Misfit and unfit sorted at Blois--Clan again--What to do with the
"dodo"--Making good after Blois--Its significance to the regular--The
fear of Blois in its effect on the reservist--Faults of reserve
officers--Feeling of the medicos--Staff propaganda--Getting to
troops--Staff and line--Slow weeding out.
When the promotion disease was most acute, however, the word promotion
never exercised over the army the spell of the word Blois. Though Blois
was not mentioned in the press, it was as familiar in the secrecy of
the army world as Verdun, Ypres, Paris, or Château-Thierry. Every
officer who was uncertain whether or not he was pleasing his superior
stood in fear of Blois, which was the synonym of failure. Downcast
generals and lieutenants traveled together from the front to Blois.
What was to be done with officers who broke down in health, or who did
not come up to the standards required in their work? They might be sent
home; but white-haired generals and colonels who had reputations as
able officers in time of peace were not wanted airing their grievances
on the steps of the Army and Navy Building in Washington. There was
an injustice, too, in placing on any officer the stigma of having been
sent back from France, which would react on the many capable officers
who were recalled from France in order to apply their experience abroad
in furthering our preparations at home. Then, too, we needed the
service of any officer who could do any kind of work in France. In the
majority of instances it was not so much a question of being unfit as
being "misfit." The thing was to put round pegs in round holes.
The town of Blois near Tours became a depot for classification and
reassignment of officers who had been relieved by their superiors. A
Leavenworth man who was in charge had the power to reduce an officer in
rank if he thought this were warranted. He secretly interrogated the
arriving officer, who was told that his record would not be considered
against him; his superiors might have been unjust to him; if he had
"stubbed his toe," this did not mean that he would do it again. Though
the plan was as logical as the transfer of an employee of a business
from the manufacturing to the selling branch, the object of the
attention felt the humiliation none the less. Despite all propaganda
to alleviate its association in the minds of fellow-officers, "being
sent to Blois" had only one generally accepted significance, which
was wickedly unfair to many a victim. There were superiors who
followed their subordinates to Blois; while the subordinates were
later promoted, they sank into the desuetude of a routine position.
Indigestion, a burst of temper, a case of nerves, of prejudice, of
finding a scapegoat for a senior's mistakes, might start an officer
away from the front with his unhappy travel order. I knew of instances
where it was a tribute to the officer that he had been sent: a tribute
to his honest effort, his initiative, his unselfish spirit in trying
to do his duty under an incompetent, irascible superior, who himself
should not have received the consideration of Blois but been sent to a
labor battalion, in the hope that by a few hours of physical effort a
day he might have earned a part of the pay and the pains his country
had wasted on him.
Considering how valuable was the regular's professional training for
combat, and considering too that only half of the regular officers
ever reached France, it was surprising how many regular officers were
sent from the front to Blois. The percentage of regulars who failed
in action was said to be as large as the percentage of reserves. The
Leavenworth group, aiming to be impartial in the ruthlessness which
they thought their duty, declared that when a man failed to make good
he went, whether regular or reserve.
"If there's a reserve officer who can do my job better than I can, I
want him to have it," said a regular colonel of thirty-five. "I'll give
all I have and do my best wherever I am sent. That's service and duty.
My country thought I was fit to be an officer. It paid me to serve
where I could serve best. What is the use of holding to the clannish
idea that any regular is better than a reserve? That isn't the idea of
efficiency. If a man who has served only six months is better than a
man who has served thirty years, the old regular ought not to growl. He
ought to feel ashamed. He is beholden to his country for having given
him a livelihood for thirty years. He could not have earned as good a
one in any other occupation."
He was the same officer who had spoken his convictions after my
remarks at the maneuver at Leavenworth. Of humble origin, proving the
democratic test by his conduct, he was an honor to the profession
of arms,--as he would have been to any profession. The whole army
recognized his ability. Of course no reserve officer or National Guard
officer could be better than he; his subordinates were proud to serve
under him. If his reward could have been judged by a monetary standard,
he earned all the pay he had ever received from the government by one
month's service in France. He would return to a major's rank under
mediocre officers, whose work he now directed from the staff.
