Chapter III: General Rule (3)

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!

The Quartermaster Corps introduced endless economies in order to save wool. More economical patterns were made for uniforms. Originally 1.45 yards of cloth were required to make a pair of wool breeches. A cheaper cutting pattern reduced this figure to 1.222 yards, thus saving nearly a quarter of a yard of cloth on every pair. Since the purchases of wool breeches amounted to 10,300,000 pairs, this single economy resulted in a saving of over 2,300,000 yards of cloth on breeches alone. It was also found that cotton linings could be substituted for the wool facings of coats and overcoats without sacrificing either serviceability or warmth. Another important cloth economy came when the designers of the Clothing and Equipage Division eliminated the right-hand pocket of the “O. D.” shirt on the ground that this pocket was not used enough to justify the additional expense.

Americans have always believed, or pretended to believe, that, so far as the uniforms of our fighting forces are concerned, smartness is not essential. This is a mental attitude which we inherit, no doubt, from our pioneering forefathers, and which was strengthened by those Civil and Spanish War generals who tucked their trousers in their boots, pulled their slouch hats over their eyes, and wore handkerchiefs instead of collars. So, when the first contingents of the Expeditionary Forces set sail for France, we excused the obvious shortcomings of their uniforms by asserting that they “looked businesslike and American”—an assertion which was, however, open to some doubt. If our soldiers looked military—_and they did_—it was not because of their uniforms but in spite of them. No one recognized more quickly than the Commander-in-Chief of the A. E. F. that the uniform of the American soldier was lamentably lacking in smartness, a lack which was made painfully apparent when it was contrasted with those worn by the soldiers of the Allied nations. When, therefore, General Pershing recommended the adoption of a smarter-looking uniform, the Clothing and Equipage Division undertook to design one, with, incidentally, an eye to the saving of cloth. The coat of the uniform, formerly called the blouse—a ridiculous and inappropriate designation which is now obsolete—was cut with new lines which made it slimmer and more graceful while retaining all the warmth and comfort of the old garment. As the soldiers usually filled the patch-pockets of their old blouses with all sorts of articles they were usually unsightly bulges, but on the new coat the patch-pocket is retained only in appearance, the pocket actually being on the inside. It is not known to most Americans that the breeches which had been worn by American soldiers for twenty years or more have been replaced by trousers so far as the A. E. F. is concerned. The soldiers themselves were not particularly enamored of the breeches, which frequently caused chafing under the knee and always caused a burst of expletives when a man tried to put them on in a hurry. Moreover, it was often found impossible for the surgeons to remove breeches from a man wounded in the legs without cutting the cloth and thereby ruining the garment. All these objections have been obviated, however, by the adoption of trousers, which have the added value of increased warmth. Following General Pershing’s recommendations, the overcoat, which was much too long to be worn in the trenches, was redesigned, a new garment being evolved which was smarter and more practical. Other changes are the adoption of the spiral woollen puttee in place of the canvas legging and the substitution of the jaunty overseas cap for the impractical and universally unbecoming campaign hat.

The redesigning of the uniform—which, by the way, never appeared in the field—accomplished several surprising economies. Merely by the substitution of trousers for breeches, the lacings, eyelets, tape, and stays thus eliminated amounted to 95¼ cents on each garment, and had the war lasted until July 1, 1919, would have saved the taxpayer nearly $17,000,000 on orders placed or in sight. The change in the design of the overcoat saved 62 cents per garment—an estimated saving, by July 1, of nearly $900,000. It was found that the service coat could be made for $1.60 less than the old blouse, which by July 1 would have effected an economy of close to $5,000,000. The changes in these three garments not only gave the American soldier a much better-looking uniform but it saved the American Government enough money to build a first-class battleship, and, what was most important of all, it effected an enormous economy in the consumption of raw wool, which, once exhausted, could not be replaced with all the money on earth.

