Part 12

When war was declared the Regular Army and the National Guard already had, of course, their complements of experienced cooks and bakers, though in wholly insufficient numbers, but the huge National Army had nothing of the sort. One of the earliest and most pressing problems of the Quartermaster Corps, therefore, was to train sufficient numbers of men for this work, which it did by expanding the fourteen Cooks’ and Bakers’ Schools of the regular establishment to twenty and by starting new schools at the various National Army cantonments. Before these schools could be successfully operated, however, it was necessary to obtain an adequate staff of instructors, who themselves had to be trained, the plan being to give at least one officer in each regiment or separate battalion sufficient training to make him competent to conduct a school for cooks and bakers in his own organization. As a result of this system of culinary education, within a year after the first American troops set foot in France the Quartermaster Corps had trained 1,200 instructors in cooking, 16,000 mess sergeants, and 50,000 cooks, in addition to which there were 40,000 others who, though they had not received sufficient training to give them a cook’s rating, were nevertheless entirely competent to prepare food. From the soldiers thus trained there were organized about seven-score Bakery Companies, more than half of which saw service overseas. Now that these hundred-odd thousand cooks and bakers have returned to civil life, there is reason to hope that there will be manifested a striking improvement in the quality of the national cooking. It may be that, as a result of this war-enforced training, we will be able to look forward to taking a meal in a railway restaurant or in a small-town hotel without dread and, perhaps, even with pleasure.

The food for the troops in cantonments, camps, and rest billets was, of course, prepared in permanent camp-kitchens, which usually possessed all the facilities and sometimes a far greater serving capacity than the kitchens of great hotels. As the front was approached, however, the problem of preparing food became increasingly difficult, particularly in the areas which were being systematically harassed by the enemy’s artillery and airplanes. To have erected kitchens in such areas would have been to invite their destruction. In order to provide hot food for soldiers occupying these exposed positions, as well as for troops on the march, recourse was had to rolling kitchens—_les cuisines roulantes_, as the French called them. Each kitchen, which was drawn either by a mule-team or by a tractor, consisted of a stove and limber. The stove contained a bake-oven and three kettles, thus permitting of four kinds of food being prepared simultaneously. The limber, which was a two-wheeled cart to which the kitchen was attached, was fitted with four bread-boxes which could also be used for water, a cook’s chest containing a set of culinary utensils which would make a housewife envious, four kettles, and four fireless cookers. The fireless cooker was, I think, first used for military purposes on the Italian Front; at least that was where I first saw it. It was an invaluable contrivance, as it permitted food to be prepared many hours in advance in the back areas and yet served piping hot to the men on the firing-line.

For use under heavy fire or other conditions which made it impossible to serve the men with hot food from the rolling kitchens, the trench ration, consisting of tinned meat, hard bread, and soluble coffee, together with salt and sugar, was designed. The food was packed in hermetically sealed, gas-proof, camouflaged iron containers, each of which held twenty-five rations, each ration in turn consisting of enough food to maintain a soldier for one day, sustaining his full strength and vigor. The food used in the trench ration was the very best that money could buy. Indeed, it became a matter of pride with the employees of the great plants where the trench rations were prepared to use exceptional care in selecting the ingredients for them, for it was realized what good food meant to the tired and mud-caked men who were holding the Frontier of Freedom. The office force of one of the big packing-houses learned from a shipping-clerk that the interstices between the tins in the packing-cases were being filled with excelsior, so they took up a collection, to which every one from president to office-boy contributed, and used the money to fill those interstices with tobacco and cigarettes. When the officers of the Subsistence Division heard of this they thought so well of the idea that orders were issued that the empty space in all trench-ration containers should be filled with tobacco thereafter. Scores of such incidents, trivial enough in themselves, showed how the hearts and thoughts of the nation were with the boys who were fighting overseas.

Every American soldier when he went into action carried in the upper left-hand pocket of his blouse a small flat tin—no larger than the pocket Bible which the sob-story writers always place in that same pocket to stop the fatal bullet—bearing on its lid the legend: “U. S. Army Emergency Ration. Not to be opened except by order of an officer, or in extremity.” This was the American equivalent of the “starvation ration” of the European armies. To it many a man caught in a shell-hole between the lines or lost in the Forest of the Argonne owed his life. Its contents represented the results of many experiments and much experience and the combined suggestions of scientists, food experts, and soldiers. The emergency ration consists of three rather dubious-looking cakes of prepared beef combined with a bread compound made of ground cooked wheat, weighing three ounces each, three ounces of chocolate, three-quarters of an ounce of fine salt, and a dram of black pepper. There are almost as many ways of preparing the ration as there are of preparing an egg. The bread-and-meat cakes can be eaten dry—provided one is sufficiently near starvation. When boiled in three pints of water they make a palatable soup, and when the water was obtained, as was frequently the case, from shell-holes and ditches, the pepper and salt served to disguise the muddy flavor. Where water was scarce, only a pint of it was needed to transform the cake into a sort of porridge, something like cornmeal mush, which could be eaten hot or cold or which could be sliced and fried, circumstances and the Germans permitting. The chocolate could be made into a drink by dissolving it in hot water, or it could be eaten as candy.

Candy, by the way, formed one of the most acceptable items of the American soldier’s ration, half a pound being issued to each man every ten days. In December, 1918, the Subsistence Division shipped to the A. E. F. more than 10,000,000 pounds of candy—the largest exportation of its kind on record. Don’t get the idea that this was “grocer’s candy”—the kind that comes in wooden buckets. It was nothing of the sort. No society girl, sitting in a box at a matinée, munched better chocolates than the American soldier. Moreover, the same chocolates which sold for a dollar a pound in the candy-stores of America could be bought for forty-eight cents a pound in the canteens of the A. E. F. Stick-candy and lemon-drops which ordinarily sold for seventy cents a pound at home were sold to the soldiers for twenty-eight cents. I say _sold_, for the pound and a half of candy which was a part of every soldier’s ration rarely satisfied the sweet tooth of the doughboy. Though everything in the confectionery line from peppermints to caramels was provided, lemon-drops were the soldier’s favorite. They were to the Yankee doughboy what gum-drops were to Doctor Cook’s Esquimaux. They devoured them at the rate of a hundred tons a month! At the beginning of the war it was found that most of the lemon-drops manufactured for the commercial market, being made of glucose and inferior or imitation fruit flavors, were not of good enough quality for the soldiers. So lemon-drops of the most expensive kind—the kind that they sell in the smart shops on Fifth Avenue and Tremont Street and Michigan Boulevard—were adopted as a standard, the recipes for making them being distributed to a number of candy manufacturers. Now the lemon-drops for the army are made from pure granulated sugar and flavored with an emulsion made from the rind of the lemon. The sourer they are the better, say the soldiers. So great became the demand for candy—which, by the way, is of great value in rebuilding wasted tissues—that the Chief Quartermaster of the A. E. F. took over a number of French candy factories and, using American sugar, manufactured huge quantities of candy for our troops in France.

Tobacco was a recognized item in the ration of the A. E. F., statistics showing that 95 per cent of the men used it in one form or another—which serves to show how the soldier vote would go should the reformers ever attempt to saddle the Constitution with an antitobacco amendment. To men enduring great physical hardships, obliged to live without the comforts and frequently without the necessities of life, and always under the terrific strain imposed by war, tobacco fills a need which nothing else can satisfy. In view of this, it was decided to adopt the practice of our allies and allow each soldier a certain amount of tobacco a day, the ration being four cigarettes, four ounces of chewing-tobacco, or four ounces of smoking-tobacco, and one hundred papers. Though cigars were not included in the army ration, they could be purchased at the Quartermaster stores in France at astonishingly low prices. Havana cigars were sold at the same price which the government paid for them in Cuba, there being no tax or import duty, no charge for transportation, and no middleman’s profit. Smokers of cigars will appreciate how cheap they were when I mention that at the commissaries in France I paid eighteen cents apiece for Corona Coronas. In order to provide “smokes” for the army, the entire stocks of several of the largest cigarette and tobacco manufacturers were commandeered—a fact with which they quickly acquainted the public in their advertising. A single purchase consisted of 3,000,000,000 cigarettes—enough to provide two “fags” for approximately every human being on the globe. The difference between the old army and the new was strikingly illustrated by the difference in their choice of tobacco. The soldier of the old army was most strongly addicted to the use of that unlovely article known as “plug”—thereby giving steady employment to the spittoon-makers. The men of our new armies, however, expressed an overwhelming preference for the cigarette. Thus does tobacco gauge the progress of civilization!

A close third to tobacco and candy in the affections of the soldiers was chewing-gum. Three and a half million packages of the shop-girl’s delight were sent overseas during the month of January alone. Chewing-gum has come, indeed, to be regarded as little short of a necessity for the soldier, both because of its value as a substitute for water—it is estimated that 250 pounds of chewing-gum will save 100 gallons of water when it is needed most—and because it is a heat and energy producer. During intensive drilling, practice firing, and on marches the more gum a man chews the less water he drinks—obviously a highly important consideration, for at the front water is usually scarce and difficult to obtain. Curiously enough, the consumption of gum is heavier in winter than in summer, this doubtless being due, as I have already mentioned, to the fact that it is a heat-producer. It took the British, oddly enough, to devise a novel and interesting use for chewing-gum which was later adopted by certain of our own commanders. Just before an attack, when the assaulting battalions were formed up on the tapes waiting for the word which would send them over the top, the enemy’s scouts, prowling in No Man’s Land, frequently detected the presence of the waiting troops by their subdued chorus of coughing. A British officer who had been in the United States evolved the idea of stopping these betraying coughs by giving every man a stick of chewing-gum. So Messrs. Wrigley, Beeman, White, and Adams may congratulate themselves on having “done their bit” toward walloping the Hun.

My mention of a chorus of coughs naturally suggests the subject of music, which was another of the multitudinous activities of the Quartermaster Corps. By this I do not mean to imply that the “Q. M.” furnished the army with bands, for it did not, but it did supply the bands of the army with instruments and music. Music, you must understand, was one of the most important factors in the maintenance of that intangible something called morale. It was a curious characteristic of the American psychology that when a homesick soldier heard a band playing “Home, Sweet Home,” or “When You Come Back,” or “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” it did not increase his homesickness. It had, instead, precisely the opposite effect: it cheered him up! Recognizing this, the military authorities saw to it that bands were stationed in every town and hamlet in France where any considerable body of troops was billeted. By the last summer of the war we had in France nearly 400 bands, to say nothing of the musical organizations improvised by the various units. As a result, the French inhabitants of the zones in which our armies were operating became as familiar with “Over There,” “Good Morning, Mr. Zip-zip-zip,” and particularly with “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning,” which was the soldier’s favorite because it so satisfyingly expressed his feelings, as they were with the “Marseillaise.” The American Army was, indeed, as noticeable for its musical proclivities as the French Army was for its total absence of them. Ours was a whistling, singing army, if ever there was one, though for some reason it seemed to delight in plaintive, melancholy tunes. Many and many a time I have heard a column coming down a road in the darkness, the softly whistled chorus of “The Long, Long Trail” rising above the clink of accoutrements and the _slog-slog-slog_ of marching feet.

In the early summer of 1918 the Quartermaster-General received a cable from General Pershing requesting that $50,000 worth of sheet-music for the bands of the A. E. F. be shipped without delay. As the chief of the purchasing unit, to whom the order was turned over, did not feel qualified to select the music for some 3,000,000 of his fighting countrymen, he delegated the task to a committee consisting of Lieutenant R. C. Deming, bandmaster at Camp Meigs, Mr. Ward Stephens, the noted organist and authority on music, and Irving Berlin, the most famous composer of popular music in America, who was at that time a sergeant in the Coast Guard but who was borrowed from that organization by the Quartermaster Corps. The selection and classification of this great mass of music—the largest single order of its kind ever given—necessitated the committee working almost night and day for weeks, it being enormously assisted in its task by the enthusiastic co-operation of the various music printers and publishers, both of these trades making great financial sacrifices in order to promote the pleasure and inspiration of the boys overseas.

Have you ever gone into one of those huge emporiums which make a specialty of supplying equipment for sportsmen, to purchase an outfit preparatory to a fishing-trip in Canada or a shooting expedition in the Rockies? If so, you will remember how much time and thought you devoted to comparing the merits of the various types of clothing and other equipment which you were shown. It probably took you the better part of an hour to decide whether you would be more comfortable wearing Canadian shoepacks or hobnailed ankle-boots. You had a long discussion with the salesman as to the relative merits of whipcord, Harris tweed, and gabardine. Even making the choice between a slouch hat and a cloth cap presented a perplexing problem. But this was only the beginning, for you had to decide on a rain-coat, a tent, a cot, blankets, pillows, cartridge-belts, fly-books, cooking utensils, and heaven knows what besides. And after you had made your final decision you were probably far from being satisfied with what you had selected. Yet this outfit, over which you had spent so much thought, was, probably, to be used only during a brief summer’s vacation. Picture, then, the task faced by the Quartermaster Corps when it was suddenly called upon to provide complete equipment for some 4,000,000 men for an indefinite period. At first thought it might seem easy enough to purchase clothing for soldiers—a coat, a pair of breeches, an overcoat, a hat, and a pair of shoes for each man—until you are reminded that no one of these simple articles of uniform was standard for civilian use, either in material, pattern, or color. Everything had to be made to order. Everything had, moreover, to be better made than if it were intended for civilian use, for the men for whom these articles were intended were not going out to shoot elk or catch trout; they were going to a country 3,000 miles away for the purpose of killing Germans, and no one could say how long the business would take them. It was a Titanic task, this equipping of the men who took up arms against Germany. The organization which handled the buying end of it was roughly as follows: in Washington the Clothing and Equipage Division of the Office of the Director of Purchase, where all the activities were centralized; in Philadelphia a purchasing office, which was a branch of the great Quartermaster Depot in that city, and in New York a procurement office which kept constantly in touch with the raw-material markets of the world.

