miles from the ocean."
Like expressions came from members of the various missions and naval
officers who came to the United States. That station, situated in
the heart of the country, far from the ocean, trained and sent into
the navy during the war over one hundred thousand men. It was the
vitalizing spirit of the Navy in the Middle West; a center of the
patriotic inspiration which swept like a prairie fire and brought
young men into the Navy more rapidly than we could house them. Two
thousand five hundred enlisted men were under training there when war
was declared and in that month 9,027 recruits were received. But Great
Lakes never was swamped. No matter what strain was put upon it, the
authorities were equal to any emergency.
Between April 6, 1917, and March 11, 1919, 125,000 men were received;
96,779 trained and sent to sea duty, and 17,356 graduated at its
special schools. The camp grew to 1,200 acres, with 775 buildings.
Nine great drill halls were built in which thousands could maneuver in
regimental formation. But bigger than the number of men enrolled or
the buildings erected or the great schools conducted was the spirit
of the place. From the inspiring leadership of Captain Moffett, who
was a genius at organization, to the youngest boy fitted out in naval
uniform, pride in the station and the naval service was so contagious
that it reached back into the homes from which the youths had come and
stirred the whole Middle West with enthusiasm for the Navy.
In the early days of the war, Captain Moffett, who had come to
Washington to discuss plans for enlarging the station, said to me: "Mr.
Secretary, I have here a requisition for $40,000 for instruments for
the Great Lakes band."
It had not been very long since $40,000 was the entire appropriation
for the station. The captain's request seemed to me like extravagance.
"Do you expect to win the war, as the Israelites did?" I asked, "by
surrounding Berlin and expecting the walls to fall as every man in your
band blows his trumpet?"
I demurred at first, but he pleaded for it with such eloquence that I
signed the requisition. This enabled John Philip Sousa, enrolled as a
lieutenant in the Reserve Force, to train fifteen hundred musicians,
the largest band in the world. Bands were not only sent to ships and
stations overseas, but toured the country, giving the greatest impetus
to the Liberty Loan campaigns. These bands were an inspiration to the
entire service. I found later that a British commission had reported
that only three things were more important than music. These were food,
clothing and shelter.
The three other great permanent training stations, Hampton Roads, Va.,
Newport, R. I., and San Francisco, were animated by the same spirit as
Great Lakes. Their officers and men vied with each other in efficient
training of recruits. The same was true of the temporary stations along
the coast which came into being to give quarters and instruction to
youths who enlisted so rapidly that provision had to be made for them
at every available point.
Approximately 500,000 men and 33,000 officers were in the Navy when
hostilities ended, and nearly nine-tenths of them had been trained
after war was declared. Naval administration did not wait until
hostilities began to increase its force. Recruiting was pressed in
the closing months of 1916, immediately after Congress authorized a
substantial increase, and 8,000 men were enlisted. In January 1917,
enlistments went up to 3,512, and there was a larger increase the
next month. In March, when the President signed the order raising the
Navy to emergency strength--87,000 regulars, plus 10,000 apprentice
seamen, and hospital attendants and others, a total of 97,000--we began
a vigorous campaign that covered the entire country. When war was
declared there were in the Navy 64,680 enlisted men and 4,376 officers,
commissioned and warrant. Some 12,000 reserves had been enrolled, the
10,000 Naval Militia were mustered into service and 590 officers and
3,478 men of the Coast Guard were placed under the Navy. This gave us a
total force of approximately 95,000.
Within little more than a month after war was declared there were
100,000 regulars, and by June 1st the total force had grown to 170,000.
By January 1, 1918, there were 300,000 officers and men on the rolls,
including reserves and the Coast Guard. By August we had passed the
half-million mark, and when the armistice was signed there was a naval
personnel of approximately 533,000. The actual figures of the Bureau
of Navigation for November 11, 1918, were 531,198, and for December
1, 532,931. But practically all those shown in the latter report had
been enlisted before hostilities had ended. Figures of various branches
varied slightly before and after the armistice, but there were in the
naval service at its maximum:
Officers Men
Regulars 10,590 218,251
Reserves 21,618 278,659
Coast Guard 688 6,101
------ -------
Total 32,896 503,011
It is interesting to compare the above enlistment for the World War
with those who served in the Navy in previous wars:
War of 1812 20,000
Mexican War 7,500
Civil War 121,000
Spanish-American 23,000
The Navy was called upon to perform many new tasks--to man troop-ships
and cargo transports, to furnish guards for merchant ships, to maintain
forces ashore, in Europe as well as this country, and to render
other services that no navy had previously contemplated. All this
required personnel in large numbers. But no matter what the service or
requirement, when the call came the Navy was ready with officers and
men, regulars or reserves.
