And they thought we wouldn't fight Part 9

"The French are great actors, and I find that American soldiers unacquainted with the French language are able to understand the French soldiers who are unacquainted with the English language much better than the American officers, similarly handicapped, can understand the French officers.

"I should say that some time would be lost if all of our troops were to be trained by French soldiers, but I believe that this division under French tutelage will be better able to teach the new tactics to the new divisions that are to follow than it would be if it had speedily pa.s.sed through training camps like the British system, for instance, where it must be taken for granted that verbal, instead of actual, instruction is the means of producing a speeding up of training."

Thus it was that our first American contingent in France was in training for something more than service on the line. It rapidly qualified into an expert corps from which large numbers of capable American instructors were later withdrawn and used for the training of our millions of men that followed.

This achievement was only accomplished by the exercise of strict disciplinarian measures by every American officer in the then small expedition. One day, in the early part of August, 1917, a whirlwind swept through the string of French villages where the first contingent was training.

The whirlwind came down the main road in a cloud of dust. It sped on the fleeting tires of a high-powered motor which flew from its dust-grey hood a red flag with two white stars. It blew into the villages and out, through the billets and cook tents, mess halls, and picket lines. The whirlwind was John J. Pers.h.i.+ng.

The commander-in-chief "hit" the training area early in the morning and his coming was unannounced. Before evening he had completed a stern inspection which had left only one impression in the minds of the inspected, and that impression was to the effect that more snap and pep, more sharpness and keenness were needed.

At the conclusion of the inspection all of the officers of the contingent were agreeing that the whirlwind visitation was just what had been needed to arouse the mettle and spirit in an organisation comprised of over fifty per cent. raw recruits. Many of the officers themselves had been included in the pointed criticisms which the commander directed against the persons and things that met disfavour in his eyes.

The night following that inspection or "raid," as it was called, it would have been safe to say that nowhere in the area was there a recruit who did not know, in a manner that he would not forget, the correct position of a soldier--the precise, stiff, snappy att.i.tude to be presented when called to attention. The enlisted men whose heels did not click when they met, whose shoulders slouched, whose chins missed the proper angle, whose eyes were not "front" during the inspection, underwent embarra.s.sing penalties, calculated to make them remember.

"Have this man fall out," General Pers.h.i.+ng directed, as he stood before a recruit whose att.i.tude appeared sloppy; "teach him the position of a soldier and have him stand at attention for five minutes."

One company which had prided itself upon having some of the best embryonic bomb-throwers in the contingent, contributed a number of victims to the above penalties, and as the General's train of automobiles swirled out of the village, the main street seemed to be dotted with silent khaki-clad statues doing their five minute sentences of rigidity.

"What about your men's shoes?" General Pers.h.i.+ng asked a captain sharply, while he directed his eyes along a company line of feet whose casings seemed to be approaching the shabby.

"We need hobnails, sir," replied the captain.

"Get them"--the words snapped out from beneath Pers.h.i.+ng's close-cropped grey moustache. "Requisition hobnails. Your men need them. Get them from the quartermaster."

The American commander stepped into the darkness of a large stone-walled stable, which represented the billeting accommodations for ten American soldiers. A dog curled in the doorway growled and showed its teeth. The General stepped past the menacing animal, and without heeding its snarls close to his heels, started questioning the sergeants in charge.

"Are any cattle kept in here?" he asked.

"No, sir," replied the sergeant.

"Detail more men with brooms and have it aired thoroughly every day."

Observed from a distance, when he was speaking with battalion and regimental commanders, the commander manifested no change of att.i.tude from that which marked his whole inspection. He frequently employed his characteristic gesture of emphasis--the wadding of his left palm with his right fist or the energetic opening and closing of the right hand.

When the Pers.h.i.+ng whirlwind sped out of the training area that night, after the first American inspection in France, it left behind it a thorough realisation of the sternness of the work which was ahead of our army.

The development of a rigid discipline was the American commander's first objective in the training schedules which he ordered his staff to devise. After this schedule had been in operation not ten days, I happened to witness a demonstration of American discipline which might be compared to an improved incident of Damocles dining under the suspended sword at the feast of Dionysius.

A battalion of American Infantry was at practice on one of the training fields. The grenade-throwing exercises had been concluded and the order had been given to "fall in" preparatory to the march back to the camp.

Upon the formation of the long company lines, end on end down the side of the hill, the order, "attention," was sharply shouted bringing the men to the rigid pose which permits the eyes to wander neither to the right nor to the left, above nor below, but straightforward.

As the thousand men stood there, rigid and silent, a sudden disturbance took place in the sky above them. Sh.e.l.ls began exploding up there. At the same time the men in the ranks could distinctly hear the whirr and the hum of aeroplane motors above them.

Almost every day reports had been received that German planes had evaded the Allied aerial patrols along the front and had made long flights behind our lines for the dual purposes of observing and bombing.

As the American battalion stood stiff and motionless, I knew that the thought was pa.s.sing through the minds of every man there that here, at last, was the expected visitation of the German flyers and that a terrific bomb from above would be the next event on the programme. The men recognised the reports of the anti-aircraft guns blazing away, and the sound of the motors suggested a close range target.

The sound seemed to indicate that the planes were flying low. The American ranks knew that something was going on immediately above them.

