Average Americans Part 2

My own regiment, the Twenty-sixth Infantry, entrained early in June at San Benito, Texas, and came to the port of embarkation, New York City.

The trip always stands out in my mind, although I did not join the regiment until after it had arrived in Europe, because all through the two years of war I was pestered by a paper which kept constantly turning up concerning some $100 worth of ham and cheese that was supposed to have been eaten by the men of the Twenty-sixth Infantry as they pa.s.sed through Houston. No one was ever able to furnish me with any information as to it, but in the best approved military style the communication kept circulating to and fro, indors.e.m.e.nt after indors.e.m.e.nt being added, until, when I last saw it, January, 1919, after the war was finished, there were some twenty-eight series of remarks, and no one was any the wiser.

A story that always appealed to me was told me by one of my officers, of the time when the troop train was lying in the Jersey marshes waiting to go on board s.h.i.+p. A very good officer, Arnold by name, had command of one of the companies of the Twenty-sixth Infantry. A number of lieutenants were sent from the training camps to join the First Division. The military knowledge of the lieutenants consisted in the main of a month at Plattsburg at their own expense, and a month for which the government paid. The lieutenants, after getting to New York, had their uniforms pressed and cleaned and their shoes beautifully polished, feeling that at least they would look the part. They went out to join the troops, who were lying in the cars, hot, dirty and uncomfortable, after traveling for four days. Arnold was sitting with his company, his blouse off, unshaven, with his feet on the seat in front of him. One of the nice young lieutenants came in to report to him looking, as the lieutenant himself told me afterward, like a fas.h.i.+onable clothes advertis.e.m.e.nt, and knowing about as much about military matters as a canary bird.

1 LT. EINAR H. GAUSTED wounded 2 LT. GEORGE JACKSON killed May 28, '18 3 CAPT. AMIEL FREY " " 27, '18 4 LT. GROVER P. CATHER " " 28, '18 5 LT. CHARLES H. WEAVER wounded 6 LT. WESLEY FREML killed June 29, '18 7 LT. JAMES M. BARRETT ga.s.sed 8 LT. ROLAND W. ESTEY 9 MAJOR THEODORE ROOSEVELT wounded 10 LT. B. VANN 11 LT. GEORGE P. GUSTAFSON killed June 6, '18 12 LT. TUVE J. FLODEN wounded 13 LT. REXIE E. GILLIAM wounded 14 LT. JOHN P. GAINES wounded 15 LT. LEWIS TILLMAN 16 LT. PERCY E. LE STOURGEON wounded 17 LT. BROWN LEWIS wounded 18 CAPT. HAMILTON K. FOSTER killed Oct. 2, '18 19 LT. PAUL R. CARUTHERS wounded 20 LT. M. MORRIS ANDREWS 21 LT. WILLIAM C. DABNEY wounded 22 LT. DONALD H. GRANT 23 CAPT. E. D. MORGAN 24 LT. DENNIS H. s.h.i.+LLEN wounded 25 LT. HARRY DILLON killed Oct. 4, '18 26 LT. CHARLES RIDGELY 27 LT. JOSEPH P. CARD 28 LT. STEWART A. BAXTER wounded 29 LT. THOMAS D. AMORY killed Oct. 3, '18 30 LT. THOMAS B. CORNELI

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GROUP OF OFFICERS OF THE 1ST BATTALION, 26TH INFANTRY Haudivillers. April, 1917]

Arnold looked at him in a weary way, shook his head sadly and remarked to the officer beside him, "We have only ourselves to blame for it."

Indeed, we were to blame for conditions, and such of us as were fortunate enough to see service in Europe had the sins of our unpreparedness brought before us in the most glaring light.

