Chapter III: General Rule (2)

In addition to the above, the following outside plants were not only built (or were in process of construction at the date of the Armistice) but were operated as well by the government. Their location at points other than Edgewood was decided upon partly because of the fact that it was thought wise to have at least two plants for the manufacture of each important material located at different places, since an accident at one would in no way interfere with production at the other. These government-owned establishments were:

Edgewood Arsenal, Stamford (Conn.) Plant: Manufacture of
chlorpicrin.

Edgewood Arsenal, Hastings (N. Y.) Plant: Manufacture of
mustard-gas.

Edgewood Arsenal, Kingsport (Tenn.) Plant: Manufacture of
brombenzyl cyanide.

Edgewood Arsenal, Croyland (Pa.) Plant: Manufacture of
diphenychlorarsine.

In addition to these nine great outlying plants, with their thousands of workmen, there was the splendidly equipped Research Department at American University, on the outskirts of Washington; the Experimental Field and Proving-Ground near Lakehurst, New Jersey; and the Army Gas Schools at Camp Kendrick, New Jersey, and Camp A. A. Humphreys, Virginia.

The tract of land near Lakehurst taken over for experimental purposes was 5 miles long and 4 wide and had an area of nearly 14,000 acres. As the nearest habitation was 2½ miles away no difficulty was experienced in conducting the highly important experiments with the necessary secrecy. The camp included quarters for 50 officers and barracks for 800 men, a completely equipped chemical laboratory, the staff of which included expert glass-blowers who could make every kind of apparatus required, a meteorological station, commanded by a former official of the Government Weather Bureau, equipped with the latest apparatus necessary for making and recording meteorological observations, a mechanical shop containing lathes, drills, and tools for making repairs of every description, an ice-making plant, a post hospital, a goat hospital, a dog hospital, a dog kitchen, and enclosures for animals which had to be kept under observation for long periods. In order to determine the effects of the various gases on living subjects a large stock of animals—goats, dogs, cats, rats, mice, guinea-pigs, and monkeys—had to be kept constantly on hand. These animals were not obtainable in the necessary numbers without considerable difficulty, it being necessary, on one occasion, to send an officer to Mexico to purchase 1,500 Angora goats, experiments having shown that the goat possesses powers of resistance to gas which more nearly approximate those of a human being than does any other common animal. Representatives of these various animal types were placed in trenches modelled after those on the Western Front and bombarded with different forms of gas-shell, those which remained alive being subjected to close observation, sometimes for many days, by the experts of the Pathological and Physiological Department. A human note enters into this grim business of preparing for war in the fact that those animals, particularly the dogs, which survived such an experiment were not subjected to it again. I imagine, however, that the officials of the S. P. C. A. would have entered a vigorous protest had they been permitted to lift the veil of secrecy which for many months enveloped the operations of the Chemical Warfare Service at Lakehurst.

The new methods and devices in gas warfare which were developed by the great corps of scientists and laboratory experts attached to the American University Experiment Station were given practical trials at Lakehurst, where they were tested under conditions approximating as nearly as possible those of actual warfare. Here experiments were carried out to determine the value of gas-shells bursting in the air instead of by impact, the value of mixing toxic or lachrymatory gas with shrapnel, the value of 14-inch naval shell filled with a combination of high explosive and toxic substance, and the value of clouds of poison-smoke. Had the war continued, I imagine that the results of some of these experiments would have given the Germans the surprise of their lives.

Though the gas production of Edgewood Arsenal from August to November, 1918, increased from 450 to 675 tons a week, and though the filling-plant had a weekly capacity of nearly 1,000 tons, less than 100 tons of gas was actually filled into shell weekly. This unfortunate state of affairs was due to the failure of the Ordnance Department to supply enough, or nearly enough, shell and boosters to keep pace with the production of gas. In other words, there was far more gas than there were shell to put it in, and far more shell than there were boosters for them. During the early summer of 1918, large quantities of this surplus gas were shipped overseas and there loaded into shell, but later instructions were received to stop all shipments in bulk except a limited amount of chlorine. From that time on, the production of gas was limited by the number of shell and booster available, because it is impossible to store toxic-gases in any large quantities. In fact, at all times after the manufacture of poison-gases began in the United States, the supply of such materials was not only in excess of the supply of shell and booster, but the gas-plants could not be operated to their full capacity because there was no way of utilizing the maximum output.

Do you remember how often, during the months immediately following our entrance into the great conflict, one heard the assertion made that American inventive genius would eventually produce a weapon so dreadful, so potent, that it would end the war because flesh and blood would be unable to withstand it? It was asserted, with a wealth of circumstantial detail, that Mr. Edison had been locked up for weeks in his New Jersey laboratory perfecting a device for the wholesale slaughter of the Huns which would startle the world. But, as the war continued on its bloody course, the public faith in inventors gradually waned and the American people settled down to a realization that victory could be achieved only by man-power, munitions, and food. Yet the persons who talked so glibly of some startling discovery which would paralyze the efforts of the enemy and abruptly end the war little realized how near to the truth their imaginations led them—_for the government actually had in its possession the secret of a weapon so terrible that, had it been used, it would probably have ended the war_.

