Part 27

Toward the end we did not lack officers in numbers for service in the rear. Our problem was to prevent unnecessary expansion in superfluities. Our American energy was under pressure. The thing for regular or reserve was to show that he was as busy as any Leavenworth man. Both the British and French said we had too many typewriters, and were prone to excess motion, despite our wonderful accomplishment. It was an obvious criticism, by officers in an established organization, of an organization which was in the throes of creation. Big men might work with a purpose; but little men might be flailing out their vitality on old straw, in order to make a "show" before the senior who might either promote them or send them to Blois.

One day a reserve officer suggested to a regular senior, who had been laboring long and hard over a problem, a solution which could be expressed in half a dozen lines, leaving the execution of the policy stated to subordinates. That conscientious regular trained in Leavenworth industry shook his head. He sent in ten pages, after burning the midnight oil, which finally went up to Harbord himself. Harbord dictated a few sentences which duplicated the reservist's suggestion. "In line with my idea!" said the regular. There was no reason why the reservist should expect credit. He was in service to help in any way he could to hasten the end of the war.

I have in mind one regular staff chief, who won promotion and great credit because of his able subordinates. "He never knew," as one of the subordinates said. I am not sure that he was entirely unconscious, for he said: "These reservists have a lot of ideas. Of course they don't know anything about war." By the time the serious fighting began, they knew more than he knew. They were shrewd enough to let him think that their knowledge was his.

Of course, he always held over them the fear of Blois and the promise of promotion. That fear of Blois killed many an officer's initiative. It made independent men into courtiers for favor from men for whom in their hearts they had no respect. The weak tried to play safe, as they studied a senior's characteristics. Lack of psychologic contact between the army post world and the world of the nation as a whole, and overwork, overworry, and lack of appreciation of their efforts sent many officers to Blois. It was one sure way of having a brief holiday. Young reservists especially became discouraged and fatalistic when they found that they were incapable of ever pleasing an irascible senior. Others who had the right kind of superior developed under his encouraging and understanding direction. All was a gamble in how commanding officers themselves developed under the test of war.

A certain suspicion of civilians of whom they knew so little had its inevitable influence in keeping regulars in all the important positions, even in the S. O. S. The army had to take the responsibility, and the army must therefore keep authority in its own hands. Was it surprising, considering the life they had led, that the regulars should think that civilians could not understand the honor and the ethics of the service which they had so jealously guarded against politicians and a misinformed public? Civilians were shrewd in worldly ways; they might use their positions for profit; they might inculcate bad gospel. I heard of no peculation in that enormous and scattered organization, buying such gigantic quantities of supplies. We may have been extravagant, but we were clean--very clean, compared to the political contracts of Civil War times. The regulars kept to the honest traditions, even if some of their officers had become "dead from the chin up," to use a regular army expression. As an observer I dare indulge in only a few of the regulars' tart sayings about one another, sayings which of themselves were symptomatic of our restless energy for achievement, and of standards which were formed on achievement rather than pretension. If there were any graft, it was that of desire for power, of travel orders to see the front and France, and of other human weaknesses which were an inevitable accompaniment of active ambition.

It was my fortune to see the staff and the supply systems, to go in and out of the different headquarters, and on up to the front itself. I had the keys to the doors of all the many compartments, each immured by the nerve-racking pressure of its industry and exposure to death. I also saw the other armies at work. I knew the faults of reserves as well as of regulars. There were young officers of the line, good in scholarship and drill at the training camps, who, not from any want of courage but from inability, failed under fire. Floating in on the wave of the quartermaster and ordnance corps in the hasty granting of commissions was many a major and captain who was worthless. Some had never earned in their occupations in civil life the pay they were receiving as officers. These were most ambitious for promotion. They were always grumbling that their organizing capacity was not recognized. To the regular they were examples in point, proving the wisdom of expert control to the last degree.

Other reserve officers who were specialists in a business or profession, now that they were at war, considered it a hardship to have to do the same work that they had been doing in civil life. Others by their propensities for unbridled talk offended the regular ethics of secretiveness. Others who had been regarded as men of ability in their occupations were living on their reputations no less than some of the older regulars. Under army conditions, in poor quarters on foreign soil, they seem to have had a further relapse. Men of reputation in civil life, who were used to having their work known through the press, once they were in uniform felt their helpless anonymity. Leavenworth, in its unfamiliarity with civil life, sticking fast to its prerogatives and its theory of war, said that all reserves, line and staff, should be given a hell's trial, and that those who survived would one day receive their reward--after all the regulars had been looked after, as the reservists remarked.