Just how much training and experience were of value was everywhere evident. In my opinion, all divisions sent over by this country were approximately equal in intelligence and courage. There was, however, the greatest difference between the veteran divisions and those which had just arrived. Each division, after being given the same amount of training and fighting, would show up much the same, but put a division which had been fighting for six months alongside of one that had just arrived, and in every detail you could see the difference. The men of the newly arrived division were as courageous as the men of the old division. Their intelligence was as good, but they did not know the small things which come only with training and experience, and which, in a close battle, make the difference between victory and defeat, the difference between needless sacrifice and the sacrifice which brings results.

A great friend of mine, Colonel Frederick Palmer, put this to me very clearly. He was observing the action of our troops in the Argonne and came on a young lieutenant with a platoon of infantry. The lieutenant was fidgeting and highly nervous. When Palmer came up he said, "Sir, there is a machine gun on that hill. I don't know whether I should attack it or whether I should wait until the troops on the right and left arrive and force it out. I don't know whether it is killing my men to no purpose whatever to advance. I don't know what to do. I am not afraid. My men are not afraid."

This man belonged to one of the newly arrived divisions. Given the experience, he would have known exactly what to do. If he had been a man of an older division and had seen sufficient service he would have been doing what was necessary when Colonel Palmer arrived.

The little tricks which come only with soldiering and training, which do not appear in the accounts of the battles and are never found in the citations for valor, are those which make the great difference. For example, Napoleon has said that an army travels on its stomach. It is often quoted and rarely understood, yet nothing is more true. The men have had a hard day's fighting. They are wet, they are cold, they have marched for a week, mostly at night, and are worn out. Can you get the food forward to them? Can you get the food to them hot? If you can get hot food forward to them you have increased the fighting efficiency of these troops thirty per cent.

Experienced troops get this food forward. A machine working on past experience knows exactly what to do. The supply trains keep track of their advance units and follow closely in their rear. During the engagement the supply officers are planning where to put their rolling kitchens and what routes can be used to get the supplies forward.

Meanwhile the echelons of supply in the rear are acting in the same manner. One does not find in the drill-book that the way to keep coffee and slum hot after it has left the rolling kitchens is to take out the boilers with the food in them, wrap these boilers in old blankets, put them on the two-wheeled machine-gun carts, which can go nearly anywhere, and work forward to the troops in this way. This is just one instance, one trick of the trade. It is something that only training and experience can supply, and yet it is of most vital importance. I have known divisions to help feed the more recently arrived divisions on their right and left, when all have had the same facilities to start with. I have known new troops, fighting by an older division, to be forty hours without food when the men of the older division had been eating every day.

Right in the ranks of a regiment you could see the difference made by training and experience. Look at a trained man alongside of a new recruit just arrived for replacement. The trained man, at the end of the day's fighting, will fix himself up a funk hole where he will be reasonably safe from sh.e.l.l fragments, will cover himself with a blanket, and will get some sleep. The recruit will expose himself unnecessarily, will be continuously uncomfortable, and will not know how to take advantage of whatever opportunity might arise to make himself more comfortable. The result is that the value of the former is much greater from a military standpoint, and the latter runs a far greater risk physically from all standpoints. Moreover, when the test comes, as it generally does, not in the beginning of the battle, but toward the bitter end, when every last ounce that a man has in him is being called on, the untrained man is not so apt to have the necessary vitality left to do his work.

Our equipment, for the same reason, during the early days of the war was most impracticable. A notable example of this was the so-termed "iron ration" carried on the men's backs. The meat component of this ration was bacon. In certain types of fighting, those in which our army had been princ.i.p.ally engaged, this may have been best, but for the work in Europe, it was absolutely impracticable. To begin with, bacon encourages thirst, and thirst, where troops are fighting in many of the districts in France, is almost impossible to satisfy. A canteen of water a day for each man was all it was possible to provide. Furthermore, bacon has to be cooked, and this again is often impracticable. About a year after the beginning of the war, some of the older divisions adopted tinned beef, which went among the men under the euphonious name of "monkey meat."

To the average person in this country these things are not evident. They read of battles, they read of the courage of the men, of the casualties, of the glory. They do not appreciate the unnecessary sacrifices and the unnecessary deaths and hards.h.i.+ps entailed on us by our policies.