Had he made the remarks which I have just quoted to reserve officers
when any regulars were present, even his ability would not have saved
him from the charge of disloyalty to the clan. So the strain on class
A men in the staff or in the line was heavy. As Leavenworth men, the
Leavenworth men stood together, thought the observing reserves--and
with them, of course, I include National Guard officers--while the
regulars, forming up against the magic inner circle, stood together as
regulars in the magic outer circle.
The human equation and friendships were bound to enter into the honest
effort at impartiality. Here was a brigadier-general of fifty-five or
sixty who had been your commanding officer at a post. He was hopelessly
superannuated. There was no place of responsibility in keeping with
his rank where his services would not be fatal to efficiency. No one
desired to hurt his feelings. Diplomacy must arrange cushions for him.
He was given a car, and aides, and sent about on inspections, to make
reports which were received with serious attention, or he was given a
first-class officer as chief of staff. One of these amiable "dodos,"
as the regulars called them among themselves--never in the presence of
a reserve officer--complained, so the story ran, that "another general
had a cut-glass vase for flowers in his limousine, and he had none."
The strife for cars befitting rank was almost as vigorous as for
promotion, while some regimental commanders rode in side-cars or cars
of a "low rank"; but they, who passed through shell-fire and bumped
over shell-craters, would not have exchanged their commands for the
most luxurious of limousines flying along good roads out of sound of
the guns. It was hard, indeed, that upstarts from Leavenworth in the
name of John J. Pershing should consign to Blois, and from Blois to
a base section of the S. O. S., veterans of thirty and forty years'
service in the regulars. There was another method applied on one
occasion, when a division commander told a brigadier who had mismanaged
his command that his brigade would be cared for in the morrow's attack,
and that he would have his chance to redeem himself in the manner of a
brave man, by going "over the top." He went, of course, winning that
respect which is given every man, regardless of age or ability, for
unflinching courage. Others might have been given the same opportunity
to win gold letters in the memorial hall at West Point as an enduring
epitaph; but there were strong arguments against this. The incompetent
were not fit for the serious business of combat organizations; men's
lives could not be trusted to their direction. In case of death, the
officer's widow would receive a small pension, while if he survived and
was retired, he would receive retired pay enough to assure comfort to
his family.
The human equation reappears. A reservist was a stranger, a regular
might be an old comrade, calling on a senior's affection and the
loyalty to clan, when the latter considered sending an officer to
Blois. Still other influences might make a regular's shortcomings more
easily forgiven than a reservist's. If a regular did not succeed in
carrying out orders, as he was a professional, failure must be accepted
as unavoidable. In a word, if Ed or John with whom you had served could
not put the trains through or take a machine-gun nest, then it was
impossible.
There was no such personal standard of professionalism to apply to a
reservist. Success must be the only standard for him. On the other
hand, I did not envy some Leavenworth men, who leaned over backward in
being resolute to comrades, when they should revert to their original
rank and be once more serving under officers whom they had commanded
from the staff. "He's got it in for me," was an expression sometimes
heard, as you will hear it in different forms in any class community.
It was an excuse for having been sent to Blois. Meanwhile, new grudges
were being formed. It was dramatic when a regular officer, who had been
sent to Blois, upon reassignment to the front won his brigadiership
in a brilliant action; but not so dramatic as when a National Guard
brigadier, who had had his stars removed at Blois, refused a colonelcy
in the rear, received a majority in the line, returned as a major to
his own brigade, and was killed in leading his battalion gallantly in
a charge.
The heartbreaks among the regulars must be more lasting than among
the reservists. War was the regular's profession. He returned to live
with his reputation in the army world. The reservists returned to the
civil world, where the war would soon be forgotten. This accounted for
the greediness for promotion, which throughout the lives of regular
officers would be the mark of their careers, while the guerdon of the
future for the reservist was success in another occupation.