Among the reserve officers were the physicians and surgeons, the most notable we had, in one of the most progressive of professions, who came to the aid of the army medical corps, which had to expand its organization with all the suddenness of the quartermaster corps. The standards of admittance to the army medical corps had been high; it had expanded its vision in sanitation in the Philippines, Cuba, and the Canal Zone; its practice was with soldiers in time of peace. The reserve medico, whether a great surgeon, a laboratory expert, or head of a hospital, was subject to a regular senior, often much younger than he, whose capacities might be first-class, or as inferior as his prejudices were numerous. No experts from civil life, in their sacred desire for efficiency, could feel the restrictions on their initiative more than the reserve medical officers; but be it said that we did build hospitals, we did equip them well, and, with General Pershing's resolute support, the exacting health discipline included precautions against that disease which has ever been the curse of armies.

Leavenworth would have no advertising. Not only for reasons of military secrecy would censorship have no names mentioned, but also in keeping with the ethics of regular officers that publicity was unbecoming--a theory that was fine in the abstract, but in the application had to deal with human nature. The names of the Leavenworth men themselves, holding the fates of division generals in their hands, were unknown to the public and to the mass of the army. Not reports in the press, glorifying a unit or its commander, but the military judgment of superiors was to form the criterion of praise. Never, indeed, had such power come to a group of men as to the graduates of that sequestered school in the wheat fields of Kansas, in charge of two million men. It was interesting to watch how rapidly some of them grew under responsibility, how used they became to accepting power as a matter of course; and equally interesting how others remained scholars of Leavenworth, their vision still shut within its walls.

They directed policy to keep up morale. Their propaganda never forgot the army; and finally included, to my regret, that of hate and of atrocities accepted on hearsay. The Stars and Stripes, the A. E. F. newspaper, brought to France all the headlines, the snappy paragraphs, the cartoons, the slang, which knit California to Maine, to arouse our enthusiasm for the war. Our communiqués, much studied and revised, had facility in concealment in place of outright prevarication, which was the prevailing fashion to keep up the spirits of the public behind the army by assurances that it was the enemy who was making the mistakes and suffering the heavier casualties. Fashions in uniform received much attention, too, from those with that inclination of mind. The overseas cap, without a visor to keep sun or rain out of the eyes, was none the less distinctive. We might have designed a better one the day we started troops to Europe, if our staff at home had had information about European climatic conditions; but the number of things in which we might have shown prevision are too numerous to mention. They do not count now; for the war was won. The Allied communiqués were right. Our victory proves that the enemy made all the mistakes.

Considering the many regulars used in organization and instruction in France, the number of regular officers who served at the front must be, if exception is made of the youngsters from West Point and the provisional regular officers, relatively small. Reacting to a "million men rising to arms in their shirt-sleeves," and to the popular conception of leadership as an officer rushing at the head of his men in a charge, Leavenworth held strictly to the idea of the chessboard system, which kept commanders, including regimental, in touch with their communications, instead of leading charges, the better to direct the tactical movements of their units. In the National Guard and National Army, the majority of the majors as well as the captains and lieutenants were from civil life; so, too, were the captains and lieutenants in the regular divisions, always excepting the regular officers, who did not average one out of six in the average regular battalion.

No army staff was more given to the policy of alternating between line and staff than ours. Every officer on the staff felt that he had a right to lead a regiment or brigade before the war was over. Transfers were frequent. The result was gratifying to individual ambition. A line officer who had just learned field command took the place of a staff officer who was just becoming expert in his branch of staff work. The newcomer had to start in learning fundamentals when his predecessor had been under a strain to keep up with the rapid developments; but how could you deny Tom, who was once your lieutenant in the Philippines, his desire, after three months' confinement, to be "in it" for a while at the front? When he showed peculiar fitness for office work, the British and French would have kept him in an office. He had his daily exercise, and his periods of leave when he might recuperate from the mental strain, which was all the worse for a man whose heart was with the troops. The Germans, least of all inclined to consider the personal equation, had interchangeable corps staffs. When one became stale, it went into rest in the same manner as a division of infantry, while a fresh staff took its place. Their system was the same as having two office forces, interchanging at intervals, in a business where the offices were open night and day. We had not enough officers to allow holidays. All must serve double the usual office hours in any concern, Sundays included--work as long as there was work to do, snatching intervals of sleep. In this the Leavenworth men, I repeat, set all an industrious example. Their greatest fault first and last was lack of psychologic touch with the people of their country. They were too remote from the troops. "But you forget the men," as the C.-in-C. used to say to the chess-players.