The story of how the secret came into the possession of the government is a curious one. Years ago a student of chemistry, then living in a foreign country, while carrying on a series of laboratory experiments, stumbled upon a chemical combination which almost cost him his life. It was a compound never before made, or, at least, never recorded. Later the chemist came to the United States, but it was not until he read of the use of toxic-gases by the Germans that he recalled his all but fatal experiment of many years before. He kept silence, however, until America’s entry into the war, when he imparted his formula to the government. The chemist’s assertions of what his compound could accomplish were at first received with considerable scepticism, but this scepticism abruptly disappeared when the reports from the Research Division of the Chemical Warfare Service at American University, where the formula was developed, were received. So appalling was its nature, indeed, that the War Department at first refused to permit the use of the weapon thus strangely placed in its hand on the ground that the nation using it would be guilty of inhumanity. But in July, 1918, following the wholesale use of mustard-gas against our troops by the Germans, the scruples of those in power disappeared and orders were given that quantity production of the new toxic material should immediately be begun.

This super-gas, as it has been termed, was known to the Chemical Warfare Service as G-34, though it was more commonly referred to as methyl, a name which was given it because it in no way suggested the true character of this newest and deadliest of poisons. It has also been dubbed “Lewisite” because it was developed from the original formula to a stage which made it practicable for military use by Professor W. Lee Lewis, chief of the Defense Department of the Research Division of the Chemical Warfare Service. Methyl, or Lewisite, is an oily, amber-colored liquid, with an odor which vaguely suggests that of the geranium. It is somewhat more volatile than mustard-gas, being comparable in that respect to benzol. Instead of being inoffensive at first contact, like mustard, it starts an acute pain which quickly becomes unendurable. A single drop spilled on the hand will penetrate to the blood, attacking first the kidneys, then the heart and lungs. It hardens the cell-tissues of the lungs and causes simultaneously strangulation and a weakening of the heart which result in speedy and violent death. If taken into the lungs by inhalation in any perceptible quantity it kills almost instantly, the victim dying in terrible agony. _It is estimated to be seventy-two times deadlier than mustard-gas._

The manufacture of methyl was carried on in an abandoned motor-car plant at Willoughby, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, the work being in charge of Colonel F. M. Dorsey, who, before the war, was a chemical engineer in the employ of the General Electric Company. Every step in the process of manufacture was enveloped in the most profound secrecy. Every workman who entered the stockade surrounding the plant did so under a voluntary agreement not to leave the eleven-acre space until the war was won, though this arrangement was later modified upon the men promising upon their honor not to divulge the nature of the product or even the existence of the plant. All mail was censored and even the use of the word Willoughby in correspondence was forbidden, letters for the officers and men connected with the plant being addressed to a lock-box in Cleveland. There was no recreation, the work was hard and danger was always present, the men working with their gas-masks constantly at the “alert” position. Though none of the masks designed for protection against chlorpicrin, phosgene, or mustard were of the slightest avail against methyl, the safety of the workers was ensured by specially designed masks and clothing. Had we used methyl against the Germans, however, it is extremely unlikely that they would have succeeded in devising a means of protection against it—at least in time to save themselves.

The methyl, as manufactured, was loaded into both shell and drums. The shell, of 155mm. calibre, contained about ten pounds of the liquid, which becomes a gas upon contact with the air; the drums, which held from 350 to 400 pounds each, were to be dropped from airplanes. It is estimated that half a hundred of these drums, judiciously distributed, would exterminate the entire population of Manhattan Island. When the Armistice was signed methyl was being produced at the rate of approximately ten tons a day and the plant at Willoughby was two months ahead of its schedule, orders having been given that 3,000 tons should be in France, ready for use, by March 1, 1919. It was well for Germany that she quit when she did. Had methyl been turned loose against the Huns, civilization would have had its revenge on the assassins of the _Lusitania_, on the fiends who ravaged France and raped Belgium.

Within forty-eight hours after the signing of the Armistice the work of dismantling the plant at Willoughby had begun, and ten weeks later its demolition was complete. A special train, running at night under heavy guard, carried the hundreds of tons of methyl which had already been produced, in iron containers, to Edgewood Arsenal, where it was transferred to a steamer, taken out to sea, and lowered into three miles of salt water. But the formulæ and processes for manufacture still exist, locked away in the great vaults of the War College in Washington, so, if the nation is ever again forced to take up arms, it has at hand the most terrible weapon ever devised for the purpose of wholesale slaughter.

