Photo by Signal Corps
EMBARKING FOR UNITED STATES
Photo by Signal Corps
MESS ROOM ON CONVERTED CARGO TRANSPORT OHIOAN
Always courageous and swift in action, the Transportation Service was one of the first of the war department bureaus to anticipate the armistice and the consequent demobilization. On November 1, ten days ahead of the armistice, upon the confidential intelligence that the German Government had ordered its fleet out to give battle to the Grand Fleet of the Allies, and further assured that the defeat of Germany on land was in sight, the Transportation Service stopped the overseas movement of all combat troops. Primarily this action was taken to avoid a disaster to our troop transports, a disaster almost bound to occur if in the expected forthcoming naval engagement any of the German warships were by chance able to slip through the Allied cordon and reach the Atlantic. After the armistice the anticipatory act of the Transportation Service proved to be of material benefit in demobilization, for it had kept away from France at least four divisions of troops, diminishing by so much the work of bringing back the expedition.
On the fifth day of the armistice General Pershing named thirty divisions that were to conduct the advance of the Army of Occupation to the Rhine and hold open the communications, designated the supply troops to support the divisions, and released the rest of the Expeditionary Forces for return to the United States as soon as transportation facilities could be provided. This order freed nearly half the expedition for demobilization. A million men were thus ready to return home at once.
While the authorities in France were preparing for the embarkation to come, there was at hand a job in overseas transportation to which the Transportation Service could turn with such troopships as were available for immediate use. In England on the day of the armistice there were stationed more than 70,000 American soldiers, most of them members of the air service squadrons undergoing training in the British aviation camps. Their embarkation through the large British seaports offered no particular difficulty. On our own regular transports and in such space as the Army could secure on British commercial liners, this whole force was set down in the United States within six weeks after the armistice began.
The embarkation of the A. E. F. in France may be said to have started about the middle of December, simultaneously with the appearance of the order establishing the three embarkation ports and the embarkation area at Le Mans. From then on week by week the embarkations of home-coming troops steadily increased in number. In January the first of the converted cargo transports joined the troopship fleet. A little later some of the chartered foreign tonnage appeared in the service. About that time, too, the Navy began adding its increment of war vessels fitted out as troop carriers. In the late spring we secured the German tonnage. In June, 1919, the American troop sailings reached a maximum never before attained in any military or civilian movement. In that month 368,300 American soldiers embarked on transports in France, and 343,600 landed on American soil. The movement exceeded by 60,000 men that of the greatest month in the transport of the A. E. F. to France. In taking the forces to France we had been assisted by the merchant marines of the principal Allies to the limit of their combined capacities, but we brought back the expedition single-handed.