The innumerable special-service units which were constantly being added to the rapidly expanding army required all sorts of strange, new equipment and special clothing. The cooks and bakers had to have cotton aprons and the blacksmiths leather ones. The linemen of the telegraph battalions had to have special gloves. Hoods were needed for the motorcycle despatch-riders, overalls for the men of the stevedore battalions, helmets for the camp firemen, garments of fur and leather for the flying-men. The prisoners began to come streaming in and for them had to be designed clothing which would insure their speedy recognition and recapture in case they attempted to escape. The convalescents at the hospitals needed special suits. The expeditionary troops sent to Siberia and the Murman Coast required outfits which would keep them warm through the long arctic winters. And uniforms had to be provided for the army’s women nurses. Besides this vast quantity of clothing there were tents to be provided, cots, blankets, towels, shaving outfits, brown-canvas bags for filtering water, and the blue-denim bags in which the soldiers kept their personal belongings. These things were not in existence anywhere; they had to be made from the outset. To produce them in the enormous quantities required, not only took the maximum output of all the factories and mills already engaged in the manufacture of such articles, but hundreds of other plants had to change over their machinery in order to meet the army’s needs, and the Quartermaster Corps had to send experts to give instruction at these plants in the new manufacturing processes and methods. Nor was it enough for the Quartermaster Corps to thus become itself a manufacturer of clothing and equipment. It had to manufacture the cloth used in the clothing, and, going still further, it had to provide the raw cotton and wool used in making the cloth, as well as the hides for the leather used in the shoes. And it had to produce this staggering volume of equipment quickly, for the Germans would not wait. It was compelled, moreover, to make its purchases in a market glutted with orders from the Allied governments and from the domestic trade. And, to increase the difficulties under which the corps labored, it had to buy on credit, and to do so in the face of cash competition, for Congress did not make sufficient funds available until twelve weeks after the declaration of war. Nevertheless, the whole enormous undertaking was successfully carried through, and, save in rare instances, the soldiers never lacked for clothing or other Q. M. supplies.

Wool was the most important of the raw products to be procured, since it entered into the composition of more items than any other material. Soon after the declaration of war the Quartermaster Department estimated that about 100,000,000 pounds of scoured wool would be required to meet the initial demands of the army. An inventory of all wool supplies, including wool ordered from abroad as well as the stocks on hand in this country, revealed the startling fact that there was in sight only about 35,000,000 pounds—barely more than a third of the amount needed. To insure the procurement of this wool and to head off speculation in domestic wool prices, for the American sheep were then about to be sheared, the government itself, in July, 1917, entered the wool business. It immediately optioned practically all the wool in the hands of all the dealers in the United States; it fixed a price for the domestic supply for the ensuing year; it arranged to procure the entire 1917 clip if needed; it took over all wool under import licenses, and it sent its buyers to South America and the other foreign markets. There was a wool administrator to buy wool, a wool-purchasing quartermaster to pay for it, and a wool distributor to sell it to the government contractors. Within a year the Clothing and Equipage Division had absorbed the entire wool trade of the United States. In fact, there was no wool market again and no public sale of wool until after the signing of the Armistice.

The largest of the foreign markets which was available from the standpoint of accessibility was the Argentine. Australia and New Zealand were, of course, enormous markets, but the shortage of tonnage made it impossible to spare many bottoms for the long voyage to the antipodes. As a result of the shipping situation, when the fighting ceased there was an appalling shortage of wool everywhere in the world except in Australia and New Zealand. America was short of wool, there was a little in England, France had practically none, and in Germany and Austria there was none at all. But Australia and New Zealand had _a billion pounds_—and no ships.

At first the better grades of wool appeared to be adequate to meet the demands of the army, but later changes were made in the specifications for various cloths—uniform cloth being increased from 16 to 20 ounces, overcoating from 30 to 32 ounces, shirting flannel from 8½ to 9½ ounces, and blankets from 3 to 4 pounds—which made it necessary to utilize grades of wool which previously had been used only in coarse materials, such as carpet. In order to obtain the necessary weight and warmth, the lower grades of wool were blended with the higher grades, though this frequently entailed a sacrifice of fineness of texture and appearance. This explains why many of the uniforms worn by our returning soldiers looked rough and uneven in color. But the necessary cloth was provided and it was warm and it wore well. The trouble was that it was not provided soon enough. During the autumn of 1917 and the succeeding winter thousands of our soldiers, both in France and in the camps at home, did not have sufficient clothing to keep them dry or warm. Hundreds of American soldiers went into action wearing British uniforms—even to the buttons bearing the royal cipher and crown!