During the entire war "we never had a delay of a vessel on account
of not having the officers and men," said the Chief of the Bureau of
Navigation. "The personnel were actually ready at seaports to put on
vessels before the vessels were ready."
Few of the recruits had any previous sea experience. Most of them were
from the interior, many had never seen the ocean. But the enthusiasm
and energy of teachers and pupils would have surprised Dana, who in
his "Two Years Before the Mast," said: "There is not so helpless and
pitiable an object in the world as a landsman beginning a sailor's
life." They knew they were woefully ignorant of the sea, but they had
a stimulus Dana's landsmen lacked--the eager desire to fit themselves
to fight. That sharpened their capacity so that in a few weeks they
learned more than, without such incentive, they could have mastered in
a twelve-month.
At training stations naval terms were used for everything. The barracks
building was the "ship"; the floor was the "deck"; offenders were tried
at the "mast"; requests for leave were to "go ashore," and returning
the men "reported aboard." Meals were "chow" and there was slang for
every article of food--stews being known as "slumgullion," salt as
"sand," coffee as "Java," and bread was called "punk." Recruits soon
picked up the lingo of the sea, and found their "sea legs."
Every feature of life at sea was simulated as closely as possible in
the stations, and when sent into service, the men felt at home aboard
ships. It was no new experience for them to sleep in hammocks. They had
slept in them while under training. "Hit the deck, boys," was always
the morning order in station as it is on shipboard. Before they had so
much as seen a man-of-war or transport, their motto was, "for the good
of the ship."
"Do your bit," never found favor in the Navy; we had a better term. As
the commanding officer of one station passed a squad at drill, he heard
ringing out the words: "Don't just do your bit. The men on this station
do their best."
Serious as was the work, recruits, with the spirit of eternal youth,
enlivened it by fun, humor and pranks. This was always in evidence.
No hardship could dispel it. A story is told of a young Texan, just
enlisted and being inspected at Great Lakes. All the recruits were
ordered to fall in line and strip for inspection. Sans shoes, sans
shirts, sans pants, in fact sans everything in the way of clothing,
the boy marched past the doctor. The Texan, with utter lack of the
awe which a gold-striped surgeon is supposed to inspire, had secured
a paper stencil, used to mark clothing, and using black paint had
lettered his bare stomach with the words, "Good morning, doctor."
The grave surgeon saw the joke was on him, and led the hearty laughter
at this original greeting. Another recruit from a Western state,
hearing of the various detentions and occasional surgical operations
supposed to precede acceptance, hung over the place where he supposed
his appendix was located this placard: "I have had my appendix
removed." He probably thinks to this day that this saved him from an
operation.
"I never knew what patriotism meant before I learned it by service in
the Navy."
That remark was addressed to me by an upstanding, clear-headed youth in
naval uniform as the mine-sweepers were welcomed back to New York after
they had finished the worst job assigned to the navy, that of sweeping
up the mines in the drab days after the armistice.
He was bronzed by the wind and the sun of the North Sea. His muscles
seemed made of steel. Exposure had given a vigor of body that made you
feel that he could do anything.
"Tomorrow," he went on, "I am going back to my job in civil life, but
I am a different man. Before the war I think I loved my country and
I suppose the flag meant something to me. But I felt no passion of
patriotism. It was a matter of course. But the Navy has taught me such
reverence for the flag that I have a thrill every time it is raised,
and somehow my country became something more than land and water and
houses. It seems something holy to me. And that's what my naval service
did for me," he added as he passed to his place at the banquet table.
Such inculcation of love of country was the best by-product of the war.
How was it that the regulars in the Navy were able to train so rapidly
the recruits that poured in after war was declared? How did they attain
the efficiency which led to the promotion of ten thousand of them to
warrant or commissioned officers?
The answer is that the Navy had been organized as an educational and
industrial, as well as a fighting, institution. Officers and men had
gone to school, they were subjected to frequent examinations, and
promotions were given from ascertained fitness rather than from the
outgrown policy of seniority. Post-graduate schools enabled officers to
qualify as experts. Vocational and grammar schools for enlisted men
had kindled ambition and given mental as well as physical and naval
training. The war, therefore, found the Navy not only fit to fight,
but its officers and men equipped to train quickly the half-million
young men who enlisted in 1917-18. The Navy had years before instituted
educational preparedness--professional, vocational, elementary--as a
part of its policy. And the test of war proved that no other form of
preparedness produced better results.