In making its earlier clothing contracts the government paid the contractor a percentage of the value of the yardage which he saved by his economy in cutting and it also permitted him to keep his own clippings. But later on, when the shortage in wool became more acute, the cloth issued to the contractor was calculated more closely, he received no credit for his savings, and all clippings had to be turned in. These clippings were sent to the base sorting-plant in New York, where they were baled and shipped to mills to be used as reworked wool, in blankets and other articles. From September, 1917, to December, 1918, this plant handled over 17,000,000 pounds of wool clippings, the total sales of which produced $5,500,000.

Wool was not only made up into clothing but it went into such knit goods as undershirts, drawers, stockings, gloves, and puttees. This branch of the war woollen-goods industry found itself confronted with a serious problem in the lack of suitable machinery, for though there were numerous manufacturers of knit goods, their mills had been devoted to the production of specialties, such as men’s union suits and women’s underwear. These concerns had, therefore, to make great changes in their machinery, and sometimes to remodel their plants, before they could knit underclothing in the sizes required for the army. Toward the close of the war every machine in the United States that could make hosiery was knitting socks for soldiers.

At one time there was a serious shortage of needles, which we had formerly obtained from Germany. When this source of supply was cut off we turned to Japan, but the Japanese needles proved anything but satisfactory: they were not properly tempered and their frequent breakage caused much loss and delay. A rumor reached the ears of the Quartermaster-General that there were 10,000,000 knitting-needles in Sweden, whereupon purchasing agents were despatched to Scandinavia post-haste. They returned a few weeks later bringing with them a million needles, which helped to relieve the situation, the American needle-makers meanwhile being pushed to the limit.

Though the production of the regulation service uniform constituted the bulk of the Manufacturing Branch’s activities, it was by no means the whole of them. It went into an entirely new field, for example, when it bought uniforms for the women nurses of the army. There was a trim little Norfolk suit of navy blue which cost the government about thirty dollars; a cotton uniform for indoor wear that cost three dollars; a long, belted ulster costing in the neighborhood of twenty-eight dollars; to say nothing of blouses made from navy-blue silk, jaunty hats of blue velour, stout tan walking-boots, and hospital shoes of white canvas. When it came to lingerie, however, the “Q. M.” balked. It permitted the nurses to purchase that for themselves.

Then there was the special clothing required for the soldiers fighting on the Siberian steppes and the frozen wastes around Archangel. These garments were designed by men who had had experience in the arctic and were intimately familiar with the peculiar conditions existing on the world’s remotest battle-line. Our soldiers in Russia were supplied with caps and mittens made from muskrat fur, overcoats of moleskin or of duck lined with sheepskin, Alaskan parkas with hoods lined with the fur of the wolf, woodsmen’s heavy knee-length socks, Canadian shoepacks, such as the trappers and _voyageurs_ wear in the Northern woods, and special heavy underwear. These outfits, which cost about a hundred dollars each, were supplied to approximately 15,000 men.

And, finally, there was the clothing for prisoners of war and interned enemy aliens. This was not manufactured for the purpose but, instead, the uniforms discarded by our own men were dry-cleaned, repaired, and dyed a special shade of green—a glaring emerald-green—so that the wearer could be distinguished as a prisoner as far as the eye could see him. I remember watching a column of German prisoners leaving the prison stockade near Atlanta one morning on their way to work. In the front rank, his red mustache bristling fiercely, was a peculiarly haughty and insolent head steward whom I had known in those days, now long past, when self-respecting persons crossed the Atlantic on German liners. He was fatter than when I had last seen him, and in his bright-green prisoner’s uniform he looked for all the world like an animated cabbage. There is a certain appropriateness in the fact that the uniforms with which we supplied our captured Germans cost the government just thirty cents apiece.