No staff can ever be popular with the line; and no line can ever satisfy the staff which works out its plans of attack on paper. The staff serves at a headquarters, and the line in the open under fire. The difference of the human equation is that between security and comfort, and death and hardship, which no philosophy can bridge. A staff officer who appeared at the front always looked conspicuously neat and conspicuously wise, as exotic as a man in a morning coat on a cowman's ranch. The line officer in earth-stained uniform, lean from his effort, eyes glistening with the fever of battle dangers shared with his men, as he entered a staff room to report was equally exotic in his surroundings, while he had a personal dignity whose chivalrous appeal no one could resist.

Yet someone must do staff work. Some directing minds must arrange for the movement of the troops and their transport according to a system, and assure the presence of supplies and ammunition; someone must sit near the centering nerves of wire and wireless and telephone and messengers, and maneuver the units in battle. The more comfortable they were, the better they did their work, inasmuch as there was no reason for their sleeping on the ground when they could have shelter.

Everyone familiar with the statics of war on the Western Front knew that you might have a good lunch at a division or corps headquarters, and two or three hours later you might be floundering in the mud, gas mask on, under bombardment. If you spent a day in the trenches, your feelings became those of the men who were there, you knew the nonsense that was written for public consumption in order to keep the public stalwart for the war, and you held visitors and staff officers who came sight-seeing in the kind of humorous contempt that those who "busted bronchos" held the tenderfoot in the days when realities in the wild west resembled the moving-picture shows of contemporary times. The officer relieved from staff duty for the front was subject to the same influence. He was not long in command of troops before he began abusing the staff for its preposterous orders, while the line officer assigned to the staff was soon talking about the incapability of the line to carry out his directions.

Gradually slipping the round pegs into round holes and the square pegs into square holes, floundering and stumbling, but keeping on, the process of organization continued, while the resolute will of the Commander-in-Chief laid down the lines of policy. For him to give an order, as I have said, did not mean that it would be carried out. He himself was the victim of the system: one man dependent upon others for the execution of his plans, and largely dependent too upon inspections by others for reports of progress. His adjutants could form chains of influence of which he was unconscious. "Insubordination" is the most glaring of military offenses, next to timidity under fire. It cannot be openly practised; but within the bounds of any closed society the effects of insubordination can be gained. To trace responsibility in time of action is laborious through channels where officers familiar with the craft of "passing the buck" may spin red tape endlessly, though on other occasions they cut it with facility. Yet the phrase, "the C.-in-C. wants it," was the shibboleth of power. In war a democracy is right to confer autocracy. This means efficiency in concentration according as the character of its people is sound and efficient. The C.-in-C. and all progressive officers had to fight the influences inherent in autocracy, which eventually make permanent autocracy effete through formality and intrigue.

The leaven was working; we were passing through the inevitable evolution which had been foreseen. The officers who had come through the schools and training camps, watchful if silent, had learned their fundamentals thoroughly and up to date, without having to unlearn pre-war teachings. They were finding, as the Canadians and Australians found, that, once on the inside, the art of making war was not such a profound technical secret as they had thought. They were now able to judge their seniors by professional as well as human standards. Regulars, of the type who felt their feet slipping, were naturally tenacious in keeping up the mystery, which was the capital of the inefficient. Regulars who were sure of themselves--having learned more of war in six months than in all their service--gladdened at the prospect of the fulfillment of their dream of a great army, which was equal to any in the world. They felt the fewness of their numbers on the top of this tidal wave of the nation's manhood in arms, which they must ride. An army has its public opinion, that of the mass of officers and men. Great leaders realize that this is supreme. Moltke courted it no less than Napoleon; Hindenburg sought to hold it, and lost it. The American army was becoming the country's army--the country as a whole trained to arms. The youth and the brains of the country making war its business had too large resources in leadership, once it had learned the technique of leadership, to submit to class rule. Your old regular sergeant, your old regular colonel must yield to the survival of the fittest in the competition of the millions. At the end of the Meuse-Argonne battle, excluding at the most twenty per cent of the regulars of sufficient rank for battalion and regimental command, I should say that there were five officers from civil life who were better than any regular in leading a battalion, and two or three better than any regular in leading a regiment. With the reservists I include the National Guard officers, though they had had military experience before the war. Arms was not their regular calling; but they were to prove that they were not amateurs. Our plans, as I have said, until the late summer all looked forward to a spring campaign. In the winter that preceded it there would have been many heartbreaks among the regulars; for the evolution no longer held in check would have had its fruition. The tidal wave would have broken through the barriers; we should have had many colonels and brigadiers from among the young officers from the training camps and the National Guard.

Called to the Meuse-Argonne battle, without adequate preparation or equipment, our organization imperfect, remarkable as it was considering the circumstances, the burden of the leadership which meant success, as the account already shows, was with the officers from civil life. They led the combat units against the machine-gun nests. Did promotion matter for the moment to that sergeant who took over the platoon when his lieutenant was mashed by a shell or received a machine-gun bullet in the heart? Did it matter to the second lieutenant who was the only commissioned officer left to lead a company? To the boy captain, who had fought his way up from the ranks, or had not finished his college course before he went to a training-camp, as undaunted he took charge of a battalion and continued the attack? Staffs, sitting beside the telephones, waited on their reports. Did promotion matter to the men? I am weary of writing of staff and officers, who must have their part in the narrative. The men! We have heard much of them. We shall hear more. They won the battle--a soldier's battle. They saved generals and staff. It is their part which sent an old observer of wars home in pride and gratitude.

XXVII

AMERICAN MANHOOD

Visualizing "over there"--Camping out in France--Unimportance of the leaders--Adopting "Jake"--America finding maturity--Playing the game--The coating of propaganda.

If one by one all the sounds at the front from the thunders of the artillery to the rumble of the columns of motor-trucks were to pass from my recollection, the last to go would be that of the rasping beat of the infantry's hobnails upon the roads in the long stretches of the night, whether in the vigor of a rested division, in rhythmic step going forward into line, or of an exhausted division in dragging steps coming out of line. It was mechanical and yet infinitely human, this throbbing of the pulse of a country's man-power.

Whether or not the draft boards were always impartial, whether or not favoritism provided safe berths for certain sons, I know that the fathers or friends who kept a young man of fighting age out of uniform or away from France did him an ill turn. He had missed something which those who went to training camps or to France were to gain: something not to be judged in terms of medals or bank balances.

When the men returned from overseas, people wondered at their inarticulateness over their experiences. Subscribing to Liberty Loans and War Savings Stamps, eating war bread, making innumerable sacrifices, relatives and friends had been living in their habitual world, traversing the same streets or fields in their daily work, and meeting the same people,--and sleeping in their accustomed beds. The war news that they had read came through the censorship, speaking in the assuring voice of propaganda, which had men cheering and singing in battle. Their sons and brothers had been in another world, whose wonders, agony, and drudgery had become the routine of existence in the face of death, which was also routine. They had seen the realities of war behind the curtain, which had offered the pictures of war as it was designed to be seen by the public. There was so much to say that they found themselves saying nothing to auditors who did not know that the Meuse-Argonne was a greater battle than Château-Thierry, or that the S. O. S. was the Services of Supply, or the difference between rolling kitchens and the ammunition train. Some finally worked up a story which was the kind that friends liked to hear. Only when they had their American Legion gatherings would they be able to find a common ground where all their fundamental references would be understood.

Much was written about the democratic results of millionaire and bootblack, farmer's son and son of the tenements, day laborer and cotton-wool youth, fastidious about his cravats, mixing together in the ranks. At the training camps our soldiers were on the background of home, and they were not facing death together. They knew their own country by railroad journeys and by living with men from different States; but some observers think that one does not really know his own country until he has seen other countries. The training camp had become a kind of home. Its discipline was modest beside that of France; there were no hardships except the hard drill and routine. In France our soldier had no home. He was always changing his boarding place, though never his task as a fighting man.

He did not see France as the tourist saw it, from a car spinning past finished old landscapes, between avenues of trees along roads that linked together red-tile-roofed villages, while his chauffeur asked him, after he had had a good dinner at an inn, at what time he wanted his car in the morning. He marched these roads under his pack, often all night long, while he was under orders not to strike a match to light a cigarette. He was drenched with winter rain when he was conducted to a barn door and told to crawl up into the hayloft, or conducted to a house door where he stretched himself on the floor in a room that had no heat.