Notwithstanding the fact that toxic-gases had been in almost constant use by the European belligerents for two years before the United States entered the conflict, the declaration of war found us totally unprepared to commence the manufacture of the gas-defense equipment with which every soldier going overseas must be provided. Such an article as a gas-mask had never been produced in this country, the sum total of American knowledge on the subject having been obtained from the masks brought back as souvenirs by war correspondents and displayed in shop-windows and from the pictures in the illustrated papers. Incredible as it may seem, in view of the enormously important rôle which gas was playing on the European battle-fields, only a single American army officer, Major L. P. Williamson of the Medical Corps, had studied the subject of gas defense, and he had done so on his own initiative. Thus it came about that within a few days after the declaration of war, the military authorities, confronted by the imperative necessity of providing our expeditionary forces with gas-defense equipment, were conducting a frantic search among the various scientific departments of the government to discover one possessing the necessary facilities for handling the problem. The Bureau of Chemistry did not have the personnel to carry on the work and the Department of Agriculture did not have the necessary apparatus, but the Bureau of Mines at Pittsburg possessed some experience in kindred problems arising from mine-rescue work, and it also had adequate facilities for handling the experimental work involved. It was, therefore, selected for the purpose. The research facilities at Pittsburg soon proved inadequate, however, and in the summer of 1917 there was taken over the American University Experiment Station, near Washington, where virtually all of the research work connected with the numerous branches of the Chemical Warfare Service was conducted. The Research Division, instead of being dismissed with passing mention, is deserving of a chapter to itself, the services which it performed in the development of gases, protective equipment, and manufacturing processes having been of enormous assistance in the prosecution of the war.

When, in May, 1917, the need arose for providing masks for the first contingent of the American Expeditionary Forces, the War Department appealed to the Bureau of Mines to provide 25,000 masks within three weeks. Emboldened by the valor of ignorance, the officials of the bureau jauntily undertook the task, making arrangements for the fabric to be produced by a rubber company at Akron, Ohio, and for the masks to be assembled at a factory in Brooklyn. Instead of producing 25,000 masks in three weeks, however, the best they could do was to produce 20,000 in two months. These were immediately shipped overseas. But the rubberized fabric of which they were made was easily penetrated by chlorpicrin vapor, therefore affording very little protection, and they were returned unused. “The only thing about them which is satisfactory,” General Pershing is said to have remarked, “is the strap around the neck.” But the experience thus gained opened the eyes of the authorities to the gravity of the problem, so that when, in July, 1917, the army itself took up the manufacture of gas-masks, it was with a more complete realization of the magnitude of the task by which it was confronted. One of the first steps taken by the War Department, upon assuming charge of mask production, was to give a colonel’s commission to Mr. Bradley Dewey, an officer of the American Can Company, and to place him in command of the Gas Defense Service, as it was then called, but which, upon the organization of the Chemical Warfare Service, became the Gas Defense Division. Thanks to the energy, resourcefulness, and business ability of Colonel Dewey, backed by the efficiency and enthusiasm of the great organization which he created, the American forces in France were protected against gas by masks which, as proved by actual field tests, _gave twenty times the protection afforded by those worn by the Germans_.

In addition to the mask, the man is wearing an anti-mustard gas suit, gloves, and boots. The horse is provided with boots and a gas mask.]

U. S. Navy Mask (obsolete).
U. S. Navy Mask.
U. S. C. E. Respirator.
U. S. R. F. H. Respirator.
U. S. H. T. Respirator.
U. S. H. T. Respirator.
U. S. Model 1919 Respirator.

British Black Veil Mask.
British P. H. Helmet.
British Box Respirator.
French M. 2 Mask.
French Tissot Art. Mask.
French A. R. S. Mask.

German Late-type Mask.
Russian Mask.
Italian Mask.
British Motor-Corps Mask.
U. S. Rear Area Emergency Respirator.
U. S. Connell Mask.]

It is essential that a mask, or respirator, to use its correct name, should remove all traces of gas or smoke from the air before it reaches the eyes, nose, or mouth of the wearer. The principal features of the mask of the “Box Respirator” type, as used by the American forces throughout the war were:

(_a_) A canister of metal containing both neutralizing and absorptive chemicals and a smoke filter. The air to be breathed passes in through an inlet check valve and through chemicals and smoke filter.

(_b_) A flexible rubber-hose through which the purified air passes from the canister to the face-piece.

(_c_) A face-piece, effectively covering the eyes, cheeks, lower forehead, nose, mouth, and chin, provided with eye-pieces permitting vision and a harness to hold the face-piece in place.

(_d_) An exhalation valve which affords easy discharge of exhaled air and at the same time instantly closes upon inspiration.

(_e_) A knapsack slung from the neck or shoulder, in which the mask and canister are carried.