For more than forty years the woollen shirts worn by American soldiers have been made at the great Quartermaster Depot at Jeffersonville, in southern Indiana. In order to give employment to as many of those who needed it as possible, it has always been the policy of the depot to distribute the sewing of the shirts among the women of the community, so, upon the outbreak of war, there were some 2,000 sewing operatives working for the government in or near Jeffersonville. When word was received from Washington that shirts were required in enormous quantities and with the least possible delay, appeals were made by means of posters and through the press to the women throughout that region to increase the output of shirts for our soldiers. The response was as quick as it was gratifying. Women who did not need the money gave up their duties or their pleasures and turned to sewing. Soon there was scarcely a woman along that portion of the Ohio who was not, like the industrious Sister Susie, sewing shirts for soldiers. The number of operatives jumped from 2,000 to 20,000 almost overnight; the yearly output of shirts rose from 600,000 to 8,500,000. The operatives were required to call at the depot, where unmade garments, which had already been cut, were issued to them, together with the necessary trimmings and a completed shirt to be used as a guide, the garments being sewn at home and returned to the depot for inspection. In order to care for the thousands of women who came flocking into Jeffersonville to secure shirts, first-aid stations had to be established at the depot. A Sanitary Bureau was also organized and a corps of sanitary inspectors were employed to visit the homes of all the operatives to see that the shirts were being sewn under proper sanitary conditions. As a further precaution, the shirts were fumigated upon their return to the depot, thus insuring the soldier against any risk of contagion from this source. When the Armistice, was signed the Jeffersonville Depot was the largest shirt-manufacturing establishment in the world, and “The Song of the Shirt” was heard for miles up and down the banks of the Ohio.

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In supplying the army with such articles as sheets, pillow-cases, towels, gauze, denim, duck, and webbing, the Cotton Goods Branch of Purchase and Storage procured over 800,000,000 square yards of cotton textiles—enough to have covered an area four times the size of the District of Columbia. It also purchased enormous quantities of burlap for packing, for bags, and for the use of the Camouflage Service, as well as silk for flags, hat-cords, and badges. Though it was never found necessary to resort to the use of paper fabrics, the division had in its possession samples of paper cloth and articles made from it which had been captured from the enemy. These paper textiles were carefully analyzed and studied, and had it become necessary to provide a substitute for cotton, we were prepared to produce one which would have astonished the Germans.

One of the characteristics of the equipment of the European soldier is the number of articles made of leather. He has leather belts, cross-belts, cartridge-belts, bandoliers, gun-slings, map-cases, knapsacks, sword and bayonet scabbards, chin-straps, and not infrequently his head-gear is likewise made of leather. Not only is all this leather costly, but it is stiff, heavy, cracks easily, and requires constant work to keep it clean. Owing to the extreme scarcity and the almost prohibitive cost of leather, its use was confined in the American Army to saddles, bridles, harness, leggings, and Sam Browne belts, virtually all other articles of equipment formerly made of leather, such as cartridge-belts, packs, bandoliers, scabbards, gun-slings, pistol-holsters, and the like, being made of cotton webbing. To supply the army’s enormous demand for these articles it was necessary to convert to the manufacture of this cotton webbing many plants which had theretofore been engaged in the production of hose, cotton belting, and asbestos brake linings. All the plants thus adapted to the emergency manufacture of webbing were dependent on purchased yarns which they had to secure in the open market. In the South, where most of this yarn was produced, the securing of power was a very serious problem. Many of the mills depended upon electricity generated by water-power, so when this water-power ran very low it was necessary for the government to step in and allocate the available power among the mills working on army contracts according to the most pressing needs. Then there was the inevitable question of labor. In many of the plants employees had to be given special courses of instruction before they could produce the new materials on which they were set to work. In the South, particularly, much trouble and delay was caused by the question of child labor and the working hours for women and minors, for in its later contracts the government inserted clauses insisting on the observance of certain regulations designed to benefit and protect the workers. In some instances contracts were returned to the government because of this child-labor clause, whereupon orders were issued virtually compelling the mills to produce the goods called for, whether they wanted to or not. I doubt if any government in the world, while engaged in a life-and-death struggle, would have found time to show such solicitude for the weakest and least influential of its people.

