Our Army at the Front. Heywood Hale Broun
as if…" Then some of the wiseacres at the camp pronounced the conviction that the Americans thought the French were melodramatic, and by no means to be copied, until they found their British first cousins, surely above reproach for needless emotionalism, were doing the same strange things.
The state of mind into which Allied instructors sought to drive or coax the Americans was pinned into a sharp phrase by a Far Western enlisted man before he left his own country. A melancholy relative had said, as he departed: "Are you ready to give your life to your country?" To which the soldier answered: "You bet your neck I'm not – I'm going to make some German give his life for his."
This was representative enough of the sentiments of the doughboys, but the instructors ran afoul of their deepest convictions when they insisted that this was an art to be learned, not a mere preference to be favored.
After the live bombs came the first lessons in machine-gun fire, using the French machine-gun and automatic rifle. The soldiers were taught to take both weapons apart and put them together again, and then they were ordered to fire them.
The first trooper to tackle an automatic rifle aimed the little monster from the trenches, and opened fire, but he found to his discomfiture that he had sprayed the hilltops instead of the range, and one of the officers of the Blue Devils told him he would better be careful or he would be transferred to the anti-aircraft service.
The veterans of the army, however, had little trouble with the automatic rifle or the machine-guns, even at first. The target was 200 metres away, at the foot of a hill, and the first of the sergeants to tackle it made 30 hits out of a possible 34.
The average for the army fell short of this, but the men were kept at it till they were thoroughly proficient.
One characteristic of all the training of the early days at camp was that both officers and men were being prepared to train later troops in their turn, so that many lectures in war theory and science, and many demonstrations of both, were included there. This accounted for much of the additional time required to train the First Division.
But while their own training was unusually long drawn out, they were being schooled in the most intensive methods in use in either French or British Army. It was an unending matter for disgust to the doughboy that it took him so long to learn to hurry.
CHAPTER VII
SPEEDING UP
WHILE the soldiers were still, figuratively speaking, in their own trenches and learning the several arts of getting out, the officers of the infantry camp were having some special instructions in instructing.
Young captains and lieutenants were placed in command of companies of the Blue Devils, and told to put them through their paces – in French.
It was, of course, a point of honor with the officers not to fall back into English, even in an emergency. One particularly nervous young man, who had ordered his French platoon to march to a cliff some distance away, forgot the word for "Halt" or "Turn around" as the disciplined Blue Devils, eyes straight ahead, marched firmly down upon their doom. At the very edge, while the American clinched his sticky palms and wondered what miracle would save him, a helpful French officer called "Halte," and the American suddenly remembered that the word was the same in both languages – an experience revoltingly frequent with Americans in distress with their French.
But disasters such as this were not numerous. The officers worked excellently, at French as well as soldiering, and little precious time was needed for them.
Three battalions were at work at this first training – two American and one French. As these learned their lessons, they were put forward to the next ones, and new troops began at the beginning. This plan was thoroughly organized at the very beginning, so that the later enormous influx of troops did not disrupt it, and as the first Americans came nearer to the perfection they were after, they were put back to leaven the raw troops as the French Blue Devils had done for the first of them.
The plan further meant that after the first few weeks, what with beginners in the First Division and newly arriving troops, the Vosges fields offered instruction at almost anything along the programme on any given day.
Over the whole camp, the aim of the French officers was to reproduce actual battle conditions as absolutely as possible, and to eliminate, within reason, any advantage that surprise might give to the Germans.
By the end of the first week in August, the best scholars among the trench-diggers and bombers were being shown how to clean out trenches with live grenades, and the machine-gunners and marksmen were getting good enough to be willing to bet their own money on their performances.
Then came the battalion problems, the proper use of grenades by men advancing in formations against a mythical enemy in intrenched positions.
From the beginning, the American Army refused to accept the theory that the war would never again get into the open. They trained in open warfare, and with a far greater zest – partly, of course, because it was the thing they knew already, though they found they had some things to unlearn.
Then the war brought about a reorganization of American army units, and it was necessary for the officers to familiarize themselves with new conditions. The reorganization was ordered early in August, and put into effect shortly afterward. The request from General Pershing that the administrative units of the infantry be altered to conform with European systems had in its favor the fact that it economized higher officers and regimental staffs, for at the same time that divisions were made smaller, regiments were made larger.
The new arrangement of the infantry called for a company of 250 enlisted men and 6 commissioned officers, instead of 100 men and 3 officers. Each company was then divided into 4 platoons, with a lieutenant in command. Each regiment was made up of 3 battalions of 4 companies each, supplemented by regimental headquarters and the supply and machine-gun organizations.
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