UNIVERSITY OF CA RIVERSIDE, LIBRARY 3 1210 01959 7986 IN COMMEMORATION OF THE WORK OF THE EIGHT THOUSAND YALE MEN WHO TOOK PART IN THE WORLD WAR 1914-1918 HOW AMERICA WENT TO WAR THE GIANT HAND THE ROAD TO FRANCE I. THE ROAD TO FRANCE II. THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY I. THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY II. DEMOBILIZATION HOW AMERICA WENT TO WAR AN ACCOUNT FROM OFFICIAL SOURCES OF THE NATION'S WAR ACTIVITIES 1917-1920 ^. . THE ROAD TO FRANCE I. THE TRANSPORTATION OF TROOPS AND MILITARY SUPPLIES 1917-1918 BY BENEDICT CROWELL THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF WAR AND DIRECTOR OF MUNITIONS 1917-1920 AND ROBERT FORREST WILSON FORMERLY CAPTAIN, UNITED STATES ARMY ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THE WAR AND NAVY DEPARTMENTS NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXXI Copyright, 1921, by Yale University Press CONTENTS PART I— THE LAND Preface . Chapter I. 11. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. A Contrast ..... The Start of the Vanguard Mobilizing Regulars and National Guard The Troop-movement Office Hauling the Selectives Intercamp Travel .... The System at Work At the Height of the Effort The War Freight Problem The Army Solves Its Freight Problem Solving the National War Freight Problem Space-saving in Car and Ship PART II— THE PORT A Halt by the Way . In Camp Merritt Personally Conducted Casuals . The Embarkation Service Orders and Item Numbers The Process of Embarkation Some Notes of Tidewater Activities At Newport News . PART III— THE SEA The Catalogue of the Troopships A Little Job of Marine Repairs , The New Merchant Marine The Army's Quest for Cargo Tonnage The Shipping Control Committee Page xiii 3 15 27 41 51 68 79 96 107 117 136 146 169 183 193 208 225 242 263 281 297 311 331 347 361 374 vi CONTENTS Chapter XXVI I. Early Voyages XXVIII. The American Troop Convoys XXIX. Escapes and Losses . XXX. The Cargo Convoys XXXI. The Technique of Convoying XXXII. Marine Camouflage . XXXIII. Heroes Unsung APPENDICES A. Primary Travel of the National Guard . B. Train Schedule for Minnesota Draft Troops . C. Export of War Department Freight D. Freight Traffic at Camp Grant E. Troops Embarked, New York, after July 1, 1918 F. List of Army Transports .... G. The American Troop Convoys Page 387 408 427 446 467 492 512 535 540 549 551 553 564 603 Index 621 ILLUSTRATIONS Near the End of the Long Trail .... Convoy at Sea ........ Portrait of George Hodges ..... Rough Riders' Camp at Tampa (1898) The Rough Riders Waiting To Embark for Cuba "A Perfect Welter of Confusion" .... Transports and Dock at Tampa (1898) The Rough Riders Seize the Yucatan The Rough Riders Embark ..... Troops Entraining at Camp Meade (1918) A Detrainment at Port of Embarkation . On the Dock at Tampa ...... Harvard Hospital Unit Leaving Boston (May, 1917) Rough Riding for the Rough Riders (Tampa, 1898) . Marines Entraining for Embarkation Border Troops Off for France . "Good-bye, Broadway!" An Early Troop Train Some of the First To Go . A Bridge Patrol Chicago Guardsmen Out for War Service National Guardsmen of New York Leaving for Newark (N. J.) Farewell to National Guard Fifth Avenue Cheers Its Departing Guardsmen Off on the Long Road .... Traveling Canteen ..... Public Farewell to Cincinnati National Guard Regiment Inside a Troop Coach "Good-bye, Boys; Get the Kaiser!" A Nebraska Town Says Farewell New England Crowds Watch the Troop Trains Railroad Box Lunches for Traveling Selectives Draft Train Leaving a Rhode Island City . A New England Town Dines Its Inductives When the War Began To Strike Home . The March to the Railroad Station . A Montana Station Crowd When the Draft Train Left Parade of First New York City Drafted Men Arm Bands in Lieu of Uniforms for Selectives Camp Pass Frontispiece, Vol. I Frontispiece, Vol. II Opposite page 3 6 6 7 7 10 10 11 11 14 14 15 15 20 20 21 21 28 28 29 29 38 38 39 39 46 46 47 47 56 56 SI SI 62 62 63 63 VIU ILLUSTRATIONS Michigan Town and Country Folk Say Farewell at Station A Boston Crowd at Departure of Drafted Men . Through the Cantonment Personnel Mill . Lined Up for First Drill ..... A Troop Train Passes ..... A Stop in a California Town .... The Red Cross Canteens Drew No Color Lines . An Entrainment at Camp Wadsworth Interior of Army Sleeping Car .... Loading a Baggage-kitchen Car A Unit's Baggage Included Its Vehicles Loading a Troop Coach ..... Food Stores for a Journey .... Artillery Traveled Apart from Infantry . Draft Troops in Coach ..... A Welcome Break in the Tedium of Travel Volunteer Laborers Leaving Prescott, Ariz., for Nitre A Familiar Station Scene in 1918 A Red Cross Railway Canteen .... Mail Facilities en Route ..... Wood and Canvas Construction, Camp Mills Cantonment Construction, Camp Devens . Loading Platform at Army Depot Army Freight Loaded at a Munitions Plant Truck Ready for Crating at Camp Holabird Three-way-end Crate Construction Testing Drum at Forest Products Laboratory Trench-mortar Shell Boxes after Tumbling Test Grenade Boxes after Test ..... Ordnance Department Boxes for Browning Rifles Improved Box for Browning Rifles . An Army Baling Machine ..... Army Clothing Bales Ready for Shipment . Portrait of Brigadier General Frank T. Hines . Overseas Transients Occupying Barracks, Camp Merritt Reading Room in Merritt Hall .... Troops Arriving at Camp Merritt Station . Marching into Camp Merritt .... Unloading Quartermaster Supplies at Camp Merritt Troops Drawing Supplies in Street, Camp Merritt Quartermaster Warehouse, Camp Merritt . Empty Boxes Showing Tremendous Issue of Supplies Troop Baggage Arriving at Camp Merritt . Salvaging Clothing Discarded by Embarking Troops Overseas Troops Arriving at Camp Merritt Emergency Ration To Be Carried on Board Ship An Army Naturalization Court .... Rest on Road to Alpine Landing Opposite page ILLUSTRATIONS Turn in Old Cornwallis Road Descending Palisades Troops at Alpine Boarding Ferryboats for Piers Casuals Receiving Embarkation Instructions Entrance to Stockade, Camp Merritt . Leviathan Leaving for France, August 3, 1918 . On One of Leviathan's Decks, August 3, 1918 . A Crowded Ship, Every Man Identified The Madazvaska Takes a Crowd, June 30, 1918 . Looking Forward on U. S. A. T. Mercury, June 30, 1918 Looking Aft on Mercury . At Alpine, Waiting for Ferryboats Boarding Ferry for Piers . Landing from Ferry at Hoboken Entering Pier from River End . Coffee and Rolls at Red Cross Pier Canteen First Food Since 3 : 00 A.M. . * . "Safe-arrival" Cards Slipped into Caps A "Safe-arrival" Card Checked against Company Records Ship Billet Cards at Foot of Gangplank Fresh Arrivals from Embarkation Camp Boarding Ship ..... Mail Sack at Head of Gangplank Troop Mail Held at Hoboken . A Gangplank Leading into U. S. A. T. Leviathan Last Letters Home before Sailing for France Reinforcing Rods Laid in Concrete Ship Construction Kapok Life Preservers Supplied to Transports Life Preservers on Leviathan Life Rafts on Hoboken Army Pier . Emergency Life Rafts for Troop Transports Equipping Lifeboats for Transports . Embarking Troops Marching through Newport News Troops Approaching Pier, Newport News Checking Troops aboard Transport, Newport News Loaded Troopship Leaving Newport News Boarding Ship at Newport News Crowded Transport Leaving Pier, Newport News Portrait of P. A. S. Franklin .... Mauretania Leaving New York with Troops Departure of Leviathan, August 3, 1918 German Ships Interned in North fliver. New York Seizure of Austrian Cargo Vessel Eray 1. Broken Cylinder ...... 2. Patch in Place Ready for Welding 3. Welded ....... Repaired Cylinder on S. S. Princess Irene . Requisitioned Hull of Troopship Orizaba . IX Opposite page 207 " 207 " " 224 " 224 " 225 " 225 " 254 " 254 " 255 " 255 " " 264 " " 264 « 265 " 265 " 268 " 268 " " 269 " " 269 " 272 " 272 " 273 " 273 " 276 " " 276 " 277 " 277 " 288 " 288 " 289 " 289 " " 296 " " 296 " 297 " 297 " 304 " 304 " 305 " 305 " 311 " 330 " 330 " 331 " 331 " 340 " 340 " 341 " 341 " 352 ILLUSTRATIONS War Construction of Wood Ships Seizure of Dutch Vessel Zeelandia Hog Island Shipyards ..... Line of Shipways at Hog Island Great Lakes Steamer Being Cut in Two Gun Platform and Gun at Stern of Troopship . Dutch Ships Tied Up on Day of Seizure . Launching of a "West" Ship .... Wooden Ships Building at Tampa, Florida A New Cargo Transport Takes the Water . A New Cargo Carrier Camouflaged . Army Cargo Base at Port Newark, New Jersey . Cargo Transports Loading at Army Dock, Brooklyn Interior of an Army Cargo Pier, Brooklyn . Loading Locomotive on Wheels into Cargo Transport A Troopship in Convoy ..... Destroyers Arriving at Rendezvous with Convoy First American Destroyers Arriving at Queenstown Destroyer Gun Crew Waiting for Shot at Submarine American Transport Docking at St. Nazaire Warning Sign on Troopship .... Abandon-ship Drill on Troopship Standee Berths ....... 1. The Wrong Way at Abandon-ship Alarm 2. The Right Way One of the Best Defenses against the U-Boat . Emergency Life Rafts on Leviathan . Gun Crew on Destroyer ..... Sailors Watching Troopship Destroyer Racing To Attack Enemy Submarine . Gun Crew on American Troopship Orizaba On Mt. Vernon Immediately after Torpedoing . Gun Crew of Troopship in Action American Convoy in War Zone .... American Destroyer in War Zone — View from Dirigible Destroyers Joining Convoy at Sunrise Destroyer Making Smoke Screen To Shield Convoy Convoy as Seen from Flanking Destroyers . Destroyers Leading Cargo Convoy Aerial View of American Cargo Convoy near Englan Aerial View of Submarine Discharging Torpedo Aerial Protection to Transports near Coasts Submarine with Periscope Awash, as Seen from Airpl Wake of Zigzagging Vessel in Convoy An Attack on a Convoy ..... Destroyers Protecting Transports with Smoke Screen Destroyer Circling Convoy To Attack U-Boat . Laying Out Camouflage Design .... Opposite page 352 353 ILLUSTRATIONS XI Siboney Camouflaged with Dazzle Design . Tottori Maru in Camouflage Which Saved Her . Philadelphia Camouflaged by Mackey System . 1. Camouflaged Model Apparently Steering across Stern 2. Models Shown To Be on Parallel Courses Proteus (Model) Appears To Head Northeast . Extreme Design of Geometric-solid Type . Model of Hog Island Ship Camouflaged . An Example of Extreme Dazzle Design American Cargo Transport, Showing After Gun Gun Crew on Cargo Transport ..... Torpedoed ! ........ The Dread Silhouette of a Submarine Running Awash Two-periscope Submarine Submerging Aerial View of Submarine One Hundred Feet Submerged Forty Lives Lost When Missanabie Sank . Destroyer Gun Crew Firing at U-Boat The Final Plunge ....... A Guardian of the Transatlantic Highway Opposite page 494 " 495 " 495 " 508 " 508 " 508 " 509 " 509 " 509 " 516 " 516 " 517 " 517 " " 522 " " 522 " 528 " 528 " 529 " 529 MAPS Port of Embarkation, New York Port of Embarkation, Newport News Route of the First American Troop Convoy The French Coast ..... " 172 Between pages 300-301 " 402-403 Opposite page 479 PREFACE WHEN the guns and the ammunition, the airplanes, the motor trucks, the general equipment, and the food and clothing of the American Army in the World War stood ready on the loading platforms of American factories and filled the army warehouses, the problem of sup- plying the American Expeditionary Forces with their necessi- ties was as yet by no means solved. Those materials had still to travel a route the sources of which touched every producing point within the United States, and of which the main artery crossed the Atlantic. This was a military supply situation of unprecedented difficulty. No nation had ever attempted to maintain a great army over such a distance, nor was a line of supply ever so beset with peril. Yet, while the forges and shops of the land were fighting their war manufacturing battles to ultimate triumph, our national genius for transportation rose superior to conditions and wrought the saving miracle of the struggle. It carried to France the two million men of the American Expeditionary Forces, together with such munitions and supplies as the grand strategy dictated. That achievement will probably forever stand as America's most signal contribution to the cause of the Entente and its associated nations. The weight of American manpower proved to be a decisive factor in the defeat of Germany and her allies. Every Ameri- can expected this result ultimately, but few expected it in 1918. Hence, even while the ships were carrying the conquer- ing host of American troops to France, the military transpor- tation organization was already preparing for the effort which was to freight across the ocean in 1919, according to inter- allied plan, an irresistible weight of American guns, ammuni- tion, and other war materials. To this goal was directed our xiv PREFACE whole war industry. Had the war continued for another six months, it is probable — nay, certain — that the Atlantic would have buoyed up an eastward movement of American munitions every bit as astonishing as that transatlantic procession of Yankee troopships in the spring, summer, and early autumn of 1918. Broadly analyzed, the supply of the American expedition fell into two divisions, personnel and materiel^ men and things. As the War Department expanded in organization, each of these two divisions tended to segregate its activities from those of the other. There occurred a crystallization under pressure, the pressure of the emergency. Eventually all the activities relating to personnel — the conscription, classification, and training of troops, and the erection of military units — clustered within the administrative province of the Secretary of War and the General Staff, The enterprises in materiel — including principally the production of munitions — came to be the charge of the Assistant Secretary of War, who later bore the added title of Director of Munitions. Such a demarcation was not sharply evident during the period of hostilities, although it actually existed. Nominally, the General Staff was in control of the production of supplies, because the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic was a division of the General Staff; but this control was only nomi- nal. In practice the General Staff Division of Purchase, Stor- age, and Traffic was the "overhead" through which the Director of Munitions functioned in the procurement and delivery of materiel. The allocation of supplies, once they had been manufactured and delivered to French ports, was prop- erly the concern of the General Staff; but the manufacture of those supplies and their transportation to the point of delivery were not inherently general staff functions. It was hard for some general staff officers to see this distinction. The Director of Munitions produced the supplies and delivered them to the General Staff at the ports in France, functioning through the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic. That great indus- trial organization was joined to the General Staff only because PREFACE XV there seemed to be no other place for it in. the administrative scheme as it then existed. Military transportation was not a supply, but an agency: yet it was industrial in implication, and therefore, quite nat- urally, it became integral with the group of material activities directed by the Assistant Secretary of War. Although the transportation organization's chief problems were those connected with the movement of military freight, it also had charge of the travel of troops. Thus it occurred that the office of the Assistant Secretary of War, otherwise con- cerned only with the inanimate elements of warfare, found itself dealing intimately with one of the most interesting, and certainly the most remarkable, of its human phases — the trans- portation of the men of the Army. The chapters which follow, therefore, while not slighting the less dramatic movement of our army supplies by land and sea, are devoted principally to the progress of the Expeditionary Army from its two million American homes to the shore of France. The investigation from which this record results was con- ducted while the return of our troops from Europe was at its maximum volume and the transportation organization still intact. The story here presented comes not only from the official documents and ifiles, but also from the memories of the men who did the work. B. C. & R. F. W. Washington, D. C, November, ig20. THE ROAD TO FRANCE PART ONE THE LAND Photo by Harris iS Ewing GEORGE HODGES DIED, MARCH 14, 1919 As head of the troop-movement office^ he was field marshal of troop travel in A?nerica CHAPTER I A CONTK\ST IN the twenty-year period which separated our two over- seas wars, that with Spain in 1898 and that with Germany in 1917-1918, America had made military progress ; but in no province of the profession of war had the strides been longer or the distance covered greater than in the science of military transportation. The marching power of an army is almost, if not quite, as important to the success of its campaigns as its courage and fighting ability. Some of the greatest soldiers in all history — Hannibal, Julius Csesar, Gus- tavus Adolphus, even Napoleon — built their military reputa- tions largely upon the ability to move their troops. In their days, however, armies usually traveled on their own feet, and the great strategist staked as heavily upon the leg muscles of his soldiers as upon their spirit and valor. To-day, the motor truck, the passenger and freight train, and the ocean trans- port have been substituted for the thews and sinews of troops ; and the movement of great bodies of soldiery has become a matter of the organization and management of the most intricate of all industries — transportation. Our experiences in sending an overseas expedition to Cuba in 1898 showed the United States her shortcomings in mili- tary transportation and the magnitude of the lessons she had yet to learn. Thereafter our country maintained a force in the Philippine Islands and in other outlying possessions; and the necessity of providing replacements and supplies for these troops also gave our military authorities a measure of practice in the management of ocean transportation. A third most practical experience was to come in 1916, when with notable efficiency we assembled on the Mexican border the greatest 4 THE ROAD TO FRANCE concentration of American troops since the Civil War. Yet the Spanish War and all of the succeeding martial episodes of our history, added together, scarcely afforded us an ade- quate discipline and preparation for the transportation crisis which this nation was to face when she went to war with Germany. In comparison with the accomplishment of sending 2,000,000 men and their supplies across the Atlantic Ocean to France, the whole troop movement of the Spanish War takes rank with only the more commonplace phases of trans- portation in 1918; the maintenance of forces in our island possessions becomes a mere incident of traffic; and the border mobilization which excited the whole country in 1916 was little more than a hint of what, in the spring and summer of 1918, was to become a weekly, almost a daily, procedure. The reader, if he is fully to appraise the quality and merit of the system which handled our military transportation dur- ing the recent hostilities, to understand the difficulties meas- ured and mastered before that system could be what it was, to estimate the prodigious sum of its accomplishments and appre- ciate the smooth perfection of its processes, must begin with a quickened memory of 1898, when we made our last previous great effort in military transportation. Against the melancholy background of the war with Spain, the history of our military transportation since 1917 is brilliant indeed. Tampa, on the Gulf coast, was the chief port of embarka- tion for the American expedition sent to Cuba in 1898. For what occurred in Tampa let us accept the testimony of an illustrious eyewitness; one who, so far from holding a preju- dice, characterizes in lenient terms, even if he does not con- done, the failures of those momentous days. In The Rough Riders,* Theodore Roosevelt refers to the commander of troops in 1898 as having "positively unlimited opportunity for the display of individual initiative," and as being in no danger "of finding his faculties of self-help numbed by be- coming a cog in a gigantic and smooth-running machine." * The Rough Riders; copyright, 1899, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Quotations herein used by permission of the publishers. A CONTRAST 5 "If such a battalion chief wants to get anything or go any- where he must do it by exercising every pound of resource, inventiveness, and audacity he possesses. The help, advice, and superintendence he gets from the outside will be of the most general, not to say superficial, character. . . . When he wishes to embark his regiment, he will have to fight for his railway cars exactly as he fights for his transport when it comes to going across the sea; and on his journey his men will or will not have food, and his horses will or will not have water and hay, and the trains will or will not make connections, in exact correspondence to the energy and success of his own efforts to keep things moving straight." The Rough Riders had been recruited among adventurous millionaires, clubmen, and college athletes of the East, and among the rough cowmen, sheriffs, "lungers," and prospectors of the Far West, with a spirited and eager addition from the other principal sections of the United States. Leonard Wood was colonel of the regiment and Theodore Roosevelt lieuten- ant colonel. The organization gathered at San Antonio, Texas, and, after two or three weeks of military training, received orders to proceed by train to Tampa. The regiment entrained in seven sections, Colonel Wood commanding the first three and Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt the remaining four. It took the transportation service of that time four days to move the sections from San Antonio to Tampa, "and," comments Col- onel Roosevelt in The Rough Riders^ "I doubt if anybody who was on the trip will soon forget it." The railroads had promised to move the regiment to Tampa in forty-eight hours. "Our experience in loading was enough to show that the promise would not be made good. There were no proper facili- ties for getting the horses on or off the cars, nor for feeding or watering them; and there was endless confusion and delay among the railway officials. I marched my four sections over in the afternoon, the first three having taken the entire day to get off. We occupied the night." After describing some of the difficulties in entraining his troops and their impedimenta. Colonel Roosevelt continued: 6 THE ROAD TO FRANCE "Meanwhile I superintended not merely my own men, but the railroad men; and when the delays of the latter, and their inability to understand what was necessary, grew past bearing, I took charge of the trains myself, so as to ensure the horse cars of each section being coupled with the baggage cars of that section." But after the animals and baggage were suc- cessfully loaded, it was discovered that no passenger cars were in evidence. It was then nearly midnight. Some of the men had scattered in the darkness, and it was necessary to gather them up again from the "vile drinking-booths around the stock yards." Finally this was accomplished, and, the pas- senger cars still not having come, the men were ordered to lie down beside the railroad tracks. Not until dawn did the passenger coaches arrive. During four hot and dusty days the train crawled across the South. Yet the officers of the Rough Riders did not find time dragging on their hands. "There was enough delay and failure to make connections on the part of the railroad people to keep me entirely busy. ... It happened that we usually made our longest stops at night, and this meant we were up all night long. . . . "It was four days later that we disembarked, in a perfect welter of confusion. Tampa lay in the pine-covered sand-flats at the end of a one-track railroad, and everything connected with both military and railroad matters was in an almost inex- tricable tangle. There was no one to meet us or to tell us where we were to camp, and no one to issue us food for the first twenty-four hours; while the railroad people unloaded us wherever they pleased, or rather wherever the jam of all kinds of trains rendered it possible. We had to buy the men food out of our own pockets, and to seize wagons in order to get our spare baggage taken to the camping ground which we at last found had been allotted to us." Eventually, however, the camp was made. Military drilling began. The war correspondents — Richard Harding Davis and Frederic Remington among them — called; social life began; and (a circumstance which, for all we know, may have had a A CONTRAST 7 bearing on events nineteen years later) the military attaches^ including the German attache^ came to Tampa to look on and, no doubt, privately to marvel. Four or five days later, just as the Rough Riders were pre- paring for an indefinite stay, notification came that the expe- dition would start at once for a destination unknown, and that of the Rough-Rider Regiment eight troops without their horses would be taken along. "It was the evening of June 7 when we suddenly received orders that the expedition was to start from Port Tampa, nine miles distant by rail, at daybreak the following morning; and that if we were not aboard our transport by that time we could not go. We had no intention of getting left, and prepared at once for the scramble which was evidently about to take place. As the number and capacity of the transports were known, or ought to have been known, and as the number and size of the regiments to go were also known, the task of allotting each regiment or fraction of a regiment to its proper transport, and arranging that the regiments and the transports should meet in due order at the dock, ought not to have been difficult. However, no arrangements were made in advance; and we were allowed to shove and hustle for ourselves as best we could, on much the same principles that had governed our preparations hitherto. "We were ordered to be at a certain track with all our baggage at midnight, there to take a train for Port Tampa. At the appointed time we turned up, but the train did not. The men slept heavily, while Wood and I and various other officers wandered about in search of information which no one could give. We now and then came across a Brigadier General, or even a Major General; but nobody knew anything. Some regiments got aboard the trains and some did not, but as none of the trains started this made little difference. At three o'clock we received orders to march over to an entirely different track, and away we went. No train appeared on this track either; but at six o'clock some coal-cars came by, and these we seized. By various arguments we persuaded the engineer in charge of 8 THE ROAD TO FRANCE the train to back us down the nine miles to Port Tampa, where we arrived covered with coal-dust, but with all our belongings. "The railroad tracks ran out on the quay, and the trans- ports, which had been anchored in midstream, were gradually being brought up alongside the quay and loaded. The trains were unloading wherever they happened to be, no attention whatever being paid to the possible position of the transport on which the soldiers were to go. Colonel Wood and I jumped off and started on a hunt, which soon convinced us that we had our work cut out if we were to get a transport at all. From the highest General down, nobody could tell us where to go to find out what transport we were to have. At last we were informed that we were to hunt up the depot quartermaster. Colonel Humphrey. We found his office, where his assistant informed us that he didn't know where the Colonel was, but believed him to be asleep upon one of the transports. This seemed odd at such a time; but so many of the methods in vogue were odd, that we were quite prepared to accept it as a fact. However, it proved not to be such, but for an hour Colonel Humphrey might just as well have been asleep, as nobody knew where he was and nobody could find him, and the quay was crammed with some ten thousand men, most of whom were working at cross purposes. "At last, however, after over an hour's industrious and rapid search through this swarming ant-heap of humanity. Wood and I, who had separated, found Colonel Humphrey at nearly the same time and were allotted a transport — the Yucatan. She was out in midstream, so Wood seized a stray launch and boarded her. At the same time I happened to find out that she had previously been allotted to two other regiments — the Second Regular Infantry and the Seventy-first New York \'olunteers, which latter regiment alone contained more men than could be put aboard her. Accordingly, I ran at full speed to our train ; and leaving a strong guard with the baggage, I double-quicked the rest of the regiment up to the boat, just in time to board her as she came into the quay, and then hold A CONTRAST 9 her against the Second Regulars and the Seventy-first, who had arrived a little too late, being a shade less ready than we were in the matter of individual initiative. There was a good deal of expostulation, but we had possession; and as the ship could not contain half of the men who had been told to go aboard her, the Seventy-first went away, as did all but four companies of the Second, These latter we took aboard. Mean- while a General had caused our train to be unloaded at the end of the quay furthest from where the ship was; and the hungry, tired men spent most of the day in the labor of bringing down their baggage and the food and ammunition." Loading accomplished, the Yucatan dropped down the stream and anchored; and because of a confusion in orders, the whole expedition remained on its transports in Tampa Bay for nearly a week thereafter. The soldiers, packed into the ships like sardines, stewed and sweltered in the burning heat of a subtropical June. For a contrast to this distressing picture, let us anticipate a noteworthy episode of this narrative by following the train movement and overseas embarkation of the infantry regiments of the Seventy-ninth Division in the recent war. The Seventy- ninth was a division of the National Army, made up largely of drafted troops and formed and trained at Camp Meade, Maryland, near the city of Washington. It was called to France early in July, 1918, when the paramount need of the American Expeditionary Forces was for infantry. Consequently this division moved without its artillery. The preparation for the embarkation of the Seventy-ninth began on the nation's Independence Day, when three freight trains moved out of Camp Meade, bearing the division's bag- gage directly to the ship's side at Hoboken. These trains were followed on July 5 by four passenger sections carrying the headquarters company of the division and detachments to go aboard the transports in advance of the main body of men, there to be instructed in the correct assignment of men to their quarters and in the routine which must be followed while the division was crossing the ocean. lo THE ROAD TO FRANCE The complete movement of the infantry units of the divi- sion, numbering over 18,000 men, or thirty-six times as many as Colonels Wood and Roosevelt had led aboard the Yucatan, was accomplished in the two following days, July 6 and 7. Two railroads connect Camp Meade with the water front at New York, the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore & Ohio. Not only were the 18,000 men handled over these two lines in two days, but the movement was accomplished in less than an eleven-hour period in each of the two days, all the trains being put through from start to destination each day between three o'clock in the afternoon and two o'clock in the early morning. Loaded trains left the camp at intervals as brief as fifteen minutes. On July 6 the first train started from Camp Meade at 4.00 p.m. with 343 men aboard, and the last of the sixteen sections which departed on this day pulled out at 8.45 p.m. with 549 men on board. One of the July 6 trains carried 756 men, and the trains averaged more than 500 passengers each. The aver- age time of loading a train was less than twenty minutes. Also on July 6, a heavy consignment of the division's baggage left Camp Meade by freight for Newport News, Virginia, whence it was to cross the ocean in a cargo convoy and rejoin the division in France. On the following day, July 7, the movement was even heavier, for nineteen passenger trains left Camp Meade with an average of more than 500 men each. The first section left the camp at 3.15 p.m., and the last section of the regular movement at 8.30 o'clock — a rate of departure requiring each section to be loaded in about twenty minutes, average time. Two supplementary sections, following later in the evening, carried the soldiers detailed to see that neither men nor mate- rials were left behind and that the camp was ready to be turned over in good order to the division's successors. It should be noted that these troops went directly from their training camp to their ships, without any delay at an embarkation camp. The troop trains began arriving at Hoboken in the early evening of each of the two days; and Frrni '111, Jl C.I I. I!,,,, Crlh.tun TROOPS ENTRAINING AT CAMP MEADE (1918) Photo by Siynal Corps A DETRAINMENT AT PORT OF EMBARKATION A CONTRAST ii after (i) a quick and efficient inspection, (2) the issue, if necessary, of articles of clothing or ordnance to make up the full personal equipment of each soldier, and (3) the final medical and other necessary inspections, the men went directly aboard their ships. The trains reached Hoboken every few minutes, but so efficiently was the embarkation handled that there was no cramming at the piers, and there was always transport space ready for each unit as it arrived. When a transport was loaded, it dropped down to the Lower Bay and anchored. Early on the morning of the third day the whole convoy was ready to sail. Note, too, that, although this movement happens to have been the quickest transfer of a division during the war, it was not then regarded by the military transportation organiza- tion as anything out of the ordinary. It was simply one inci- dent in the routine. Not until the armistice gave leisure for retrospection did the service check up its figures and discover that it had set a record. In Germany, in France, and in England, too, the regular railroad service to civilians was greatly upset and, in periods of heaviest military traffic, sometimes suspended altogether, because the rail facilities in those countries were burdened beyond their limits by the necessities of the armies. The meager passenger train equipment of the Continental railroads was utterly inadequate to military needs, and troops invariably traveled in accommodations normally assigned to live-stock and other freight. The French box car with its war-time load- ing instructions, "40 hommes, 8 clievaux^^ — ^40 men or 8 horses, — the "bucko special" — was one of the most familiar jokes of the war to the derisive Yanks, who at home had ridden in accommodations which even peace-time Europe would regard as de luxe — sleeping cars whenever the journey was of twenty-four hours' duration or longer, and in all other circumstances comfortable coaches or even, sometimes, parlor cars. America, during the war period which ended with the armistice, transported over her rails nearly 9,000,000 soldiers 12 THE ROAD TO FRANCE with absolutely no disorganization of regular service, and with only such curtailment of some of the luxuries of inland travel as national economy demanded. On the day when the nineteen troop trains of the Seventy-ninth Division moved away from Camp Meade, and right in the midst of the movement, tiie "Congressional Limited," the crack passenger train between Washington and New York, left Washington as usual and on schedule. Perhaps not one of the passengers on that train realized that he was going fifty or sixty miles an hour in the midst of an ocean-bound division of Yankee troops, all travel- ing as comfortably, as swiftly, and as safely as he. And what was happening on the rails between Camp Meade and Hoboken during those two days was being duplicated in almost every section of the country. The average number of troops transported by rail in the United States during the month of July, 1918, was over 35,000 a day; so that the movement from Camp Meade on the heavier of the two days did not amount to more than one-quarter of the total volume of inland military passenger traffic on that day. The circumstances which, at Tampa, Colonel Roosevelt ironically characterized as "odd," did not exist in the trans- portation of American troops during the recent war. If they had existed. General Pershing's force of 2,000,000 men never would have existed. In Tampa, fewer soldiers were mobilized altogether than were transported from Camp Meade and loaded aboard ship in two days. Had the oddities of Tampa been repeated at such a port as New York in 1918, who can picture the indescribable result, the confusion, the bitter dis- grace to America, the almost certain disaster to our cause? Men were being moved to France at the rate of 10,000 a day — more than a division every three days, more in a week than mobilized at Tampa altogether. With the embarkation camps at New York almost continuously packed with troops to utmost capacity, with other tens of thousands always on the rails moving steadily and inexorably toward the Port, and with System there in "the neck of the bottle" so ordering the operation that the ships snatched away their loads at precisely A CONTRAST 13 the rate of flow of the olive-drab torrent to the sea, what chaos, what an inextricable tangle, had the system faltered! But, as one military bureau* expressed its astonishment, "the almost unbelievable facts" were true "that there was never any serious congestion at camp or ports, never any seri- ous delays or accidents en route^ and that no troopship was delayed by lack of troops or sailed without its full capacity of troops, except ... on account of the influenza epidemic." The 1918 commander of overseas troops had no need to display that "individual initiative" of Spanish War days, or to fight for his equipment, his railroad cars, or his transporta- tion. Nor did he need to fear, with M. Demolins, whose book occupied Colonel Roosevelt on the railway trip from San Antonio to Tampa, that his individual faculties might become atrophied in consequence of his being merely "a cog in a vast and perfectly ordered machine." If he lost individuality, it would not be on that account. The vast and perfectly ordered machine existed in 1918, but the combatant officer was not even a cog in it. He was merely a passenger transported by it. The whole affair of his travel from training camp to debarka- tion port in France was handled for him by an expert organi- zation which attended to every detail with intimacy and solicitude such as the most timorous and inexperienced of Cook's tourists never knew. The commander of combatant troops received orders to proceed to France, and thereafter his concern was merely to maintain discipline among his men during the journey. Otherwise he had little to do but fold his hands and await arrival in France. The transportation organization told him when to move and how to prepare for the journey. When he marched his troops to the camp and railroad station, he found the trains ready for him. Transportation officers on the spot had arranged that. Transportation officers superintended the loading of the trains. Transportation officers routed the trains across the country, saw to it that they made their junction connections, * Operations Branch, Operations Division, General Staff. Resume of Activi- ties, July 1, 1918- June 30, 1919. 