In the box respirator type, the inhaled air, passing through the canister and hose, went directly into the mouth through a rubber mouth-piece, which in this manner offered protection to the lungs in the event of the face-piece being damaged or not fitting. The mask was also provided with a spring and rubber clamp which closed the nostrils and compelled the wearer to breathe entirely through the mouth.

While the box respirator was in process of manufacture, much thought and effort was devoted to developing a mask which would combine with its safety and good vision a greater measure of comfort, it being particularly desired to eliminate the nose-clip and the mouth-piece, which are the box respirator’s most uncomfortable features. The starting-point in these attempts was the French Tissot mask, several modifications of which were put into production. The best mask of this type was designed, curiously enough, by a New York corset manufacturer, Major Waldemar Kops, whose name was given to his invention, which is known as the K.T. or Kops-Tissot mask. One hundred and eighty-nine thousand of the K.T. masks, which were radically different and far more comfortable than the box respirator type, had been manufactured when the Armistice was signed. The total number of masks produced by the Gas Defense Division was more than three and a half million.

The mask-makers were confronted at an early period with the problem of finding a charcoal of sufficient density to absorb the toxic fumes, the wood-charcoal which was used in most of the French and British masks being very far from satisfactory. After considerable experimentation it was discovered that a charcoal having sufficient absorptivity could be produced from the shell of the cocoanut, whereupon officers were despatched to the Hawaiian Islands and the British West Indies to arrange for large shipments of cocoanut-shells to the United States. The supply thus obtained proved entirely inadequate, however, whereupon the Chemical Warfare Service issued an appeal to the American public to save the shells of Brazil nuts, hickory-nuts, and walnuts, the pits of peaches, prunes, apricots, and cherries, and the seeds of dates, the collection of the pits and shells being undertaken by the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts, and kindred organizations. Placards and receptacles were put in public places throughout the country and almost immediately fruit-pits began to pour in by the ton, every family making it a point of honor to save its pits “for the boys fighting overseas,” as they proudly put it. There were numberless cases of old ladies who sent in by mail a few peach-pits which they had conscientiously saved and which they had cleaned as carefully as though they were jewels. As it required 7 pounds of pits and shells to make the charcoal for a single mask, 3,500 tons were used in the million masks which we sent overseas.

The result of the appeal of the Gas Defense Division for nutshells and fruit-pits.]

Because it was realized that the slightest flaw or imperfection in a finished mask might well mean the death in agony of an American soldier, an extremely rigid system of inspection was devised. It was discovered, for example, that all thread holes must be filled with gelatine, in order to prevent the gas from being carried through by the thread; that wrinkles in the band around the face and head permitted gas to leak inside the face-piece; that the mouth-piece must be reinforced with bushings so that the soldier would not bite it in the excitement of a gas attack and thereby cut off his own breath. Only the most painstaking and conscientious women—usually those having husbands or sons at the front—were chosen for the work of final inspection, and, even after they had examined each mask in every detail it was again inspected over a bright light in a dark booth for small pinholes which might have escaped the ordinary visual inspection. And, in order to make the inspectors doubly careful, they were frequently required to go into the gas-chambers wearing masks chosen at random from those they themselves had passed. To obtain absolute results as to the protection afforded by a mask, however, breathing tests in a gas-chamber had to be employed. This testing was done by enlisted men of the Gas Defense Division, who spent many hours each day testing masks and canisters in the gas-chambers, sometimes working in a concentration of phosgene as high as 1 per cent. Without hope of glory or promotion, without the lure of decorations, these men day after day, month after month, risked their lives in order that their fellows at the front might have a better chance to live. Though they wore silver instead of gold chevrons, they are as deserving of thanks and admiration as the men who broke the Hindenburg line or battled in the Forest of the Argonne.

Though the earlier gas-masks were manufactured in Brooklyn, and later in Philadelphia, the operations of the division expanded so rapidly that by November, 1917, it became evident that it was no longer practicable for a commercial organization to carry on the manufacture of this new and vitally important article of equipment in the quantities demanded by the new army programme, and it was consequently deemed advisable to establish a government-owned and controlled organization. In pursuance of this policy, the work of mask manufacture was transferred in November to Long Island City, the plant expanding in seven months from a floor space of 157,000 square feet to 1,000,000 square feet, or 23 acres. When the Armistice was signed the Gas Defense Division had a personnel of 274 officers, 2,353 enlisted men, and 13,000 civilians. Much of the work was done by women, and, as a traitor could have worked irreparable damage by tampering with the masks, the employees were selected only after the closest investigation by the Military Intelligence Division of their antecedents and affiliations. From the very outset the officers in charge of mask production conducted a campaign for efficiency based on patriotism. The walls of the factory were hung with copies of a poster depicting a soldier dying from gas as the result of a defective mask; it bore the grim and suggestive title “The Last Inspection.” Lectures and motion-pictures were used to emphasize the horrors of death by gas. And everywhere were placards bearing the admonition: “Remember that _your_ carelessness may cost the life of _your_ husband, _your_ son, _your_ brother.”