"Do these reservists want to jump in and take everything away from
us, when they are in the army only for the war?" as a veteran regular
complained when he was not receiving the promotion which he thought was
his due.
The more subordinates you had, the more chance of promotion.
"Get a lot of young officers around you, form a bureau, and you will
get a colonelcy in the new tables of organization," said one regular
officer to another, both efficient, upstanding men.
Toward the end we did not lack officers in numbers for service in
the rear. Our problem was to prevent unnecessary expansion in
superfluities. Our American energy was under pressure. The thing for
regular or reserve was to show that he was as busy as any Leavenworth
man. Both the British and French said we had too many typewriters, and
were prone to excess motion, despite our wonderful accomplishment. It
was an obvious criticism, by officers in an established organization,
of an organization which was in the throes of creation. Big men might
work with a purpose; but little men might be flailing out their
vitality on old straw, in order to make a "show" before the senior who
might either promote them or send them to Blois.
One day a reserve officer suggested to a regular senior, who had
been laboring long and hard over a problem, a solution which could
be expressed in half a dozen lines, leaving the execution of the
policy stated to subordinates. That conscientious regular trained
in Leavenworth industry shook his head. He sent in ten pages, after
burning the midnight oil, which finally went up to Harbord himself.
Harbord dictated a few sentences which duplicated the reservist's
suggestion. "In line with my idea!" said the regular. There was no
reason why the reservist should expect credit. He was in service to
help in any way he could to hasten the end of the war.
I have in mind one regular staff chief, who won promotion and great
credit because of his able subordinates. "He never knew," as one of the
subordinates said. I am not sure that he was entirely unconscious, for
he said: "These reservists have a lot of ideas. Of course they don't
know anything about war." By the time the serious fighting began, they
knew more than he knew. They were shrewd enough to let him think that
their knowledge was his.
Of course, he always held over them the fear of Blois and the promise
of promotion. That fear of Blois killed many an officer's initiative.
It made independent men into courtiers for favor from men for whom
in their hearts they had no respect. The weak tried to play safe, as
they studied a senior's characteristics. Lack of psychologic contact
between the army post world and the world of the nation as a whole,
and overwork, overworry, and lack of appreciation of their efforts
sent many officers to Blois. It was one sure way of having a brief
holiday. Young reservists especially became discouraged and fatalistic
when they found that they were incapable of ever pleasing an irascible
senior. Others who had the right kind of superior developed under
his encouraging and understanding direction. All was a gamble in how
commanding officers themselves developed under the test of war.
A certain suspicion of civilians of whom they knew so little
had its inevitable influence in keeping regulars in all the
important positions, even in the S. O. S. The army had to take the
responsibility, and the army must therefore keep authority in its own
hands. Was it surprising, considering the life they had led, that the
regulars should think that civilians could not understand the honor
and the ethics of the service which they had so jealously guarded
against politicians and a misinformed public? Civilians were shrewd in
worldly ways; they might use their positions for profit; they might
inculcate bad gospel. I heard of no peculation in that enormous and
scattered organization, buying such gigantic quantities of supplies. We
may have been extravagant, but we were clean--very clean, compared to
the political contracts of Civil War times. The regulars kept to the
honest traditions, even if some of their officers had become "dead from
the chin up," to use a regular army expression. As an observer I dare
indulge in only a few of the regulars' tart sayings about one another,
sayings which of themselves were symptomatic of our restless energy for
achievement, and of standards which were formed on achievement rather
than pretension. If there were any graft, it was that of desire for
power, of travel orders to see the front and France, and of other human
weaknesses which were an inevitable accompaniment of active ambition.