14 THE ROAD TO FRANCE kept them up to schedule. Transportation officers handled the detraining at the embarkation camps at the seaboard and assigned the troops to quarters. The troop commander was not even charged with the responsibility of seeing that his men were properly equipped. Experts of the transportation organi- zation, conversant with the latest of the ever-changing orders and regulations, attended to this, confiscating excess and unauthorized articles, issuing new if the equipment were worn or deteriorated, and finally placing each man aboard the trans- port with his outfit in good condition and exactly complete, no more and no less. Troops on the trip by rail had to provide their own food, but the cooking facilities, kitchen cars and the like, were supplied by the transport organization. The Service had the last word on what men should go to France and what ones should not, for the final weeding-out occurred at the Port of Embarkation. If the unit had — as it usually had — left stragglers behind at training camp or elsewhere, even the diffi- cult duty of bringing up these men, no matter in what part of the country they were, rested not on the commander, but on the broader shoulders of the transportation organization, which maintained a traveling military police force for this purpose — a huge business in itself. A vast and perfectly ordered machine ! So vast it was that no one mind could encompass its intricacies, yet so perfectly ordered that the smoothness of its performance must sometimes have astonished even its creators. There was never a mal- function of crucial importance; never a grave slip-up. Its capacity for handling men seemed to have no limit. It deliv- ered troops to France so fast that our own soldiers construed the published figures of American overseas transportation as exaggerations meant to hearten the Allies and assail the morale of the enemy. Not Germany, not France, not one of even the most militaristic nations of the world had ever accomplished anything like it. In a most exacting branch of the profession of war, peace-loving America showed herself to be not the neophyte, but the master. Photo from Brown Bros. ROUGH RIDING FOR THE ROUGH RIDERS (Tampa, 1898) Copyright by Undertvood is' V ndcrzvood, N. Y. MARINES ENTRAINING FOR EMBARKATION CHAPTER II THE START OF THE VANGUARD A MERICAN troops began moving toward France with- /-% out undue delay after the declaration of war. Having ^ ^ taken the plunge, America was at once to realize what it involved: fighting, our own men facing the enemy in Flanders, engagements, American casualty lists — and all of this soon. We had a Regular Army — small, as forces had come to be regarded; not thoroughly equipped in the ultramodern sense ; but intrepid, highly trained, and efficiently commanded by the graduates of West Point. We had, moreover, some one hundred thousand National Guardsmen still bronzed and hard from service at the Mexican border — a force which merited the respect of any enemy because of its recent training. The first act of Congress after adoption of the war resolution was to introduce a selective service bill which was soon to result in the registration and mobilization of the entire manpower of the greatest of republics. The land began to roar with the hammer-blows of workmen building the first thirty-two train- ing camps. All other building suddenly ceased, and the rails grew heavy with freight — principally building materials — for the new mobilization cities. Officers' training camps had sprung up in half a dozen centers. Men were beginning to dis- appear from offices, from factories, from college classrooms. The war was upon us; its inexorable process of consumption had begun. The great machine was in motion. Almost at once the Allies startled us with appeals for men. We had not known how desperate was their plight. Missions, headed by men high in the administration of the struggle against Germany, began arriving in the United States. The scales fell from our eyes. If the impression existed that we could take a year or two for preparation and then send a i6 THE ROAD TO FRANCE moderate force abroad to add the finishing touch to a victory which the Allies in themselves had the power to achieve, that impression was quickly dispelled. The Allies were bleeding to death. Germany was winning, nothing less. The morale of the French, who thus far had successfully held the "frontier of freedom," was running out like water through a sieve. There had been mutinies — officers shot by their men. Ameri- can soldiers in France, not merely to be to the people of Europe the visible token of our moral support and of the material aid that would come presently, but soldiers forth- with for the actual fighting; green soldiers if necessary, to be brigaded with the veteran troops of the Allies for speed in training; men, soldiers, Americans, in the utmost possible numbers, in the quickest possible time — such was the desperate need. Without such aid, the cause of civilization might go under; it might, even if the aid came. Thus, from the start, a heavy responsibility rested upon the transportation organization. As it wrought for success or failure, so might the destiny of humanity turn. General Pershing, summoned from the Rio Grande, set up in Washington the headquarters of a new element in the world struggle, the American Expeditionary Forces. The Govern- ment had already secured the first ships of its future transport fleet, and these were assembling in New York, which, for the sake of secrecy in our military movements, had lost its metropolitan identity in the public press and had become, noncommittally, "an Atlantic port." The British ship Baltic slipped out of port, and a few days later the cable astonished millions of Americans by announcing the arrival in England of General Pershing and his staff. The A. E. F. was a fact. Already orders had been issued ; and the transportation organi- zation, still no more than the embryo of what it was shortly to become, had begun to function. The First Division was beginning to assemble for the voyage across the Atlantic. America had inaugurated the offensive. General Pershing, however, was not the first to wear the American uniform in Europe. Several hospital organizations THE START OF THE VANGUARD 17 had preceded him, the earliest care of the Government being to provide accommodations and treatment for the sick and wounded of the forthcoming expedition. To Base Hospital No. 4, organized at Lakeside Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, under the leadership of the eminent surgeon. Dr. George W. Crile, now^ commissioned in the Medical Corps, fell the honor of being the first American military unit to reach Europe. This organization sailed on May 8, 1917, on the S. S. Orduna of the Cunard Line. It was composed of 34 officers, 156 enlisted men, 64 nurses, and 4 civilians, and it carried a com- plete hospital equipment. Landing in England, these soldiers gave Europe its first glimpse of the American khaki. Three days later the hospital organized at Harvard University, Cambridge, and called Base Hospital No. 5, sailed on the Cunarder Saxonia, to be followed the next day by Base Hospital No. 2, which had been organized at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York, and which sailed on the American liner St. Louis. On May 19, two other base hospitals, with their equipment, left America for France : the university unit of St. Louis, Missouri, on the S. S. St. Paul., American Line, and now called Base Hospital No. 10; and Base Hospital No. 12, the Northwestern University unit, of Evanston, Illinois, on the American liner Mongolia. General Pershing sailed on May 28, nine days after the last of the pioneer five base hospitals. He went with the under- standing that the First Expeditionary Division was to follow him after a brief interval. He was still in Washington when the first overseas orders to combat troops went out in the form of a telegram from Colonel William M. Cruikshank, adjutant general, to the commanding general of the Southern Depart- ment of the Army at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. These orders were as follows: "1. The following organizations are designated for foreign service: Sixteenth, Eighteenth, Twenty-sixth, Twenty-eighth Infantry Regiments; headquarters and four motor truck com- panies, personnel only; outpost company from First Battalion Signal Corps; Motor Ambulance Company No. 6; Motor i8 THE ROAD TO FRANCE Field Hospital No. 6; two motor-truck company machine shops with personnel complete. "2. Use all resources of your department to organize infan- try regiments and equip them accordingly. Fill up organiza- tions to strength prescribed by transfer of enlisted men from other organizations or by recruits. Wire requests for shortages direct to bureau chief concerned, who will have shortages meet organization at port of embarkation. Commissioned personnel will be assigned by the War Department. Expedite organiza- tion and equipment in every way possible. Report by wire when organizations are ready to move by rail." A day or so later a telegram was dispatched to the com- mander at Fort Sam Houston directing that the First Division be organized and ready to entrain by June i. This telegram was signed by General McCain, the adjutant general. There is another historic document in the files at Washington on the letter-head of the A. E. F. Headquarters, Washington, D. C, dated May 24, requesting the adjutant general to substitute the outpost company of the Second Field Signal Battalion for that of the First Battalion named in the original order. This letter is signed by General Pershing. On May 24 General Pershing instructed the commanding general at Fort Sam Houston to order the four infantry regi- ments of the First Division, the i6th, 18th, 26th, and 28th, to take their existing equipment with them, including their Benet-Mercier machine guns. The rest of a complete field equipment was to meet the regiments at the Port of Embar- kation and be loaded on ships constituting part of the convoy. The system of having troops carry along their equipment wherever they went was rooted deep in the traditions of the American Army, though it was to be drastically changed before the fighting came to an end. Meanwhile, a chief concern of the military line organiza- tion in Washington was the tactical reorganization of units for overseas duty. The old American regiment with its 1,000 or 1,200 men and companies of 100 members would not fit in with the scheme of organization adopted by both the Brit- THE START OF THE VANGUARD 19 ish and the French : namely, companies of 264 men and regi- ments with an approximate strength of 2,800 officers and men. One of General Pershing's jfirst duties in his foreign service was to study this problem and to recommend a plan for the reorganization of American troop units. Late in May the Gov- ernment organized a mission of eleven army officers to go to France immediately and study the many problems connected with the landing and establishment of a great American force, among these problems being that of army organization. Mean- while, upon the arrival of French officers with the mission headed by M. Viviani and Marshal Joffre, the Army War College, after consultation with these experts, drew up a table of organization for an American division. General Pershing approved this scheme of organization before he sailed and re- quested that similar plans be formulated to cover the organi- zation of army corps and field armies. Washington decided to send, in addition, a regiment of marines with the first convoy. On May 16 the Secretary of War wrote to the Secretary of the Navy requesting that this regiment be organized according to the new specifications, with a headquarters company, three battalions, and an aggre- gate strength of 2,779 officers and men. It was also requested that replacement troops to the number of 1,000 either accom- pany the marine regiment or follow it immediately. Mean- while the four infantry regiments of the First Division were to be brought up to the newly authorized strength by transfer of men from other units and by recruiting. Major General William L. Sibert, later Chief of the Chem- ical Warfare Service, was assigned by the Secretary of War to the command of the First A. E. F. Division. General Sibert at once went to New York, set up his headquarters, began collecting his personal staff, and made arrangements for the loading of the first convoy. In a telegram from General Sibert to the War Department we catch a glimpse of the stir of preparation for combat which animated the military service in these early days : "Information received here indicates that various bureau 20 THE ROAD TO FRANCE chiefs of the War Department are ordering personnel and sup- plies to New York for transportation within first convoy. They cannot be accommodated on vessels procured. Arrange- ments have been made for the transportation of units itemized on sheet accompanying your letter May 26, and in addition one field bakery company and stevedores. No room for any other. Provisions made for only one ambulance company and no more can be accommodated, neither personnel nor equip- ment. No room for motor vehicles, other than those mentioned in list referred to above. Cargo space available is now over- taxed, and some portions will have to be left behind unleSs additional ships can be secured." This telegram shows the eagerness of the various branches of the Army to place their men and materials in France at the earliest possible date. This zeal, if it had remained un- checked by central authority, might have entailed disaster to the great overseas movement or, at least, greatly impaired its momentum; and indeed, before the Transportation Service became completely organized, it did bring about a serious situation. The telegram, with its implication that the com- mander of combat troops still had much to do with the trans- port of his men, can also serve as a basis for the reader's appre- ciation of the tremendous changes brought about later in our handling of troops and supplies. In the latter part of May the authorities were working with all speed to prepare the ships for this first sailing. The Gov- ernment had found the vessels at or near New York and had bought or chartered them to be the beginning of what was later a mighty transoceanic equipment. The army ships of the first convoy, fourteen in number, were these: Havana Montanan Antilles H. R. Mallory Dak o tan Mom us El Occidente Y* as tores Finland San Jacinto Lenape Saratoga Edward Luckenbach Tenadores From The Tfar College Collection BORDER TROOPS OFF FOR FRANCE Photo by International Film Service "GOOD-BYE, BROADWAY From The Jl'ai ( AN EARLY TROOP TRAIN Photo by Western Neivspaper Union SOME OF THE FIRST TO GO THE START OF THE VANGUARD 21 With the single exception of the Finland, none of these ves- sels had ever been in the transatlantic trade. They were all boats from the coastwise and Latin-American trades, running from New York to the West Indies, to the American and Mexican Gulf ports, and to Central America. The Fas tores and Tenadores had been in the banana trade between New York and Caribbean ports, as part of the "Great White Fleet" of the United Fruit Company. The Mallory was in coastwise trade between American Gulf ports, Cuba, and New York. Most of the ships were in New York harbor, either unloading or already unloaded, when the Government secured them. The Luckenbach was in Philadelphia unloading. She steamed around to New York, reaching there May 30, the \te also of the arrival of the Saratoga. The Momus reached New York May 31, and the Finland came in from her last commercial voyage across the Atlantic on June 1. While these vessels were receiving alterations to make them over into troop transports and cargo and animal transports, under the direction of construction officers of the Army Trans- port Service, the New York Navy Yard was preparing gun platforms and mounts for the decks and securing guns for the mounts, so as to give each vessel her own defense against the submarines which were expected to dispute the passage of the convoy across the ocean. The Finland alone was already armed, fore and aft. On the day when war became a legal fact, the Government had seized the great piers of the North German Lloyd Steam- ship Company and the Hamburg-American Line at Hoboken, New Jersey, across the North River from Manhattan Island. Here the Army Transport Service set up headquarters and prepared for the embarkation of the First Division. For the benefit of the morale of her civilian population. Great Britain invited us to send part of the First Expedition- ary Division to England to visit London en route to France. Military and naval reasons forbade us to accept this ^ ffer of hospitality; but the Government promised that later bntin- gents should land in England. This promise was fulfilled on 22 THE ROAD TO FRANCE a scale far greater, perhaps, than either our Government or the Government of Great Britain expected. The four infantry regiments at the Mexican border and the other units were equipped and ready for departure on June 1, the date set in the original orders from Washington. The supply companies of these regiments, in fact, entrained at their various headquarters in Texas on the 31st day of May and reached the New Jersey suburbs of New York on June 7. By June 1 the refitting of transports had progressed to such a point that the War Department felt justified in ordering the Texas units to entrain at once. The most remote of the four infantry regiments, the 18th, left its quarters at Douglas, Arizona, on June 2. The other three regiments, all of which were stationed in Texas, en- trained on the 3d, each in six special trains. The 16th had been patrolling the border at the Rio Grande crossing at El Paso. It entrained between midnight and four o'clock on the morning of June 3. The 26th entrained at its camp at San Benito, Texas, in the late afternoon of June 3. The 28th entrained at its headquarters in McAllen, Texas, on the same afternoon. The first section of the train movement of the 28th started at 3.20 p.m., and the last left McAllen at 8.40 that evening, the others getting off at regular intervals between those times. The entraining of the other regiments was conducted on a similar schedule and with equal precision. The 16th traveled via Fort Worth, St. Louis, and Buffalo, three sections arriving at Hoboken on June 9 and three on June 10, the entire regiment having made the trip from the Mexican border within seven days. And these troops carried all their equipment on the journey by rail — a fact which means that freight cars were coupled to the passenger trains, with a consequent slowing down of the running time. The 18th went via Chicago, reaching Hoboken on June 9 after a jour- ney of seven days. The quickest trip of all was made by the 26th, which, routed through St. Louis, began arriving in Hoboken on June 7 after four days of travel. The last two sections carrying the 26th reached Hoboken on the morning THE START OF THE VANGUARD 23 of the 8th. The 28th Infantry arrived in Hoboken on June 8 and 9, via Atlanta and Washington, D. C. All four regiments were at the Port of Embarkation by June 10. Meanwhile the other units assigned to the First Division had been traveling to Hoboken. Base Hospital No. 18 had been ordered to mobilize at AUentown, Pennsylvania, for de- parture with the first convoy. This hospital was the creation of Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore. AUentown is but a few hours' run from New York, so that the hospital unit could entrain there, travel to New York, and embark on a transport, all within one day. Two battalions of engineers assigned to the division left San Antonio in three sections on June 2, arriving at Hoboken June 9, The field hospital and ambulance company designated for the division occupied one train, which left San Antonio June 3 and arrived at Hoboken June 9. The Signal Corps outpost company's train left Browns- ville on the 3d and arrived at Hoboken on the 9th. A detach- ment of quartermaster troops had also come through from Texas on a special train. The embarkation of all these troops from the piers in the North River — piers recently German, by the way — was not so rapid as the execution of similar tasks later on. Approxi- mately 12,000 troops sailed in the first convoy. They spent four days getting their baggage and themselves aboard ship. Hoboken was to see 45,000 American soldiers embark on transports within twenty-four hours. The troopships of the convoy started June 14, 1917. The 16th Infantry occupied two transports — six companies and the regimental headquarters on the Havana^ six companies and the supply company on the Saratoga. The 18th crossed on the Finland and the Mallory^ six companies to each ship, with the headquarters on the Finland and the supply company on the Mallory. These assignments used up the larger ships, so that the 26th Infantry and the 28th Infantry each had to utilize three vessels. The 26th traveled on the San Jacinto., the Lenape, and the Momus., one battalion of four companies on each vessel. The headquarters of the 26th was set up on the 24 THE ROAD TO FRANCE Sa?i Jacinto; the regiment's supply company found accom- modations on the Lenape. The three ships assigned to the 28th were the Antilles^ Fastores^ and Tenadores. This regiment, also, embarked with its three battalions intact, one on board each of the three ships. Regimental headquarters traveled on the Antilles and the supply company was assigned to the Pastores. General Sibert, his staff, and the headquarters of the First Division were on the Lenape^ sharing the vessel with troops of the 26th Infantry. The quartermaster troops were carried on the Pastores. The ambulance company and the field hospital embarked on the San Jacinto. The four motor truck companies, personnel only, had quarters on the Finland. The Signal Corps outpost company was on the Mallory., and 500 military stevedores were carried on the Momus and the Tenadores. Thus, of the fourteen vessels in the first American convoy, ten carried troops — the Antilles^ Finland^ Lenape, Mallory, San Jacinto, Saratoga, Momus, Pastores, Tenadores, and Havana. The other four vessels, the Dakotan, El Occidente, Edward Luckenbach, and Montanan, carried cargo and ani- mals for the First Division. This last group sailed June 17. We must not forget the regiment of marines which crossed the ocean with the infantry of the First Division. The Navy, which protected the first convoy and had charge of it through- out the voyage, carried the marines aboard its own ships. The Navy already possessed the naval transports Henderson (new) and Hancock, and had also seized the German auxiliary cruiser Printz Eitel Friedrich, which had been interned in Philadelphia. This vessel was a passenger ship; and, since she had escaped the damage inflicted by the German crews upon the machinery of nearly all the German vessels sheltered in our ports, she was ready for immediate service as a naval trans- port. The Navy renamed this vessel the De Kalb. On these three ships, the Henderson, Hancock, and De Kalb, attached to the first convoy, the 1st Regiment of Marines started on the road to France. Such was the distribution of the first combat troops of the THE START OF THE VANGUARD 25 A. E. F. as they set out from America on that memorable June day — a gallant muster, destined to write its record imperish- ably into the history of the world. The orderly line of trans- ports, some in sober gray, others bedizened like harlequins in the fantastic patterns of the new camouflage, pass through the opened gate in the recently placed submarine net across the Narrows; through, and on into the obscuring fog of a spring morning. There we wave our farewells to them for the present, reserving, however, a place later in the narrative for the thrilling story of their unforgettable voyage across the Atlantic. Even before the first convoy sailed, the War Department was preparing for the departure of other overseas troop units which should make the First Expeditionary Division complete and place in France the skeleton of the Second Division. In the first convoy sailed only the infantry and a few miscel- laneous units of the First Division. It was necessary to add to the First its artillery, its engineering force, and other neces- sary sections. No time was lost in preparing these organiza- tions for foreign duty. As yet, our transport fleet consisted solely of the fourteen vessels of the first convoy. It was the plan to have the other units of the First Division at the docks in New York awaiting the return of the transports. At first the authorities thought that the ships could be ready to sail on the second voyage from America by July 1 5, and this date was tentatively fixed for the mobilization of more troops at the Port. But the arrival of so many vessels at one time seri- ously congested St. Nazaire, our first port of debarkation in France; and the 500 stevedores carried across on the first convoy were far too few to handle the work of unloading in quick time. July 15 came and went, and still the transports had not returned from France. By July 4 the War Department had designated the troops which were to sail in the second convoy. The artillery for the First Division included the 5th Regiment, then stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, the 6th, quartered at Douglas, Arizona, and the 7th, at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. A trench-mortar battery for the Division was being organized hastily at Fort Dupont, 26 THE ROAD TO FRANCE Delaware. These three regiments of Field Artillery were to comprise a brigade, the headquarters of which was to be organ- ized at once in readiness for sailing. The ist Regiment of Engineers received orders to join the First Division in France. Its companies were located at various points in Texas, except one company, stationed partly in New York and partly in Washington, D. C. The regiment assembled in Washington and moved thence to Hoboken. The 2d Field Battalion of the Signal Corps, at Brownsville, Texas, which had sent its outpost company with the first convoy, was ordered to sail on the second convoy. A battalion of telegraph operators for the A. E. F. was recruited and organized at Monmouth Park, New Jersey. The Southern Department of the Army was ordered to organize the horse-drawn section of the ammuni- tion train for the First Division, and the Eastern Department the motor-drawn section. Meanwhile the War Department was getting together a headquarters train with a company of mili- tary police for the First Division. The First Aero Squadron and three base hospitals also found ship space, as did six rail- way engineer regiments. In all, the troops embarking on the second convoy numbered 274 officers and 7,337 men. They carried with them 797 vehicles of all sorts, including wagons, rolling kitchens, artillery caissons, motor trucks, automobiles, and motorcycles. The second convoy crossed early in August. It sailed in two escorted groups of ships. The first group, which left on July 31, 1917, included four of the troop transports which had been members of the first convoy : the Pas tores, Tenadores, Mallory, and Saratoga. The tanker Arethusa also sailed in this group, carrying fuel to the naval forces abroad. Six days later sailed the second group, composed of the Finland, Antilles, and San Jacinto, with the navy transport Henderson. This departure ended the embarkation at New York until September, when there began the unbroken flow of American soldiers to France which was to end only with the armistice. CHAPTER III MOBILIZING REGULARS AND NATIONAL GUARD ALTHOUGH, from a popular standpoint, the chief /-% interest in these early weeks of the war attaches to ^ m- the inland travel and overseas embarkation of the First Division and other pioneer units of the American Expe- ditionary Forces, this phase of military movement constituted by no means the major part of the work then being conducted by the organization which was handling transportation. Mili- tary transportation on a war-time scale began almost as soon as war was declared. For months the United States had been teeming with agents of the German Government, who operated with the weapons of the Vandal against American factories turning out muni- tions of war for the Allied armies and against American rail- roads transporting these supplies. There was no reason to believe that these hirelings would not continue their depreda- tions after America became a belligerent, when the oppor- tunity for outrages was vastly greater. There were hundreds of railroad bridges, the destruction of any one of which would seriously cripple railroad transportation at an hour when it was imperative that every mile of trackage be used to its capacity. For the protection of these structures and of impor- tant industrial plants, the Government turned out the Na- tional Guard. One of the first duties of the transportation service was to convey large numbers of state militiamen to the important bridges, tunnels, and industrial plants which needed protection. This movement, however, was not large enough to be considered at this point as one of the distinctive phases of military travel during the war. Of these greater drifts or tides that characterized different periods of army 28 THE ROAD TO FRANCE transportation, there are five which should have immediate mention : ( 1 ) The movement of the old units of the Regular Army to increment camps ; (2) The movement of the National Guard organizations to their training camps; (3) The movement of drafted troops from their homes to their cantonments; (4) The intercamp movement of National Army troops; and (5) The movement of all to the seaboard for embarkation. Only roughly speaking were these currents consecutive in point of time. They always overlapped. And for a long span the last three processes occurred simultaneously — that is, dur- ing the last ten months of military expansion new drafts were continually called to the cantonments, intercamp travel con- tinued as these new levies were sorted and distributed, and in the same period the stream of troops flowing to the ports reached flood- tide and stayed there. Yet one or another of these types of movement dominated the traffic at different periods. With reasonable accuracy we can define the limits of these periods as follows: (1) Regulars to increment camps — late spring of 1917; (2) National Guard to training camps — early autumn of 1917; (3) Drafted men to cantonments — mid-autumn of 1917; (4) Intercamp travel — late fall and winter of 1917-1918; and (5) Movement to ports — March-October, 1918. This classification, of course, does not include the tremen- dous volume of rail travel incident to demobilization after November 11, 1918. Nor does it embrace such miscellaneous, but heavy, items as the gathering of volunteer recruits from the enlistment centers; the carrying of candidates and officer graduates to and from the various officers' training camps; the transport of troops to depots, arsenals, dangerous war factories, army posts, hospitals, and other stations not on the Photo copyright by International Film Service A BRIDGE PATROL Photo by International Film Service CHICAGO GUARDSMEN OUT FOR WAR SERVICE Photo copyright by Iniernaticnal Fihn Service NATIONAL GUARDSMEN OF NEW YORK LEAVING FOR CAMP From The War College Collection NEWARK (N. J.) FAREWELL TO NATIONAL GUARD REGULARS AND NATIONAL GUARD 29 direct route between the citizen soldiers' homes and the A. E. F. in France; the tremendous furlough travel that weighted the rails during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays; or any of a dozen other elements that enormously added to the traffic burden and complicated its problem. Finally, this classification does not include (nor is any of the discussion in these pages concerned with) the travel of individual soldiers or small groups of them. These isolated travelers arranged for their own trips and rode on the regular trains, the railroads handling them as commercial passengers. They presented transportation orders to the ticket offices and received their tickets, and the military disbursing office later paid the cost of their transportation. On furlough or leave, military passengers rode for one cent a mile and paid it from their own pockets. That this travel was heavy, anyone who rode on the trains in 1918 can testify. The transportation organization of the Army, however, assumed jurisdiction of the travel of soldiery only in groups of fifty or more, a party large enough to require at least one special car. The traffic figures presented in this account embrace nothing but officially managed travel, and do not include the casual travel of individuals. The declaration of war was attended by a tremendous wave of patriotic enthusiasm, and men hurried by thousands to recruiting offices to join Uncle Sam's fighting forces. Whether from a desire to get at the Germans as soon as possible, or in order to escape the fancied stigma of being drafted for service, young Americans flocked to the recruiting offices in numbers never known before. They were taken into the military service in such numbers that it required special trains to haul them from the principal cities to various depots and barracks. In the five months after the declaration of war, and before the first selective service men moved to their cantonments, the transportation organization handled 125 special trains loaded with 33,277 of these recruits. This figure does not include the tens of thousands of volunteers from the smaller communities who traveled on regular trains to points of mobilization. 