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Next to wool, leather was the most essential of the raw materials required for the equipment of our soldiers, the Quartermaster Corps purchasing 33,000,000 pairs of shoes, 6,500,000 pairs of gloves, and nearly 3,000,000 leather jerkins, in addition to enormous quantities of harness, saddlery, and other equipment. It was early recognized, therefore, that it was as vitally necessary to save every foot of leather as it was to conserve every pound of wool, so, in pursuance of this policy, the Hide and Leather Control Board was formed. This board not only put a check on the use of leather for non-military purposes by restricting the variety of styles in civilian shoes and by similar measures, but it guaranteed an adequate supply of leather to those manufacturers engaged on army contracts. It also maintained a small army of inspectors to examine the leather at the tanneries as well as the finished products of the shoe, clothing, and harness factories, thereby guaranteeing the quality of the material and frequently improving it. Generally speaking, no action was taken which affected the hide or leather business without calling into consultation the members of the particular trade concerned and coming to an agreement with them as to the quality and price. This procedure, which was followed throughout the war, did much to eliminate all friction and misunderstandings, and enormously speeded up production.

Hanging always over the heads of the board was the menace of a leather shortage, and its members lay awake nights devising plans by which such a calamity could be averted. To illustrate the seriousness of the situation, it was estimated in July, 1918, that in another twelvemonth something like 13,000,000 hides would be required for the use of the army alone. As this is the entire output of hides in the United States, it was realized that were the war to continue through the winter, there would be no leather left in the United States by spring. Faced by this critical situation, the board called to its aid the foremost tanners, shoe and harness manufacturers in the country, and it was due to their services in checking up the figures submitted by the trade, in keeping down the manufacture of non-essential articles, in unearthing thitherto unsuspected sources of leather supply, and in introducing more economical methods of cutting, that during the latter months of the war the army rarely lacked for leather equipment. I have already told how great economies in the consumption of leather were effected by the substitution of cotton webbing in the manufacture of certain articles. During the second spring of the war the women of America suddenly found that they were no longer able to obtain the extremely high-topped boots which were then the fashion, while men had to content themselves with plain instead of “wing” tipped shoes. The leather thus saved was used in the manufacture of footwear, gloves, and jerkins for the men who were offering their lives in the trenches in order that the people at home who wore the high-topped boots and the wing-tipped shoes might continue to live in safety. Many persons have wondered why officers serving in the United States were not authorized to wear the Sam Browne belt. I can give them one of the reasons. It was because the necessary leather could not be spared for a purpose which was, after all, purely ornamental. As a result of this admirable system of supervision and control the Quartermaster Corps was not only able to fill with reasonable promptness the requirements of our troops overseas, but when the Armistice was signed, it had enough leather equipment, either manufactured or in process of manufacture, to supply an army of 5,000,000 men.

In none of its innumerable forms of endeavor did the Quartermaster Corps more strikingly demonstrate its genius as a manufacturer than in the design and production of the army shoe. Before the war our soldiers wore a machine-sewed shoe of russet calf lined with duck, very similar to civilian footwear of the better grade. Shortly after the beginning of hostilities, however, the War Department adopted a new and much stouter shoe. This new model had a much heavier upper than the old one, with the flesh or rough side out and the grain side in, and with no lining, while, instead of a single sole, as in the old shoe, two heavy soles were used, the bottoms of which were thickly studded with hobnails. But even these, formidable in appearance as they were, did not prove stout enough to stand up under the incredible wear of trench warfare, so there was finally developed the so-called “Pershing shoe.” These really should have been classified as tanks instead of shoes, for they could go anywhere, they could withstand any amount of use or abuse, and they were, literally speaking, armored. The “Pershing shoe” has three outer soles which are fastened to an inner sole of outer-sole quality and thickness, first by nailing, then by screws, and finally by stitching with heavy linen thread; the toe is reinforced with a moulded steel plate; both sole and heel bristle with hobnails, and, as a final touch, the heel has a heavy steel horseshoe around its edge. It was by long odds the best shoe worn by any army. In fact, no such footwear was ever produced before. The pity was that it did not reach our troops sooner.