It was my fortune to see the staff and the supply systems, to go in and
out of the different headquarters, and on up to the front itself. I had
the keys to the doors of all the many compartments, each immured by the
nerve-racking pressure of its industry and exposure to death. I also
saw the other armies at work. I knew the faults of reserves as well as
of regulars. There were young officers of the line, good in scholarship
and drill at the training camps, who, not from any want of courage
but from inability, failed under fire. Floating in on the wave of the
quartermaster and ordnance corps in the hasty granting of commissions
was many a major and captain who was worthless. Some had never earned
in their occupations in civil life the pay they were receiving as
officers. These were most ambitious for promotion. They were always
grumbling that their organizing capacity was not recognized. To the
regular they were examples in point, proving the wisdom of expert
control to the last degree.
Other reserve officers who were specialists in a business or
profession, now that they were at war, considered it a hardship to have
to do the same work that they had been doing in civil life. Others by
their propensities for unbridled talk offended the regular ethics of
secretiveness. Others who had been regarded as men of ability in their
occupations were living on their reputations no less than some of the
older regulars. Under army conditions, in poor quarters on foreign
soil, they seem to have had a further relapse. Men of reputation in
civil life, who were used to having their work known through the press,
once they were in uniform felt their helpless anonymity. Leavenworth,
in its unfamiliarity with civil life, sticking fast to its prerogatives
and its theory of war, said that all reserves, line and staff, should
be given a hell's trial, and that those who survived would one day
receive their reward--after all the regulars had been looked after, as
the reservists remarked.
Among the reserve officers were the physicians and surgeons, the most
notable we had, in one of the most progressive of professions, who
came to the aid of the army medical corps, which had to expand its
organization with all the suddenness of the quartermaster corps. The
standards of admittance to the army medical corps had been high; it
had expanded its vision in sanitation in the Philippines, Cuba, and
the Canal Zone; its practice was with soldiers in time of peace. The
reserve medico, whether a great surgeon, a laboratory expert, or head
of a hospital, was subject to a regular senior, often much younger
than he, whose capacities might be first-class, or as inferior as his
prejudices were numerous. No experts from civil life, in their sacred
desire for efficiency, could feel the restrictions on their initiative
more than the reserve medical officers; but be it said that we did
build hospitals, we did equip them well, and, with General Pershing's
resolute support, the exacting health discipline included precautions
against that disease which has ever been the curse of armies.
Leavenworth would have no advertising. Not only for reasons of military
secrecy would censorship have no names mentioned, but also in keeping
with the ethics of regular officers that publicity was unbecoming--a
theory that was fine in the abstract, but in the application had to
deal with human nature. The names of the Leavenworth men themselves,
holding the fates of division generals in their hands, were unknown
to the public and to the mass of the army. Not reports in the press,
glorifying a unit or its commander, but the military judgment of
superiors was to form the criterion of praise. Never, indeed, had such
power come to a group of men as to the graduates of that sequestered
school in the wheat fields of Kansas, in charge of two million men.
It was interesting to watch how rapidly some of them grew under
responsibility, how used they became to accepting power as a matter
of course; and equally interesting how others remained scholars of
Leavenworth, their vision still shut within its walls.
They directed policy to keep up morale. Their propaganda never forgot
the army; and finally included, to my regret, that of hate and of
atrocities accepted on hearsay. The Stars and Stripes, the A. E. F.
newspaper, brought to France all the headlines, the snappy paragraphs,
the cartoons, the slang, which knit California to Maine, to arouse our
enthusiasm for the war. Our communiqués, much studied and revised, had
facility in concealment in place of outright prevarication, which was
the prevailing fashion to keep up the spirits of the public behind the
army by assurances that it was the enemy who was making the mistakes
and suffering the heavier casualties. Fashions in uniform received
much attention, too, from those with that inclination of mind. The
overseas cap, without a visor to keep sun or rain out of the eyes, was
none the less distinctive. We might have designed a better one the day
we started troops to Europe, if our staff at home had had information
about European climatic conditions; but the number of things in which
we might have shown prevision are too numerous to mention. They do not
count now; for the war was won. The Allied communiqués were right. Our
victory proves that the enemy made all the mistakes.