30 THE ROAD TO FRANCE It devolved upon the transportation organization to move many of the old organizations of the Regular Army from sta- tions along the Mexican border to camps in the East and South where they could receive these recruits and build up their own ranks to the strength authorized in the new scheme of army organization. This movement required many special trains; it was a difficult problem for the transportation organi- zation, which was still relatively inexperienced. There were several of these Regular Army increment camps — one at Syracuse, New York, another at Westfield, Massachusetts, a third at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and a fourth at Chicka- mauga, Tennessee. In the West and Southwest the army forts served as increment camps. Some instances of military travel in this period will indi- cate the nature of the movement. The 4th Infantry Regiment of the Regular Army left Brownsville, Texas, on five special trains on May 28 and arrived at Gettysburg on June 2. On May 28 the 7th Infantry entrained in four sections at El Paso, bound for Gettysburg, and arrived there June 4. On May 18 five sections started from San Antonio bearing the 9th Infantry to Syracuse, and reached their destination May 23. Chickamauga began receiving regular troops in late May, nine sections arriving between May 24 and 28, with the 6th Infantry from El Paso and the 11th from Douglas, Arizona. The 23d Infantry arrived in Syracuse on June 27 on four sections, having left El Paso June 19. The 30th Infantry left Eagle Pass, Texas, on May 19 on four special trains and arrived in Syracuse on May 25. Seven special trains, depart- ing at intervals during three days in late May, bore the 11th Cavalry from Fort Bliss to Chickamauga. The 13th Cavalry moved in six sections from Fort Bliss to Fort Riley; the 3d Field Artillery traveled from points in Texas to Fort Myer in four sections; and the 4th Field Artillery went to Syracuse on three special trains — all three of these last-named move- ments taking place in May. Between May 1 and August 1 the movements of the Regu- lar Army in the United States, including the embarkation REGULARS AND NATIONAL GUARD 31 movement of the infantry units of the First Division, required the operation of 110 special trains, usually over long routes. The total number of troops carried on these trains was 36,765. Among other troop movements in this period may be men- tioned the dispatch of 10,243 officers and enlisted men, most of them volunteers for aviation, to various aviation fields in the United States and Canada, thirty-three special trains being operated for this one purpose in these early weeks. The recruit- ing, mobilization, and transferring of ambulance, hospital, sanitary, and medical companies before August required the operation of sixty- four special trains for 12,903 passengers. In this period the mobilization of engineer units required twenty-two special trains for 11,059 passengers. An interest- ing phase of early transportation history was the movement of casual officers, most of them graduates of the first officers' training camps. Thirty special trains, carrying 5,519 officer passengers, took part in this movement. In all, the miscellaneous railway travel of troops, even before the transportation problem had become at all serious in its proportions, entailed the movement of 448 special trains with 138,482 passengers. This whole series of operations pro- ceeded without the slightest disturbance to normal passenger train schedules. The public scarcely realized that troop travel had begun, so notably absent was the confusion which might have advertised the activity. Yet the number of men trans- ported was comparable to the total force which received transportation at the time of the Spanish-American War. Even so, the military passenger list of this period was negli- gible in comparison to the number of men that cascaded upon the transportation organization in August. In April, 1917, the National Guard had numbered approximately 150,000 men. By the middle of August, recruiting had added nearly 200,000 men to its rolls, so that its total strength was then above 340,000. The movement of this force to its training camps constituted the second great phase of inland passenger trans- portation during the war. Sixteen training camps were provided for the National 32 THE ROAD TO FRANCE Guard, nearly all of them in the South. This centralization of the camps in a single territorial section had an important bearing on the transportation problem, for it necessitated much longer hauls of troops than if the camps had been located in the centers of sixteen districts comprising the whole United States. The exigencies of the war program required that the Guard camps be set up in a mild climate. Winter was coming on. It was a certainty that not all of the National Guard divisions could be taken to France before the northern weather grew cold. Moreover, once the National Guard divisions had evacuated their training camps, there might be no other troops to take their places there. This dilemma was not to arrive in connection with the National Army divisions. The drafted men for the National Army were to be called out for training in continual increments, perhaps up to the whole sum of American manpower. Therefore, the National Army canton- ments were of stanch, permanent construction, and were located according to the geographical distribution of popula- tion, regardless of climate. The National Guard camps were of but temporary construction — for the most part canvas tentage. To have placed these in the North would have put unnecessary hardship upon those who had to winter in them. The southern location of the National Guard camps, then, placed upon the railroad system of the United States the heaviest military burden it had known up to that time. It required the transportation of great bodies of soldiers over great distances. Troops from Minnesota on the Canadian border went to Camp Cody at Deming, New Mexico, on the Mexican border. Militia traveled from Washington and Ore- gon to Camp Greene at Charlotte, North Carolina. The whole Guard movement called into being a complicated mesh of train schedules to bring the regiments together at mobilization points within their respective states and to carry them to their southern camps. If military transportation were to break down at all, the disaster might have been expected at this time, when the National Guard, with its third of a million men, put the first REGULARS AND NATIONAL GUARD 33 of a series of military peak loads on American tracks. Yet the system never faltered. The hundreds upon hundreds of special trains, bearing their khaki-clad loads, went through to their destinations in almost as quick time as could have been made by regular trains carrying private travelers. The Guardsmen were still moving in great numbers when the first increment of the draft added its tens of thousands of men to the transportation load. These, too, were cared for by an organization now becoming exceedingly expert in its business. American civilians were traveling in unprecedented num- bers; the men in uniform were speeding along American rails in an ever-increasing flood ; and those same rails were weighted to capacity with millions of tons of war freight — building materials for the training camps, raw materials for the thou- sands of industrial plants even then starting work on their war contracts, thousands of cars rolling toward the seaboard to bear to the Allies a volume of munitions which never for an instant dwindled by reason of America's entry into the war. At this juncture, in the fall of 1917, we see American trans- portation genius managing with supreme success a volume of traffic beyond the ability and equipment of any other nation. The movement of the National Guard to its training camps was practically completed between August 15 and October 15, 1917. It involved the operation of 920 special trains loaded with 294,752 passengers. Approximately 50,000 Na- tional Guardsmen resided so near the training camps that they rode to them on regular trains or made their own way to camp without government transportation. An equivalent of this movement would be the travel of a single train over 710,309 miles of track, a mileage sufficient to take the single train nearly three times over the entire railroad system of the United States. Or, stated in another way, it was approximately the travel-equivalent of three troop trains operated over every short-line and trunk-line railroad in America. The Guard, in all, required rolling stock in such enormous quantities as 3,208 tourist cars, 3,941 parlor chair cars, 619 coaches, 1,211 bag- gage cars, 2,282 box cars, 1,097 ^^^ cars, 478 gondolas, and 34 THE ROAD TO FRANCE 948 stock cars. The National Guard occupied on the first stage of the road to France a total of 13,802 cars. New York placed aboard the trains a heavier human lading than any other state. New York's 37,787 National Guards- men occupied 97 special trains. The Ohio National Guard was second in strength, with 24,065 men, occupying 76 special trains, bound for Dixie. Illinois sent 19,844 National Guards- men to the training camps on 50 specials. The Pennsyl- vania Guard, 16,704 in strength, used 83 special trains. Wisconsin dispatched 47 specials ; Missouri, 36. In an appendix* to this volume is a tabular analysis of the primary travel performed by the National Guard, show- ing the number of men transported from each state, the num- ber of special trains occupied, the period during which each state was sending its militia to camp, the destination of each movement, and the divisions of the American Army in which these units finally found place. Although, in general, the National Guard troops traveled directly to the South to camps in which they were organized and trained in divisions, and from which they ultimately de- parted for the seaboard and the ships, there were exceptions to the rule. The National Guard of all the New England States, for example, assembled at Camp Devens, the new National Army cantonment at Ayer, Massachusetts, and there combined with the New England Coast Artillery to form the Twenty-sixth Division, its ranks being filled out by a slight addition of drafted men. The Twenty-sixth was known as the "New England Division." Almost immediately after its or- ganization it began moving to the Port of Embarkation to cross the ocean and receive the greater part of its training abroad. By the 1st of November the entire division had landed in France, surrendering Camp Devens to the Seventy-sixth Division of the National Army, made up of drafted troops from New England and New York State. The Twenty-sixth Division and the Forty-second (the famous "Rainbow Division") shared the honor of being the * Appendix A. REGULARS AND NATIONAL GUARD 35 first National Guard divisions to arrive as units in France. They immediately followed the First and Second Regular Army Divisions into the organization of the A. E. F. The "New England" Division was the second to go into the trenches and one of the first four or five to begin active combat operations against the enemy. The assembling of this organi- zation in the heart of a small and heavily populated district put only a slight strain upon the transportation facilities. The Forty-second, the "Rainbow Division," was the only other National Guard division which did not train in the South. It assembled and organized at Camps Upton and Mills on Long Island, near New York City. Camp Mills, twenty miles by rail from the ferries on the East River, was originally set up for the accomm^odation of the Forty-second Division, and was therefore, like the other National Guard camps, of temporary construction. Soon, however, it became evident that Camp Merritt, in the northern New Jersey suburbs of New York on the Hudson Palisades, and designated as the rest camp for France-bound troops awaiting transport space at the port of New York, would be inadequate, large and well equipped as it was, to handle the flood of men which must pass through the Port. The result was that, after the "Rain- bow Division" had left Camp Mills for France and the evacu- ation of the camp was complete. Camp Mills was rebuilt with permanent barracks and added to Camp Merritt as part of the permanent facilities of the Port of Embarkation. Camp Mills began to be used as an embarkation camp early in 1918, and thereafter its capacity of 40,000 visiting troops was filled and refilled times without number. The assembling of the Forty-second Division was a con- siderable task, for the division was made up of National Guard troops from twenty-seven states of the Union, with a considerable dilution of drafted men. Alabama furnished the largest contingent, and New York the next largest, fol- lowed closely by Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, and Illi- nois, in the order named. The concentration of these and the other units on Long Island, during the period of greatest travel 36 THE ROAD TO FRANCE by the National Guard, meant that every day there were a few National Guard special trains moving eastward across the southerly current of travel which was the dominant char- acteristic of military transportation in September, 1917. Sentiment played a part in the composition of the Forty- first, known as the "Sunset Division"; and in that fact lies the explanation of one apparent inefficiency in planning the primary movement of the National Guard. As the training system was first formulated, it was proposed to assemble one National Guard division at Camp Greene, near Charlotte, North Carolina. The plan was to build this division of Na- tional Guardsmen out of the northwestern tier of states from North Dakota to Washington. The plan was carried to the point of dispatching a great number of special troop trains across the continent to Charlotte from points as far west as Puget Sound. Idaho sent four such trains, Montana two, North Dakota eight specials, Oregon twelve; Guardsmen of South Dakota occupied five special trains in this movement, those of Wyoming four; and six specials carried more than 2,000 Guardsmen from Washington on the Pacific coast to North Carolina on the Atlantic. Each of the trains from Washington and Oregon was on the rails for more than a week. Yet scarcely had these troops been set down in the new camp in North Carolina when there arose a popular demand in the Northwest for an entire National Guard division to be made up of units from the Northwestern States. The War Department deferred to this expression of public opinion by establishing at Camp Fremont, near San Francisco, the Forty- first Division, composed of National Guard troops. Among the states represented in this division were Oregon, Washing- ton, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyo- ming, Colorado, and New Mexico. To assemble the division involved, of course, the return to the Pacific coast of troops that had already crossed the continent. And some of the north- western troops originally sent to Camp Greene went to points other than Camp Fremont. Several organizations joined the "Rainbow Division" at Camp Mills. Certain of the North REGULARS AND NATIONAL GUARD 37 Dakota and South Dakota units were transferred to Camp Cody, at Deming, New Mexico, there to become part of the Thirty-fourth Division, made up principally of Guard troops from the upper Mississippi valley. After the northwestern troops had evacuated Camp Greene, the establishment became an increment camp for the Third and Fourth Divisions of Regulars. The Third occupied the camp from late November to late March, the Fourth from mid-December to mid-May. Two states, New Mexico and Nevada, had no National Guard organizations. Four states. New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, each sent nearly enough National Guard troops to make up a division. The all-New York Division was called the Twenty-seventh. It trained at Camp Wadsworth, at Spartanburg, North Carolina. Every National Guard division received a greater or smaller infusion of National Army troops to bring it up to the authorized strength before sailing for France. The Pennsylvania Division, known as the Twenty- eighth, which trained at Camp Hancock, at Augusta, Georgia, came the nearest of any of the seventeen National Guard divi- sions to being composed entirely of National Guard troops; it had only a few National Army men in its organization. The Illinois Division, the Thirty-third, which trained at Camp Logan, near Houston, Texas, received nearly half its strength from the National Army. The Ohio National Guard con- tributed slightly more than three-quarters of the roster of the Thirty-seventh Division, the remainder being National Army troops. The Thirty-seventh Division trained at Camp Sheridan, near Montgomery, Alabama. In the spring and summer of 1917, then, the National Guard, at its various camps and armories throughout the coun- try, received volunteer increments, until about 200,000 new soldiers had been added to the ranks. The militia trained at the Mexican border numbered only about 110,000 men. This trained force was to be simply the skeletal nucleus of the great new volunteer army of Guardsmen, By the middle of August the southern training camps were ready to receive their first units, and the Guard began moving southward. Some states 38 THE ROAD TO FRANCE sent out trains as early as August 1 1 ; the heaviest movement occurred in September. During the middle two weeks of Sep- tember, practically all the states were dispatching troops. The first trainload of National Guard troops from New York started for Camp Wadsworth on August 29. Thereafter the New York movement was rapid — three special trains on August 30, three on September 6, three on the 7th, one on the 8th, four on the 1 ith, four on the 14th, and five on the 15th. After a quiet interval of eight days, during which there was no National Guard travel from New York, eight special trains of New York Guardsmen departed for camp on Septem- ber 24, eight more on the 25th, one on the 27th, five on the 29th, six on the 30th, and four on October 1. Another inter- val, and three more trains started October 6, one on October 8, eight on October 9, five on October 1 1, and three on October 12, which completed the movement. Throughout this period there was a considerable employ- ment of special trains for concentrating the various New York National Guard units at suitable entraining points within the state. When distances were short, heavy trains were the rule. The entire 69th New York Infantry Regiment, 1,716 men, rode from New York City to Camp Mills, Long Island, on a single train, made up of thirty-three chair cars, one baggage car, and eight kitchen cars — a total of forty-two. The dispatch of Ohio National Guard Troops was another big job in transportation. The 4th Infantry Regiment of the Ohio National Guard, nearly 4,000 men, became part of the "Rainbow Division." Having gathered at Camp Perry, Ohio, this regiment started for Camp Mills on September 7 on eight special trains. The movement to the Ohio camp at Mont- gomery, Alabama, began on August 23. The 10th Infantry Regiment of the Ohio Guard, consisting of volunteers from northeastern Ohio, left Youngstown on three special trains September 16. The 5th Infantry left Cleveland and other northern Ohio points on six sections September 25 and 27. The 6th Ohio Infantry left Cleveland and Toledo on three special trains September 27. The 8th Infantry entrained on ?i'ri wi r Photo from American Red Cross TRAVELING CANTEEN Photo by Felix J. Koch PUBLIC FAREWELL TO CINCINNATI NATIONAL GUARD REGIMENT REGULARS AND NATIONAL GUARD 39 four specials September 29. The next day the 2d Infantry left northwestern Ohio cities on three sections. The 3d Infan- try, which had concentrated at Camp Sherman at Chillicothe, embarked on five special trains October 8 and 9. Five other trains on October 9 bore the 1st Ohio Infantry from Cincinnati. The movement of Pennsylvania National Guard troops to Camp Hancock, Augusta, Georgia, was so expeditious as to merit a detailed analysis. The Pennsylvania Guard began moving southward August 17, and by September 15 the entire division was in camp. Except for a few scattered units, the whole force of 17,000 men was transported from Pennsyl- vania to Georgia within eight days. The heavy movement began on September 7, when nine special trains departed for the South, including four sections which carried the 10th Infantry Regiment from Pittsburg. The next day, September 8, the 16th Infantry left Meadville and Erie on six trains; the 18th Infantry started from Pitts- burg on five sections; and the 3d Infantry entrained at West Pittston on three sections — fourteen National Guard trains, all running as specials, originating in Pennsylvania on that one day. Eleven of these trains discharged their passengers at Augusta on September 10, two days later, and the other three early in the morning of September 11. On September 10, twelve sections left Pennsylvania points for the South with various other units of the National Guard, including the 13th Infantry from Scran ton, which traveled on five trains. The 1st Infantry left Philadelphia on September 1 1 in four sec- tions. Seven special trains left the state on the 1 1 th, six on the 12th, and four on the 13th, ending the movement. In seven ut they could master the regulations for the conduct of troops on shipboard, they could put the men through the various boat drills and fire drills, and in the event of a torpedoing they could superintend the aban- donment of the ship. Less than 4,000 replacement troops embarked in January. Thereafter the number steadily grew, until in the summer of 1918 as many as 50,000 a month went aboard the transports. As the war progressed, the tendency was toward a greater proportion of replacement troops. At length there came about a drastic change in the method of transporting overseas the casuals of the vagrant sort. For a long time the military machine on this side organized them into mixed companies and forwarded them to France in the expectation that each man would ultimately catch up with 2i6 THE ROAD TO FRANCE the organization which had left him behind; but this system only made confusion in our French ports. The A. E. F. was on strange soil, and the whereabouts of units and organizations were often not accurately known to the administrations of the debarkation ports. Hundreds of casuals became lost entirely in France and never found their original companies. In fact, after a time the A. E. F. abandoned the attempt to forward stragglers to their own units, and treated them all as simple replacements. The debarkation-port officers ascertained from each casual what his training had been, and then sent him to any organization which happened to need soldiers of his type. It was this same simplified system which, by official order of the War Department, was adopted in the United States in July, 1918. This order required the Port of Embarkation to treat as replacements all casuals on this side of the water. As these men reached the casual camp, they were sorted accord- ing to their training and placed in skeleton replacement com- panies — infantry casuals in one company together, medicals in another, quartermaster casuals in a third, and so on. If over- seas organizations reached Camp Merritt deficient in strength, the camp drew upon these casual replacement companies to bring their numbers up to par. Such a system put many of the casuals into regularly commanded ranks, and incidentally made it easier to pass them through the process of embarka- tion. Still, with overseas laggards arriving at Camp Merritt at the rate, sometimes, of 1,000 a day, the organized units embarking at the port could not use all the casuals; and, whenever the skeleton companies reached full strength, the excess supply embarked simply as replacements. When a casual soldier arrived at Camp Merritt he reported at headquarters, registered, and received an order which as- signed him to a certain block in the casual camp and provided him with a bed in one of the barrack buildings. His first visit was to the supply warehouses, where his clothing and personal equipment were brought up to the overseas standard. Then he was assigned to a skeleton company in the arm of the service to which he belonged. His immediate officer in the block then CASUALS 217 prepared his service record — brought it up to date if it were deficient in that respect, or made it out anew on the soldier's unsupported say-so if, as was often the fact, he had lost it. A record of the latter sort was regarded as a temporary record, to be used only until the permanent record could be located, and was so marked. The equipping of casuals was a tremendous job. Most of them reached camp without adequate equipment; many re- quired completely new outfits. One entire warehouse at the camp stored nothing but ordnance and quartermaster supplies for casuals and replacement soldiers. It taxed the ability of the casual camp command to feed its guests, largely because their number fluctuated so capriciously. Organized troops brought their own mess organizations and, when they moved into camp, simply occupied kitchens and mess halls in their areas and proceeded to subsist exactly as in their training camps. But the floating population of the Army, the casuals and replacement troops, possessed no mess sergeants or kitchens or cooks ; and Camp Merritt itself had to provide for feeding them. One week there might be as many as 20,000 casuals of all sorts at Camp Merritt, and the next week only 1,000. The camp mess department had to be ex- tremely flexible. Casuals arrived at all hours of day and night, often unheralded. The casual camp operated an all-night kitchen to feed hungry arrivals between sunset and morning. Whenever any large detachment of casuals or replacements reached Camp Merritt, cooks were sent immediately to the section assigned them, and their next meal was ready at the appointed hour. When the camp was filled to capacity it took 130 men to do the cooking for the casuals. The subsistence office of the casual camp operated sporadically more than 150 mess halls. In the spring of 1918 a third class of men began accumu- lating in the Camp Merritt casual camp: soldiers rejected by the Port for overseas service because of alienage, physical dis- ability, or other reasons, including the cryptic one, "for the good of the service." These men the camp distributed from 2i8 THE ROAD TO FRANCE time to time among cisatlantic posts where they might be serviceable. Camp Merritt maintained a card-index record of every man who passed through it. The camp personnel officer had charge of this activity, which in the summer of 1918 kept three shifts of men feverishly occupied making out cards day and night. The card record brought to the camp, incidentally, a duty which it had not foreseen. Soldiers were often careless about letting their friends know their whereabouts. All during the overseas movement the War Department in Washington was flooded with inquiries about soldiers. Washington could fol- low the movements of organized troops overseas, and it main- tained an extensive branch to answer questions from the anxious relatives of men in the regular units; but Washington did not attempt to keep track of casuals. Instead, it referred to the port headquarters at Hoboken and Camp Merritt all ques- tions relating to them. Consequently the camp, which handled the overseas passage of all American casuals except the rela- tively few who embarked at the independent Port of Embarka- tion at Newport News, Virginia, became a central bureau of information about casuals. The camp set up a separate office to answer queries, whether official ones from the War Depart- ment or unofficial ones from private citizens. Casual officers arriving at the Port of Embarkation of New York might accept the hospitality of Camp Merritt if they chose, as many did. Often there were, at one time, 300 casual officers in Camp Merritt awaiting embarkation. To these the camp served as a hotel. They were assigned to quarters and to messes, and they paid for their entertainment the one dollar a day collected from each officer at any army mess. The offi- cers' club at Camp Merritt was extensively patronized by these casuals. The concentration of all New York casuals at Camp Mer- ritt involved the camp in a related enterprise which grew to be one of its most interesting and important activities. The camp became the single agency for collecting and forwarding overseas all deserters and men absent without* leave from CASUALS 219 organizations which had proceeded to France through New York and its subsidiary ports. Under the system finally adopted, all embarking organizations surrendered their claim to any men left behind for any reason whatsoever, and passed to Camp Merritt the jurisdiction over such men. Technically, then, a deserter from the Nth Infantry became, after the Nth had gone aboard its ships, a deserter from Camp Merritt; and in the eyes of military law a man absent without leave from the Blank Engineers, after his regiment had departed, was absent without leave from Camp Merritt. It became the duty of the camp to apprehend these delinquents and restore them to the military service. Deserters and A. W. O. L.'s became so numerous that in April, 1918, Camp Merritt established within the casual camp a special stockade for the detention of these men. The prison camp thereafter expanded until it embraced sixteen barracks, each accommodating sixty-six men, and four kitchens and mess halls, the entire block surrounded by a barbed-wire fence charged with electricity. Just as the overseas casual camp was a camp within a camp, with a complete camp administration in miniature, so the stockade was a still smaller camp, self- contained, within the casual camp. The stockade, at its largest, was none too large to accommodate the prisoners who were brought in or who surrendered themselves, although the pro- cedure was so speeded up that the average prisoner remained in the stockade only six days, in which period he went before the court-martial and was tried, convicted and sentenced, or acquitted. The stockade, accommodating as it did nearly 1 ,000 men, was emptied and refilled once every week, to reduce its transactions to equivalent terms. The stockade administration came to include twelve officers and about 250 enlisted men. Not all these troops were required at the stockade to manage the prisoners : some of them spent much of their time traveling about the United States, bringing in deserters and other prisoners accountable to the A. E. F. It was possible at Camp Merritt to get some idea of the extent to which desertion made inroads upon the ranks of 220 THE ROAD TO FRANCE America's World- War Army. Camp Merritt did not, to be sure, come in contact with desertion from units stationed within the United States; but it is reasonable to assume that desertion was greatest among troops facing the ordeal of actually meeting the enemy, and most nearly negligible among troops safe in the United States. The A. E. F. was largely an army by compulsion. Logically, the tendency to desert would be greater among conscripted troops than among volunteers. These overseas troops, moreover, faced warfare deadlier than any the world had ever known; and the very sea which they must cross to reach the scene of conflict was full of peril. If ever cowardice and reluctance were to show themselves, it was when the American Army was departing for the unknown shores of France. It is extraordinarily gratifying, then, to note what actually occurred. It may be years before the exact figures of American desertion in the World War will be compiled; but we can form an approximate estimate of it from the records of Camp Merritt. The camp handled in all about 50,000 casuals of the straggling class. Of these men, a great number were the merely unfortunate — soldiers left behind in hospitals to recover from accidents or illness, or men who had somehow lost themselves beside the way. The Camp Merritt figures show that about half the stragglers, or 25,000, possessed no military record papers and cards. We may assume that most men of this class had fallen behind by their own fault. The Army did not rate a man as a deserter unless he was absent without leave for more then ten days. Of the prisoners who passed through the Camp Merritt stockade, only about one-fifth were actual de- serters. The others were men who had left their units without permission, and the great majority of them, after short ab- sences, had returned voluntarily to the service. Of the more than 1,500,000 men who went to France via New York, only 5,000 remained behind and were apprehended as deserters. This number compares favorably with the desertions from the