And in addition to all these were the base repair shops in France, which were erected on a scale to employ a force three times as large as the combined organizations of all the manufacturing arsenals of the United States in time of peace, having a capacity for relining 1,000 cannon and overhauling and repairing 2,000 motor vehicles, 7,000 machine guns, 50,000 rifles, and 2,000 pistols every month. This equipment of artillery and its maintenance organization implies the flow from American industry of enormous quantities of repair parts and spare parts to keep the artillery in good condition.
Coming next to the more personal equipment of the soldier, we find the necessity confronting the Ordnance Department to manufacture shoulder rifles by the million and cartridges for them by the billion. The great war brought the machine gun into its own, requiring in the United States the manufacture of these complicated and expensive weapons by the tens of thousands, including the one-man automatic rifle, itself an arm of a deadly and effective type.
Simultaneously with the mass employment of machine guns in the field came the development of the modern machine gun barrage, the indirect fire, of which required sighting instruments of the most delicate and accurate sort, and tripods with finely calibrated elevating and traversing devices, so that the gunner might place the deadly hail safely over the heads of his own unseen but advancing lines and with maximum damage to the enemy. These thousands of machine guns required water jackets to keep their barrels cool and specially built carts to carry them.
The personal armament of the soldier also called for an automatic pistol or a revolver for use in the infighting, when squads came in actual contact with soldiers of the enemy. These had to be produced by the hundreds of thousands.
The requirements of the field demanded hundreds of thousands of trench knives, murderous blades backed by the momentum of heavily weighted handles, which in turn were protected by guards embodying the principle of the thug's brass "knucks" armed with sharp points.
Then there were the special weapons, largely born of modern trench warfare. These included mortars, ranging from the small 3-inch Stokes, light enough to go over the top and simple enough to be fired from between the steadying knees of a squatting soldier, to the great 240-millimeter trench mortar of fixed position. The mortars proved to be exceedingly effective against concentrations of troops, and so there was devised for them a great variety of bombs and shell, not only of the high explosive fragmentation type, but also containing poison gas or fuming chemicals. Great quantities both of mortars and their ammunition were required.
From the security of the trenches the soldiers first threw out grenades, which burst in the enemy's trenches opposite and created havoc. From the original device were developed grenades of various sorts—gas grenades for cleaning up dugouts, molten-metal grenades for fusing the firing mechanisms of captured enemy cannon and machine guns, paper grenades to kill by concussion. Then there were the rifle grenades, each to be fitted on the muzzle of a rifle and hurled by the lift of gases following the bullet, which passed neatly through the hole provided for it. The production of grenades was no small part of the American ordnance problem.
In addition to these trench weapons were the Livens projectors, which, fired in multiple by electricity, hurled a veritable cloud of gas containers into a selected area of enemy terrain, usually with great demoralization of his forces.
Bayonets for the rifles, bolos, helmets, periscopes for looking safely over the edges of the trenches, panoramic sights, range finders—these are only a few of the ordnance accessories of general application.