It is all very well for someone comfortably ensconced in his swivel chair in Was.h.i.+ngton to issue the statement that he glories in the fact that we went into this war unprepared. It may be glorious for him, but it is not glorious for those who fight the war, for those who pay the price. The clap-trap statesmen of this type should be forced to go themselves or at least have their sons, as guarantee of their good faith, join the fighting forces. Needless to say, none of them did.

Except for one instance, I do not believe there is a single male member of the families of the administration who felt that his duty called him to be where the fighting was, a single male member who heard a gun fired in anger. I have heard some of these estimable gentlemen say they considered it improper to use any influence to get to the front much though they desired to do so. This type of observation is hypocritical.

No doubt the men who gave their lives, their eyes, their arms, or their legs would feel deeply grieved to be robbed of this privilege.

I have quoted above my father's statement that he would rather have explained why he went to war than why he did not, for the benefit of these gentlemen. I should think they would rather explain why they used their influence to be where the danger was than why they did not. As my father wrote me in June, 1918: "When the trumpet sounds for Armageddon, only those win the undying honor and glory who stand where the danger is sorest."

CHAPTER III

OVERSEAS

"Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behind the gates of Hercules, Before him not the ghosts of sh.o.r.es Before him only sh.o.r.eless seas."

JOAQUIN MILLER.

My brother and I sailed from New York for Bordeaux on June 18, 1917. One little incident of the voyage always stands out in my mind. As we were leaving the harbor, the decks crowded with pa.s.sengers, everyone keyed up to a high state of excitement, our flag was lowered for some reason.

While being lowered it blew from the halyards and fell into the water, and as it fell one could hear everyone who saw it catch his breath, like a great sob.

The pa.s.senger list was polyglot. French returning from missions to the United States, Red Cross workers, doctors, ambulance drivers, and a few casual officers. We spent our time trying to improve our French to such an extent that we could understand or be understood when speaking it with others than Americans. Our teacher was Felix, a chauffeur. He had already served in the artillery in the French army, finally finis.h.i.+ng the war as a captain in the same branch of the service in the United States army.

We touched the sh.o.r.e of France toward the end of June and, pa.s.sing a few outgoing s.h.i.+ps and a couple of torpedoed vessels, steamed slowly up the broad, tranquil estuary of the Garonne. In the town of Bordeaux all the inhabitants were greatly excited about _Les Americaines_. We were the first they had seen since the news had reached France that we were sending troops, and as we drove through the multi-colored market the old crones would get up and cackle their approval.

To the average Frenchman who had always been accustomed to a sound scheme of preparedness and trained men who could go to the colors for immediate service, we were taken to be simply the first contingent of an enormous army which would follow without interruption. The poor people were bitterly disappointed when they found that the handful of untrained men alluded to by our papers in this country as "the splendid little regular army" represented all that we had available in the United States, and that ten months would pa.s.s before a really appreciable number of troops would arrive.

From Bordeaux we went by train to Paris. In the train the same interest in and excitement over us continued. The compartment was full of French soldiers, who asked us all about our plans, the number of our troops and when they would arrive. Outside it was a beautiful day, and the green, well-cultivated fields and picturesque, quiet villages made it hard to realize we were really in France, where the greatest war in history was being fought.

On reaching Paris we reported to General Pers.h.i.+ng. He asked us what duty we wished. We both replied, service with troops. He a.s.signed my brother at once to the Sixteenth Infantry, and ordered me to go with the advance billeting detail to the Gondecourt area, where our troops were to train.

Meanwhile the convoyed s.h.i.+ps containing the troops had arrived at St.

Nazaire. On the way over officers and men had tried to do what they could to prepare themselves. One of the officers told me he spent his time learning the rules of land warfare for civilized nations as agreed on by the Hague tribunal. Like the dodo, the mammoth, and international law, these rules had long since become extinct.