comparative handful of American volunteer troops who fought in the Revolutionary War. There were more than CASUALS 221 5,000 deserters from the Union Army in the debacle which followed Bull Run. In fact, no American volunteer army of the past was nearly so steadfast in its fidelity and courage as the force which fought in France. Actual desertion, at least on this side of the ocean, was practically an invisible quantity. No doubt the superior training and discipline of our troops in 1918 kept desertion to a minimum, for this capital crime of the military service has always been most prevalent among green troops and troops held under loose restraint; yet some- thing must be said for the spirit of the soldiers. Of the prisoners at Camp Merritt, about four in ten were men who went absent without leave after their organizations reached the Port of Embarkation. They were the men who could not withstand the temptations of the city; men who allowed themselves to be persuaded to overstay their leaves, or who went on sprees and awoke to find themselves delinquent. On the theory that it is as well to be hanged for an old sheep as a lamb, many of these men continued A. W. O. L. until close to the time limit at which desertion begins and then returned voluntarily for whatever punishment they might re- ceive. There was also an element in the service so ignorant as to believe that if they took French leave and were absent when their units sailed, they could then safely report them- selves and be sent to prison on this side of the ocean, thus escaping foreign service altogether; and some of them put their theory into practice. They were unaware that deserters and men absent without leave were always forwarded to the A. E. F. to undergo punishment in France. A good share of the prisoners in the stockade, however, were the weak and the unwise and the homesick. Upon learn- ing that their organizations were scheduled to depart from the training camps for the port, numerous boys took the long chance of returning home without leave to say good-bye — most of them, no doubt, hoping and expecting to catch their units before they embarked. Some of those who went absent without leave at Camp Merritt eventually turned their misdemeanor into the crime of desertion by remaining away. Immediately 222 THE ROAD TO FRANCE after the armistice was declared, about 350 deserters appeared at Camp Merritt and gave themselves up. Absenteeism at the port grew so serious in the summer of 1918 that the commanding general issued public appeals to the people of New York not to tempt soldiers to overstay leave, and to help men to return if they were so intoxicated that they did not know what they were about. On one occasion a unit of 1,800 troops, when it checked up on the pier, found 300 men missing. There were numerous instances of units sailing minus any number from 25 to 200 of the men whom they had brought to the port. The overpowering fascination of New York to thousands of boys who had never seen the city before was accountable for a large part of the absence without leave in that vicinity. At first the Army forwarded prisoners to France, there to be tried by their own organizations. This plan turned out not feasible, and a permanent military court was set up in Camp Merritt to sit every day and dispose of cases. It had little trouble with men A. W. O. L. Most of these culprits came to camp voluntarily, with confessions on their lips. But de- sertion was a different matter. In time of war it was a capital crime, and a trial for desertion was a grave affair. The com- petent witnesses in a deserter's case — the comrades and officers of the man's own organization — were all on the other side of the Atlantic. When it was found impossible to convict men of desertion in the Camp Merritt court, the regulations were changed to send alleged deserters to the A. E. F. for trial. When a man was brought to the Camp Merritt stockade, the officer on duty there issued to him a fatigue uniform, assigned him to quarters, and within twenty-four hours had him up for investigation before an officer who conducted a sort of preliminary court. This examination might acquit him or even release him with a warning, if the offense were trivial ; or it might hold him for trial by court-martial. In the second event, he went before the court immediately. If found guilty, he was at once assigned to a skeleton company within the stockade. A prison casual company consisted of sixty-six men, CASUALS 223 all that could live in one barrack building. As soon as a prison company reached its full strength, it was sent under guard to the piers and embarked upon the first transport which had room for it. The period between the sentencing of a man by the court- martial and his departure for Hoboken in an overseas prison company was not often longer than forty-eight hours. In that interval the camp made out his service records as best it could, issued to him a complete overseas equipment just as if he were a member of a regular organization, and restored to him any property which he had abandoned when he went A. W. O. L. He traveled to France as a prisoner and served his sentence there. The stockade guard company was kept busy bringing in prisoners from all parts of the country. Its members traveled as far west as the Pacific coast. The actual coward, the soldier whose metal was dross, was extremely rare; yet there were a few whose moral nature was so warped that they preferred even suicide to a voyage across the ocean. Some faltering spirits simply could not stand the gaff. One prisoner who was being brought to Merritt under guard threw himself from the window of a swiftly moving train. The fall failed to kill him, and he got up and hanged himself to a telegraph pole with some wire which he found beside the track. Another who was marching at night with a company of prisoners from Camp Merritt to Alpine Landing took the frightful leap over the edge of the Palisades. In the darkness his deed was not witnessed, nor were the guards able to tell how he had escaped. Some days later, a gathering of buzzards caught the attention of the guardsmen. They gave search and learned the truth about his escape. Occasionally men would disappear after the ferry- boat left Alpine Landing and before it touched the pier in the lower river. These desperate individuals had jumped over- board. Some of them perhaps succeeded in swimming to shore ; others never made it. Intermittently during the period of heaviest embarkation the watermen of New York fished the bodies of dead soldiers out of the river. A few soldiers, when 224 THE ROAD TO FRANCE the transports were moving from the piers down the bay to the rendezvous of the convoy, leaped to death in the deep water. But for every such dark incident, there were a dozen of another sort — the stalwart youth condemned by some final inspection to remain behind because of alienage or physical disability, standing before the embarkation officer with un- ashamed tears flowing down his cheeks as he pleaded for the chance to share with his comrades the dangers ahead. This was a common sight at Hoboken in those dramatic days. The Government knew how rare were desertions and cowardice, how frequent the exhibition of valor; and it reposed a mighty faith in the moral stamina of the American Expeditionary Forces. From An Official Motion Picture CASUALS AT CAMP MERRITT RECEIVING EMBARKATION INSTRUCTIONS From An Offinu! M.iim Picture ENTRANCE TO STOCKADE, CAMP MERRITT Photo by Signal Corps LEVIATHAN LEAVING FOR FRANCE, AUGUST 3, 191J WITH NEARLY 11,000 YANKEE TROOPS Photo by Signal Corps ON ONE OF LEVIATHAN'S DECKS, AUGUST 3, 1918 CHAPTER XVII THE EMBARKATION SERVICE THE New York Port of Embarkation antedated the Embarkation Service, of which it was an integral part during so much of the period of overseas travel. The Port of Embarkation, we have seen, was created as a military entity in July, 1917, a few days after the first convoy had departed for France; but it was not until August 8 that the Embarkation Service came into existence. It may confuse the civilian reader to find the function of troop transportation carried on, as it was during our hostilities with Germany, by the General Staff. The layman thinks of a staff as an advisory and not as an executive and operating body. Such, in theory, is our General Staff — a deviser and creator of plans and policies, not the organ for executing them — and such it was in fact, before the declaration of war in 1917. The expansion of the American General Staff as an operating agency, its assumption of duties which logically and normally fell to the administrative branches of the Army — this is a significant chapter of American military history. Some day, no doubt, wise men will make studies of this growth and draw conclusions therefrom; but the province of this narra- tive is only to chronicle the facts of the expansion in so far as they pertain to the transportation of troops and supplies. In theory, the General Staff in Washington is the Army's executive committee. It may be likened to the board of directors of a railroad. The directors are men of deep expe- rience and skill. In their meetings they lay broad plans for the growth and efficient administration of the property. But it is not their function to carry out these policies in executive administration. That duty falls to the operating staff of the 226 THE ROAD TO FRANCE road — its line organization, to continue the military analogy — which consists of the railroad's president and his assistants, the general superintendent, the general freight agent, the gen- eral passenger agent, the general superintendent of rolling stock, the general superintendent of motive power, the general superintendent of maintenance of way, and others, each assist- ant being in actual executive control of some necessary branch of railroading. In the Army this organization is, or rather was, duplicated. The Commanding General in the field (or the Adjutant General in time of peace) acted as the railroad president does; the Chief of Staff was the chairman of the board of directors. Up to the sixth day of April, 1917, the General Staff con- sisted of ( 1 ) a small conclave of officers on duty at the office of the Chief of Staff in the War Department, and of (2) a group of military academicians gathered together for research at the Army War College in Washington, and known col- lectively as the War Plans Division of the General Staff. The War Plans Division had its chief, a secretary, and certain committees, which might be likened to the several faculties of a university. Each committee conducted some special branch of investigation. There was, for instance, the Organization Committee, which, through its observers stationed with the armies of other nations and through its own studies of domes- tic conditions, from time to time recommended changes and improvements in the organization of the American Army. It was the Organization Committee which, in conference with the British and French officers sent to America with the first visiting missions, drew up for General Pershing the plan, hereinbefore mentioned, for the organization of an expedition- ary division with enlarged companies and other innovations in harmony with the organization of the French and British armies. Another committee at the War College was the Operations Committee, whose responsibility was to work out plans for our actual field operations, including the maneuvering and disposal of troops at the front and their transportation to the THE EMBARKATION SERVICE 227 scene of action. In years past, this committee had built tenta- tive plans for the manipulation of American forces against various specific but supposititious enemies, so that an unex- pected emergency might not catch the United States strate- gically unprepared. The Operations Committee kept a vigilant eye on international politics; and any threat of possible future complications, no matter how remote, was sufficient to cause it to inaugurate studies and develop plans for meeting any conceivable situation. When the World War broke out and threatened more strongly month by month to involve America, this committee concentrated upon methods for the possible employment of our forces in Europe. A third committee at the War College studied the multi- farious problem of equipping our Army with clothing and ordnance and all the other supplies necessary to a great force. A fourth formulated systems for training soldiers. Out of this group came the projects for universal training considered by the Government before the outbreak of hostilities. A fifth committee procured military intelligence; it was this agency which employed the services of our military attaches in many lands. When war was declared, this whole War Plans Division threw itself into the task of laying down a prospectus for raising, training, equipping, and transporting an army of forty-two divisions, with their necessary maintenance troops. Such a force would number, roughly, 1,600,000 men. It will be seen that this program was considerably in advance of any conceived at that time (the spring of 1917) by the line organization of the Army. In fact, General Pershing, in Octo- ber, 1917, when he sent his first great requisition for troops, called for a force that should consist of but thirty divisions, with the appropriate army troops, corps troops, and troops for the line of communication. It was the province of the War Plans Division to step out in this fashion in advance of con- temporary needs ; to be ready with practical measures when the Government's power to organize troops had reached greater stages of development. 228 THE ROAD TO FRANCE It was soon discovered that this closet organization, the War Plans Division, was too remote from the control of the Army to be effective; and little by little, at first by the inclu- sion of liaison officers within General Staff headquarters, these committees were brought out of the War College, until at length, vastly expanded in personnel and power, they became independent divisions of the General Staff itself. The Opera- tions Committee, for instance, grew into the powerful Opera- tions Division of the General Staff, an organization whose behests set in motion the machinery of the draft, built up the combat divisions at the training camps, called into being the bewildering numbers of special troop organizations, dictated the transportation of all units, and fixed priorities in overseas travel. The Operations Division also supervised the distribu- tion of supplies. The Equipment Committee eventually united with the whole quartermaster branch of the Army to become the great Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Division of the Gen- eral Staff, which by that time had actually assumed the duties of buying all army supplies (except technical equipment) and of transporting supplies and men. By the close of 1917, the General Staff, without losing any of its advisory powers, had taken on vast responsibilities in the actual executive operation of many of the most vital func- tions of warfare. Herein our General Staff differed from the staffs of other modern armies, for they remained only advisory. It was natural, even inevitable, that our Staff should branch out in these administrative directions. It included within itself the very men who knew most about these subjects of transport and purchase. The expedient thing for the Staff to do was to assume direct charge of the great supply and traffic enterprises made necessary by the war, instead of creating new organiza- tions for these purposes and instructing them afterward. We are now in a position to understand the place of the Embarkation Service in this system. In early August, 1917, Major General Bliss was Acting Chief of Staff. His assistant was Major General Keman. At this time the Staff was attempt- ing, through the Operations Committee, merely to coordinate THE EMBARKATION SERVICE 229 the movement of troops and supplies; that is, it had no opera- tive powers in this quarter. Each military bureau still retained authority to transport its own troops and supplies as it chose, and each conducted its business with heedless disregard of its interference with the affairs of others. General Kernan felt that the War Department needed a central agency to coordi- nate the traffic, or at least that part of it which involved troops and supplies approaching the coast for transfer overseas; and in this judgment General Bliss concurred. And he made his con- currence effective by ordering the creation, within the General Staff, of a section known as the Embarkation Branch. At this time the Operations and Equipment Committees were staff branches; and so the Embarkation Branch was born on a parity with them. The blood brotherhood served our military transportation in good stead later on, when the success of the system depended crucially upon the perfection of the rap- prochement between the Operations Division of the General Staff and the Embarkation Service, then a branch of the Pur- chase, Storage, and Traffic Division of the General Staff. The complete harmony established in these days of swaddling clothes continued to the end between the agency which ordered embarkation and the service which actually conducted it. General Bliss made General Kernan the Chief of the Em- barkation Branch. For his assistant, the Staff went over into one of the operating branches of the Army, the Quartermaster Department, and therefrom picked an officer who had had greater recent experience in the transportation of troops and supplies than any other man in the Army, Colonel Chauncey B. Baker. The administrative agency of military transportation prior to 1917 was the Transportation Division of the Quar- termaster Department. Colonel Baker was chief of this divi- sion. His most practical experience in overseas transportation had been gained when the American military and naval forces occupied Vera Cruz in 1914. He had proceeded to Vera Cruz with the first ship and acted as base quartermaster there until our forces were withdrawn. 230 THE ROAD TO FRANCE Still a third officer joined the new organization; a man whose personality was later to be so impressed upon our trans- portation history — for he was destined to become the chief figure in it — that it is of interest to examine his career in more detail. When the United States declared war against Spain and the country was aflame with war enthusiasm, a young civil engi- neer named Frank T. Hines enlisted in the United States Volunteer Army as a private. He found a place in a battery of field artillery which was proceeding to the Philippine Islands. Out of its campaign there he emerged a few months later with a record for courage and ability and a commission as second lieutenant. One duty after another kept him in the uniform until, at the end of two years, he decided to make the profession of arms his own. He took up various technical branches of the service, working in the graduate army schools, until he had made himself an electrical and mechanical engi- neer, a captain in the Coast Artillery Corps, and a specialist in the location and equipment of coastal fortifications. The Government of Greece, no doubt anticipating the clash of arms that was to resound throughout Europe, asked the American Government to lend it an officer to supervise the strengthening of the Hellenic coast defenses; and for this mission the War Department nominated Captain Hines. He was in Greece when Germany began her invasion of Belgium. He stuck to his work until, one day, he discovered that com- mercial travel at sea had ceased. His job had come automati- cally to an end. The last passenger vessel for the United States had departed; the steamship companies could promise no other. On board one of the wallowing tubs of the ^gean, Captain Hines crossed to Brindisi, on the Italian boot-heel, and thence made his way to Naples, where an important duty faced him. Europe was crowded with American refugees, many of whom were women and children. They were stranded, prac- tically without funds and without hope of getting home. Their THE EMBARKATION SERVICE 231 immediate resources were generally in the form of letters of credit — many of them letters of credit issued by German steamship companies. In the financial paralysis of those first astonishing weeks of war, all instruments of international credit, whether issued by German institutions or not, had collapsed. An order for thousands of dollars was not good for a night's lodging. The State Department stepped in at this juncture to rescue the unhappy American victims of the cata- clysm. The Secretary of State cabled to our ambassadors and ministers in Europe to manage the relief work in their respec- tive jurisdictions; and the advices empowered them to com- mand the services of any American army officers who were traveling in Europe. Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, the American ambassador at Rome, straightway discovered Captain Hines and placed him in charge of the work in Italy. There were some 3,100 American tourists caught in Italy, and they were in a wretched plight. Most of them were entirely without money, living at inns and hotels solely on their verbal assurances that everything must come out all right. Some of the women were half hysterical with fear, and even the more courageous and hopeful found the outlook anything but bright. It was impossible, in this dangerous time, for the American Government to induce foreign steamship companies to risk operating their vessels across the Atlantic. The naval situation was still uncertain; German raiding ships, and even German ships of war, were abroad on the seas. Moreover, the chief transatlantic lines were owned by the very nations which were at war, whose first steps had been to commandeer all tonnage that could be used in the transportation of troops and supplies. America then conceived the plan of building temporary pas- senger accommodations on several of our transports and naval cruisers and sending these vessels abroad with gold for the financial relief of the stranded and with quarters for their return passage. The Government actually carried out this plan, sending, among other ships, the cruiser Tennessee to Europe. By the use of her own ships and by crowding full the few 232 THE ROAD TO FRANCE British and French liners which presently ventured to resume operations, America managed in four or five months to gather home her hapless nationals. While the improvised American relief organizations in other countries were beseeching the home Government for passenger vessels, Captain Hines, in Italy, was ready with a plan which made no demand upon outside help. Searching the Italian harbors, he had found in Naples and Genoa four large, com- modious passenger vessels, the property of an Italian trading concern. They were immigrant ships in the South American trade. Not even a sanguine person could have called them palatial in their appointments, for their accommodations were steerage throughout, except for a few second-class cabins for the wealthier colonists. But Captain Hines saw that he could quickly make the ships serviceable for the emergency work in hand. Aided by the backing of the American ambassador, he struck a bargain with the company, got the four ships, tore out their steerage accommodations, and built them full of temporary staterooms. While this work was going on, the officer, assisted by the American consul at Naples, arranged with the Italian banks a credit which gave him money to settle the bills of the refugees and buy their tickets home. Six weeks later the last of the 3, loo Americans sailed from Italy for New York, and in comfortable accommodations, too. At this early date not one of the American vessels then being outfitted for similar work had yet left the home shipyards. Our refugees in Italy were all in the bosoms of their families relating their adventures while the relief of those in other countries was still a vexing problem. This episode proved to be the turning point in Captain Hines's career, for it marked him as an executive who could step out firmly on unbeaten paths. He was acting as a member of a Coast Artillery board at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, when the United States declared war against Germany. The Army Staff at once reached out for him and assigned him to the Equipment Committee at the Army War College; and in August, when the Staff created its Embarkation Branch, Gen- THE EMBARKATION SERVICE 233 eral Bliss made Captain Hines chief of staff in the new organi- zation, in which capacity he acted as executive officer in the first attempt at centralized control of embarkation. The Embarkation Branch began its existence with the three officers mentioned, General Kernan, Colonel Baker, and Cap- tain Hines, and with a single civilian clerk. The first thing that attracted the attention of the junior officer of this group was the slowness of the War Department in securing vessels for the transatlantic shipment of the great supplies of mate- rials for dock-building which the Engineer Corps was accumu- lating at Jacksonville and Fernandino, Florida. In many ways this was the most vital cargo that could cross the ocean at that time, for until we had provided adequate port facilities in France the growth of the A. E. F. must inevitably be slow. On the advice of Captain Hines, Colonel Baker went to the United States Shipping Board and secured its promise to allocate a greater amount of tonnage to the engineering cargo. In August, 1917, the competitive system of military trans- portation was in full swing. Every production bureau in the War Department was trying to be the first to deposit its sup- plies in France, and every special corps vied with the others to get its troops shipped overseas. By September the Embarka- tion Branch had established a port-release system of a sort de- signed to control the flow of export army freight tonnage. Yet the Embarkation Branch was still merely an advisory body, still in essence a staff organization ; and its advisory system of release was not sufficient to control the congestion that steadily grew at the seaboard. Captain Hines wrote for the Chief of Staff a memorandum to that effect, in which he stated that the embryonic service, though it might exercise some degree of regulation of purely war department freight, had no con- trol over domestic shipments to the New York Quartermaster Depot, and none over the traffic in munitions and supplies obtained in the United States by the Allies. War department export freight was as yet only a small percentage of the total volume of traffic moving into New York. No matter how much this advisory body could systematize the military freight 234 THE ROAD TO FRANCE movement, it could not forestall the general traffic confusion then imminent. The aftermath of this memorandum was the creation of the so-called Coordination Committee. This was a committee made up of representatives of the railroads interested in traffic at New York, together with the representatives of the British and French Missions, the War Department itself, the Navy, the Shipping Board, and what was then the germ of the future United States Food Administration. This committee met once a week with the American Railway Association's Committee of Five in Washington. These meetings represented the Gov- ernment's first attempt to regulate all traffic. By this time every official agency, including the railroads and the representatives of the Allies, had established its own independent release sys- tem at the port of New York. The various releases were brought each week before the Coordination Committee, which attempted to give precedence to them in proper order. The intention of the committee was good, but its authority was weak. Each representative on the committee possessed executive control of shipments for his own department; but the committee itself lacked that overlordship which alone could have made it an effective power. A few weeks later it gave way to the famous Priorities Committee of the Council of National Defense, headed by Judge Lovett, the eminent railroad man. This committee, which acted in coordination with the American Railway Association, possessed in fact, if not by actual law, the authority to control freight movements by rail. It did succeed to some extent in gaining upon the con- gestion at the port, but it was deficient in the summary power to deal with shipping at its points of origin — which power, as the event proved, was the sine qua non of effective traffic control. WTien the severe winter of 1917-1918 closed in, it brought a traffic paralysis utterly appalling to those in a position to observe its effect upon overseas shipping. The Government promptly seized the railroads — an act which, as we have re- lated, gave the War Department its opportunity to establish THE EMBARKATION SERVICE 235 the Inland Traffic Service, one of the great agencies which composed the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic. Shortly before this event, even, it had become evident that firm-handed centralized control was necessary, not only in the shipment of supplies, but equally in the whole direction of the supply enterprise; and the result was the immediate crea- tion of the Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Division of the General Staff. The direction of this centralized supply agency demanded an executive of qualifications which few men pos- sessed — courage in shouldering responsibility and a willingness to cut comers and drive through obstacles to any desired end. For this post the War Department selected Major General George W. Goethals, who had built the Panama Canal, the largest work ever undertaken by the Government before 1917. Prior to this appointment. General Goethals had been Acting Quartermaster General. He brought into the Division of Pur- chase, Storage, and Traffic the new Inland Traffic Service, and took over also the Embarkation Branch of the Staff, raising it to the status of an independent service. Thus, in addition to his other powers. General Goethals, with both the Inland Traffic Service (rail) and the Embarkation Service (port and ocean) under his jurisdiction, became the master of military transportation. Of the two traffic services, the Embarkation Service was the greater, for the Inland Traffic Service maintained no control over any activity of the Em- barkation Service, whereas the Embarkation Service was dic- tator to the Inland Traffic Service in one of its most important operations — the transportation of troops and supplies to the seaports. But there was one significant development which we have still to mention. In the autumn of 1917 General Kernan was assigned to duty in France. Colonel Baker, now wearing the stars of a brigadier general, was made chief of the Embarka- tion Branch of the Staff. Captain Hines, who had become Major Hines, was appointed assistant chief. General Goethals found this organization when he took charge. It did not take the canal-builder long to discover that the embarkation control 236 THE ROAD TO FRANCE had not been functioning as it should. General Goethals attri- buted its ineffectiveness to the lack of a practical shipping man at the head. Therefore he transferred General Baker to another branch of the military service and, during the interval of several weeks in which he was hunting for the practical ship- ping man to be the civilian head of the Embarkation Service, left Major Hines in charge as acting chief. Major Hines seized the opportunity to upset completely the organization of the Embarkation Service as created by General Baker and to remodel it according to his own ideas. In January, 1918, General Goethals found his man. He was Mr. J. L. Lilly, of the ocean shipping concern of Norton, Lilly & Company. General Goethals made Mr. Lilly Chief of Embarkation, but retained Major Hines, who by this time was a lieutenant colonel, as assistant chief. Mr. Lilly accepted the appointment, took his place in the Embarkation Service, signed the official communications, and studied the organiza- tion of the Embarkation Service to analyze its weakness and its strength. Five days later he went to General Goethals to express his conviction that he could best serve the Government by acting as a subordinate in the Embarkation Service. He told General Goethals that even his long experience could con- tribute no suggestion for improving the system which Lieu- tenant Colonel Hines had built, and he strongly urged that Hines be made Chief of Embarkation and given a free hand in the direction of the service. General Goethals acted at once upon this advice. He made Lieutenant Colonel Hines Chief of Embarkation, and Mr. Lilly went to the Port at New York, there to serve in several important capacities throughout the rest of the embarkation period. A few weeks later Lieutenant Colonel Hines was pro- moted to a full colonelcy, and in April, 1918, he was made a brigadier general, having advanced to that eminence from the rank of captain within eight months. General Hines con- tinued to serve as Chief of Embarkation until after the armi- stice. Then occurred a development contemplated before the cessation of hostilities : one which, even had the war continued. THE EMBARKATION SERVICE 237 would undoubtedly have come to pass as it did. In December, 1918, the Inland Traffic Service and the Embarkation Ser- vice were merged in a single organization known as the Trans- portation Service, and General Hines took command as chief of it. Second in importance only to the actual maneuvering of the American Expeditionary Forces in the field was the trans- portation of the Army. Indeed, it will probably always remain a subject of at least academic dispute which was the greater triumph of American prowess — the transportation of the two million men to France in little more than a year, or the maneu- vering of that force in France. We are safe in saying that these enterprises were easily the two most momentous episodes in the history of our Army in the World War. The abrupt rise of a relatively obscure captain of the Coast Artillery to the command of this vital service was only another instance of the devastation wrought by war within the estab- lished military bureaus. It is no derogation from the inherent ability of many officers who for years prior to 1917 had held some of the chief posts in the military service, to emphasize the bare fact that the great test of the war unseated those officers and, often, raised to their places men theretofore com- paratively unknown. Those of extended experience in army bureaus, no matter how great their original stock of initiative or native ability, become chained by long association to regu- lation and precedent. There is no help for it; it is so in every army. The system will take the most individual of men and slowly but surely mold him into the common form. When the great emergency comes, such men often find themselves too timorous, too fearful of transcending custom, to make execu- tives of the best type. When a nation is committed to a strug- gle for existence, only a man impatient of hampering custom is likely to carry a great project through to success. Such a man was General Goethals, and such was General Hines. The very freshness of these men in their work, their lack of previous intimate contact with the red tape and machinery of the war bureaus, fused with their native ability, judgment, and de- 238 THE ROAD TO FRANCE . termination to make them successful executives. They were bold in assuming responsibilities, willing to strike out in new directions without driving their superiors to distraction by continual requests for authority to act. General Hines's first act as Chief of Embarkation was typi- cal of his whole administration. Up to this time the Embarka- tion Service had been going to the Shipping Board hat in hand and deferentially requesting its quota of ships for war depart- ment freight. General Hines did not request, but — none the less politely, of course — demanded all the vessels the Shipping Board possessed. To be sure, he did not get them — he scarcely expected that, for other important functions of the Govern- ment had to be served. There had to be ships in the Chilean nitrate trade, ships to bring the indispensable manganese ore from Brazil and Cuba, ships in the service of the Food Ad- ministration carrying relief to Belgium and other parts of stricken Europe, ships placed at the service of the Swiss to keep them content in their neutrality. But by demanding all the tonnage in sight. General Hines acquired a greater portion of it than he could have got by giving obsequious considera- tion to these other needs. When he took office there was still a great accumulation of engineering materials at the seaports — materials for use in construction of docks at Bordeaux, St. Nazaire, and other French ports assigned to the A. E. F. The additional shipping placed at General Hines's disposal soon cleared away this accumulation. Had the Engineer Corps been able to prosecute its work on the French ports at the rate expected in the summer of 1917, the Embarkation Service would have scored a failure to deliver the material. So narrow was the margin of success that abilities of even the first brilliancy needed the intervention of pure good fortune. Meanwhile certain activities within the Embarkation Ser- vice had now expanded to great importance. The Embarka- tion Branch at first kept manifests of export freight which showed only the general content of packages shipped abroad. Soon there began to come from General Pershing cabled de- THE EMBARKATION SERVICE 239 mands for specific information about the shipment of various consignments. The Embarkation Branch could not answer such questions, nor could it help the A. E. F. trace any missing supplies, because its records did not contain the necessary information. To supply this defect the Branch set up its cargo section. The cargo section kept detailed records of the contents of every package sent to the A. E. F. as well as of the quanti- ties and kinds of all bulk freight. Under the direction of Major Morse, a former official of the Pennsylvania Railroad, this work grew until it required the services of 180 clerks. Eventually the section kept track of all important supplies from the moment they were packed in the shipping rooms of American factories. A similar system was adopted in the movement of troops. Whenever General Pershing cabled for troop units, of what- ever branch of the service, copies of his cablegrams went to the Embarkation Service, where the proper employees placed in the record index a card for each unit requested. When the first entry was made on a card, there was as yet no such unit in existence : there was only a requisition for it. Weeks or months later, such a unit would be organized. The Operations Divi- sion of the General Staff would place it on the priority list for overseas transport and send notice of this action to the Embarkation Service, which thereupon made the suitable entry on the card. Presently the port machine worked down through the priority list until it neared this unit. Thereupon the Em- barkation Service issued a release for the travel of the unit to the port and, through the Adjutant General and the regular military channel of communications, ordered the unit to pro- ceed to the port ; but — and this is most important — not before the troop commander had communicated with the Commander of the Port and from him received specific orders for the travel. Right here is the secret of the successful embarkation of the two million. The Embarkation Service did not attempt a cen- tralized control of overseas travel. If the Washington head- quarters had ordered the unit to the port and simultaneously had ordered the Port Commander to receive the unit and em- 240 THE ROAD TO FRANCE bark it upon a transport, the whole overseas travel system would soon have come to grief. Washington was too far re- moved from that hour-by-hour intimacy with conditions at waterside to attempt to manage the details of embarkation. Instead, it created a joint responsibility for the travel of a unit to France and placed it partly upon the unit's own com- mander and partly upon the Commander of the Port. It was not unduly difficult for those two to arrange the travel without interference to the travel of other units. A similar system was applied to the overseas transportation of individual officers. As soon as a requisition from the A. E. F. called for an officer of certain qualifications, a numbered, but nameless, card was started in the Embarkation Service's index. Later, when an officer was appointed to the assignment, his name was entered on the card, and in due time the Service made a place for him on a transport. The activities of the Embarkation Service ramified, we have seen, in many directions. As has been stated, it exercised com- mand over the New York Fort of Embarkation. Later it estab- lished expeditionary depots at Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston. These it joined to the New York Port of Embarkation as subsidiary ports. It created one other independent port — that at Newport News. Troops and cargoes were embarked and shipped from Portland, Maine, Montreal, Quebec, and even from Halifax, Nova Scotia; but these were emergency ports, used only occasionally; and whenever they were in such use they were under the command of the New York Port of Embarkation. Newport News possessed no subsidiary ports. The Embarkation Service also established its famous courier service for the speedy transmission of confidential or other important communications back and forth between the A. E. F. and Washington; and it conducted other enterprises related to transportation. But fundamentally the most important activity of the Em- barkation Service was its incessant and ineluctable struggle for ocean tonnage adequate to the overseas movement. The overwhelming disaster contingent on mismanagement of the THE EMBARKATION SERVICE 241 tonnage situation was a reality which earlier administrations of the Service had never fully grasped. We were forcing the overseas embarkation of troops to the extreme limit, a limit which, before it was reached, the military experts of the world had deemed impossible of attainment. The haunting fear of the embarkation authorities was that they might dispatch to France more troops than they could find the tonnage to main- tain. If that situation ever arose, it meant disaster to the American arms, if not to the Allied cause. The first great triumph of the Embarkation Service in the direction of procuring tonnage was its acquisition of the British troopships in the spring of 1918 — an achievement most bril- liantly registered in the stupendous figures of overseas sailings in the memorable spring and summer of that year. With em- barkation proceeding at such a rate, the burden of finding the necessary supporting tonnage was more crushing than ever. The Service and its director were the decisive factor in the acquisition of the Dutch tonnage and, in the late summer of 1918, of the British cargo tonnage — both great episodes in the enterprise. Moreover, the exhaustive studies of ocean traffic which issued from the brain of the Chief of Embarka- tion were among the notable documents produced in our Army during the World War. It was upon them, in a real and far- reaching sense, that the War Department based its whole program of operation. CHAPTER XVIII ORDERS AND ITEM NUMBERS AT Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana were three bat- it^ talions of the 34th Regiment of Engineers, operating A. M^ a military supply train and a mobile repair shop. They numbered some 50 officers and 2,400 enlisted men, and every one of them was impatiently awaiting the order that would send them all overseas. Expectancy had been acute since the 14th of May, 1918, when the battalions had received from the Commander of the Port of Embarkation at Hoboken, New Jersey, the well-known and coveted form letter beginning: "Instructions have been received from the War Department that your organization has been designated for service abroad. ..." The letter went on to tell them what preparations they were to make for sailing. Except for its address, it was identical with the letters sent to all military units about to sail for France — the first harbinger of their embarkation. But it was now mid-July. Weeks ago the three battalions had followed the mimeographed instructions of the letter; weeks ago they had secured all of the prescribed paraphernalia that they could lay hands on. Two months had passed and brought no order to proceed to the port. The newspapers were black with headlines flaunting tremendous doings in France. The Germans were at the height of their successes ; the Channel ports were threatened; Paris was under bombardment; and American soldiers by hundreds of thousands were in the thick of the fighting, writing their imperishable record on the pages of history. And out in this peaceful interior post, surrounded by a smiling Hoosier landscape that dreamed beneath a sum- mer sun, lay these engineer troops, eating their hearts out with chagrin because of an order that never came. ORDERS AND ITEM NUMBERS 243 Washington had not forgotten them. Troops in camp could scarcely be expected to know about the almost daily military crises that upset the orderly arrangements for travel during those momentous weeks. Plan as they might in advance, the military heads in America could not begin to anticipate the needs of the A. E. F. as those needs were modified and con- trolled by events at the front. And, although organizations might be on the list for early sailing, their departure was often postponed in order that the Transportation Service might hurry to France, out of turn, specialized troops of one sort or another demanded forthwith by the A. E. F. cables. The day came when Washington telegraphed the following message : Adjutant General's Office July 20, 1918 To be sent in broken code. Commanding General, Central Department, Chicago, Illinois. Send regiment headquarters, First, Second, and Fourth Battalions of 34th Engineers (Supply and Shop), pertaining to Item E-403 and E-404, 3d Phase, consisting of 56 officers and 2,410 enlisted men, now at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, to Port of Embarkation, Hoboken, N. J., after arranging time of arrival and other details directly with Commander of the Port. Do not entrain troops until Commander of Port advises you that he is ready to receive them. Have inspection made to determine if organizations and individuals are properly supplied with serviceable authorized clothing, equipment, and medical supplies, reporting result by telegram. Anything found lacking to be reported in detail. Leave enemy aliens behind. If any so left, report number. McCain. This was a typical overseas order; except for the substitu- tion of other names and addresses, it went to thousands of expeditionary organizations. It reached its destination "through military channels," which in this instance happened to be the Commander of the Central Department at Chicago. To find whether the commanders of the battalion hastened to comply with the orders and to ask Hoboken to arrange the details of their arrival at port, we turn to the next important 244 THE ROAD TO FRANCE document in the overseas file of the 34th Regiment, a telegram sent six days later by Major General David S. Shanks, Com- mander of the Port of Embarkation, Hoboken, New Jersey. ( Translation) SJC/MS CONFIDENTIAL July 26, 1918 Commanding General, Central Department, Chicago, Illinois. T-125 Request you to send to Camp Upton, Long Island, New York, to arrive not earlier than noon August 6 and not later than noon August 8: Regimental Headquarters, 1st, 2d, and 4th Battalions, 34th Engineers, 56 officers and 2,410 enlisted men, Item No. E-403 and E-404, 3d Phase, now at Fort Benjamin Harrison. Leave at station all animals, ambulances, combat wagons, medical carts, ration carts, water carts, escort wagons, combat carts, spring wagons, passenger automobiles, motorcycles, cargo trucks, ammunition trucks, and tank trucks. All other vehicles not mentioned above to be shipped as freight. Ship freight to General Superintendent, Army Transport Service, New York City, for lighterage on separate bill of lading and loaded in separate cars. Motor vehicles must be on second separate bill of lading and loaded in separate cars. Advise accurately weight and cubical measurement of freight, and number and make of all vehicles. Troops to take with them to Camp Upton field ranges, field desks, authorized typewriters, office records, individual equipment of officers and enlisted men as outlined in Circular, War Department, July 11, 1918. All officers should be familiar with the various points of ship- ment of freight, vehicles, and baggage as above indicated. Personal records including qualifications and locator cards should accompany troops. Consult with representative of United States Railroad Administration regarding all details of train movements and conform to schedule as arranged with him. Telegraph Commanding General, Camp Upton, in advance time of arrival, names of organizations, number of men in each section, and list of shortages. Please acknowledge. Shanks. Copies — 2 to Representative of U. S. R. R. Administration. 1 to Personnel Adjutant. 1 to General Superintendent, Army Transport Service. 1 to Shipping Control. 1 to Equipment Officer. ORDERS AND ITEM NUMBERS 245 1 to Commanding Officer of Camp. 1 to Inspector of Camp. 1 to Inland Transportation, Washington. In the sequence of orders and other communications which passed during the progress of an organization of troops from the training camp to its quarters on shipboard, one can trace clearly the process of embarkation. Each departing unit left in the archives of the Port the documentary history of its sail- ing. These paper records are essentially identical; to set down one of them is to represent all. In tracing the movement of the 34th Engineers, however, we have passed by one important paper — the release for the travel, emanating from the Embar- kation Service. The Adjutant General could not act until he had this release before him. Each day the Adjutant General received from the Embarkation Service a number of releases for overseas travel, and his telegrams ordering the troops to the port were the result. The Embarkation Service was in full control of the troop travel to the ports, and only the army punctilio which required that troops receive operation orders from the Command of the Line, and not from the General Staff, kept the embarkation authorities from communicating directly with the troops. The embarkation release for the 34th Engineers was as follows : CONFIDENTIAL July 19, 1918 MEMORANDUM FOR THE ADJUTANT GENERAL OF THE ARMY 541.1 Subject: Transfer of the following troops to Port of Embarkation, Hoboken, N. J.: Regimental Headquarters, 1st, 2d, and 4th Bns., 34th Engineers, Ft. Benj. Harrison, Ind. The Secretary of War directs that instructions be issued substantially as follows : 1. Direct Commanding General, Central Department, confidentially by wire to send the following troops to the Port of Embarkation, Hoboken, N. J., after arranging time of arrival and other details directly with the Commanding General of the Port : Regimental headquarters, 1st, 2d, and 4th Battalions of the 34th 246 THE ROAD TO FRANCE Engineers (Supply and Shop), Item E-403-404, 3d Phase, consisting of 56 officers and 2,410 enlisted men, now at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Ind. 2. Advise Commanding General, Port of Embarkation, Hoboken, N. J., of the above action. By authority of the Director of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic. Frank T. Hines, Brigadier-General, G. S., N. A., RHJ/JIM Chief of Embarkation. Copy to Hoboken. Copy to Colonel McAndrews. Copy to Inland Traffic. The reader will have noted on the faces of some of these communications the arrangement for a considerable distribu- tion of copies of them. This system was the device which made the work of embarkation almost automatic. One copy of Gen- eral Hines's memorandum went to Hoboken and prepared the Port for the impending travel of the 34th Engineers. Having this notice, the port officers would look over their embarkation camp facilities and their transport accommodations for the near future, so as to be able to arrange for the reception and embarkation of the engineer regiment as soon as they received the organization's request for travel directions. Colonel Joseph R. McAndrews was the executive officer of the Operations Branch of the General Staff, the primary executive arranging the priorities for sailing. His copy of General Hines's memo- randum showed him the progress being made in embarkation. The copy to the Inland Traffic Service was notification of the impending railroad travel of the 34th Engineers. The com- mander of the regiment would soon request the Fort Benjamin Harrison general agent of the troop-movement office to supply trains and schedules for the organization. The general agent, in turn, would relay this request to the troop-movement office in Washington, which, having received several days earlier a copy of General Hines's memorandum, would have the train equipment ready. In the same way General Shanks, the commander at ORDERS AND ITEM NUMBERS 247 Hoboken, directed a numerous distribution of copies of his orders to the 34th Engineers, notifying simultaneously the port representatives of the troop-movement office, the Army Transport Service, the Shipping Control Committee (which arranged for the reception of the regiment's freight), the com- mander of Camp Upton, who was to entertain the regiment, and numerous other port officers to whom the arrival of the unit meant work; sending one copy as well to the Inland Traffic Service in Washington, as a further precautionary guarantee that the train equipment would be ready. General Shanks directed the regiment to arrive at the port between noon of August 6 and noon of August 8, 1918. Each embarkation camp sent daily to Hoboken a report of troops in camp awaiting ocean passage. In the file at Hoboken was a card which read as follows : HEADQUARTERS, CAMP UPTON, L. I. August 9, 1918 DAILY REPORT OF TROOPS AT CAMP UPTON AWAITING PASSAGE Organization ^ ^ s -g. ■^ *^ ^ O tt) tq ^ Q ^ DcJ Base Hospital No. 62 30 200 No No 7/1 2 Base Hospital Casuals 69 88th Division, 338th Mach. Gn. Bn. 23 730 No Yes 8/9 Division Hdqrs. Bn.* 27 No No 8/8 Hdqrs. Troop 3 120 No No 8/8 Hdqrs. Detach, 99 No No 8/8 350th Infantry 78 3,382 No No 8/8 34th Engineers except 3d Bn. 35 2403 No No 8/8 3 * 3 British officers, 2 French officers, 5 Army Field Clerks not included R. V. HiscoE, Major Infantry, N. A., Adjutant. 248 THE ROAD TO FRANCE The final item shows that the 34th Engineers, except the 3d battalion (which had not been ordered to port), arrived at Camp Upton on August 8, as scheduled, bringing 35 offi- cers and 2,403 enlisted men, a strength somewhat shorter than had been indicated in the preceding records. On August 9 the camp organization had not yet inspected the regiment. Three soldiers had gone absent without leave. Next day the embarkation machine began to draw the 34th Engineers into its hopper. The port authorities sent to Camp Upton a notification as follows: HEADQUARTERS, PORT OF EMBARKATION HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY Serial No. August 10, 1918. TENTATIV^E ASSIGNMENT Transport No. 642 {England) Pier No. 61, North River, New York City, August 15, 1918 Officers Men 34th Engineers Camp Upton, Long Island 35 2,403 Item No. Phase 3- E-403 E-404 Grand Total 35 2,403 Capacity 100 2,303 By authority of the General Superintendent, A. T. S. C. E. Hooper, Captain, Q. M. R. C. "Transport No. 642 (England)" was the British liner Euripides. Transports, both American and foreign, were called by number and not by name during the war. The assignment of the 34th to the Euripides was made tentatively because the embarkation officers never knew until the hour of sailing the exact space to be available on a ship; and unless all three battalions could get on the Euripides^ not one could be per- . ORDERS AND ITEM NUMBERS 249 mitted to embark on her. Military regulations forbade the splitting up of units in overseas transit. Note that the capacity of "Transport 642" lacked 100 berths of being great enough to accommodate the 34th Engineers. Excess assigning of this sort was customary. The port officers knew by long experience that seldom did an embarking organization come up to the piers at its full scheduled strength. Better to risk crowding the men a bit on board ship than to match accommodations in advance exactly to organization strength and then see a ship go out with empty berths. On the same day, August 10, the dispatch office at Hoboken sent to the Commander of Camp Upton the following instructions : L-451 August 10, 1918 From: Assistant Port Adjutant To: Commanding General, Camp Upton, Long Island, N. Y. Subject : Overseas Transportation 1. Transportation available on Thursday, August 15, 1918, for the following organizations : On ship No. 557 : 51st Telegraph Battalion, 9 officers, 206 men, Item S-103, 4th Phase ; Field Hospital and Ambulance Company No. 39, 1 1 officers, 204 men, Item M-201, 4th Phase. These organizations should arrive at Pier No. 53, North River, New York City, N. Y., on Thursday, August 15, 1918. 2. On ship No. 556 : 3d Battalion and Cos. G & H, 350th Infantry, 38 officers, 1,400 men. Attached medical personnel, 5 officers, 24 men. 338th Machine Gun Battalion, 23 officers, 720 men. These organizations should arrive at Pier No. 53, North River, New York City, N. Y., on Thursday, August 15, 1918. 3. On ship No. 642: 34th Engineers, 35 officers, 2,403 men. Items E-403, E-404, 3d Phase. This organization should arrive at Pier No. 61, North River, New York City, N. Y., on Thursday, August 15, 1918. 4. The following advance parties will report to Col. G. N. Mc- Manus, C. A. C, at Pier No. 1, Port of Embarkation, Hoboken, N. J., 9 A.M. Wednesday, August 14, 1918, prepared to go aboard ship and 250 THE ROAD TO FRANCE remain there. One member of each detachment should be a stenographer, who should bring along a typewriter. 5. For ship No. 557. Commanding Officer, Adjutant, Senior Medical Officer, and 3 en- listed men, from 51st Telegraphic Battalion. 6. For ship No. 556. Commanding Officer, Adjutant, Senior Medical Officer, and 3 en- listed men, from 338th Machine Gun Battalion. 7. For ship No. 642. Commanding Officer, Adjutant, Senior Medical Officer, and 3 en- listed men, from 34th Engineers. 8. Troops to take with them light and heavy baggage, personal equipment of officers and enlisted men, and all office records. 9. Triplicate lists giving names of officers, noncommissioned officers above Grade No. 17, and total number of other enlisted men, should be sent to these headquarters at the earliest possible moment. 10. In making routing consult with representatives of the U. S. Railroad Administration regarding details of train movements, and hours of departure and arrival. Please acknowledge receipt by telegraph as soon as received. F. F. Roy, Captain, A. G., N. A. Copies — 2 to C. G. Camp Upton 2 to U. S. R. R. Administration P. of E. 1 to Personnel Adj. 1 to Transport Q. M. 1 to Equipment Officer 1 to Director of Shipping 1 to Assistant to C. G. 1 to Dispatch Off. Paragraphs 3 and 7 interest us. They specify transport, pier, and date of embarkation for the 34th Engineers and arrange for the customary advance party to go on board twenty- four hours ahead of the others, to be instructed in the ship routine and be ready to receive and settle in its quarters the rest of the regiment when it came up the gangplanks the next day. Pier No. 61 belonged to one of the British lines; it was located on the New York side of the North River. ORDERS AND ITEM NUMBERS 251 This completes the historical file of the sailing of the 34th Engineers. After an organization had sailed, however, the Port made for its own records an index card giving tersely the essential facts and dates in the progress of the unit from training camp to transport. The following is the text on the card showing this record for the regimental headquarters and first battalion of the 34th Engineers : File 508 Organization Regt. Hdqrs. & 34th Engrs. Ist Btn. Officers 25 Enl. above Grade 17 Other Enlisted 794 Station Ft. Benjamin Harrison, Ind. Civilian Employees Ordered to Camp Upton Date Between 8/6 & 8/8 Passenger Lists & Embarkation Regulations Sent 5/15. Recd. 7/6 Release Par. 8 Sh. Sch. No. /, 3d Phase; Hines 7/19 Authority A. G. 7/20 to C. G. Cent. Dept. Ordered Pier 61 N. R. 8/15 Assignment Euripides Pier 61 Date of Sailing Aug. 16, 1918 Order Q. M. Port of Embarkation Nurses Civilian Employees Remarks E-403 E-404 (Item No.) A perusal of this card gives one more than a little insight into the system of embarkation. The card is plain enough to anyone as far down as the entry beginning "Release," which is followed by certain cryptic abbreviations translatable into "Paragraph 8, Shipping Schedule No. 1, 3d Phase; Briga- dier General Hines, July 19, 1918." This entry has reference partly to General Hines's memorandum releasing the unit for travel to the port, and further to what was, during the period of hostilities, one of the most secret of all documents in the possession of the War Department — Shipping Schedule No. 1 . Shipping Schedule No. 1 was compiled by General Pershing and his aides in the early autumn of 1917. It was dated Octo- 252 THE ROAD TO FRANCE ber 7, 1917. The schedule was a product of the study which General Pershing and his officers made in France between the time of their arrival in early June and the date of the docu- ment. It was the architect's plan on which the A. E. F. was to be erected, and at the same time it was a set of instructions to the military organization at home as to the order in which troops should be sent to France. It provided for the formation of the A. E. F. up to and including its sixth army corps. The completion of the schedule would put in France thirty divi- sions of the line and their necessary maintenance and auxiliary troops in the Services of Supply and the line of communica- tions. The schedule was divided into phases, each phase providing for the shipment of a single army corps with its necessary maintenance organization. General Pershing's headquarters, uninformed of the individual identity of the units then being recruited and trained in the United States, made no attempt in Shipping Schedule No. 1 to specify organizations by name, but called for troops by general designations according to the sorts of units desired. The Operations Division of the General Staif on this side took the general requisition and made it a specific one by assigning to places in the schedule the old and new organizations that fitted the requirements. Thus, Para- graph 8 of the 3d Phase of that schedule, compiled in remote France far back in October, 1917, called for three battalions of Engineers to operate a supply train and a repair shop in the A. E. F.'s line of communications. By spring of 1918 there was such an organization in existence — the 34th Engineers — three of whose four battalions did operate a supply train and a shop. The Operations Division selected the 34th to fill the generic requisition of Paragraph 8 of the shipping schedule; and when the Embarkation Service had worked down to this point in the schedule, the 34th Engineers received notice to proceed to France. The rest of the card is plain, except the final entry. In the space given to "Remarks" we find a mysterious label — a so- called "item number," or rather two item numbers — assigned ORDERS AND ITEM NUMBERS 253 to this unit. The numbers are E-403 and E-404, Phase 3. Doubtless the reader has noticed that these cabalistic numerals have appeared on all the communications reprinted above. They were written in the letter sent to the 34th Engineers by the Port of Embarkation back in May ; in fact, this letter bore to the regiment its first notification of the item numbers assigned to it. The numerals appeared next in General Hines's memorandum to the Adjutant General. They were repeated in the telegram of the Adjutant General ordering the travel, and reiterated in the telegram from the Commander of the Port detailing the travel arrangements. They were carried in the assignment of the organization to its transport, repeated once more in the instructions from the dispatch office notify- ing the regiment when it should arrive at the pier, set down at the head of the passenger lists, and, finally, written into the card record of the unit's embarkation. Such unvarying iteration must signify that these numbers were important; and so they were — as important as anything in the whole trans- portation system. Item numbers were the means adopted by the A. E. F. to identify its component parts and to prevent them from getting lost in transit — an easier mischance than one might suppose. To understand item numbers, we must revert again to the » A. E. F.'s plan for its own creation, its Shipping Schedule. The construction of such a force is like what that of a modem skyscraper would be if the skyscraper were built up floor by floor. In the first place, perhaps, the architect planned only a two-story building and figured the strength of its component members according to the stresses that so light a weight would put upon them. Then perhaps the owner found the two-story structure too small for his purposes and ordered the construc- tion of a third story. This new floor must be complete and identical with the floors below ; but the architect must provide for a strengthening of the foundation and the bracings to accommodate the added weight. So the building might rise, story by story, and each addition would require the strength- ening of the substructure. 