Before we had been at war a month a most troublesome fact came to light in connection with the question of shoes. It was found that the old schedule of sizes was entirely wrong and did not begin to meet the new conditions. In the old army the individual men were carefully selected according to a certain standard of measurement, and it was, therefore, a simple matter to fit them with shoes from a comparatively restricted range of sizes. But the millions of men who were called to the colors by the draft represented all types except the physically defective. In the ranks of the recruits a 250-pound policeman who had spent the better part of his life on his feet would be found shoulder to shoulder with an anæmic-looking little clerk who had spent most of his life perched on an office-stool. A man whose feet had always been incased in the flexible pumps of a professional dancer might find himself rubbing elbows with a cow-puncher who wore high-heeled Mexican boots and who had always lived in the saddle. As the raw levies began to round into shape at the training-camps, it was found that clerks, professional men, and others who had not been accustomed to working in the open air developed in size with amazing rapidity. This was particularly true of the men’s feet, for after a few long hikes with a full pack, a recruit could not squeeze his feet into shoes of a size which he had theretofore worn with perfect comfort. This meant that an entire new series of models and lasts had to be made, running up to unheard-of sizes, as, for example, 17-EEE! The standard sizes of the army shoe at present range in length from 5 to 15 and in width from A to EE, thus making it necessary to carry each style of shoe in _one hundred and twenty sizes_.

Now, no article of clothing can cause such acute discomfort and so quickly affect a man’s disposition, and consequently his morale, as an ill-fitting shoe. The Germans were the first to appreciate the importance to an army of caring for the men’s feet, and with their customary thoroughness took steps to prevent foot-trouble from the very beginning of the war. I remember remarking, when I was with the Ninth German Army during the first weeks of the invasion in 1914, that following each regiment of infantry was a huge motor-truck carrying a complete pedicure establishment—a sort of chiropodist’s office on wheels. Whenever a soldier developed a bunion or a corn or an ingrown nail, whenever his boots pinched his toes or chafed his heel, he fell out of the ranks and waited for the pedicure wagon—I don’t remember the German name for it—to come along, climbed up, sat in a chair, and the attending chiropodist tended his feet and, if necessary, issued him another pair of boots. “The feet of the soldiers?” said a German general to whom I mentioned the matter. “They no longer belong to them after the Empire goes to war—they belong to the Emperor. A soldier is no more permitted to abuse his feet than he is to abuse his rifle. They must always be in condition for marching and for fighting the Emperor’s battles.”

Profiting by the example of our enemy, we exercised the utmost care in fitting our men with footwear. As the result of examinations conducted at a number of training-camps, it was found that out of nearly 60,000 men examined, slightly more than 71 per cent were wearing shoes which were too long and nearly 10 per cent shoes which were too short, only one man in five having shoes of the proper size. These figures were sufficient to demonstrate to the War Department the necessity for extraordinary care in the fitting of soldiers’ shoes, and led to the establishment at Camp Meigs, D. C., and Jefferson Barracks, Mo., of schools for foot-measuring and shoe-fitting. Two officers from every camp and cantonment in the United States were detailed to take this course of instruction, which lasted five days and consisted of lectures, demonstrations of the various appliances, and practical training, the latter being acquired by each officer actually measuring and fitting a thousand men with army shoes under the direction of competent instructors.

