Our men followed the ordinary rule of soldiers on leave. About seventy-five per cent. of them wired in for extensions and more money. About seventy-four per cent. received peremptorily unfavorable replies. The excuses and explanations which came in kept our officers interested and amused for some days. One man—who got leave—sent in a telegram which is now framed and hung on the wall of a certain battalion orderley’s room. He telegraphed:
“No one dead. No one ill. Got plenty of money. Just having a good time. Please grant extension.”
After our leave, they really began to make soldiers of us. We thought our training in Canada had amounted to something. We found out that we might as well have been playing croquet. We learned more the first week of our actual training in England than we did from November to April in Canada. I make this statement without fear that any officer or man of the Canadian forces alive to-day will disagree with me, and I submit it for the thoughtful consideration of the gentlemen who believe that our own armies can be prepared for service here at home.
The sort of thing that the President is up against at Washington is fairly exemplified in what the press despatches mention as “objections on technical grounds” of the “younger officers of the war college,” to the recommendations which General Pershing has made as to the reorganization of the units of our army for service in Europe.
The extent of the reorganization which must be made in pursuance of General Pershing’s recommendations is not apparent to most people. Even our best informed militia officers do not know how fundamentally different the organization of European armies is to that which has existed in our own army since the days when it was established to suit conditions of the Civil War. But the officers of our regular army realize what the reorganization would mean and some of them rise to oppose it for fear it may jeopardize their seniority or promotion or importance. But they’ll have to come to it. The Unites States army can not operate successfully in France unless its units are convenient and similar multiples to those in the French and British armies. It would lead to endless confusion and difficulty if we kept the regiment as our field unit while our allies have the battalion as their field unit.
There are but unimportant differences in the unit organization of the French, British and Canadian forces. The British plan of organization is an examplar of all, and it is what we must have in our army. There is no such thing in the British army as an established regimental strength. A battalion numbers 1,500 men, but there is no limit to the number of battalions which a regiment may have. The battalion is the field unit. There are regiments in the British army which have seven battalions in the field. Each battalion is commanded by a lieutenant-colonel. All full colonels either do staff duty or act as brigaders. There are five companies of 250 men each in every battalion. That is, there are four regular companies of 250 men each, and a headquarters company of approximately that strength. Each company is commanded by a major, with a captain as second in command, and four lieutenants as platoon commanders. There are no second lieutenants in the Canadian forces, though there are in the British and French. The senior major of the battalion commands the headquarters company, which includes the transport, quartermaster’s staff, paymaster’s department (a paymaster and four clerks), and the headquarters staff (a captain adjutant and his non-commissioned staff). Each battalion has, in addition to its full company strength, the following “sections” of from 30 to 75 men each, and each commanded by a lieutenant: bombers, scouts and snipers, machine gunners and signallers. There is also a section of stretcher-bearers, under the direct command of the battalion surgeon, who ranks as a major. In the United States army a battalion is commanded by a major. It consists merely of four companies of 112 men each, with a captain and two lieutenants to each company.
As I have said, a British or French battalion has four ordinary companies of 250 men each and the headquarters company of special forces approximating that number of men. Instead of one major it has six, including the surgeon. It has seven captains, including the paymaster, the adjutant and the quartermaster. It has twenty lieutenants, including the commanders of special “sections.” You can imagine what confusion would be likely to occur in substituting a United States force for a French or English force, with these differences of organization existing.
In this war, every man has got to be a specialist. He’s got to know one thing better than anybody else except those who have had intensive instruction in the same branch. And besides that, he’s got to have effective general knowledge of all the specialties in which his fellow soldiers have been particularly trained. I can illustrate this. Immediately upon our return from first leave in England, we were divided into sections for training in eight specialties. They were: Bombing, sniping, scouting, machine-gun fighting, signalling, trench mortar operation, bayonet fighting, and stretcher-bearing. I was selected for special training in bombing, probably because I was supposed, as an American and a baseball player, to be expert in throwing. With the other men picked for training in the same specialty, I was sent to Aldershott, and there, for three weeks, twelve hours a day, I threw bombs, studied bombs, read about bombs, took bombs to pieces and put them together again, and did practically everything else that you would do with a bomb, except eat it.
Then I was ordered back along with the other men who had gained this intimate acquaintance with the bomb family, and we were put to work teaching the entire battalion all that we had learned. When we were not teaching, we were under instruction ourselves by the men who had taken special training in other branches. Also, at certain periods of the day, we had physical training and rifle practice. Up to the time of our arrival in England, intensive training had been merely a fine phrase with us. During our stay there, it was a definite and overpowering fact. Day and night we trained and day and night it rained. At nine o’clock, we would fall into our bunks in huts which held from a half to a whole platoon—from thirty to sixty men—and drop into exhausted sleep, only to turn out at 5 A.M. to give a sudden imitation of what we would do to the Germans if they sneaked up on us before breakfast in six inches of mud. Toward the last, when we thought we had been driven to the limit, they told us that we were to have a period of real, intensive training to harden us for actual fighting. They sent us four imperial drill sergeants from the British Grenadier Guards, the senior foot regiment of the British army, and the one with which we were affiliated.
It would be quite unavailing for me to attempt to describe these drill sergeants. The British drill sergeant is an institution which can be understood only through personal and close contact. If he thinks a major-general is wrong, he’ll tell him so on the spot in the most emphatic way, but without ever violating a single sacred tradition of the service. The sergeants, who took us in charge to put the real polish on our training, had all seen from twenty to twenty-five years of service. They had all been through the battles of Mons and the Marne, and they had all been wounded. They were perfect examples of a type. One of them ordered all of our commissioned officers, from the colonel down, to turn out for rifle drill one day, and put them through the manual of arms while the soldiers of the battalion stood around, looking on.