254 THE ROAD TO FRANCE A truer analogy, perhaps, would be an expanding manu- facturing enterprise. The company starts with a factory in the suburbs and an executive office in the financial district of New York. Eventually it branches out and establishes a new factory in another section of the country. This factory is a complete unit so far as its technical processes are concerned, but the original executive office in New York, by increasing its staff somewhat, can direct the business of both plants and keep them supplied with orders and raw materials. And as the business grows the company keeps on adding new factories to its string, while, to conduct the business for all its plants, the central managing organization expands in corresponding ratio. The A. E. F. grew by army corps, each corps a technical whole for actual combat against the enemy. But as corps after corps crossed the ocean and added its weight to the American strength at the front, the central management, consisting of a general headquarters and the whole multiplex array of activi- ties embraced in the supply and support system of the expedi- tion, had to expand in like degree. The problem of planning out on paper a great expeditionary force was complex beyond the power of any single mind to grasp. The construction of the A. E. F. was in the hands of its own staff organization, the most competent intellects which the Army had at its disposal. Some sort of working plan was necessary. Our capacity in the United States to train and transport combat troops might be unlimited; in fact, we might have entered the war with millions of men trained and ready to go into the trenches to meet the enemy. But it would have been utterly useless to train these troops and send them across the ocean, unless we could accompany them with adequate numbers of supply troops. The builders knew roughly that for each corps there should be 135,000 combat troops, 15,000 general troops for the Army and corps commands and the line of communication, and 50,000 Services-of-Supply troops. They might specify in advance the combat troops with fair accu- racy, but they could scarcely foresee all the kinds of units From An Official Motion Putu HUNDREDS OF SHIPS CROWDED LIKE THIS, AND EVERY MAN IDENTIFIED Photo by Signal Corps THE MADAWASKA TAKES A CROWD, JUNE 30, 1918 ORDERS AND ITEM NUMBERS 255 needed in the Services of Supply; for the maintenance of a great expedition called for thousands of widely various activi- ties, scattered through almost the entire range of human enterprise. In order to build the A. E. F. scientifically, to provide the proper balance of troops sent to France and to avoid the fatal blunder of shipping any one class of soldiers in numbers out of just proportion to the whole; in order, further, to fore- stall confusion and give the simplicity of system that comes from dealing in small numbers, General Pershing and his assistants marked off the construction of the overseas army into definite periods of increment. For want of a better name, each increment period was called a phase. The word "period" is not an exact term to apply to the system, for it connotes time, whereas the working plan for the construction of the A. E. F. was but vaguely related to the time required. Gen- eral Pershing's Shipping Schedule No. 1 made provision for six phases of this construction. Each phase, when completed, would add to the A. E. F. one entire army corps plus its neces- sary maintenance troops. On October 7, 1917, this great plan was set down on paper and forwarded to the United States. The six phases provided for an overseas American Army of thirty divisions (five divi- sions to the corps). Counting in supply troops, the force thus projected would number 1,200,000 men. No time was fixed within which America was to complete the schedule. General Pershing hoped we could accomplish the feat by July l, 1919 — in twenty months. We can measure the increase in our ability to train and transport troops by the fact that in August, 1918, less than eleven months after the date of the Shipping Schedule, the Embarkation Service was forwarding to France the final units of the sixth phase. After that the Army abandoned the numerical phase and substituted the monthly phase: we had become able to trans- port to France in a single month an entire army corps with its supports! The sixth was the last of the numbered phases. September, 1918, was an interval during which we shipped 256 THE ROAD TO FRANCE miscellaneous phase troops pushed out of their sailing priorities by emergency calls from the front ; and then we began on the new system, naming each phase after the month during which it was being shipped. When the armistice came in November, we were still shipping troops of the October phase, the influ- enza epidemic and the assurance on November 1, 1918, that the war was about to end having slowed down the movement during the last eleven days. One is not to suppose that the Army made a clean job of shipping phases of the A. E. F. to France. Frequently, before one phase had been completed there was a need overseas for troops of the succeeding phase ; and it was not unusual for units of even three phases to be crossing the ocean simultaneously. Phases always overlapped somewhat. The Shipping Schedule, after all, was but a working outline, to be followed only so far as events warranted. In the compilation of Shipping Schedule No. 1, General Pershing adopted the item number as the means of identifying troops arriving in France in response to the requisition. In the paper army thus laid down — some of it months before its human members had even been inducted into the military ser- vice of the United States — the prescribed units were assigned item numbers and initials. The initial I stood for Infantry, E for Engineers, M for Medical Corps troops, Q for Quartermaster troops, and so on. The numbers, too, had meanings. Divisional troops bore item numbers ranging from 1 to 100 serially within each phase; troops attached to army corps bore numbers from 101 to 200; troops acting in the service of the commands of field armies, from 201 to 300; units for service in that great expeditionary institution known as G. H. Q., 301 to 400; and troops for the lines of communication, 401 to 500. We can now read meaning into the item numbers assigned to the 34th Regiment of Engineers. Back in the early autumn of 1917, the A. E. F. builders had reached the plan for the third phase of increment. There they foresaw that the A. E. F. would need, at a certain point in its structure, a supply train ORDERS AND ITEM NUMBERS 257 and machine shop. In Paragraph No. 8 under Phase 3 they set down these requirements and gave them the item numbers E-403 and E-404. The initial E showed that the troops would be Engineers. Since the numerals were in the 400' s, they indi- cated to anyone familiar with the system that the units were to serve within the lines of communication. Months later the Operations Division of the General Staff, engaged in turning the abstract schedule into a specific force, came to Phase 3, Paragraph 8. The General Staff officers in Washington surveyed the troop resources which had now sprung into existence at the training camps ; and at Fort Ben- jamin Harrison they found the 34th Engineers, three of whose battalions operated a supply train and a machine shop. These battalions fitted the requisition. Therefore, opposite the two item numbers of Paragraph 8 the Operations Division set down the name of the 34th Engineers. This act gave the regiment its place in the priorities for sailing. Thereafter the item numbers became an integral part of the regiment's name, to appear in every order concerning its travel. At length the 34th reached France. No need there for the A. E. F. debarkation officers to inquire into the regiment's qualifications and then find a place where it might serve: that place had been fixed months be- fore. The debarkation officials needed only to turn to Ship- ping Schedule No. 1 to learn precisely why the A. E. F. needed the unit and where it was to be sent. This system of identification was followed rigidly in the upbuilding of the first six army corps of the expedition, in so far as the needs of the force could be foreseen a year in advance. All combat organizations, at any rate, and many supply units which moved to France during the major part of the embarkation period, possessed item numbers assigned by the command of the overseas force in its first schedule. But at that early date General Pershing's experts could scarcely anticipate the enormous expansion of the need for units of kinds previously unknown in our military service. Finite minds could not be expected to lay down in advance every detail of a modem army as large as the A. E. F. 258 THE ROAD TO FRANCE Who could know in the summer of 1917 that, less than a year later, our expedition would be calling for whole com- panies of meteorological experts to form a weather bureau for the A. E. F.? In many ways the accurate prediction of weather conditions was of invaluable aid to the Army. It enabled the Air Service to lay its plans with intelligence. Weather forecasts controlled to a great extent the employment of poisonous gases, for certain of these could be used with most success only when the wind blew toward the enemy. The draft reached out and took men from every calling. The train- ing and experience of every one of the 4,000,000 men in the American Army was ascertained and catalogued in the great index of human talents compiled in the War Department in Washington. For the Operations Division to supply a whole company of weather prognosticators on short notice became a mere trifle. As the A. E. F. expanded, there were dozens of other calls for special units strange to our former military practice. Requisitions came for companies of typesetters and linotype operators, embalmers and grave registrars, motion- picture camera operators, cold storage experts, pharmacists, and coffee roasters and tasters — to name only a few of the innovations. Nor could it be foreseen in the summer of 1917 that the Army would add whole services to the group it had known before — such organizations as the Chemical Warfare Service and the Tank Corps. In short, the phase program as laid down by General Pershing in October, 1917, did not begin to meet the developing actualities. Then, too, the putative army as it existed on paper in the Shipping Schedule was by no means complete, even in well-recognized troops. Often it became nec- essary for the A. E. F. to go outside its schedule in the call for such soldiers as quartermaster troops and motor trans- port troops. Many organizations proceeded to the seaboard and thence to France duly identified with item numbers from the original schedules; but thousands of others crossed in response to supplementary requisitions, and these units bore no item numbers. ORDERS AND ITEM NUMBERS 259 The Operations Division tried to give each unnumbered unit identification by writing into all orders which concerned it, in juxtaposition to its unit name, the serial number of the Pershing cablegram which requested it and the cablegram paragraph number. But this plan did not work. The debarka- tion officers at French and English ports might or might not have before them copies of General Pershing's cablegrams. Seldom did the commander of an overseas unit know for what purpose he and his men had been summoned to France. For a time there was great confusion in France because of incom- plete identification of arrivals; hundreds of individuals and organizations became lost, and some never did reach the posts for which they had been requisitioned. A new supply warehouse might be set up somewhere along the lines of communication in France. The Q. M. organiza- tion discovered that the phase plan had not contemplated this establishment and had made no provision for troops to man it. The commander of the depot thereupon made requisition to the headquarters of the A. E. F. for, let us say, 200 quar- termaster troops. This requisition in due time found a place in one of General Pershing's cablegrams. Perhaps at the time the Operations Division could find no quartermaster company numbering 200 men, but discovered one of 125 men. Natu- rally it dispatched the 125 men to France and made up the deficit in later shipments. Suppose the first organization, the one with 125 men, were lucky enough to meet at the French debarkation port a copy of its requisitioning cablegram. The debarkation officer sent the unit at once to its correct destina- tion. But the succeeding detachments were almost certain not to be identified upon arrival overseas, and the port officer there would send them to any spot which needed such troops. Presently the depot commander would complain bitterly that his requisition was not honored. Operations, in Washington, could only reply that they had sent him his men long ago. The plight of individuals whose services were not contem- plated in the Shipping Schedule of October, 1917, might be even more unfortunate. A casual officer specially requested 26o THE ROAD TO FRANCE by the A. E. F. did not often know for what purpose he was being summoned, or where he was to go in France. No more would the debarkation port know about him; and he was usually sent wherever the A. E. F. port official fancied he could be of service. At one time a highly trained technical man, commissioned in the Army, was requested for special service in France. The A. E. F. officer who sent for him had in mind an important post which he was eminently qualified to fill. This casual lost his identity in transit. The service that requisitioned him searched France for him in vain for months — and found him after the armistice bossing a gang of stevedores at one of the army docks I On April 24, 1918, the Army took measures to end this confusion. After that date the A. E. F. assigned item numbers to all excess organizations and officers summoned to France, and these numbers were outside of and different from the phase numbers of the original schedule. The lid was screwed down on embarkations except upon cabled requisitions giving item numbers. The A. E. F. adopted new arbitrary number groups for these excess troops. This system continued through- out the heaviest period of embarkation. It saved the A. E. F. a confusion that would have become tremendous after the late spring of 1918, when troops began avalanching on France. By April, 1918, the number of recognized classes of troops had greatly expanded. The A. E. F. then adopted a system of initials to go with item numbers and help identify organi- zations. The list of abbreviations, as it stood at the time of the armistice, was as follows: X Reinforcements K New Units W Exceptional Replacements R Automatic Replacements I Infantry CA Coast Artillery FA Field Artillery C Cavalry E Engineers A Aviation ORDERS AND ITEM NUMBERS 261 T Tank Service M Medical Corps S Signal Corps O Ordnance Corps MAR Marine Corps Q Quartermaster TRANS .... Transportation Corps G Chemical Warfare Service L Light Railroad and Roads F Construction and Forestry MOTOR .... Motor Transport Corps AG Adjutant General's Dept. IG Inspector General JA Judge Advocate SERVICE .... Army Service Corps An interesting development of item numbers occurred in the system of identification for replacement troops. Under the army maintenance plan adopted in the summer of 1918, re- placements became automatic monthly. The authorities on this side of the water, in other words, did not have to wait for cabled requisitions for replacement troops, but shipped them at a predetermined monthly rate. Yet it was essential to prevent the identity of replacements from being lost and the men them- selves from being diverted by the French debarkation ports to any other purpose than that for which they were shipped. Con- sequently the replacements were given item numbers, which the Operations Division assigned as soon as replacements reached camp and were organized into units. Other troop units did not receive item numbers until there was a special call for them from France, or until the Operations Division reached the places in the Shipping Schedule where they fitted. A replace- ment unit received its item number immediately after organi- zation, and this item number ended in the initial R, which, as the above table shows, indicated that they were automatic replacements. A unit of soldiers arriving in France under the item number I-1119-R would at once be identified there as a company of automatic replacement infantry. The A. E. F. possessed the list of replacement numbers representing troops that were to reach France each month, and sent to the ports of 262 THE ROAD TO FRANCE debarkation instructions as to the destination of each body of replacements. Just as, after April, 1918, all excess organizations received item numbers, so did all casual officers proceeding overseas for special work in the A. E. F. The casual officers' item num- bers began with the numeral 1001 and proceeded upwards serially. CHAPTER XIX THE PROCESS OF EMBARKATION NEAR the end of each month there was a meeting in Washington to determine the number and identity of troops to go overseas during the ensuing month, and to fix the order of their sailing. The Operations Division of the General Staff called and conducted the meeting. The Chief of Embarkation brought an estimate of his port facilities for the accommodation and handling of troops during the period under consideration. The embarkation director stationed in America by the British Ministry of Shipping came with schedules of the names and passenger capacities of the English transports which were to sail from New York and Canadian ports. Our own navy rep- resentative was more cautious, but he undertook to predict what American transports would depart during the first ten days of the month, promising supplementary and additional schedules each succeeding ten days. The Operations Division had before it the A. E. F. Shipping Schedule, the names of organizations assigned to the schedule, and data covering the readiness of these organizations for foreign service. The rep- resentative of the troop-movement office was present to see to it that the arrangement of the monthly sailing priorities was coordinated with the efficient employment of the available railway equipment. Anyone who can add two and two together can see that, with all this information and ability encompassed by the walls of a single room, it was entirely possible to project on paper a complete diagram of troop embarkation for a month in advance. We knew to a man how many passengers the ships could carry and to a man where the passengers were coming from. Therefore, to any lover of the orderly, the systematic. 264 THE ROAD TO FRANCE the thirty-day sailing priority schedule that eventuated from this meeting was a thing beautiful to see ; it was System with a capital S. Unfortunately for all planning, human ability is fallible and inanimate objects are perverse. Transports had a way of sinking with gaping wounds in their sides where German tor- pedoes had struck in. Storms and head winds upset the best prognostications of the mariners. Ship machinery broke down and had to be repaired. Labor troubles delayed vessels in the foreign ports. Bunker coal was not always available on the minute. Never once did the actual sailings of British trans- ports befall as the predictions had said; never once did the American troop carriers depart seaward in exact accordance with a ten-day forecast. Events showed that the basis for the monthly sailing schedule was more or less accurate guesswork. It was evident that the embarkation machine must have a governor like an engine's; a contrivance for opening the valve wider to admit more troops when the sailings exceeded the estimates, and for closing the throttle when the influx of soldiers threatened to flood the port. The embarkation camps, a reservoir that could accommodate, in a pinch, 60,000 troops, aided in this adjustment; but they alone were not sufficient to make the sailing schedule work. The adjusting mechanism, the governor on the machine, was the dispatch office at Hoboken. It fitted the prospectus to the actual day-to-day conditions. A small handful of officers did the work of the dispatch office, and they were busy men — how busy an illustration will show. The day was a Thursday. The business in hand at the port was the embarkation of 32,000 troops who were to sail on Saturday on a British convoy of fourteen vessels. The 32,000 were all in the embarkation camps (along with other troops awaiting sailings, the total filling the camp to capacity), under- going the final preparations for the voyage. The dispatch office regarded the job as done; it was now working in terms of the future, and had already ordered to New York 32,000 troops to occupy the barracks to be vacated on Saturday by those who were embarking on the British ships. At this juncture the Brit- Photo by Signal Corps AT ALPINE, WAITING FOR FERRYBOATS Photo by Signal Corps BOARDING FERRY FOR PIERS Photo by Signal Corps LANDING FROM FERRY AT HOBOKEN Photo by Signal Corps ENTERING PIER FROM RIVER END THE PROCESS OF EMBARKATION 265 ish embarkation officer telephoned that the British Ministry had cut four ships out of the convoy, reducing its capacity to 25,000 troops. Such belated changes were not unusual. Frequently the home conditions in England demanded the temporary withdrawal of ships which had been assigned to the American Embarka- tion Service. Once in the spring of 1918, after the British Food Controller had inventoried the reserves and found only six days' supply of food in all England, the Ministry drastically cut down the passenger space on the transatlantic ships and crammed staterooms and berth decks, as well as cargo holds, with food for the English people. It was some such emergency which had arisen now. The dispatch officers took the upset with philosophical sang froid. They were used to it. They could make the adjustment by sending out telegrams to catch 7,000 troops at interior camps before they had entrained for the rail journey to New York, where now there would be just so many barrack accommodations fewer than had been expected. On Friday the British withdrew another ship, this time a big one. On Saturday they cut out another, and the mutilated convoy to sail that day contained only eight ships instead of fourteen, with berths for 16,000 soldiers instead of 32,000. It was a jolly situation. Actually on the piers was an excess of men, brought there during the night, before the final ship was canceled; and traveling steadily toward New York were troop trains on which rode nearly 16,000 men more than could find places to eat and sleep in the embarkation camps. Such contretetnps as this kept the dispatch officers from participating in that popular Hoboken pastime, wondering when an ingrate Government was going to send one to France to see some of the excitement. After a man had finished a twelve- or fourteen-hour stint during which nothing ever moved smoothly or as expected, he was too tired to wonder about anything except how long it would take him to get to bed. The dispatch office was the contact point between theory and conditions, and the job of absorbing the friction was no picnic. 266 THE ROAD TO FRANCE Yet the managerial acrobats of the office were never found wanting. They solved every problem, and they met the situa- tion set forth in the preceding paragraphs. In that instance they gave orders to the port railway agent to slow down the incoming troop trains to the speed of freight trains, so as to utilize the coaches as mobile barracks; and they postponed further travel toward the port until the almost daily sailings had cleared away the congestion. The dispatch office, when it began its career, was part of the Port Commander's own office. In those days a troop con- voy sailed about every two weeks. The dispatch officers then both ordered troops to come to New York and conducted them through the port. As the volume of travel grew, these duties became too heavy for a single agency to handle and were divided among other port organizations. The whole port sys- tem expanded and ramified in hundreds of directions ; it came to embrace twenty-one distinct departments, each administered by a branch of the port organization. The dispatch office was then not even a branch: it was the twig of a branch. But, though humble in position, it was mighty in importance. The dispatch office was the Port Commander's right hand in his contact with all traveling organizations. When a unit was first placed on the sailing priority list, the dispatch office notified it of the fact and sent to it the booklet E?nbarkation Regulations and other general instructions relating to its travel. When, later, the unit commander telegraphed to Hoboken for travel instructions, the dispatch office, in the name of the Com- manding General, replied, designating the embarkation camp, the time of arrival, the equipment to be brought and that to be left behind, and other steps to be taken. When the unit was in the embarkation camp, inspected, equipped, and ready for embarkation, the dispatch office ordered its advance party to the transport and named the day for the unit itself to move to the designated pier. In general, Washington expected the Port to follow the fixed sailing priorities ; but the War Department was not hide- bound by its schedules. The administration, at least informally, THE PROCESS OF EMBARKATION 267 permitted a certain latitude to the dispatch office; it was con- tent to accept judgment of the men who were on the spot and confronting the actual conditions. If the Port were reaching out desperately for troops — as it was at the end of the war, when the transport facilities were exceeding the ability of the country to raise and prepare troops for foreign service — the dispatch office skipped about in the priority list and took any troops who were ready for departure, rather than hold up the whole column because one organization or another had en- countered delay in getting away from its training camp. It is to the credit of the organization in Washington that it invari- ably backed up and authenticated such deviations from the orders. The flexibility of the Embarkation Service was never better demonstrated than in the spring of 1918, when the British first placed their transport tonnage at our disposal. Up to that time we had been sending over divisions as nearly complete as possible — infantry, machine gunners, artillery, and divi- sional support troops — always keeping two, three, or even four divisions proceeding overseas simultaneously. Also as nearly as possible, we were completing the phase shipments in regular order, so as to place in France an entire army corps, with its necessary communication troops, before proceeding to ship any of the next corps. Exigencies at the front upset this plan for a time. The Germans were driving ahead and consuming the Allied trench troops at a ruinous rate. The British offer to transport, feed, and brigade with the B. E. F. six divisions of American line troops, and when these had been supplied to take another six, was an offer to carry infantry and machine gunners only. The British had plenty of artillery to support a retreating action. Later on these brigaded divisions were to join the A. E. F., and only then were they to receive their artillery. The change in embarkation plans came suddenly in March, 1918. Washington telephoned that until further notice the Port was to ship only infantry and machine gun troops to France, whether in British or American convoys, and that only if the suppl)^ of available infantry organizations and machine 268 THE ROAD TO FRANCE gun companies ran out was the Port to send artillery and Ser- vices-of-Supply troops. At that time Hoboken was engaged in the routine embarkation of the Third Division. This shipment it abruptly broke off; and for weeks thereafter ship upon ship departed from New York loaded to the rails with doughboys only. Later on, when the weight of these troops began to be felt by the enemy and the emergency was over, the Port re- sumed its work on the Third Division. The dispatch office almost always succeeded in keeping the embarkation camps crammed to the limit; and for whole months during 1918 there was not a day when a man with telescopic bird's-eye vision, looking down on the railroad sys- tem of the United States, could not have seen, in motion toward the seaboard, trains carrying from 15,000 to 20,000 more troops than the port camps could hold if anything hap- pened to curtail embarkation. In the face of this nice adjust- ment of troop-flow to sailing space, last-minute changes in transport or convoy capacity were chronic. Sometimes, to avoid holding a ship in port for repairs, it was decided to make re- pairs during the voyage. Then bunks had to be torn out to make space in which to stow the repair parts, and the passen- ger room was reduced by so much. The British seldom adjusted passenger and cargo space on a ship long before the eve of sailing. A last-minute change in passenger capacity might be slight, but for the dispatch office it often created a problem quite out of proportion to the change. Military law required every or- ganization to cross the ocean undivided. A change that threw one company of a regiment off a transport, automatically threw off the whole regiment, and the dispatch office had to hunt up, at the eleventh hour, a new unit to fit the reduced space. Casuals and supply troops came in handy at such times : they usually traveled in small units, and consequently packed well. In spite of all the difficulties in providing troops, only one transport sailed from America with any empty berths, and even that one was three-quarters filled. It is true that, during ^^^^b i^^^lB 1 i jUI 1 i ^ Im&i ^ ^^1 W f^^^^^BL 'I^^^Hh 9w From An Official Motion Puturo COFFEE AND ROLLS AT RED CROSS PIER CANTEEN Photo by Signal Corps FIRST FOOD SINCE 3.00 A.M. From An Official Motion Picture "SAFE-ARRIVAL" CARDS SLIPPED INTO CAPS BY WELFARE WORKERS Photo by Signal Corps A "SAFE-ARRIVAL" CARD THE PROCESS OF EMBARKATION 269 the influenza epidemic, ships sailed with fewer passengers than they could carry, but this reduction in capacity was insisted on by the medical authorities. The dispatch office regarded a ship as loaded full when its troops totaled the capacity allowed by the army doctors. The Port not only loaded ships to capacity: it overloaded some of them. Several of the former German vessels, originally built to transport troops of the German army, carried loads far beyond the utmost capacity which their builders had reck- oned on. We installed berths far more thickly than any foreign plans had contemplated; and, furthermore, we placed soldiers aboard in such numbers that there were not enough berths for all, and the men had to sleep in shifts. Never in history had such an expedient been resorted to. The dispatch office controlled overseas troop movements to New York's subsidiary ports, from each of which, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, two or three ships sailed in an average month. Occasionally, too, there were shipments from Portland, Maine, and from Montreal and Quebec. At these ports there were no embarkation camps; the troops were equipped and inspected for overseas service at their home camps before proceeding to shipside. All troops came to the New York piers by ferry. The water trip from Camp Merritt to the North River has been described. Troops at Camp Mills or Camp Upton, on Long Island, trav- eled by train to the waterside terminal in Long Island City and there embarked on ferry-boats. As the men scrambled to the floor of the pier they lined up to respond to the company roll-call. This formality ended, they were allowed to approach the tables set by canteen workers of the Red Cross. Here, in cool weather, rolls and coffee were served to them; during the summer, ice cream and cold milk. The Red Cross Canteen Service at the Port of Embarkation was at first an organization of four women, Mrs. Roy Rainey and Mrs. J. Ellsworth of New York and Mrs. Palmer Campbell and Mrs. Franklin Hart, Jr., of Hoboken, New Jersey. At the time of the armistice the service mustered over 270 THE ROAD TO FRANCE three hundred devoted women, of whom a hundred and twenty were stationed at the piers of New York, sixty at Newport News, and the rest at Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Mon- treal, and Halifax. The women who enlisted for this service, many of them New York society women unused to rough work, agreed to give their full time. The life was arduous. It required all canteen workers to be on the piers and ready for business at five o'clock in the morning, which meant rising at four. It is of record that throughout the entire embarkation not one of the women ever reported late. The soldiers on the piers consumed enormous quantities of supplies. The Red Cross installed at Hoboken the largest coffee-distilling plant in the world, and then put in a bigger one at the Chelsea piers on the New York side of the river. A single day's embarkation at New York often called for the serving of ten tons of hot liquid coffee, three tons of rolls, about a ton of cigarettes, and several hundredweight of ice cream and cookies. This refreshment was most welcome to men who had spent the night on their feet. Many a time it turned a cold gray dawn into a rosy one. The Port of Embarkation paid official tribute to this service for its wholesome effect upon the morale of the embarking soldiers. After the men had visited the refreshment tables, the Red Cross and Y. M. C. A. workers went among them with the "safe-arrival" cards. These were uniform, printed post cards for the soldiers merely to sign. Each read : "The ship on which I sailed has arrived safely overseas." No date appeared, nor was the signer permitted to write in the name of his organiza- tion. The soldier signed and addressed as many of these cards as he chose, and kept them on his person to deposit in the mili- tary mail bag which he would later pass at the head of the gangplank. Just before the ship sailed, the mail bags were taken off. The Hoboken military post office bundled the "safe- arrival" cards together and held them pending the receipt, a week or so later, of the cablegram announcing that the ship had reached Europe. The cards were then forwarded through the regular mail. THE PROCESS OF EMBARKATION 271 In the ship mail bags the soldier might deposit, not only these cards, but also whatever final letters he might wish to write. If he desired his letter to go through to its destination immediately, he deposited it unsealed. It then went to the office of the port censor, who read it and, if it contained no contraband information, forwarded it at once. Sealed letters the censor did not read, but he did not forward them until the transport had reached England or France. Commissioned offi- cers and army nurses were permitted to write out "collect" telegrams announcing safe arrival overseas. These they left at the port post office to be filed at the telegraph office when the transport reached the other side of the ocean. When convoys began sailing almost daily from New York, one result was a huge accumulation of "hold" mail — mail which must await advices from Europe before it could be forwarded. The military post office devised a system for han- dling it so as both to preserve the secrecy that then shrouded ocean travel and to maintain the identity of mail and prevent its loss. Just before a ship left a pier, her mail bags were collected. The unsealed letters were then sorted out for cen- soring and forwarding. The rest was sealed in sacks, and all the sacks were marked with the transport's number. We have seen that each troop transport went by number rather than by name. Leviathan was No. 22. Mail bags taken from the Leviathan were marked No. 22. When the cablegram an- nounced that transport No. 22 had again passed safely through the war zone, all the No. 22 mail bags were sent to the regular post office. At Hoboken there was only one instance of a soldier at- tempting to send out information calculated to be of aid to the enemy, and even in this case it is questionable if the man's actions were criminal or only foolish. There was a positive and well-understood order at the piers that all letters must be dropped in the gangplank mail bags and nowhere else. This man wrote a letter and paid a pier stevedore a fee to post it in a city mail box. The Intelligence Service at Hoboken dis- covered his action before the letter reached the addressee. The 272 THE ROAD TO FRANCE New York post office turned its forces loose on a hunt which presently found the missive. It proved to be a letter addressed to the soldier's wife in Brooklyn, a woman born, as investiga- tion showed, in Germany. The letter contained a full list of the troops on the transport and even named the English port to which the ship was bound — probably a lucky guess, for all convoys sailed under sealed orders, and even the convoy com- mander did not know his destination until well out at sea. The soldier was arrested and taken from the ship. He protested his innocence, declaring that he was unaware of the regulation requiring all mail to be deposited in the ship mail sacks. It was impossible to prove a case of espionage against him; but he was tried by court-martial for violating the order pertain- ing to the mailing of letters, convicted, and sentenced to serve a term in the penitentiary. At the piers the medical officers made their final inspec- tions; and sometimes, even at this last hour, they took out men suspected of disease. Personnel officers took the oppor- tunity to make a final inspection of the nationality of embark- ing soldiers; and now and then they found an alien, or even an enemy alien, who had slipped through all previous inspections. Presently the force of gangplank checkers came on duty. Meanwhile the pier laborers had brought to the feet of all gangplanks tall desks at which men could work standing up. Each company marched to the gangplank by which it was to board the boat. The company commander took his place at the desk, the men's service records in a case before him. In front of the desk stood the port checking officer; at his elbow, the first sergeant of the company. Embarkation proceeded by squads. The command was right or left by files ; and, a squad at a time, the men approached the gangplank. Passenger list and service records were arranged to tally with the arrange- ment of the men in their squads. When a squad halted before the desk, the checking officer called out the first name on the passenger list. The first man of the squad, when his name was called, responded by repeating his name, family name first. From An Official Motion Picture CHECKED AGAINST COMPANY RECORDS Photo by Signal Corps SHIP BILLET CARDS AT FOOT OF GANGPLANK THE PROCESS OF EMBARKATION 273 given name and middle initial afterwards. He had previously received instructions to speak loudly and distinctly. He was then ordered to ascend the gangplank, and the checkers called the next name. If any soldier were absent at embarkation time or were withdrawn for any reason, his service record was taken from the company file and retained by the embarkation officers. As each man passed the desk he received a billet card which noted the compartment of the ship in which he was to be quar- tered and the number of his berth in that compartment. At the top of the gangplank he met a member of his organiza- tion's advance party, who escorted him to his bunk. There he was told to remain until the order came which permitted him to go on deck. During the greater part of the embarkation period, soldiers were forbidden to appear on deck until the ship had reached the rendezvous in the lower bay. Officers were ordered to remain with their men during this interval. The sleepy men usually beguiled the enforced imprisonment by turning in for much-needed rest. All through the early months our transports went down New York Bay without a soldier visible to those aboard ferries or other harbor craft or in the windows of the tall office build- ings of lower Manhattan. In the late summer of 1918, the Government gained complete confidence in its ability to send transports safely past the enemy submarines. Moreover, to depress the enemy morale, the United States actually wanted the German Government to know the high rate at which we were sending