From St. Nazaire a battalion of the Sixteenth Infantry went to Paris and paraded on the Fourth of July. The population went crazy over them.

Cheering crowds lined the streets, flowers were thrown at them, and I think the men felt that France and war were not so bad after all. As a side light on our efficiency in this parade the troops were marched in column of squads because the men were so green that the officers were afraid to adopt any formation where it was necessary to keep a longer line properly dressed.

Meanwhile three officers and I had left Paris and gone to Gondecourt.

The officers were General (then Colonel) McAlexander, who since made a splendid record for himself when the Third Division turned the German offensive of July 15, 1918, east of Chateau Thierry; General (then Major) Leslie McNair, afterward head of the artillery department of the training section; and Colonel Porter, of the medical corps. We knew nothing about billeting. The sum total of my knowledge was a hazy idea that it meant putting the men in spare beds in a town and that it was prohibited by the Const.i.tution of the United States.

Toward evening we arrived at the little French village of Gondecourt.

The streets were decorated with flowers, and groups of little French children ran to and fro shouting _Vive les Americaines_! We were met by French officers and taken to the inn, a charming little brownstone building, where French officers, soldiers and civilians mingled without distinction. There the mayor of the town and the town major, who is appointed in all zones of the army as the representative of the military, came to call on us, and we started to get down to business. A most difficult thing for our men to realize was the various formalities through which one must go in working with the French. Many times real trouble was caused because the Americans did not understand what a part in French life _politesse_ plays. No conversation on military matters is carried on by the French in the way we would. You do not go straight to the point. Each partic.i.p.ant first expresses himself on the virtues and great deeds of the other, and after this the sordid matter of business in hand is taken up. We were poorly equipped for this. Only McNair and I spoke French at all, and ours was weird and awful to a degree. We had both been taught by Americans after the best approved United States method.

The French town major with whom we dwelt was an old fellow, a veteran of the war of 1870. He had an enormous white mustache. He "snorted like a buffalo," and the one word that I always understood was _parfaitement_, which he constantly used.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRIGADIER GENERAL FRANK A. PARKER, LIEUTENANT COLONEL THEODORE ROOSEVELT, AND MRS. ROOSEVELT AT ROMAGNE]

Right by this area was the birthplace of Jeanne d'Arc. The humble little village, Domremy, is just like any of those in the surrounding country.

The house where she is supposed to have lived is rather smaller than its neighbors. In many ways Jeanne d'Arc and this little village symbolize France to me. France is France not on account of those who scintillate in Paris, but on account of the humbler people, those whom the tourist never sees, or if he does, forgets. France has no genius for politics.

Her Chamber of Deputies is composed of men who amount to little and who do not share the national ideals and visions, but in the body of the people you find that flaming and pure patriotism which counts no costs when the fight is for France. The national impulse will exist as long as there is a peasant left alive.

The training area was composed of a number of towns with from 150 to 500 civilian population. We ran from village to village in automobiles, surprised and appalled by the number of men that the French military were able to put in each.

These small French villages in the north of France resemble nothing that we have in our country. They are charming and picturesque, but various features are lacking which to the well-ordered American mind causes pain. To begin with, there is no system of plumbing. The village gets all its water supply from the public fountains. This naturally makes a bath an almost unknown luxury. Many times I have been asked by the French peasants why I wanted a bath, and should it be winter, was I not afraid I would be taken sick if I took one. Around these public fountains the village life centers. There the chattering groups of women and girls are always congregating. There the gossip of the countryside originates and runs its course. There is rarely electric light in the small towns, and enormous manure piles are in front of each house and in the street. The houses themselves are a combination affair, barn and house under the same roof. The other features that are always present are the church and cafe. Even in the smallest town there are generally charming chapels. The cafes are where the opinions of the French nation are formed.

The peasants who live in these villages have an immemorial custom behind them in most of their actions. They have the careful att.i.tude of an old people, very difficult for our young and wasteful nation to understand.

Each stray bit of wood, each old piece of iron, is saved and laid aside for future use. No great wasteful fires roar on the hearth, but rather a few f.a.gots, carefully measured to do just what is intended for them.

The families have lived in the same spot for generations. Their roots are very firmly in the ground. Individually they are a curious combination of simplicity and shrewdness. One old woman with whom my brother Archie was billeted in the town of Boviolles became quite a friend of ours. We talked together in the evening, sitting by the great fireplace, in which a little bit of a fire would be burning. She had never in her life been farther than six or eight miles from the village of Boviolles. To her Paris was as unreal as Colchis or Babylon to us.

She, in common with her country folk, looked forward to the arrival of the American army, much in the way we would look forward to the arrival of the Hottentots. In fact, when she heard we were coming to the village, she at first decided to run away. To her the United States was a wilderness inhabited by Indians and cowboys. We told her about New York City and Chicago. We told her that New York was larger than Paris and that neither of us had ever shot a bear there and no Indians tomahawked people on the street. We explained to her that if you took all the houses in the village and placed them one on top of another they would not stand as high as some of our buildings. As a result, she felt toward us much as the contemporaries of Marco Polo felt toward him--we were amiable story-tellers and that was all.

Once I introduced a French officer to Colonel William J. Donovan, of the 165th Infantry. In the course of my introduction I mentioned the fact that Colonel Donovan came from Buffalo. After Donovan had gone, the Frenchman remarked to me, "Buffalo is very wild, is it not?" I answered him guardedly, "Not very." He explained, "But it is the place where you hunt that great animal, is it not?"

Something that struck me forcibly was the total lack of roving desire among the peasants. Where they had been born, there they desired to live and die. This you would see in the _poilu_ in the trenches, whose idea always was to return home again to the house where he was born.

There is also a very real democracy in the French army. This should be borne in mind by all those who go about talking of the military aristocracy which would be built up by universal service in this country. In France I have seen sons of the most prominent families, the descendants of the old _haute n.o.blesse_, as privates or noncommissioned officers. I also have seen in the little French villages a high officer of the French army returning to his family for his leave, that family being the humblest of peasants, living in a cottage of two rooms. I have dined with a general, been introduced by him to the remainder of his family, and found them privates and noncommissioned officers.

The French sent to the Gondecourt area a division of the "Cha.s.seurs Alpins" to help train us. The cha.s.seurs are a separate unit from the French infantry and have their own particular customs. To begin with, their military organization is slightly different, in that they do not have regiments and the battalion forms the unit. Their uniforms are dark blue with silver b.u.t.tons, and they do not wear the ordinary French cap, but have a dark-blue cloth _beret_, or tam-o'-shanter, with an Alpine horn embroidered in silver as insignia. The corps is an old one and has many traditions. Their pride is to consider themselves as quite apart from the infantry; indeed, they feel highly insulted if you confuse the two, although, to all intents and purposes, their work is identical.

They have songs of their own, some of them very uncomplimentary to the infantry, and highly seasoned, according to our American ideas. They have a custom when marching on parade of keeping a step about double the time of the ordinary slow step. Their bugle corps, which they have instead of our regimental bra.s.s bands, are very snappy and effective, and the men have a trick of waving their bugles in unison before they strike a note, which is very effective. They have no drums. These quaint, squat, jovial, dark-haired fellows were billeted in the villages all around our area.

The billeting party, after working very hard and accomplis.h.i.+ng very little, divided the area up as the French suggested. In advance of the remainder of our troops the battalion of the Sixteenth Infantry, which paraded in Paris on the Fourth of July, arrived. We were all down at the train to meet them, as was a battalion of the Cha.s.seurs Alpins. They came in the ordinary day coaches used in France. I remember hearing an officer say that these were hard on the men. It was the last time that I ever saw our troops travel in anything but box cars, and this arrangement was made, I think, as a special compliment by the French Government.