Considering the many regulars used in organization and instruction
in France, the number of regular officers who served at the front
must be, if exception is made of the youngsters from West Point and
the provisional regular officers, relatively small. Reacting to a
"million men rising to arms in their shirt-sleeves," and to the popular
conception of leadership as an officer rushing at the head of his men
in a charge, Leavenworth held strictly to the idea of the chessboard
system, which kept commanders, including regimental, in touch with
their communications, instead of leading charges, the better to
direct the tactical movements of their units. In the National Guard
and National Army, the majority of the majors as well as the captains
and lieutenants were from civil life; so, too, were the captains and
lieutenants in the regular divisions, always excepting the regular
officers, who did not average one out of six in the average regular
battalion.
No army staff was more given to the policy of alternating between line
and staff than ours. Every officer on the staff felt that he had a
right to lead a regiment or brigade before the war was over. Transfers
were frequent. The result was gratifying to individual ambition. A line
officer who had just learned field command took the place of a staff
officer who was just becoming expert in his branch of staff work. The
newcomer had to start in learning fundamentals when his predecessor had
been under a strain to keep up with the rapid developments; but how
could you deny Tom, who was once your lieutenant in the Philippines,
his desire, after three months' confinement, to be "in it" for a while
at the front? When he showed peculiar fitness for office work, the
British and French would have kept him in an office. He had his daily
exercise, and his periods of leave when he might recuperate from the
mental strain, which was all the worse for a man whose heart was with
the troops. The Germans, least of all inclined to consider the personal
equation, had interchangeable corps staffs. When one became stale, it
went into rest in the same manner as a division of infantry, while a
fresh staff took its place. Their system was the same as having two
office forces, interchanging at intervals, in a business where the
offices were open night and day. We had not enough officers to allow
holidays. All must serve double the usual office hours in any concern,
Sundays included--work as long as there was work to do, snatching
intervals of sleep. In this the Leavenworth men, I repeat, set all
an industrious example. Their greatest fault first and last was lack
of psychologic touch with the people of their country. They were too
remote from the troops. "But you forget the men," as the C.-in-C. used
to say to the chess-players.
No staff can ever be popular with the line; and no line can ever
satisfy the staff which works out its plans of attack on paper. The
staff serves at a headquarters, and the line in the open under fire.
The difference of the human equation is that between security and
comfort, and death and hardship, which no philosophy can bridge. A
staff officer who appeared at the front always looked conspicuously
neat and conspicuously wise, as exotic as a man in a morning coat on a
cowman's ranch. The line officer in earth-stained uniform, lean from
his effort, eyes glistening with the fever of battle dangers shared
with his men, as he entered a staff room to report was equally exotic
in his surroundings, while he had a personal dignity whose chivalrous
appeal no one could resist.
Yet someone must do staff work. Some directing minds must arrange for
the movement of the troops and their transport according to a system,
and assure the presence of supplies and ammunition; someone must sit
near the centering nerves of wire and wireless and telephone and
messengers, and maneuver the units in battle. The more comfortable they
were, the better they did their work, inasmuch as there was no reason
for their sleeping on the ground when they could have shelter.
Everyone familiar with the statics of war on the Western Front knew
that you might have a good lunch at a division or corps headquarters,
and two or three hours later you might be floundering in the mud, gas
mask on, under bombardment. If you spent a day in the trenches, your
feelings became those of the men who were there, you knew the nonsense
that was written for public consumption in order to keep the public
stalwart for the war, and you held visitors and staff officers who came
sight-seeing in the kind of humorous contempt that those who "busted
bronchos" held the tenderfoot in the days when realities in the wild
west resembled the moving-picture shows of contemporary times. The
officer relieved from staff duty for the front was subject to the same
influence. He was not long in command of troops before he began abusing
the staff for its preposterous orders, while the line officer assigned
to the staff was soon talking about the incapability of the line to
carry out his directions.