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The coal which was required for heating and cooking in the various camps and cantonments both in the United States and France, the coke which was used at our arsenals in the production of ordnance, the gasoline which drove our trucks, tractors, tanks, and airplanes, and the oils which lubricated them, were all procured through the Fuel Branch of the Fuel and Forage Division of the Office of the Quartermaster-General, which in October, 1918, was converted into the Raw Materials Division of the Office of the Director of Purchase and Storage, without, however, in any way affecting its functions. From its creation by the President in August, 1917, until the close of the war, the United States Fuel Administration worked in closest harmony with the Fuel Branch of the Quartermaster Department in supplying the enormous fuel requirements of our fighting forces. The procedure was roughly as follows: The Fuel Branch first ascertained the probable requirements of every camp, post, and station for each month of the fiscal year, and upon receipt of these estimates it would request the Fuel Administration to allocate to the respective camps the tonnages required. Pursuant to these requests, the Fuel Administration would instruct its District Representatives to place the necessary orders with the various coal-shippers, the regulation of shipments and similar matters thenceforth being handled by the District Representatives directly with the Camp Quartermasters. With the abolition of the Fuel Administration at the end of the war, the task of supplying the army with coal and coke devolved upon the officers in charge of the various General Supply Zones into which the United States is now divided.

The prime importance to the army of gasoline and lubricants was made clear by General Pershing when he placed them, with food and forage, in the first division of the automatic supply cable which governed and controlled the movement of all supplies that had to go forward daily to the combat troops on the line. To procure and maintain an adequate supply of petroleum products, and to devise and standardize these products, there was created the Oil Branch of the Fuel and Forage Division of the Quartermaster Corps. Many interesting problems were successfully solved by the Oil Branch, which received assistance of the greatest value from the producers and refiners. Though the oil producing and refining concerns of the United States have repeatedly been characterized by politicians and by the press as “soulless corporations,” their patriotism throughout the great emergency was shown by the fact that their interest and efforts did not end with providing what the government asked for, but every one connected with them, from their presidents down, regarded the matter of supplying the army as a personal responsibility, suggesting many valuable changes, improvements, and economies based on their technical knowledge and experience.

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the oil industry, I ought to explain that there are many grades of gasoline, differing in character or in method of production. Commercial gasoline, for automobile use, included grades known as “straight-run,” “casing-head,” “blended,” “pressure still,” and “cracked.” In order to standardize gasoline for army use the Fuel and Forage Division worked out, with the co-operation of the refiners, certain specifications, with the result that a gasoline called “Quartermaster Specification” was adopted as a standard fuel. It is known as “428° gasoline,” and is used for motor cars, trucks, tanks, and cycles. For aviation purposes three other grades were produced; two of which, 257° “Fighting Naphtha” and 302° “Export Aviation,” were furnished only to the American Expeditionary Forces. “Fighting Naphtha” is the highest refinement of gasoline ever produced in quantity, being produced by “rerunning” Export Aviation and taking off the “cream” of that extremely high-grade fuel. To distinguish it as the finest motor-fuel in existence and to prevent its indiscriminate use, a small amount of aniline dye was added to color it red. Its use was confined to scout and battle planes, thus giving our flying-fighters an immense superiority over those of our allies or of the enemy, and thereby lending them the confidence which is required for daring deeds. Indeed, many a Hun flier was brought to earth, many a D. S. C. was won, as much by the qualities of the scarlet fuel as by the courage of the aviator. Who says that there is no romance in gasoline?

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Though this is the greatest horse-breeding nation in the world, and though Americans fondly think of themselves as a nation of horsemen, no one of the warring countries found itself so utterly unprepared in respect to remounts as the United States. The importance with which the War Department had regarded the question is best illustrated by the fact that at the outbreak of the war remount matters were in charge of one officer, with two civilian clerks, as a subsection of the Transportation Branch of the Quartermaster-General’s Office. For a number of years prior to the war repeated efforts had been made by enthusiastic horsemen, both in the army and out of it, to induce the government to undertake the breeding of cavalry and artillery mounts on a large scale, or at least to encourage their breeding by farmers, as has been done for centuries by certain of the European nations. But the parsimony of Congress, combined with the lack of vision of officers high in the military councils of the nation, blocked all these plans, and though one or two government studs were established with animals presented by public-spirited breeders, so little of real value was accomplished that of the 458,000 animals purchased during the war by the Remount Service, only about 5,000 were horses bred specially for military purposes.