troops to France, and for that reason it made no attempt to conceal the overseas movement. Each transport went down the river crowned with olive drab. Cheering sol- diers, thick as swarming bees, encrusted her rails, lifeboats, ventilators, even her rigging; and the regimental bands played quicksteps on the decks. The final act in embarking a company was to gather up its baggage detail and send the members aboard. Each unit, on its arrival at the pier, sent a few men to make sure that all com- pany baggage was loaded. This work frequently continued up to the minute of sailing. Meanwhile the company commander 274 THE ROAD TO FRANCE remained at the gangplank desk to check aboard the baggage detail. After these last individuals had passed aboard, the port checking officer took all service records to which there had been no men to correspond, so that if the stragglers reported later they would find records waiting for them. The company commander then certified in writing that he possessed records for every man embarked. Even on ship the commander kept the record cards handy, lest at the last minute it might become necessary for the Port to take off some member of the com- mand. During the influenza epidemic, hundreds of men sus- pected of having the sickness were removed, even after the ships had gone down to the lower bay. Casual officers were checked on the transports in much the same way, except that the port organization itself made out passenger lists for them and prepared their credentials. The pier organization grew extremely adept in its work. It could easily load 1,000 men in an hour. The port record was 250 men checked aboard at one gangplank in seven min- utes. The greatest day in the history of the Port was the twenty-four-hour period beginning on the morning of August 31, 1918. In that time the port organization loaded more than 51,000 troops on seventeen transports. This was the largest number of passengers, either civilian or military, that ever sailed from any one seaport in any one day in the history of the world. An appendix* to this narrative shows the transport sailings from New York from the 1st of July, 1918, to the date of the armistice. It will be noted that sixteen vessels sailed from New York on August 3 1 and September 1 ; and the Aquitania, listed as sailing September 2, but actually loaded on September 1, really belongs within the record twenty-four-hour period. These record embarkation days, however, were not to be the real test of the port organization's mettle. Its ordeal by fire was the interval between the 1st day of November, 1918, and the hour when the armistice went into effect. Scarcely any troops at all were embarked in those ten days; yet they were * Appendix E. THE PROCESS OF EMBARKATION 275 the most memorable in the history of the Port and the time of its most signal achievement. On the morning of November 1 , a select few of the highest army and navy officers in Washington were admitted to a most startling military secret. Our Intelligence Service abroad had gained two pieces of information of supreme importance. The first was that the dominant party in Germany was ready to sign an armistice, no matter what its terms. But the matter was not settled yet, for the bitter-end element favored a last desperate measure that might yet turn back the tide of defeat. This measure was nothing less than to throw the German navy at the Grand Fleet of the Allies and America. Both parties in Germany had agreed upon this course. In fact — and this was the second piece of information — the German Admiralty had sent the order to its fleet to go out to victory or destruction. The Secretary of War at once decided to stop further em- barkations of American troops for France, if that could be done without a word of the truth leaking out. There were several important reasons for such a course. Of these, the financial was the slightest. The Government was not pinching pennies, and the cost of transporting another 100,000 or so men to France made little difference, although it was an element in the situa- tion. A graver matter was the impending demobilization. As peace loomed, Washington realized that it had a problem on its hands — to bring back the A. E. F. More than half that great force had crossed the ocean on British and other Allied ships. Upon the conclusion of an armistice, the British Empire would immediately withdraw her ships from our use and put them to work returning to their native shores her own home and colo- nial armies. We should be left to bring back our own men in our own ships ; ships which, loaded to capacity, had taken more than a year to transport to France less than half of the A. E. F. Therefore the addition of even a single man to that force would make our problem of demobilization so much the harder. But both these reasons together would not have war- ranted the danger incurred by the Government's decision to stop embarkation. There was another overmastering consid- 276 THE ROAD TO FRANCE eration — a paramount one which, taken alone, would have justified the step. In the light of history, we have to-day the comfortable knowledge that the battle order to the German fleet was met by a mutiny which touched off the German revolution and cast out the Hohenzollerns. But it must be remembered that on November 1, 1918, every one of the army and navy heads who had received the secret tidings expected that the greatest naval engagement of all time was at hand, if it had not already begun. The Government had every con- fidence in the ability of the Grand Fleet to meet the issue; but there was unquestionably the possibility that some of the German ships of war might win through the Allied naval cordon and reach the open Atlantic. In that event every Ameri- can transport at sea would be in terrible danger. We did not protect our convoys at sea against armed battleships. The escort was protection against only a chance merchant raider of the enemy and against submarines. An enemy cruiser could have worked havoc in one of our troop convoys. When you con- sider that our embarkations, even at the average rate, meant as many as 150,000 American soldiers on the ocean at once, you can imagine the anxiety of those in Washington who knew that a naval battle was imminent. To stop embarkation would keep tens of thousands of American boys out of this danger. Yet, if it were to be stopped, the action must be taken in complete secrecy — secrecy that would prevent the truth from becoming known, not only to the enemy, but to the Allies as well. The reason for keeping the information from the enemy is evident. The military party in Germany was still strong. If the junkers discovered that we had stopped embarking troops, they could argue that America was not so strong as she appeared; that she had seized the first rumor of peace as an excuse to bring to an end an effort which must evidently be exhausting her resources and strength. Such an argument might induce Germany to prolong the struggle. No more did we care to let the British and the other Allies learn of the action. The escape of a German cruiser or two meant no such disaster to any one of the Allies as it might Photo by Signal Corps LAST LETTERS HOME BEFORE SAILING FOR FRANCE From An Official Motion Picture MAIL SACK AT HEAD OF GANGPLANK Photo by Signal Corps TROOP MAIL AT HOBOKEN HELD AWAITING ARRIVAL OF TRANSPORTS IN EUROPE Photo by Signal Corps A GANGPLANK LEADING INTO U. S. A. TRANSPORT LEVIATHAN THE PROCESS OF EMBARKATION 277 possibly mean to us. Washington, under the circumstances, regarded the stopping of embarkation as being our own busi- ness and a step justified by our trust in the reports from the Argonne that the enemy's line was broken and that the sever- ing of his communications at Sedan was imminent. On that momentous morning Brigadier General Hines, the Chief of Embarkation, was called into conference and asked if the step in contemplation were possible of achievement. He explained the difficulties in keeping secret so radical a departure. If only our own transports had been involved, the matter would have been simple ; but more than half the troop- ships in our service were foreign, owned and operated by foreign companies — British companies for the most part. When these ships began leaving our ports empty, it would be most difficult to keep the operating companies from discovering the truth. Still, General Hines declared his willingness to accept the responsibility for the success or failure of the plan. His instructions to the Port were so confidential that he did not dare trust them to the usual means of communication. He confided the situation to his chief executive officer. Colonel Waddell, and sent him to New York to communicate the news and the orders orally to the Commander of the Port, and to just so many other officers as had to be let into the secret. The orders were for the Port to proceed with every routine embarkation function as usual, stopping just short of checking the troops up the gangplanks. Ships should be sent out on schedule, but sent empty. German agents, if they were watch- ing the port, would see nothing out of the ordinary. There was but one outsider to whom the truth had to be told. This was Major P. A. Curry of the British Army, acting as New York embarkation officer for the British Ministry of Shipping. Our embarkation officers outlined the whole plan to Major Curry and obtained his cooperation, which included his promise not to communicate the truth to his home govern- ment. If London pressed him irresistibly for an explanation of why the ships were empty, then he had our permission to fasten 278 THE ROAD TO FRANCE the blame upon an alleged failure of the American Embarka- tion Service to deliver the passengers. Of the agencies of the Port, the dispatch office was the only- one admitted to the secret. The rest of the great organization rumbled smoothly on, serenely unaware that, for Hoboken, the war was over. Not even the entire personnel of the dispatch office knew what was going on. The two or three dispatch officers in the secret used to return to their desks at night after the clerical workers had gone, to write and send the telegrams which kept the port from being flooded with incoming troops. At the time of the order to stop embarkations there were twenty-three troopships awaiting their loads in New York harbor. The advance parties of a number of overseas units had gone on board some of them. The port officers made one excuse after another to explain to the British captains why the troops did not come — this unit had been quarantined be- cause of the influenza, that one was held up by lack of equip- ment. Sailing day arrived for a British convoy of seven ships; no postponement was thinkable. Major Curry went to the convoy commander and, with well-simulated disgust, told him to start out without passengers — the Embarkation Service had fallen down. The convoy sailed. It was then the discreet major's duty to cable his government the passenger lists, so that the English ports might make their arrangements for accommodating the troops. He was strangely derelict in per- forming this routine task. Day by day the Admiralty in London cabled more insistently for the lists. Major Curry remained uncommunicative until the convoy was but twenty- four hours off the English coast; then he cabled laconically that no troops had sailed on the convoy, and that the American War Department would explain. Not until after the armistice did the British Government learn that we had ceased to ship soldiers on November 1. The Distinguished Service Medal awarded to Major Curry by the American Government was largely a tribute to his discretion during the first eleven days of November. On November 1 troops at two interior camps were about to THE PROCESS OF EMBARKATION 279 start for Montreal and Quebec, there to embark upon British ships. The Hoboken dispatch office canceled their travel orders by wire and notified the British ship captains not to wait for their passengers. It was safe to countermand embarkation orders to troops in the interior of the country, for it had often been done. The dispatch office was therefore able to stop all travel toward the port without giving anyone an inkling of the true situation. Fortunately, not many organizations were scheduled for embarkation at this time. The heavy movements of the summer had virtually exhausted the supply of trained troops in the United States. In late October the Port was em- barking chiefly supply troops, labor battalions, and other or- ganizations which did not require extensive training. At the end of October the Eighth Division, whose travel to the port from Camp Fremont, California, we have already cited, was making its way to France. The 8th Infantry, a member of the Eighth Division, was the last combat unit to go overseas. The other three infantry regiments of the Eighth Division were held in Camps Merritt and Mills and, after the armistice, sent to interior camps for demobilization. It was more difficult to conceal the stoppage from troops rest- ing in the embarkation camps. In the aviation camp at Garden City, Long Island, was a squadron of aviators most anxious to get to France. Three times they sent their baggage down to the port, and three times the Port sent it back again, each time with the excuse that the transport was held for repairs to her machinery. In spite of all precautions, the rumor went forth that something unusual was going on at Hoboken. When the order came to stop embarkations, the advance parties of several troop organizations were already on the transports. The port administration withdrew these parties and sent them back to the embarkation camps. The news of this occurrence ran swiftly to the New York newspaper offices. Within a short time a body of news correspondents besieged General Hines in Washington for an explanation. The general looked his questioners in the eyes and told them that they were on a false trail — that no troops had been pulled off any transports. Then the general 28o THE ROAD TO FRANCE privately called Hoboken by telephone and ordered the ad- vance parties put back on the ships in a hurry, before the news- papers could check up the truth of his statement. Fortune is said to favor the bold. The German sailors mutinied rather than face the Grand Fleet. General Pershing cut the enemy communications at Sedan. And the new German republic signed the armistice, thereby ending a suspense which was becoming unendurable in certain quarters in Washington. Any least slip-up, however, — a German victory at sea, a Ger- man stand in the field, even a partial enemy success that would have prolonged the fighting, — and those responsible for the cessation of embarkation, no matter how well justified their course, would have had to face the country with the admission that the American troop program had been set back two weeks or a month as a result of it. CHAPTER XX SOME NOTES OF TIDEWATER ACTIVITIES SECRET panels that open to the touch of hidden springs, I stairways concealed in unlooked-for places — we are in the realm of the mysterious. And not in the palace of an ancient intriguing Venetian doge, as you might suspect, nor yet in some mediaeval Norman castle, but in the very heart of commercial America — in the offices of the Hamburg-American Steamship Company, at No. 45 Broadway in the city of New York. When the Government, upon the declaration of war, seized the American properties of the German transatlantic lines, it fell heir not only to the system of modem piers on the New Jersey side of the North River, but also to the office building put up on lower Broadway by the Hamburg-American Line and occupied by it for a number of years. For several months thereafter the building remained tenantless. In November the New York branch of the War Trade Board moved into a section of offices on the street floor of the building; but the upper stories continued to gather dust and to echo only to the occasional tread of watchmen. Then the port organization, outgrowing its quarters at the Hoboken docks, sought space for expansion. It sent its construction forces to renovate the building and put it in order for occupancy. When the repair men came to examine the building, they made some discoveries. With its cherry-red woodwork and walls tinted in strong shades, the building was somewhat more ornate than the usual American office building. It had spacious halls, high-ceiled rooms of generous dimensions, and broad windows looking out upon the bay and the mouth of the North River. The reno- vators found the chief executive office wainscoted to the ceil- ing in rich mahogany. As the workmen explored along the 282 THE ROAD TO FRANCE walls, their fingers touched unobtrusive buttons, whereupon panels swung open. One such door concealed a strong fireproof safe. Another opened into a hidden elevator shaft in which moved an automatic electric cage down to a basement passage- way, which in turn led to a rear exit. By this route a man could leave office and building quite unobserved by possible watchers on the busy thoroughfare on which the building fronted. Still a third panel covered a dumb-waiter shaft con- necting with a mezzanine kitchen above, which could be reached by a private stairway. An exploration revealed com- modious pantries and refrigerators. It was evident that the former occupants of the executive office were prepared to stand a considerable siege. In the spring of 1918 the Government occupied the whole of this building. The Navy took an entire floor. The important Shipping Control Committee occupied six floors. The United States Shipping Board, the United States Railroad Adminis- tration, and other official agencies all took space ; and the Army Transport Service (later to be known as the Port and Zone Transportation Office) occupied the rest and hung its sign above the Broadway entrance. The prime and obvious business of the Port of Embarka- tion was to embark troops and to ship supplies to France ; but the successful conduct of this work entailed the prosecution of a host of related enterprises. There was the task of superintend- ing the entire port personnel, a staff which at one time included close to 40,000 men and women. The inspection of troops and of their equipment created another major activity at the port. The Port had its own lawyers and courts. One set of advocates concerned themselves with purely military cases. Another set devoted their attention to the innumerable questions of admi- ralty law that arose in the operation of the transport fleets. The port surgeon administered camp and base hospitals, in- spected troops for physical disability, received and trans- ported the sick and wounded, and operated harbor hospital boats and hospital trains. He also assigned medical officers to the troopships. This complete travel agency, the Embarka- NOTES OF TIDEWATER ACTIVITIES 283 tion Service, even supplied spiritual and doctrinal comfort to its voyagers, by placing chaplains at the embarkation camps and on the transports. The port chaplain also super- vised the many welfare activities at the port. Another sec- tion administered the storage of materials awaiting ocean transit. Another employed and directed the gangs of steve- dores at the freight docks. A branch of the Port, with nearly 6,000 military and civilian employees, built and kept in repair the hundreds of structures which housed the organization. The great Port and Zone Transportation Office chartered the army transports, repaired the cargo trans- ports and provided crews for them, secured and operated whole fleets of harbor boats, and rendered many other important ser- vices. Another organization made out the pay checks. There were boards of survey to estimate the deterioration of char- tered ships, for the Government's guidance in its settlements with the owners. There were survey officers to fix the amount of damages done to ships and cargoes in accidents. In short, the New York Port of Embarkation was comparable in size to some of the largest industrial enterprises in the United States. If you include the crews of cargo transports and the forces of machinists and laborers at the various harbor repair shops and ship railways, the port activities gave employment to nearly 100,000 individuals. It is beyond the scope of this narrative to describe the intri- cacies of the organization; to show how, as the work grew, various activities came together under certain heads, sprang apart again like the luminous particles in a kaleidoscope, and re-formed once more in other combinations. The port organiza- tion was no rigid institution. It kept experimenting with dif- ferent forms of control in an attempt to approximate the ideal. One of the earliest undertakings of the Port was to provide quarters for itself. The Port's construction division attended to this matter. Its first task was to build a group of structures in the yards at the Hoboken piers and to add a third story to a long section of the pier bulkhead building, all of this new space for occupancy by port headquarters and by branches 284 THE ROAD TO FRANCE whose work was at the piers. The Port Commander had his office in the bulkhead building. The constructors extended into the pier yards a railroad track which connected with the Hoboken Shore Railroad. Troops which came to the ships directly from their training camps were sometimes brought in to the piers on this track. The construction division also had charge of the Army's harbor dredging. When the Government undertook to move the great steamer Vaterland^ later renamed Leviathan^ from her berth at Hoboken, it found that she was fast in the mud. The construction division put in dredges and in four days cleared out the slip. Thereafter the division operated a squad- ron of dredges that kept the army slips unobstructed. Even- tually the port builders constructed a great development enter- prise of erecting groups of piers and warehouses on the Jersey and Brooklyn water fronts and putting up barracks in various places in the metropolitan district. When the Army occupied several of the Bush freight piers in South Brooklyn, the port constructors fenced in that great terminal and flood-lighted the stockade so that skulkers by night could not approach undetected. The Port and Zone Transportation Office managed the ferry-boats used in the transportation of troops within the jurisdiction of the Port, and also operated all other harbor craft used by the Army. After the armistice, the Port and Zone Transportation Office took over bodily a great part of the organization and duties of the Shipping Control Committee, including the function of loading military freight on trans- ports. The whole Atlantic commercial equipment of lighters, tugs, car floats, and small passenger steamers did not measure up to the needs of military shipping in 1918. The Embarkation Service bought and chartered all the suitable harbor craft it could find, and then found itself confronting the necessity of building more. There was no established industry to which the Service could turn and order new floating stock, nor was there any 'Other branch of the Army which could supply it; NOTES OF TIDEWATER ACTIVITIES 285 and the Service showed its versatility by going ahead and building its own harbor boats. In this work the Service recog- nized the world's desperate need of ocean tonnage. It proved its recognition by putting no additional demand upon ship- yards which were launching hulls for the United States Ship- ping Board, for the Navy, or for any other government branch (and practically all existing American shipyards were engaged in such work) . Rather, it allotted its contracts entirely to new yards created expressly to serve it. Nor did the Service wish to compete extensively for steel, so vital to other war activities. Therefore it built just as few steel vessels as possible. It specified wood construction for the hulls of such small boats as junior mine planters, motor tugs, and troop launches; and then it stepped clear outside standard shipbuilding practice and adopted for the rest of its equip- ment the new reinforced concrete construction which was then beginning to intrigue the attention of the marine world. The Embarkation Service was not only one of the American pioneers in building boats of concrete, but it attained more success in this direction than any other large constructor, public or private. Having complete military jurisdiction over all its harbors, the Embarkation Service was required to defend those harbors against possible enemy attack. The only attack anticipated was by submarines. Part of the harbor defenses were mine fields at the approaches; and the Service was presently operating a fleet of mine planters, large and small. As the experience of the Embarkation Service broadened, it began to make greater use of port waters in the transportation of troops; and thus it removed from the terminal railways some of their war-imposed burden. Its success in bringing troops to New York piers from Camp Merritt by the Hudson River caused the Service to extend its use of natural water- ways. Before the armistice came, experimental embarkation from Camp Lee in Virginia had used the James River as a highway between the camp and the piers at Newport News. One outgrowth of this policy was a scheme to build a fleet 286 THE ROAD TO FRANCE of river steamers designed for carrying large numbers of passengers. The Embarkation Service ordered thirteen vessels of steel construction — nine large mine planters, each 172 feet long, and four river steamers, each 130 feet long. These were turned out by the quantity-production method known as "fabricated" ship construction; that is, the standard parts were manufactured in shops and then assembled into hulls on the launching ways. The contract for all thirteen went to the Fabricated Ship Corporation, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which created a new shipyard for the task. The company built parts in its own shops and let sub-contracts to manufactories located some miles away from the shipyard. Because plates came to the ways shaped and ready for the rivets, the system resulted not only in uniformity of construction but also in great speed. The contract for the so-called "junior" mine planters — eight boats, each 98 feet long — was taken by the Defoe Boat & Motor Works, of Bay City, Michigan, which also established a new yard. When men first proposed to build iron ships, doubtless there were skeptics who derided the notion that safe and seaworthy vessels could ever be made of so heavy and sinkable a sub- stance. When it was proposed to construct vessels of reinforced concrete, men could likewise be found who maintained that the "stone" boats would be, because of their ponderous weight, either unseaworthy or else unwieldy and uneconomical in operation. Although concrete hulls are indeed heavier than steel hulls of the same dimensions, the actual use of such ves- sels had demonstrated their practicability; and at a time when the nation's needs could scarcely endure any additional de- mand for steel, the utility of concrete construction for harbor craft was a veritable salvation. The weight of a concrete boat, after all, is not so much greater than that of a steel boat of the same size as one would think. The concrete hull walls are made surprisingly thin. In most of the craft launched by the contractors of the Embarka- tion Service, the exterior concrete covering of the reinforcing NOTES OF TIDEWATER ACTIVITIES 287 bars did not exceed three-quarters of an inch in thickness. To mold concrete with such precision required, of course, con- structive skill of the first order. The Service concluded a contract with the Great Northern Shipbuilding Company, of Vancouver, Washington, for the construction of five concrete water- tank boats, each 100 feet long. To the Newport Shipbuilding Company went another contract to build nine concrete river vessels, each 130 feet long, at a new yard at Newbern, North Carolina. These river vessels were to be in the service of the Newport News Port of Embarkation. A third contract for six concrete car floats, each 265 feet long, went to the L. B. Harrison Shipyards (Inc.), at Athens, New York, and an identical contract to the Liberty Shipbuilding & Transportation Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Each one of these contractors set up new shipyards for the construction. In appearance, the concrete boats differed little from steel craft of the same types. The service designers made, in the accepted curves and lines of hulls, no concessions to concrete. The river boats were built on the lines of standard steel ships, except that the sections amidships were practically square for about one-fourth of each vessel's length. The car floats were rectangular in shape, but curved slightly at the bilge and had raked ends. In fact, in all its ship construction the Embarka- tion Service considered the day when the Government might want to sell these vessels to private concerns. Every vessel was so designed that the possible private purchaser could some day use it in ordinary commerce and find no difficulty in placing insurance upon it. The launching of a concrete vessel is a matter of careful engineering calculation. It is usually launched sideways, and great is its list before it regains equilibrium. The Embarka- tion Service was the first to launch large concrete vessels end on. Several of the car floats took the water in this way. Certain engineers who witnessed the first of these end-on launchings confidently expected to see the new float break in two and sink as soon as its bow struck the water; but the designers were 288 THE ROAD TO FRANCE sure of their calculations, and they awaited the result with confidence. The sagging or "hogging" stress which end-on launching puts upon the midship section of such a long and shallow-draft boat as a car float is tremendous. As the forward end of the hull goes into the water and is buoyed up by it, it is precisely as if the craft were picked up by one end on the sole support of the other end. In the steel of the first concrete car float launched endwise, the strainagraph, a special instru- ment for recording stresses in construction members, regis- tered a stress of 4,000 pounds to the square inch. But this stress was well within the strength of the vessel, which neither buried its nose under water nor gave way amidships. The Service pioneered elsewhere in concrete construction. It made the first adaptation of reinforcing to the inherent require- ments of the hull. In previous concrete construction the rein- forcing bars had been allowed to follow the converging lines of the hull and to come thickly together at bow and stern, thus actually making them stronger than the midship sections, where heavier strains occur. The marine architects of the Em- barkation Service reduced the reinforcing at the ends of vessels and thereby made the hulls approximately 18 per cent lighter, with an actual gain in strength. Pouring the concrete in marine construction is a delicate operation. The concrete forms or molds must be built for prac- tically the entire hull before any concrete can go in; for after the pouring starts, it must continue until the entire hull is poured, to avoid the joints that result from pouring wet con- crete upon hard. The shell of a concrete vessel is so thin that only 100-per-cent accuracy in the placing of forms will result in a successful hull. Extraordinary precautions must be taken to prevent the forms from spreading away from the pressure of the concrete as it is being poured in. This spreading the Service engineers avoided by running certain reinforcing bars of the deck through the side molds as tie rods. (The projecting ends were used later for fastening the wooden fenders on the exterior of the hull.) Nor could concrete be dumped in care- lessly, as in ordinary construction. Precautions had to be taken From The War College Collection REINFORCING RODS LAID IN CONCRETE SHIP CONSTRUCTION KAPOK LIFE PRESERVERS, JACKET TYPE, SUPPLIED TO TRANSPORTS Photo by Signal Corps LIFE PRESERVERS ON LEVIATHAN Photo by Signal Corps LIFE RAFTS ON HOBOKEN ARMY PIER NOTES OF TIDEWATER ACTIVITIES 289 to secure an absolute consistency of mixture, without interior cavities or holes. This consistency was obtained by battering against the forms with electric and pneumatic hammers, the jar packing the mixture and filling all interstices. The Embarkation Service also designed a cargo barge of hollow tile and reinforced concrete. The hollow tile bottom, covered with concrete above and below, besides making the craft practically puncture-proof, allowed smooth concrete floors in the hold, upon which power shovels could operate in the unloading of coal and other bulk commodities. One of the extensive activities at the New York Port of Embarkation was the supply and inspection of life-saving equipment for the troop transports. America sent across the Atlantic many ships loaded with men as ships had never been loaded before. The torpedoing of one of these vessels would have been a terrible disaster to the United States ; yet the loss of life might not have been so great as the military authori- ties feared. To stack upon one of the great ships enough life- boats to hold passengers and crew was physically impossible. But lifeboats, life rafts, and life preservers collectively pro- vided floatage for every man aboard even the more heavily loaded transports. If a rescue came speedily after a sinking, most of the human cargo might have been saved. The Government's sudden decision in April, 1918, to increase embarkation to the rate of 300,000 men a month taxed to the utmost the ability of the port utilities office, which had charge of life-saving equipment. The decision threw into our transport service an immense Allied merchant ton- nage, and the War Department would not permit one of these foreign ships to sail with troops unless it possessed life-saving equipment up to the American army standard. The Govern- ment, instead of donating equipment to the British, French, and Italian vessel companies, sold it to them after the Port of Embarkation had procured it. During the period of overseas sailings the port utilities office bought thousands of life rafts and hundreds of thousands of life preservers. The office also supervised the frequent cleansing of life 290 THE ROAD TO FRANCE preservers. American troops were required by order to wear their life belts continuously night and day, sleeping and awake, while their transports were passing through the war zone — and the average transport was in it seventy- two hours. The Medical Corps therefore insisted that the preservers be fre- quently washed and sterilized. In the autumn of 1918, just after influenza had broken out in this country, a convoy carrying 46,000 men was about to sail for France. The port utilities office had approved the life- saving equipment. The life preservers were not dirty, but they had been worn on one previous voyage, since which they had not passed through the laundry. The convoy was to sail on Saturday. On the Thursday before, the Surgeon General con- demned the complete equipment of life preservers on the con- voy and demanded that sterilized equipment be substituted. The utilities office, in a hasty inventory of its stores, discovered only 4,000 life belts in stock. There was not enough time to clean the condemned life belts. The utilities officers began to comb the metropolitan manufacturing district for possible supplies of new life preservers which had been overlooked in previous purchases. In New Jersey they discovered a manu- facturer who by mistake had made 25,000 kapok life belts more than he had needed to fill a previous government con- tract. The Port bought these belts outright and rushed all its available motor trucks to the factory in Newark. The truck- ing force freighted life preservers day and night. This find, together with the 4,000 life preservers on hand, brought the available supply up to nearly 30,000; but it still left a short- age of 16,000. Then the utilities officers made by telephone a systematic canvass of the trade. They succeeded in picking up five hundred life belts here and a thousand there; but even after they had literally swept the trade clean, there was still a shortage. Mean- while the office had been cleaning and sterilizing as many of the condemned preservers as it could; and, to swell the volume of this work, it temporarily chartered the plants of several large carpet-cleaning establishments in New York and oper- NOTES OF TIDEWATER ACTIVITIES 291 ated them for two days and nights. The office was working in the sure knowledge that if it failed to provide the life preserv- ers in time, the embarkation authorities would be forced to hold the convoy in port. No ship could sail without satisfactory emergency floatage for every man aboard. But the utilities office did not fail. The convoy sailed at the scheduled hour with complete life-saving equipment which had passed the inspection of the Surgeon General's department. To be sure, the utilities office had exceeded its authority in the emergency : only the Division of Purchase in Washington was empowered to buy life preservers. But the War Department granted, as in other like instances, ex post facto authority for the transaction. Thus the Port passed triumphantly through another crisis. The Port of Embarkation maintained a disbursing office at New York to pay all embarking officers and men up to the date of their sailings. The payment was made, conveniently, in either francs or pounds, shillings, and pence, so that the soldiers would have no trouble with the money changers on the other side of the Atlantic. The Port disbursed millions of dollars in the payment of transient individuals and organi- zations. The Navy operated most of the American troop carriers and incidentally supplied the food eaten by our soldiers on their voyages in such ships. Yet, by one of the queer inconsistencies of an organization so large and intricate as the Embarkation Service, the New York Port of Embarkation supplied food stores to several of the American transports throughout the heaviest period of travel and until June, 1919. The value of the stores so supplied was close to $3,000,000. The port utili- ties office took care of this work. It also operated the great port bakery in Brooklyn, and provided the food and the daily menus for the crews of all army harbor craft. It required a special organization at the port to give the releases on which the Inland Traffic Service based its War Department Transportation Orders, the potent instruments, it will be remembered, that cleared away the great eastern freight car congestion in early 1918. This organization, the 292 THE ROAD TO FRANCE Army Railway Traffic Service, was formed by the consolida- tion of the traffic offices which the several export bureaus of the War Department had maintained at New York. When the Army Traffic Service took hold, in the late winter of 1918, the Port could handle at the maximum 400 cars a day of export government freight. At the time of the armistice the Port was putting through an average of 1,800 carloads a day; the record day was 4,000 cars. The Service allocated space for freight on the cargo and passenger transports, stationed men through- out the New York yards to keep war department cars mov- ing, handled the financial end of army shipping in the ter- minal, and worked its three office shifts twenty-four hours a day to keep up with the business. Whenever commercial passenger vessels came into the trans- port fleet, it was necessary to refit them specially for such ser- vice. The work of refitting ships fell to the Port's vessel main- tenance and repair division. All transports crossing the war zone were required to go armed. This meant the installation of gun platforms on both troop and cargo carriers. In equip- ping merchant passenger boats as troopships, the refitters liter- ally crammed them with standee bunks, building these in wherever there were a few cubic feet of spare room, even constructing them in companionways which could be closed off. The constructors built rows upon rows of temporary state- rooms in the transports, fitted up special bath houses on their decks, and installed ship hospitals. The hospital wards were entirely lined with white enamel, and their floors were of sanitary concrete composition. Each transport required at least one false deck on which to stow the additional lifeboats and life rafts required by regulations. The galley facilities of the ordinary passenger vessel had to be greatly expanded by the installation of ovens, steam tables, and other cooking equip- ment. The Port's maintenance and repair division operated a large marine repair shop at the Hoboken piers to take care of the trip repairs needed by our transports. This shop was frequently of extraordinary usefulness. At one time during the cold NOTES OF TIDEWATER ACTIVITIES 293 weather of early 1918, the transport Finland was loading 2,000 troops for France. On the night before she was to sail, the entire sanitary system built on her decks froze tight, and many of the pipes burst. Under ordinary conditions the ship would have had to go to a yard for repairs and would have missed the convoy. The repair shop put her in condition within a few hours, and she sailed at the appointed time. During the period of embarkation the shop was manned with a military staff known as Ship Repair Shop Unit No. 301, an organiza- tion unique in the Army. The maintenance and repair division was later to render a most important service, for it was the agency which, after the armistice, converted the fleet of army cargo carriers into troop transports and thus enabled the Government to bring home the A. E. F. in so short a time. From Hoboken departed the army couriers carrying urgent official mail from Washington to the general headquarters of the A. E. F. at Chaumont, France. For many months the War Department relied upon the regular mails; but the A. E. F. postal service labored under difficulties, and the dispatch of mail was slow. Several branches of the War Department sought to beat the mail by sending their more important letters to France by courier. Eventually the Embarkation Service undertook to perform this service for the entire Army. It set up the courier service, a tight little corps composed of a resolute handful of commissioned and non-commissioned officers. Cou- rier headquarters were in Washington; a branch courier office at Hoboken attended to the details of courier travel. Back and forth between Chaumont and Washington sped the couriers, carrying sacks of mail in both directions and cutting down the delivery time by at least a week. The first courier started out in early July, 1918. From that time until June 30, 1919, the Service dispatched sixty-three couriers to France. A courier left Washington every fifth or sixth day. The average consignment of mail in charge of a single courier was thirteen sacks. In the first year of operation, the couriers took 614 sacks of mail to Europe and brought back 1,408 sacks. 294 THE ROAD TO FRANCE As soon as this convenient service was inaugurated, some of the army producing bureaus took advantage of it to send to France urgently needed consignments of such small sup- plies as firing pins for machine guns and sighting instru- ments for field artillery. The accumulation of packages of this sort soon began to hamper the speed of the couriers; and presently the Embarkation Service created a kindred organi- zation known as the War Department Overseas Express Ser- vice, whose traveling messengers handled official overseas parcels only. The mail courier waited in Washington until the last train that would take him to New York in time to catch the convoy — usually a midnight train. He and his sergeant piled the mail sacks into a sleeping-car stateroom, locked the door, and stood watch and watch until morning; for nearly all the mail in their charge was highly confidential. At Manhattan Junction in the Jersey meadows a port motor truck was wait- ing next morning to transfer courier and baggage directly to Hoboken. If by chance the convoy had gone down the bay, the Port bundled the two soldiers and their mail sacks into a fast launch and hurried them to the rendezvous. On the transport a room was assigned to the courier and his assistant. The two men lived with the mail all the way across the ocean. The sacks were piled in the stateroom, and one man or the other always watched them. Meanwhile Hoboken had cabled to Brest that a courier was on the way. The transport had scarcely lost headway in the French harbor when a launch darted out from shore. Into this the courier and his assistant loaded their sacks. Often they were on the Paris train, locked in a special compartment, before any of the troops on their ship had yet landed. At Paris an A. E. F. courier met the train to take over the sacks directed to our army representatives in England. The American courier continued on to Chaumont with the G. H. Q. mail. The swiftest trip between Washing- ton and Chaumont was made in six days and a few hours. The courier who set this record left Washington at midnight, early the next morning boarded a ship in a 20-knot convoy, barely NOTES OF TIDEWATER ACTIVITIES 295 caught the Paris train at Brest, and made a perfect train con- nection in Paris. The courier service made itself extremely valuable by taking to France the cargo manifests of freight transports ahead of the arrival of the ships. It was out of the question to send such voluminous itemized invoices by cable; yet it was important that the army ports in France receive the manifests before the cargo arrived. The regular post office could not be relied upon to forward the manifests in time. Therefore, as soon as the American ports dispatched cargo transports they sent the freight manifests to Washington, and the Embarkation Ser- vice forwarded them to France by the first courier. The couriers also brought to the United States the lists of American casual- ties in the war. When the Peace Conference opened in Paris, the State De- partment required almost exclusive use of the Atlantic cables, and the use of the cables by the Army was cut down to little or nothing. The War Department then turned to the next fastest means of communication, the couriers, and invented a new kind of official dispatch, known as the courier cable- gram. The couriers carried much mail between Washington and the Peace Conference. Each eastbound courier had at least one pouch of state department mail for the American Peace Commission, and some of the returning couriers carried as many as six pouches addressed to the State Department. All the mail between the White House in Washington and Presi- dent Wilson in Paris was carried by army couriers. During the period of hostilities the dozen or so couriers were the only soldiers attached to a home station who were permitted to wear cloth shoulder insignia. After the armistice, the New York Port of Embarkation adopted a shoulder insigne, a gray cloth rectangle upon which was worked the monogram P. of E., N. Y. This and the courier badge were the only home insignia. Both embarkation-service and A. E. F. couriers wore on their shoulders the silver greyhound, a fit emblem of their service. Couriers were favorite children of the Army. Quick passages 296 THE ROAD TO FRANCE by the American couriers brought rewards in France, in the form of trips to European cities in the A. E. F. courier service. After the armistice some of the American couriers went by airplane from Paris to Brussels, even to Rome ; others traveled by train to the Balkans and to Constantinople. The little band developed a proud esprit de corps^ of which one evidence was its pert self-applied nickname, "Fast Company." Photo by Signal Corps EMERGENCY LIFE RAFTS FOR TROOP TRANSPORTS Photo by Signal Corps EQUIPPING LIFEBOATS FOR TRANSPORTS Photo by Signal Corps EMBARKING TROOPS MARCHING THROUGH NEWPORT NEWS Photo by Signal Corps TROOPS APPROACHING PIER, NEWPORT NEWS CHAPTER XXI AT NEWPORT NEWS HOBOKEN possessed no monopoly of the transoceanic shipment of soldiers and military supplies. On the shores surrounding Hampton Roads in Virginia there was another large enterprise in transportation, conducted by a port of embarkation equal in rank to that at New York, with its own command and its own complete installation of utilities. New York specialized in the embarkation of troops. The Newport News Port of Embarkation sent out some hun- dreds of thousands of troops, but its specialty was the export of supplies, particularly heavy supplies, to the A. E. F. — notably steel rails, motor trucks, ammunition, and high explo- sives. The physical equipment of the Newport News Port of Embarkation included such installations as the General Ord- nance Supply Depot at Pig Point on the southern shore of Hampton Roads, the Norfolk Engineering Depot, and the great Norfolk Army Base. These were among the largest estab- lishments in the whole army supply chain. Also at Newport News was the principal embarkation depot for the horses and mules sent to the A. E. F. As a sender of troops to France, Newport News tended to specialization. It was the principal embarkation point for stevedores and labor troops; also, many of the artillery regi- ments boarded ship there. It embarked balloon companies and airplane squadrons. The first embarkation at Newport News occurred on January 17, 1918, when eight aero squadrons sailed on the transport H. R. Mallory. From that time on, various scattering imits sailed at intervals until April, when the troop embarkation from Newport News began in earnest. 298 THE ROAD TO FRANCE At the time of the armistice Newport News had sent overseas nearly 300,000 troops. This record best illustrates the significance of the Virginia port when it is compared with what occurred at other Atlantic seaports. The earliest embarkations of all occurred at New York in the spring and summer of 1917. The first embarkation of American troops from any port other than New York took place on September 16, 1917, when the io2d Infantry with a field hospital and an ambulance company, all units of the Twenty-sixth Division, boarded the White Star Steamship Canada at Montreal. The next outside embarkation occurred at Philadelphia October 16, 1917, when the 3d Cavalry Regi- ment sailed on the S. S. Northland. On the day before Christ- mas, 1917, the White Star liner Canada^ which had carried the first American troops from Montreal, took on board the 24th Machine Gun Battalion, a trench-mortar battery, and an evacuation hospital, at Portland, Maine. On April 13, 1918, Boston began functioning as an embarkation sub-port, the 153d Infantry, the 306th Infantry, and the latter's machine gun battalion embarking there on the Cunarder Karoa. On May 26, 1918, occurred the first embarkation from Baltimore, Maryland, the 303d Engineers boarding the S. S. Ajax of the Blue Funnel Line. Now, Montreal and Quebec (during the winter, when the St. Lawrence River was not navigable, the ports of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and St. Johns, New Brunswick, were used by our Embarkation Service instead of Montreal and Quebec), Philadelphia, Portland, Boston, and Baltimore ranked in the military organization as sub-ports of the New York Port of Embarkation, their activities being commanded from the headquarters at Hoboken; but Newport News possessed no auxiliary ports. At New York there embarked 1,656,000 troops, at Newport News 288,000, at Boston 46,000, at Philadelphia 35,000, at Montreal 34,000, at Quebec 11,000, at Portland 6,000, at Halifax 5,000, at Baltimore 4,000, and at St. Johns 1,000. These (approximate) figures fairly measure the activities of these various ports as points of embarkation for troops. AT NEWPORT NEWS 299 The work of the Newport News Port of Embarkation was similar to that of New York, though it was on a smaller scale. Newport News had its embarkation camps and its inspection and supply services. Units ordered overseas via Newport News went through much the same embarkation mill as that at New York. The problem of handling troops at Newport News was never exacting; but for all that the Port had its own peculiar troubles. It began its existence with port facilities much farther from adequacy than those which the Army was able to utilize immediately at New York, The whole plant at Newport News had to be built from the ground up, and while the construc- tion was in actual progress the Port was called upon to handle an immense quantity of supplies, especially engineering mate- rials needed in France ahead of the arrival of the main body of troops. The history of the Port at Newport News is, then, largely the history of a struggle to overcome difficulties, pro- vide a working equipment, and whip into shape a smoothly working organization. The ground over which the Port held jurisdiction is historic. Here first set foot on the soil of this continent some of the earliest English settlers sent out from the mother country to America. Close to Newport News are the ruins of the aban- doned town of Jamestown, Virginia, the first English settle- ment on the Atlantic coast. In this region the Indian princess Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan, saved the life of Captain John Smith and, later, married John Rolfe, the wealthy English merchant. It is worth noting that two of the army transports which sailed regularly from Newport News were the Powhatan and the Pocahontas^ both formerly Ger- man liners, remodeled to carry thousands of American soldiers to the battle fields of France, One of the first settlements in this region was planted by Captain Newport, who commanded a small squadron of colonist ships which he brought safely into Chesapeake Bay in the spring of 1607, The city of Newport News, however, was named, not for this pioneer, but for Sir William Newce, an Irish gentleman who sponsored the voyage of Master Cookin in 1621, in a vessel carrying eighty colo- 300 THE ROAD TO FRANCE nists. These pioneers settled on the James River and named their settlement New Port Newce, which the phonetic tend- ency in spelling later modified to its present form. The Government selected Newport News to be a port of embarkation, not because of its historical associations, but rather because of the splendid deep-water facilities of the great inland harbor known as Hampton Roads. This salt- water basin is not only large enough to give safe anchorage to the greatest vessels afloat — it has accommodated the whole North Atlantic Fleet at once — but it is also doubly land- locked. Hampton Roads itself has only a narrow entrance into Chesapeake Bay, which in turn is enclosed from the ocean by the Virginia capes. The whole Chesapeake was securely guarded against possible enemy attack by the forts on Cape. Charles and Cape Henry and by submarine nets stretched from one cape to the other. Fortress Monroe, commanding the inlet to Hampton Roads, gave additional protection to the vital military establishments to be built along the shores of that body of water. The northern shore of Hampton Roads is the end of the long peninsula enclosed between the York and the James rivers, which in this region are not so much flowing streams as broad, deep branches of the sea. On the southern- most point of this peninsula is the city of Newport News, facing south across Hampton Roads toward the city of Nor- folk, which is located at the extreme southern comer of the bay. The facilities built for the Port of Embarkation almost surrounded this deep and sheltered body of water. At the beginning of the war, when it became certain that the Army would establish a port of embarkation at Hamp- ton Roads, there was a sharp contest between Norfolk and Newport News over the question of which city should be the port headquarters. Both possessed advantages. On each side of Hampton Roads were located some of the most modern coal- ing docks in the world, at the tidewater terminals of railroads leading from the coal fields of West Virginia. The pier of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad at Newport News could load 6,600 tons of coal an hour. Both cities offered extensive ship- 12. Norfolk Army Base 13. Norfolk Engineer Depot 14. Pig Point Ordnance IDepot 15. Camp Lee \^ T^T =^=^^^^== =; "^j^CKichmond fyj/ wWst Point ^^'nS^o JJ^^^C~^ t3 / &^Wl^ IL ^^ <„_£__^_^ VY-? Xjr, L>"\ '^ i>7 L ; \ ifii """^-T^^i^ \/^% ■^^^r^ril ^ Jl ^ 'yf^.»(/ \ ^f°^ (f% X'^""~~A \ x' jNS.^j'l" '^ ^ P^v \ "^^ ^==7/ wH \ V \ *=^vy^. >^ X^'*^ /^ V //> (/ „J \\ ^^^Il^-^rv-,^ }k \ 2\\s -^S^°^^ y '^ ^ A-y, tff'^7 1 // "^^oiat "^ s" \0^^ ^-^TPetersturg C. 4^ 1 ®V C V.-^-^ k^5~'^/V^ \ "^eeHalT^^S^ Q, \^,«>/ /^S? ] \. I /\ / / S, }®\ ^^ ^ ^ Nl f^^* A. N^^ / / ^"^^ \ tq/ \ =0^ 'ft ^\ ^ \ lo ^ / N^ / / 1 "''^ ^ \ ■'^CV-^'N ^ l^t: V X ^WT / sJewsW^ ° Willoughb^ Spil \ SmithfielcTJ / O .J^S» u &. / ^ N^^ ,^ ' yi HAMPTON ^*Sf Y'S^ S^Cape ^ ^ \^ y/TTj^^^^^f^ Ct \ 30 \ ^o^&atfi^fc /'^;^^:^N^ \ \ ^Kt^^J^^^^^ \. \ \v ff 11^ /;^:5*«^— - — "^ l^v V \ \ ■— = --^^^ — ' '^""^'^''^ __ POKT OF E.MBARK.\TION, NEWPORT NEWS . Norfolk Army Base . Norfolk Eneinetr I . Pig Poin. Orfn.nt, AT NEWPORT NEWS 301 repairing and drydocking facilities. Norfolk was near the Portsmouth Navy Yard; at Newport News was located the Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Company, operating one of the largest shipyards in the world. An investigation by an army board in the spring of 1917 made it evident that neither city could accommodate all the utilities of a complete port of embarkation. The board recommended the use of sites in both cities and at other points on the shores of Hampton Roads. Since it was convenient, because of railroad and other conditions, to establish most of the port fixtures on the New- port News side, that city was selected for the headquarters. Major General Grote Hutchinson, Commander of the Port, set up his headquarters at Newport News on July 11, 1917. Construction was a much more dominant characteristic of the war activities at Newport News than it was at Hoboken. The entire period of hostilities was marked by continuous ex- pansion in military building on the shores of Hampton Roads. The vicinity became the site of more war establishments than were located in any other equal area in the United States. There were great aviation fields and divisional and special training camps near by; there was also the principal overseas supply base of the Navy, as well as a great naval training station. The Port itself soon developed into an enormous and constantly growing institution, its growth being ended only by the armistice. Like New York, the Newport News Port of Embarkation possessed two principal embarkation camps. These were Camp Hill and Camp Stewart. Camp Stewart, the larger, was located on the shore of Hampton Roads within the eastern city limits of Newport News. Its site was an area 215 acres in extent; and the finished camp had, in the section given over to transient troops, capacity for 450 officers and 15,600 enlisted men. The camp was operated by a permanent force of 40 officers and 1,230 enlisted men, troops of the 48th Infantry Regiment and the ilth Cavalry. Adjoining Camp Stewart on the east and occupying a cool and pleasant location with a beautiful outlook across Hamp- 302 THE ROAD TO FRANCE ton Roads, was the port debarkation hospital. A few of the hospital wards were open in the autumn of 1917. Construction continued, and a year later the hospital could accommodate nearly 4,500 patients. It had become one of the largest insti- tutions of its sort in the world. Here were landed thousands of the American soldiers who had been wounded in the fighting in Frai^ce. Camp Hill was located on the shore of the James River, about a half mile north of the city limits of Newport News. This was a smaller camp, with accommodations for about 350 officers and 6,900 enlisted men. Three other embarkation camps for special sorts of troops became integral with the port plant. One of these was Camp Abraham Eustis, located some twelve miles up the James River on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, not far from the army balloon school at Lee Hall, Virginia. Camp Eustis was a combination training and embarkation camp for heavy artil- lery regiments. It possessed a target range where big guns could be fired under the direction of observers in captive balloons; so that the target practice gave training to both the artillerymen and the aerial observers from Lee Hall. Camp Morrison was the Air Service's general supply depot and embarkation camp at Newport News. It was also located on the shore of the James River north of Newport News, about half way out to Camp Eustis. The camp site was a mile-long narrow rectangle containing 300 acres. The C. & O. Railroad supplied good transportation facilities between the camp and the embarkation piers at Newport News. The camp equipment included twenty-four warehouses for the storage of aeronauti- cal equipment, and also twenty-seven barrack buildings for Air- Service troops. To this point came many of the Army's aero squadrons, where they were inspected and equipped for over- seas service and, in some cases, given additional training while waiting for their transports. Camp Alexander, the third of these attached camps, was a special camp for the training and embarkation of stevedore regiments and labor battalions. Here were trained and housed, AT NEWPORT NEWS 303 also, the permanent labor detachments assigned to the Port of Embarkation at Newport News. Camp Alexander was located just east of Camp Hill. One of the most important camps at Newport News was the animal embarkation depot, known in the army organiza- tion tables as Animal Embarkation Depot No. 301, situated between Camp Morrison and Camp Hill. The depot was one of the first utilities built at the port. Its corrals, fenced fields, and pens gave accommodation to a maximum of 10,000 animals.* The animal embarkation depot occupied seventy- seven acres. At the railroad tracks were six unloading pens, each of capacity for 350 horses or mules. The unloading pens also served as detention corrals in which animals might be quaran- tined to determine the presence or absence of disease. Behind the unloading pens were twenty-four regular corrals, each for 350 animals. The depot maintained a great animal hospital for the treatment of the various maladies which afflict beasts of burden. The hospital equipment included baths and tanks for the disinfection of animals before their admittance to the regular corrals. Practically all the animals sent to the A. E. F. passed through this depot. Up to the end of March, 1918, the embar- kations of animals from Newport News had approached 30,000. At that time came the urgent call for troops in France, an event which made it necessary to divert all ocean cargo ton- nage to the shipment of supplies; and the War Department ceased altogether to send animals to France. On August 12, 1918, animal shipments began again; and between that date and the end of November nearly 40,000 horses and mules left the United States for France, most of which embarked at Newport News. All the rest of the port establishment had to do with the * In an emergency the Army had the use of corral accommodations for 5,000 more at the British remount depot near by. Nearly all of the horses and mules purchased by the British Army and shipped overseas prior to 1917 passed through this remount depot at Newport News. The British began shipping American animals in December, 1914. Our first shipment occurred on October 14, 1917. 304 THE ROAD TO FRANCE shipment of army supplies. The equipment included a line of seaport warehouses in the city of Newport News, providing 450,000 square feet of storage for supplies awaiting loading. These warehouses, each one story high, were plentifully inter- spersed with fire walls to prevent any considerable conflagra- tion. In spite of the dangerous composition of many of the materials handled through Newport News, there was no fire or explosion of any consequence during the whole overseas movement. In the city of Newport News was also located a general depot for the storage and issue of quartermaster supplies to embarking troops at the many training camps in the vicinity. This depot occupied a large abandoned brewery near Camp Stewart, and it administered in addition the quartermaster warehouses in the various embarkation camps. The administrative headquarters of the Port occupied a temporary two-story building which covered an entire city block in Newport News. While troops and animals were embarking at the city of Newport News, the Port conducted its great supply export business from establishments that dotted the eastern and southern shores of Hampton Roads. One of the largest of these was the huge army base on the eastern shore of Hamp- ton Roads, a few miles north of Norfolk. This installation, like the Brooklyn Army Base, was of permanent concrete con- struction. It consisted of great warehouses and covered piers for the handling of general supplies for the A. E. F. South of the Norfolk Army Base, within the northern cor- porate limits of Norfolk, was the General Engineer Depot of the Army. The physical plant the Army found ready for occupancy when war was declared: it had just been built by the Norfolk & Western Railroad for its own uses. With the improvements and conveniences added, this was one of the most complete ocean terminals in America. At its two covered piers eight ocean vessels could be tied up for simultaneous loading. The Army built additional warehouses and installed large stationary^ cranes and other loading machinery for han- [fgg V^ " * ■" ■ "itM l Iy i Photo by Signal Corps BOARDING SHIP AT NEWPORT NEWS rhvto by Signal Corps CROWDED TRANSPORT LEAVING PIER, NEWPORT NEWS AT NEWPORT NEWS 305 dling heavy articles. Much of the engineering material sent to the A. E. F. was such heavy bulk freight as steel rails ; and the Engineer Corps found it necessary to lay out at Norfolk a classification yard, in which freight of similar sorts, coming in by rail, could be dumped together in piles, upon which cargo ships could draw for complete homogeneous loads. For this purpose the Army leased 170 acres at Portlock, Virginia, just south of Norfolk. On a site of 600 acres on the south shore of Hampton Roads, a few miles northwest of Portsmouth and, by water, five miles south of Newport News, the Army built the huge Pig Point General Ordnance Supply Depot. The construction of this institution began in November, 1917, and was not com- plete a year later, although by that time the depot had a tre- mendous capacity. Its principal function was to store and export ammunition and high explosives. Since the water along the southern shore of Hampton Roads is comparatively shal- low, all loading from the ordnance depot had to be by lighter- age. The Port set aside a definite area of Hampton Roads near Pig Point for the anchorage of powder and ammunition ships, so that in the event of an explosion the damage to the port plant would be confined to a minimum. Except tugs and light- ers operating between the powder ships and the ordnance depot, no vessels were allowed to enter this area. The depot consisted principally of chains of powder and ammunition magazines. Its site was protected by an unscalable wire fence with sentry-boxes every 500 feet along its four miles of length. At the time of the armistice the depot could receive and export a hundred carloads of powder and ammunition every day. The Government conducted at Hampton Roads a great hous- ing enterprise which provided living quarters for thousands of men in the shipyards, the ship-repair yards, and the construc- tion gangs. Many barracks were built for the troops stationed at the port. The project also included a temporary hotel in Newport News for casual officers awaiting embarkation. Early in the war, A. E. F. supplies flooded in upon New- port News, and for many months the port organization was 3o6 THE ROAD TO FRANCE primarily engaged in getting its head above water. But grad- ually the port facilities began to measure up to the require- ments, and in the end Newport News could meet well-nigh any conceivable demand. The first vessel to be loaded there was the Momus^ which sailed September 3, 1917, with a cargo which included 1,605 bales of hay and 80 dismounted motor trucks. (The first freight convoy from Chesapeake Bay assembled in October, 1917, but none of its ships was loaded at Newport News.) The first animal ship was the Amphion^ formerly the German Koln^ which sailed October 14 with 881 mules, 1 69 horses, and forage and general cargo. The usual procedure for a cargo vessel at Newport News was to visit, first, the piers at the engineer depot at Norfolk, where it took on heavy materials for ballast, and then to pro- ceed to the army base or to the piers at Newport News for general supplies. The Port repaired ships and refitted ships for transport ser- vice in the yards of the Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry- dock Company. This was not a felicitous arrangement, for the facilities of the shipbuilding company were sorely needed by other government agencies. Had the war continued, the New- port News port equipment would probably have included a large ship-repair yard. The Port produced animal transports by building stalls into cargo vessels, took ships from the tropi- cal trades and built on deck protection so that they could brave the winter weather conditions of the North Atlantic, and also refitted for the military service many of the ex- German vessels — particularly ex-German cargo ships, some of which had been seized by Cuba, Brazil, and other Latin- American co-belligerents. Newport News conducted a large salvage enterprise for reclaiming food, clothing, and other supplies left behind by embarking troops. The Port also handled a few casuals. These fell under the command of a special officer, who compiled the service records of such soldiers and organized them into com- panies. Finally, Newport News, being the Army's principal cargo port, was confronted by the necessity of providing crews AT NEWPORT NEWS 307 for the cargo carriers of the army fleet — a difficult matter, be- cause the Norfolk district was a poor labor market. Labor scarcity of all sorts was a hampering factor throughout the entire development of Hampton Roads. Eventually it became next to impossible to secure civilian crews for our cargo trans- ports without delaying them in port. This difficulty virtually disappeared as, more and more completely, the Navy took over the operation of cargo vessels and manned them with crews of enlisted men. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA JUL 2 8 1980 DATE DUE SEP 9 986 CAYLORO rniMTcoiN U.S.A. HOW AMERICA \ WENT TO WAR THE ROAD TO FRANCE CROWELL AND WILSON YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY D570.72 C7 v. I Crowell, Benedict, 1869- The road to France...