* * * * *

It is not generally appreciated, I think, that gas warfare has tactics all its own. For example: In preparing for an infantry attack the Germans were accustomed to first concentrate all their guns on our batteries. After a brief but intensive bombardment of our artillery positions a portion of the German batteries would abruptly switch their fire onto our infantry, using, of course, a large proportion of gas-shell. Meanwhile the German infantry officers had been notified as to the kinds of gas their batteries were using, and where. Hence, when the German storming troops swept forward they did not wear masks, for their officers knew that a non-persistent gas had been used against the point which was to be attacked. Our troops, being ignorant of this, however, had donned their masks when the first gas-shell came over, and were, therefore, both fatigued and hampered when they were called upon to resist the assault.

And here is another example of gas tactics: Word having reached the French that the Germans were planning to attack a certain sector near Rheims, the troops holding this portion of the line were quietly withdrawn from the front trenches the night before the attack was to take place, a few autoriflemen being left to simulate a defense. Before the troops departed, however, they placed mustard-gas shells, which had been fitted by the artillery with electrically controlled fuses, in the dugouts. The French gunners had, meanwhile, ascertained to a foot the range of the trenches which were being evacuated. At daybreak came the expected German attack. As the helmeted figures came swarming across No Man’s Land in the dim light of early dawn the few remaining Frenchmen set off green rockets as a signal to the artillery and took to their heels. No sooner had the Germans occupied the evacuated trenches, therefore, than the French batteries turned loose on them a hurricane of steel, putting down a barrage which completely cut them off from their own lines. The Germans naturally sought shelter from this shell-storm in the deserted dugouts. At about the same moment a French artillery officer pressed his finger upon a button, an electric current leaped along a buried wire, the shells in the dugouts were blown asunder, liberating the poison-gas—and the Germans perished almost to a man.

This photograph was not taken in real action but at the Army Gas School in France.]

Troops wearing gas masks charging in open order in practice at Long Island City.]

As the result of the experiments at American University, Lakehurst, and Edgewood, and the experiences of our troops in the field, several new gases of incredible deadliness were invented as well as numerous new methods of using them, many of which would certainly have been utilized had the war continued. But the League of Nations being still confined to paper, and universal disarmament being still in the distant future, it is as well, I feel, not to particularize about them. It is enough to say that, thanks to the work of the Chemical Warfare Service, there are stored away in the vaults of the War Department certain plans and formulas which, in the event of another war—which God forbid!—would give us a weapon of undreamed-of potency and terror. Speaking from first-hand knowledge, I can assure any potential enemies of the United States that the chemical warfare which we are prepared to wage should the necessity ever arise again would make our recent gas activities, vast as they were, seem like a joke.

IV

THE “Q. M. C.”

Some years ago there was exhibited at the Grand Salon in Paris an immense mural painting, intended, if I remember rightly, for one of the walls of the Panthéon. I think it was by Détaille, but of that I am not certain nor does it matter. The canvas, which reached from floor to ceiling, was of such vast dimensions that the gallery, huge as it is, did not permit of a satisfactory perspective; it was characterized, moreover, by such a wealth of detail that one might look at it from dawn to dusk and yet not grasp it all. So in attempting to depict, even in the sketchiest fashion, the operations and activities of the Quartermaster Corps, I find myself embarrassed by the same limitations. The composition is too vast for proper perspective, too rich in variety and detail to be grasped by the imagination. The best that I can hope to do, therefore, in the limited space at my disposal, is to hurry you along, like the guides who used to conduct visitors through the galleries of the Vatican in an hour, pointing out a picturesque feature here and calling your attention to something of interest there—touching only on the high spots, as it were.