They did not know what it was, but it seems needless to state that they wanted to know. Still the ranks stood as stiff as rows of clay-coloured statues.

An almost irresistible impulse to look upward, a strong instinctive urging to see the danger that impended, and the stern regulations of "eyes front" that goes with the command "attention," comprised the elements of conflict that went on in each of the thousand heads in that battalion line.

In front of each platoon, the lieutenants and captains stood with the same rigid eyes front facing the men. If one of the company officers had relaxed to the extent of taking one fleeting upward glance, it is doubtful whether the men could have further resisted the same inclination, but not a man s.h.i.+fted his gaze from the direction prescribed by the last command.

One plane pa.s.sed closely overhead and nothing happened. Three more followed and still no bombs fell, and then the tense incident was closed by the calling out of the order of the march and, in squads of four, the battalion wheeled into the road and marched back to billets.

As one company went by singing (talking was permitted upon the freedom of routstep), I heard one of the men say that he had thought all along that the officers would not have made them stand there at attention if the danger had not been over.

"As far as I knew, it was over," a comrade added. "It was right over my head." And in this light manner the men forgot the incident as they resumed their marching song.

When Mr. W. Hollenzollern of Potsdam put singing lessons in the curriculum of his soldiers' training, a tremor of military giggling was heard around the world. But in August, 1914, when Mars smiled at the sight of those same soldiers, marching across the frontiers east, south and west, under their throaty barrage of "Deutschland, Deutschland, uber Alles," the derisive giggles completely died out. It immediately became a case of he who laughs first, lives to yodel.

The American forces then in training took advantage of this. They not only began to sing as they trained, but they actually began to be trained to sing. Numerous company commanders who had held strong opinions against this vocal soldiering, changed their minds and expressed the new found conviction that the day was past when singing armies could be compared solely with male coryphees who hold positions well down stage and clink empty flagons of brown October ale.

"It's a great idea," a company commander told me. "We learned it from the Blue Devils. They are the toughest set of undersized gentry that I have run into in France. They have forearms as big as three-inch sh.e.l.ls, and as hard. Their favourite pastime is juggling hand-grenades that can't possibly explode unless they just lightly touch one another.

"Yesterday we watched them, bared to the waist, as they went through three hours of grenade and bombing practice that was the last word in strenuosity. Keeping up with their exercises was hard work for our men, whose arms soon began to ache from the unaccustomed, overhand heaving.

"Then we watched them as their commander a.s.sembled them for the march back to the village. At the command, 'attention,' their heels clicked, their heads went back, their chins up and their right hands were pasted rigidly against their right trouser leg.

"At the command 'march' all of them started off, punctuating their first step with the first word of their marching song. It was not any sickly chorus either. There was plenty of beef and lung power behind every note. My men lined up opposite were not missing a bit of it. Most of them seemed to know what was expected when I said:

"'On the command of "march," the company will begin to sing, keeping step with the song. The first sergeant will announce the song.'

"My first sergeant responded without a change of colour as if the command to sing had been an old regulation. I knew that he was puzzled, but he did it well. The name of the song chosen was pa.s.sed down the line from man to man.

"When I gave the command to march, the company, almost half of them new recruits, wheeled in squads of fours, and started off down the road singing, 'Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here.' There were some who were kind of weak on the effort, but there was a noticeable crescendo when the sergeant pa.s.sed the word down the squad that the company would be kept marching until everybody had joined in the singing.

"We swung into camp that night with every voice raising l.u.s.tily on 'One Gra.s.shopper Hopped Right Over Another Gra.s.shopper's Back,' and after dinner the billets just sprouted melody, everything from ragtime to Christmas carols and baby lullabies."

One noticeable characteristic about our soldiers during that training period before they had come in contact with the enemy, was a total absence of violent antipathy toward all persons and things Teutonic.

On the march the men then sang "We'll Hang the d.a.m.ned Old Kaiser to a Sour Apple Tree," but at that time I never heard any parodies on the "Gott Straffe Germany" theme. Our soldiers were of so many different nationalistic extractions and they had been thrown together for so short a time, that as yet no especial hatred of the enemy had developed.

An ill.u.s.tration of this very subject and also the manner in which our boys got along with the civilian populations of the towns they occupied came to my notice.

A driving rain which filled the valley with mist and made the hills look like mountain tops projecting above the clouds, had resulted in the abandonment of the usual daily drills. The men had spent the day in billets writing letters home, hearing indoor lectures from instructors, playing with the French children in the cottage doorways, or taking lessons in French from the peasant girls, whose eyes were inspirations to the dullest pupils.

I spent several hours in a company commander's quarters while he censored letters which the men had submitted for transmission back home.

The Captain looked long at a letter in his hand, smiled and called for his orderly.

"Tell Private Blank I want to see him here right away," were the Captain's instructions. Blank's name was not quite so German as Sourkraut, but it had a "berger" ending that was reminiscent of beer, pretzels and wooden shoes.

"Here's a letter written in German," said the Captain to me, referring to the open missive. "It's addressed to somebody by the same name as Blank, and I presume it is to some one in his family. Blank is one of the best men in my company, and I know that the letter is harmless, but it is impossible for me to pa.s.s it when written in an enemy language."

The door opened and a tall, blonde enlisted man stepped in, shaking the rain from his hat. He stood at respectful attention, saluted and said: