SINS OF THE FATHERS
"Sons of the sheltered city—
Unmade, unhandled, unmeet—
Ye pushed them raw to the battle
As ye picked them raw from the street.
And what did ye look, they should compass?
Warcraft learned in a breath,
Knowledge unto occasion
At the first far view of death?"
Kipling.
WHILE we were personally working at Plattsburg the national administration, after a meandering course, in which much of the motion was retrograde, had finally decided that to fight a war in France it was necessary to send troops to that part of the world. Out of this determination Pershing's force grew.
Investigation of the condition of our military establishment indicated that we had virtually nothing available. The best that could be done in the way of an expeditionary force was to group two regiments of marines and four regular regiments together and send them to Europe as the First Division. So little attention and thought had been given to military matters that when the First Division was originally grouped it consisted of three brigades, not two. These brigades consisted of the Fifth and Sixth Marines, Twenty-sixth and Twenty-eighth Infantry, and the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Infantry. In the regiments themselves things were in the same chaotic condition. Battalions contained three companies of infantry and one machine-gun company each. This was an eleventh-hour change from the old system of four companies of infantry, to which we returned later in the year. We had, furthermore, up to this time, by our tables of organization, companies of 152 men. These companies were raised to 200 men, and still later became 250.
As a matter of fact, the strength of these companies at the declaration of war was somewhere around sixty. The 140 additional were obtained by getting a percentage by transfer from other infantry regiments, and filling in the balance with raw recruits who had just volunteered for service.
My own regiment, the Twenty-sixth Infantry, entrained early in June at San Benito, Texas, and came to the port of embarkation, New York City. The trip always stands out in my mind, although I did not join the regiment until after it had arrived in Europe, because all through the two years of war I was pestered by a paper which kept constantly turning up concerning some $100 worth of ham and cheese that was supposed to have been eaten by the men of the Twenty-sixth Infantry as they passed through Houston. No one was ever able to furnish me with any information as to it, but in the best approved military style the communication kept circulating to and fro, indorsement after indorsement being added, until, when I last saw it, January, 1919, after the war was finished, there were some twenty-eight series of remarks, and no one was any the wiser.
A story that always appealed to me was told me by one of my officers, of the time when the troop train was lying in the Jersey marshes waiting to go on board ship. A very good officer, Arnold by name, had command of one of the companies of the Twenty-sixth Infantry. A number of lieutenants were sent from the training camps to join the First Division. The military knowledge of the lieutenants consisted in the main of a month at Plattsburg at their own expense, and a month for which the government paid. The lieutenants, after getting to New York, had their uniforms pressed and cleaned and their shoes beautifully polished, feeling that at least they would look the part. They went out to join the troops, who were lying in the cars, hot, dirty and uncomfortable, after traveling for four days. Arnold was sitting with his company, his blouse off, unshaven, with his feet on the seat in front of him. One of the nice young lieutenants came in to report to him looking, as the lieutenant himself told me afterward, like a fashionable clothes advertisement, and knowing about as much about military matters as a canary bird.
A GROUP OF OFFICERS OF THE 1ST BATTALION, 26TH INFANTRY
Haudivillers. April, 1917
Arnold looked at him in a weary way, shook his head sadly and remarked to the officer beside him, "We have only ourselves to blame for it." Indeed, we were to blame for conditions, and such of us as were fortunate enough to see service in Europe had the sins of our unpreparedness brought before us in the most glaring light.
Just how much training and experience were of value was everywhere evident. In my opinion, all divisions sent over by this country were approximately equal in intelligence and courage. There was, however, the greatest difference between the veteran divisions and those which had just arrived. Each division, after being given the same amount of training and fighting, would show up much the same, but put a division which had been fighting for six months alongside of one that had just arrived, and in every detail you could see the difference. The men of the newly arrived division were as courageous as the men of the old division. Their intelligence was as good, but they did not know the small things which come only with training and experience, and which, in a close battle, make the difference between victory and defeat, the difference between needless sacrifice and the sacrifice which brings results.
A great friend of mine, Colonel Frederick Palmer, put this to me very clearly. He was observing the action of our troops in the Argonne and came on a young lieutenant with a platoon of infantry. The lieutenant was fidgeting and highly nervous. When Palmer came up he said, "Sir, there is a machine gun on that hill. I don't know whether I should attack it or whether I should wait until the troops on the right and left arrive and force it out. I don't know whether it is killing my men to no purpose whatever to advance. I don't know what to do. I am not afraid. My men are not afraid."
This man belonged to one of the newly arrived divisions. Given the experience, he would have known exactly what to do. If he had been a man of an older division and had seen sufficient service he would have been doing what was necessary when Colonel Palmer arrived.
The little tricks which come only with soldiering and training, which do not appear in the accounts of the battles and are never found in the citations for valor, are those which make the great difference. For example, Napoleon has said that an army travels on its stomach. It is often quoted and rarely understood, yet nothing is more true. The men have had a hard day's fighting. They are wet, they are cold, they have marched for a week, mostly at night, and are worn out. Can you get the food forward to them? Can you get the food to them hot? If you can get hot food forward to them you have increased the fighting efficiency of these troops thirty per cent.
Experienced troops get this food forward. A machine working on past experience knows exactly what to do. The supply trains keep track of their advance units and follow closely in their rear. During the engagement the supply officers are planning where to put their rolling kitchens and what routes can be used to get the supplies forward. Meanwhile the echelons of supply in the rear are acting in the same manner. One does not find in the drill-book that the way to keep coffee and slum hot after it has left the rolling kitchens is to take out the boilers with the food in them, wrap these boilers in old blankets, put them on the two-wheeled machine-gun carts, which can go nearly anywhere, and work forward to the troops in this way. This is just one instance, one trick of the trade. It is something that only training and experience can supply, and yet it is of most vital importance. I have known divisions to help feed the more recently arrived divisions on their right and left, when all have had the same facilities to start with. I have known new troops, fighting by an older division, to be forty hours without food when the men of the older division had been eating every day.
Right in the ranks of a regiment you could see the difference made by training and experience. Look at a trained man alongside of a new recruit just arrived for replacement. The trained man, at the end of the day's fighting, will fix himself up a funk hole where he will be reasonably safe from shell fragments, will cover himself with a blanket, and will get some sleep. The recruit will expose himself unnecessarily, will be continuously uncomfortable, and will not know how to take advantage of whatever opportunity might arise to make himself more comfortable. The result is that the value of the former is much greater from a military standpoint, and the latter runs a far greater risk physically from all standpoints. Moreover, when the test comes, as it generally does, not in the beginning of the battle, but toward the bitter end, when every last ounce that a man has in him is being called on, the untrained man is not so apt to have the necessary vitality left to do his work.
Our equipment, for the same reason, during the early days of the war was most impracticable. A notable example of this was the so-termed "iron ration" carried on the men's backs. The meat component of this ration was bacon. In certain types of fighting, those in which our army had been principally engaged, this may have been best, but for the work in Europe, it was absolutely impracticable. To begin with, bacon encourages thirst, and thirst, where troops are fighting in many of the districts in France, is almost impossible to satisfy. A canteen of water a day for each man was all it was possible to provide. Furthermore, bacon has to be cooked, and this again is often impracticable. About a year after the beginning of the war, some of the older divisions adopted tinned beef, which went among the men under the euphonious name of "monkey meat."
To the average person in this country these things are not evident. They read of battles, they read of the courage of the men, of the casualties, of the glory. They do not appreciate the unnecessary sacrifices and the unnecessary deaths and hardships entailed on us by our policies.
It is all very well for someone comfortably ensconced in his swivel chair in Washington to issue the statement that he glories in the fact that we went into this war unprepared. It may be glorious for him, but it is not glorious for those who fight the war, for those who pay the price. The clap-trap statesmen of this type should be forced to go themselves or at least have their sons, as guarantee of their good faith, join the fighting forces. Needless to say, none of them did.
Except for one instance, I do not believe there is a single male member of the families of the administration who felt that his duty called him to be where the fighting was, a single male member who heard a gun fired in anger. I have heard some of these estimable gentlemen say they considered it improper to use any influence to get to the front much though they desired to do so. This type of observation is hypocritical. No doubt the men who gave their lives, their eyes, their arms, or their legs would feel deeply grieved to be robbed of this privilege.
I have quoted above my father's statement that he would rather have explained why he went to war than why he did not, for the benefit of these gentlemen. I should think they would rather explain why they used their influence to be where the danger was than why they did not. As my father wrote me in June, 1918: "When the trumpet sounds for Armageddon, only those win the undying honor and glory who stand where the danger is sorest."