To begin with, let me give you some conception of the subject’s magnitude and importance. The total cost of the war to the United States, plus the estimate of the amount which would be required to carry it on to July 1, 1919, was approximately $16,500,000,000, while the total expenditures and estimates of the Quartermaster Corps for the same period were something over $8,500,000,000. Thus it will be seen that _the expenditures and requirements of the Quartermaster Corps comprised more than half of the total expenditures and requirements of the entire army_. The purchases which it made were remarkable not only for their unprecedented volume but for their amazing variety. It supplied the armies of the United States with practically everything they required, save only ordnance, its purchases running all the way from coal to needles, from lemon-drops to rolling kitchens, from sheet-music to beef and mutton on the hoof. At one time it constituted the entire wool trade of the United States, if not, indeed, of the whole Western Hemisphere, for it optioned every pound of wool in sight and sent its agents out with orders to buy up the excess wool of the earth. It purchased enough cotton goods to make a sheet which would cover the District of Columbia four times over. It controlled the leather trade of the nation. It operated the largest shirt-factory in existence. It developed the most highly specialized shoe ever made, purchased 33,000,000 pairs of them, carried them in 120 sizes, and opened schools to teach its officers the science of shoe-fitting. By enlisting the co-operation of a score of universities it established a great correspondence school for the education of quartermaster officers. It had other schools, a whole system of them, where training was given in cooking, baking, butchery, and coffee-roasting. It purchased every stock of rubber boots and rain-coats in the United States. It established and operated farms and truck-gardens at the various camps and cantonments. By organizing a Salvage Service for the reclamation of articles which would otherwise have been thrown away it saved 151,000,000 of the taxpayers’ dollars. The army needed horses and mules—thousands and thousands of them—whereupon the Quartermaster Corps gave commissions to half a hundred of America’s best-known sportsmen and gentlemen riders and sent them to the West, to Spain, to the Argentine, to purchase animals. General Pershing cabled that he wanted sheet-music for the 390 bands of the A. E. F., whereupon the Quartermaster Corps, not being itself musically inclined, looked about for a man who was. It was discovered that the most successful composer of popular music in America had enlisted in the Coast Guard, but the Quartermaster Corps borrowed him, told him to select the sort of music that he thought the boys in France would like, and send it to Pershing. He did. It cheered up the army overseas and cost the government $50,000. It was cheap at the price. The Quartermaster Corps educated manufacturers in the production of articles strange to their experience, and in some cases it developed entirely new industries. It was a shipmaster, a wool-grower, a coal-operator, a clothier, a builder of vehicles, a school-teacher, a reformer of labor conditions, an inventor of new products, and an originator of new methods. To the miners of Pennsylvania, quarrying coal in the low-roofed galleries by the light of their flickering lamps, to the fruit-pickers in the sun-drenched orchards of Hood River and the Santa Clara, to the pallid clothing-workers, bending over their machines in the stifling sweat-shops of the New York Ghetto, to the great manufacturers of New England, and to the beef barons of the Middle West, “Quartermaster Corps, United States Army,” was a phrase to conjure with.

* * * * *

In those casual, comfortable, easy-going days before the Great War startled us out of our national complacency, when the work of the army consisted in garrisoning many small and widely scattered posts and in doing police duty on the Canal Zone or in “the Islands,” the Quartermaster Corps, the “Q. M.,” as it was familiarly called, occupied much the same relation to our little military establishment that a “general store” does to a village. By this I mean that it supplied most of the army’s wants. It was charged, to put it briefly, with clothing, feeding, housing, and paying the army, supplying it with horses, harness, vehicles, and, in short, virtually everything else save only the actual tools of war. It also manned and operated the steamers of the Army Transport Service, was charged with the movement of troops on land, and had jurisdiction to a large extent over motor transportation, especially the movement of supplies. Though its business methods were as antiquated as the quill pen and the copying-press, like the mules which drew its wagons it jogged unconcernedly along. If the colonel’s wife needed some shelves in her kitchen she sent for the quartermaster and they were put up with neatness and despatch. When the junior officers at a post wanted to attend a dance in town the quartermaster could always be depended upon to provide a conveyance. The quartermaster ran the post exchanges and canteens. If there was a delay in the delivery of the winter’s coal, if the bread was poorly baked, if the milk was sour, if the men’s shoes did not fit, if there was a leak in a barracks roof, if a horse developed a spavin, if the pay-checks were not received on time, it was the quartermaster who had to take the blame. He was all things to all men, and if he did not do all things as well as they might have been done, it was not his fault so much as the fault of the antiquated and cumbersome system in which he had been trained.

But upon the outbreak of war this state of affairs underwent a sudden change. It was no more possible for the Quartermaster Corps, as it was then organized, to feed and clothe and transport overseas an army of 5,000,000 men than it would be for a village merchant to meet the demands which would be made upon him if oil were discovered in the vicinity and the village expanded into a city overnight. At the outbreak of the war the Office of the Quartermaster-General consisted of five divisions—Administrative, Finance, Supplies, Construction, and Transportation—but when our stupendous military programme began to assume definite form it became increasingly apparent that no single department could successfully direct so many and varied activities, and that the Quartermaster Corps must confine itself to the huge task of purchase and supply. The first step toward its reorganization along these lines was the divorce of the Construction Division, which was made a separate branch of the War Department under Colonel (later Brigadier-General) I. W. Littell, who reported directly to the secretary of war. Though the officers of this division, to which was assigned the tremendous task of constructing the camps and cantonments for our new armies, continued to wear the insignia of the Quartermaster Corps, and though they were known as construction quartermasters, they had no connection with the Office of the Quartermaster-General. During the first year of the war the Transportation Division operated a considerable fleet of vessels engaged in the transport of troops, animals, and supplies, but in April, 1918, this division was abolished, the entire transportation service being taken from the Quartermaster Corps and placed with the Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Division of the General Staff. The next branch to be lopped off was the Finance Division, the functions of which were transferred to the newly organized Office of the Director of Finance, who assumed charge of all financial matters for the army. In response to the constantly increasing demands for motor transport, a Motor Transport Service was added to the Quartermaster Corps in April, 1918, but was taken away from it three months later and established as a separate branch of the army under the title of the Motor Transport Corps. This is, however, strictly an operating unit and should not be confused with the Motor and Vehicles Division of the Quartermaster Corps. By this time the “Q. M.” had been so completely transformed as to be almost unrecognizable to men who had grown old in the service. Little remained of the old organization, indeed, save the name, and even that all but disappeared when, in October, 1918, the Office of the Quartermaster-General was merged in the newly organized Office of the Director of Purchase and Storage. By the concluding month of the war, therefore, the old Quartermaster Corps had lost all control over construction, finance, and transportation, so that of its original five divisions only the Administrative and Supplies remained. The latter had been expanded, however, into nine purchasing divisions and there had also been added to the organization—now commonly referred to as “Purchase and Storage”—five storage divisions and a Salvage Division. At the same time that the Office of the Director of Purchase and Storage assumed the functions of the Quartermaster Corps it also took over the procurement activities of the Medical Corps and of the Corps of Engineers, as well as procuring certain standardized articles for the Signal Corps and the Ordnance Department, thus bringing under a single head all the purchase, storage, and distribution agencies of the army. In order to make this extremely involved relationship a little clearer, I ought to explain, perhaps, that the Office of the Director of Purchase and Storage is one of the three chief operating branches of the Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Division of the General Staff, the others being the Office of the Director of Traffic and the Office of the Director of Finance.

In the old days the procurement activities of the army were decentralized to such an extent that every depot, camp, and post, wherever situated, had charge of procuring practically everything it used except uniforms, the procurement being under the direction of the camp or post quartermaster, as the case might be. The new organization has produced a system, however, whereby everything required by the army is purchased either by the officers in charge of the thirteen General Supply Zones into which the United States has been divided, or direct from Washington. It is scarcely necessary to comment on the enormous saving in time, money, and labor thus effected. We will now say “Amen” to this little sermon on organization, which is a dry subject at best, and turn to more interesting topics.

* * * * *

Of the countless problems which confronted the Quartermaster Corps at the outbreak of the war, by far the most important was that of feeding the army, for an army, as Napoleon inelegantly but truthfully put it, travels upon its belly. The American soldier, like the American small boy, is a prodigious eater and he is always hungry. He is, moreover, extremely finical about the quality and variety of his food. He has been accustomed from boyhood to have unrestricted access to the cooky jar and the cake-box, and things were wrong, indeed, when there were not at least three kinds of mother’s pies on the top shelf in the pantry. He laughed at danger and jeered at hardships, but in return he expected a grateful Uncle Sam, as represented by the Quartermaster Corps, to show the same consideration for him when it came to a question of food that his mother had always done. And Uncle Sam measured up to his expectations. Not only was the American soldier given all the food that he required—at the time of the Armistice approximately 10,000,000 pounds of food were being sent every day to the troops in France—but he had the best food in Europe. In those lean days of 1918, when it was impossible to obtain a spoonful of sugar in the smartest restaurants in Paris, and when the manufacture of pastries of every description had been prohibited by law, the Yankee doughboys always had full sugar-bowls and unlimited quantities of pies, cake, and puddings. Indeed, it is not the slightest exaggeration to say that the American enlisted man had a considerably better mess than most French generals. I know, for I have eaten with both.