In 1913 I issued orders which established a school on every ship in the
Navy, the officers instructing the men in reading, spelling, writing
and arithmetic, geography, grammar and history, as well as in naval and
technical subjects. Nearly every enlisted man who availed himself fully
of this instruction afloat received promotion, and all of them became
more proficient.
The war proved that vessels manned by seamen having trained minds as
well as trained hands are superior to ships with uneducated crews.
Neither speed nor armor wins battles. It is intellect, education,
training, discipline, team-work, courage.
As a logical result of the schools afloat, Congress later authorized
the appointment of one hundred enlisted men annually as midshipmen at
the Naval Academy. In the first class after this law made it possible,
the honor graduate at Annapolis came from the enlisted personnel.
Others have since attained high standing in their class and in the
service. The day will come when all appointments to the Naval Academy
will be made from the ranks.
The educational system, adopted in the Navy in 1913, became part of
the army system of training before the American Expeditionary Force
returned from France, and Secretary Baker made such instruction an
integral part of the training for men enlisting in the Army.
With the advent of war the educational work of the Navy was greatly
enlarged and changed to meet war conditions. In addition to many
technical schools the fleet at Yorktown was utilized for intensive
training, and prepared over 45,000 officers and men for important and
varied duties afloat. The older type of battleships became virtual
training schools, devoting particular attention to gunnery, navigation
and engineering, qualifying men for various duties requiring
experience. When ordered to sea the men who had enjoyed this special
training gave full proof of the practical schooling through which they
had passed.
It required war to bring appreciation of the school as a necessary part
of military instruction. The Navy had started schools for sailors in
1914, but it was not until 1919 that the Army and Marine Corps felt
the necessity of such schools, which they then established, though in
1913 General Butler, in command of the Marines at Panama, was teaching
them Spanish. "It opened my eyes to what might be done," said Judge
Garrison, then Secretary of War, upon his return from an inspection
trip, "and I am going to advise Army officers to go down to Panama and
learn from General Butler how to teach men in the Army." Upon their
return from France General Lejeune and General Butler established
schools for the teaching of Marines at Quantico, a plan which is being
extended to all Marine bases and attracting a superior type of recruits.
In 1866 General Lew Wallace outlined a plan of education for soldiers,
approved by Charles Sumner, declaring that the "military system as
respects the rank and file is founded on egregious errors." The chief
error was that no system of giving the rank and file the same character
of instruction as imparted at West Point was at that time offered in
order that they might win commissions. He urged that the hours of
service of a private soldier be "so divided as to give him time for
study and meditation without interference with his routine of duty."
The "proverbial idleness of military life" which then prevailed was
due to lack of schools and proper instruction. By the addition of the
education and promotion policy suggested, General Wallace said, we
would "not only get better military service, but as an act of wisest
statesmanship you offer in a constitutional way the coveted opportunity
for education to every youth in the land."
The Navy, having given trial to the policy, found that all that General
Wallace claimed for it was true, and now that the Army and Marine Corps
have established like schools, educational advantages as a part of
military duty have become the accepted American policy.
The war emphasized the worth of education for military efficiency.
While excellent officers were obtained from every source possible,
the main dependence for all-around naval officers was upon the Naval
Academy graduates. In the test of war they more than justified what
was expected of them. In order to secure more officers with Annapolis
training, the course for midshipmen was reduced, during the war, to
three years and made more intensive, upon the recommendation of Rear
Admiral Edward W. Eberle, the able and resourceful superintendent of
the Naval Academy. He and his associates, anxious to get into the
active fighting, were doing more by the instruction of the increasing
number of midshipmen and the zeal with which they inspired all who came
under their influence.
Before the war, plans had been adopted and appropriations made for
greatly increasing the Naval Academy. A new Seamanship and Navigation
Building that cost $1,000,000 was constructed. Four million dollars was
expended in enlarging Bancroft Hall, which was more than doubled to
accommodate the increased number of midshipmen. In 1912 there were 768
midshipmen at Annapolis. Legislation adopted before the war increased
the number to 2,120 in 1917. The enlarged facilities will accommodate
2,400.
Two special courses were established at the Naval Academy in the spring
of 1917, one for line officers and the other for men of the supply
corps. A total of 1,622 were graduated as ensigns for line duty and 400
as supply officers. They went right into the fleet, and though they had
received only a few months' drill, they carried the Annapolis spirit
into the service--a spirit of valor and invincibility. The institution
at Annapolis, the pride of America and the admiration of all visitors
to our country, is easily the greatest naval school in the world.