Upon the outbreak of the war it became necessary, therefore, to scour the country for suitable animals, which had, perforce, to be purchased in the open market, which had already been gone over with a fine-tooth comb by British, French, Italians, and Russians, all of whom had maintained remount commissions in this country from the very beginning of the conflict. Fortunately for us, under the circumstances, the requirements of the Expeditionary Forces were confined to officers’ mounts, artillery horses and mules, only one regiment of cavalry, in addition to the headquarters troops of the various divisions, being sent overseas. There were, however, demands for large numbers of horses for the use of the two cavalry divisions which were in process of organization in this country, and for the cavalry regiments which were kept on patrol duty along the Mexican border.

As soon as it became apparent that it would be necessary for the government to make large purchases of horses and mules, hundreds of horse-breeders, racing and hunting men and polo-players offered their services as purchasing agents. Some fifty of these gentlemen, as shrewd judges of horse-flesh as the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, the hunting-fields of Long Island and Virginia, and the show-rings and race-courses of the great cities could produce, were given commissions as captains in the Quartermaster Corps, and were sent to the headquarters of the various purchasing zones for a short period of practical instruction in the type of horse required by the army, and in army methods generally, before being sent on the road to purchase animals. How efficiently and conscientiously these officers, unaccustomed to military methods, performed their duties is shown by the exceptionally high class of animals which they purchased and shipped to the various auxiliary remount depots, where they were trained and conditioned for army use. As the dearth of tonnage placed a limit on the number of animals which could be shipped overseas, a number of remount officers were sent to Europe, where large purchases of live stock were made, about 110,000 horses and 10,000 mules being bought from the French, some 12,000 horses and 6,000 mules from the British, and upward of 12,000 mules—the big, 16-hand Andalusians—in Spain.

At the beginning of the war there were only three remount depots in the United States—at Front Royal, Virginia, Fort Keogh, Montana, and Fort Reno, Oklahoma—together with auxiliary depots at Fort Bliss and Fort Sam Houston in Texas, but with the rapid expansion of the forces it was found necessary to establish an auxiliary remount depot adjacent to each of the thirty-three camps and cantonments of the National Guard and the National Army. This naturally necessitated an enormous increase in the Remount Service personnel, which shortly before the Armistice numbered 400 officers and 19,000 enlisted men. As the war progressed it became increasingly difficult for the Remount Service to meet the demands made by the auxiliary depots for officers, for the available supply of amateur horsemen who had volunteered their services quickly became exhausted, many of them going into other branches of the army. In order to meet this demand camps were organized at Camp Joseph E. Johnston, near Jacksonville, Florida, and at Camp Shelby, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where enlisted men who possessed the necessary qualifications were trained for commissions as officers. There was also established at Camp Johnston a mobilization camp for the organization and training of Field Remount Depots, but as this organization did not prove sufficiently flexible, there was authorized a smaller unit, known as a Field Remount Squadron, consisting of 6 officers and 157 enlisted men, it being estimated that one squadron would be required for every replacement of 400 animals. And replacements were, of necessity, frequent, it having been estimated that the average life of a horse in France was only sixteen days. There were organized at Camp Johnston a total of sixty-three Field Remount Squadrons, three wagon companies, and twelve pack-trains, of which all but seventeen squadrons saw service abroad. The enlisted personnel of these squadrons consisted of drafted men who were carefully selected because of their knowledge of horses, most of them having been farmers, ranchmen, cow-punchers, and, in a few cases, jockeys. Provision was also made for training the enlisted specialists attached to each squadron, schools being established for horse-shoers, saddlers, farriers, teamsters, and squadron clerks. Indeed, there was no more interesting sight at a cantonment than the Remount Depot, where bronco-busters, fresh from the ranges, could be seen breaking unruly horses in the “bull-pens,” while veteran packers and plainsmen gave instruction to classes of raw recruits in the art of harnessing and driving a six-horse “swing” or of throwing the “diamond hitch.”