Gradually slipping the round pegs into round holes and the square
pegs into square holes, floundering and stumbling, but keeping on,
the process of organization continued, while the resolute will of
the Commander-in-Chief laid down the lines of policy. For him to
give an order, as I have said, did not mean that it would be carried
out. He himself was the victim of the system: one man dependent upon
others for the execution of his plans, and largely dependent too upon
inspections by others for reports of progress. His adjutants could form
chains of influence of which he was unconscious. "Insubordination"
is the most glaring of military offenses, next to timidity under
fire. It cannot be openly practised; but within the bounds of any
closed society the effects of insubordination can be gained. To trace
responsibility in time of action is laborious through channels where
officers familiar with the craft of "passing the buck" may spin red
tape endlessly, though on other occasions they cut it with facility.
Yet the phrase, "the C.-in-C. wants it," was the shibboleth of power.
In war a democracy is right to confer autocracy. This means efficiency
in concentration according as the character of its people is sound
and efficient. The C.-in-C. and all progressive officers had to fight
the influences inherent in autocracy, which eventually make permanent
autocracy effete through formality and intrigue.
The leaven was working; we were passing through the inevitable
evolution which had been foreseen. The officers who had come through
the schools and training camps, watchful if silent, had learned their
fundamentals thoroughly and up to date, without having to unlearn
pre-war teachings. They were finding, as the Canadians and Australians
found, that, once on the inside, the art of making war was not such
a profound technical secret as they had thought. They were now able
to judge their seniors by professional as well as human standards.
Regulars, of the type who felt their feet slipping, were naturally
tenacious in keeping up the mystery, which was the capital of the
inefficient. Regulars who were sure of themselves--having learned
more of war in six months than in all their service--gladdened at the
prospect of the fulfillment of their dream of a great army, which was
equal to any in the world. They felt the fewness of their numbers on
the top of this tidal wave of the nation's manhood in arms, which
they must ride. An army has its public opinion, that of the mass of
officers and men. Great leaders realize that this is supreme. Moltke
courted it no less than Napoleon; Hindenburg sought to hold it, and
lost it. The American army was becoming the country's army--the country
as a whole trained to arms. The youth and the brains of the country
making war its business had too large resources in leadership, once
it had learned the technique of leadership, to submit to class rule.
Your old regular sergeant, your old regular colonel must yield to the
survival of the fittest in the competition of the millions. At the end
of the Meuse-Argonne battle, excluding at the most twenty per cent of
the regulars of sufficient rank for battalion and regimental command,
I should say that there were five officers from civil life who were
better than any regular in leading a battalion, and two or three better
than any regular in leading a regiment. With the reservists I include
the National Guard officers, though they had had military experience
before the war. Arms was not their regular calling; but they were to
prove that they were not amateurs. Our plans, as I have said, until the
late summer all looked forward to a spring campaign. In the winter that
preceded it there would have been many heartbreaks among the regulars;
for the evolution no longer held in check would have had its fruition.
The tidal wave would have broken through the barriers; we should have
had many colonels and brigadiers from among the young officers from the
training camps and the National Guard.
Called to the Meuse-Argonne battle, without adequate preparation or
equipment, our organization imperfect, remarkable as it was considering
the circumstances, the burden of the leadership which meant success,
as the account already shows, was with the officers from civil life.
They led the combat units against the machine-gun nests. Did promotion
matter for the moment to that sergeant who took over the platoon when
his lieutenant was mashed by a shell or received a machine-gun bullet
in the heart? Did it matter to the second lieutenant who was the only
commissioned officer left to lead a company? To the boy captain, who
had fought his way up from the ranks, or had not finished his college
course before he went to a training-camp, as undaunted he took charge
of a battalion and continued the attack? Staffs, sitting beside the
telephones, waited on their reports. Did promotion matter to the men? I
am weary of writing of staff and officers, who must have their part in
the narrative. The men! We have heard much of them. We shall hear more.
They won the battle--a soldier's battle. They saved generals and staff.
It is their part which sent an old observer of wars home in pride and
gratitude.