Never before has an army been called upon to send subsistence so great a distance to so many men. It was obviously impossible to ask France and England to provide for our rapidly increasing armies from their own scanty stores, for those countries were already rationing their civilian populations. The food had, therefore, to be obtained in the United States, some of it being transported 6,000 miles before reaching the mess-tables of the A. E. F. Moreover, in order to provide against the possibility of the food-ships being torpedoed or the capture of the base depots, it was necessary to send two pounds of food where one would ordinarily have answered. To make things worse, as the demands for food increased, the available tonnage decreased. The utmost economy in space became so imperative, indeed, that inspectors from the Packing Service Branch were stationed at the various depots with instructions to pay particular attention to the thickness of lumber used in the packing-cases and to insist on the utilization of every cubic foot of spare space, as, for example, the boilers in rolling kitchens, which were filled with various articles of subsistence supplies. Even the marmites—the camp cooking-pots—were filled with beans, peas, and other dry stores. When, in the spring of 1918, the Germans launched that tremendous offensive which has been so fittingly called “the charge of a nation,” and every available ton of shipping was required for the transport of the troops which we were rushing overseas to stem the Teutonic onslaught, all canned fruits and vegetables—pears, apples, pineapple, peas, corn, asparagus, sweet potatoes—were stricken from the lists, such space as was available being filled with boneless beef, dried fruits, dehydrated vegetables—and tomatoes! I do not mean to imply that such mainstays as the “four B’s”—bread, bacon, beef, and beans—were sacrificed for the juicy fruit of the tomato-vine, for they were not, but tomatoes were regarded as such an important item of the soldier’s menu that, notwithstanding the poverty of space, their shipments, instead of being diminished, were increased. In addition to the customary ways of serving them, thousands of cans were taken up to the line to relieve the soldier’s thirst, a quart of tomato juice being more effective than a gallon of water. Lest you should get the impression, from what I have just said, that there was a shortage of beans, I might mention, in passing, that 75,000,000 cans of baked beans with tomato sauce were put in the hands of the army cooks, and in order to provide against any possible lack of this stand-by, there was purchased to supplement them 77,000,000 pounds of dried beans. I have never heard an American soldier complain that he did not have enough beans. Foreseeing the enormous demand which there would be for prunes and dried apricots and apples, the quartermaster-general summoned from his ranch in the Santa Clara Valley of California, where he was living in pleasant retirement, the foremost authority on dried fruits in America, informed him of the army’s needs, and gave him _carte blanche_ to fill them. He sent overseas enough prunes to have supplied all the boarding-houses in America for years to come. Coffee was another important item. The British Army consumed enormous quantities of tea, the Italians depended largely upon their cheap native wines, and the French drank an alleged coffee which was really camouflaged chicory, but the American troops were given real coffee—the best that money could buy. Nothing better illustrates the quality of the food served to our men than the following telegram, sent by the quartermaster-general of the A. E. F. to Washington.

“Ship 2,000,000 reserve rations packed in hermetically sealed galvanized iron cases, 25 to the case, meat to be substituted in lieu of bacon and choice George Washington coffee or other similar substitute in lieu of ground coffee.”

As even the best grades of coffee can be ruined if improperly prepared, there were established at Camp Meade and Camp Johnston schools for coffee-roasting. Here enlisted men were given a course of instruction in coffee roasting, blending, grinding, and packing, and upon graduation were sent to the various camps where coffee-roasting plants had been installed. Thus the soldier received a fresher and a better cup of coffee than ever before, and the government made a saving of from two to three cents a pound, for as the green coffee was shipped to the camps by the various Zone Supply officers and was roasted every day, there was practically no overhead expense incurred.

Beef is, of course, the chief muscle and fat-producing food, the army allowing 456 pounds of beef per year for each soldier. This does not mean, however, that the soldier actually eats that amount of beef annually, for, just as the currency of the country is based on the gold standard, the meat ration of the army is based on the beef standard. It is customary, therefore, to substitute pork, usually in the form of bacon, for 30 per cent of the beef ration, twelve ounces of bacon being equivalent to twenty ounces of beef. The balance of the meat ration consists for the most part of fresh beef, when it is procurable, supplemented by canned beef, corned beef, and canned hash. The meat-cutting for the army is performed by Butchery Companies, the personnel of which was trained at Camp Joseph E. Johnston, near Jacksonville, Florida, where a practical course of instruction was given in cutting meat by the so-called “natural-guide method.” By following this method, which is an expanding rather than a cutting process, inexperienced men who did not know a cleaver from a skewer were made into practical meat-cutters in less than two months. The curriculum of the School for Butchers also included a course of intensive training in the boxing of boneless frozen beef by a method which saved about 32 per cent storage and cargo space and was used extensively during the winter months. With the return of peace, graduates of this unique educational institution, many of them illiterate, find themselves as well qualified to take up the butcher’s trade as though they had wielded a cleaver and worn a white apron all their lives.

In spite of all that has been written by travellers and novelists about certain American delicacies—the ham of Virginia, the chicken of Maryland, the pies and doughnuts of New England, the pompano of New Orleans—the fact remains that Americans, as a people, are not good cooks. This assertion may be ridiculed by some of my readers, but, generally speaking, it is true. Almost any Frenchman can prepare from the cheapest materials a well-cooked and tempting meal; the ability of most Americans in the culinary art is confined to boiling eggs. A man who spends his days in an office can sit down to a breakfast consisting of soggy biscuits, poorly prepared coffee, and an omelet that looks and tastes as though it were made of chrome leather, and though it may affect his disposition it will not seriously affect his work, for when the noon-hour comes around he can go over to Delmonico’s or step into Childs’s, as his tastes and pocketbook may dictate, and restore his balance of digestion by a well-cooked meal. But the soldier had no such resource. There were no Delmonicos or Childses at the front. He had to eat what was given him. And as his vigor and staying powers depended on his food, it was essential that that food should be well cooked. To tell the truth, the Italian débâcle of 1917 was due as much to poor and insufficient food as it was to Austrian propaganda, for nothing affects morale like an empty stomach.

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.