We went to the kitchen and found the three expert radio operators—two were scrubbing big, black pans and the third was peeling spuds.
For moral effect, the Captain called the Top Sergeant off to one side. The rest of us had to laugh.
“Why have you got these men in the kitchen?” hotly demanded the Captain.
“Well, Sir,” replied the Sergeant, closing in his jaws firmly in determination, “there ain’t no more reason why the rest of the battery should do K. P. and excuse the wireless men. I heard one of ’em say yesterday that he ain’t never done no K. P. since he’d been in this man’s army, and that kind er talk is bad for the morale of the battery, so I just stuck ’em all on fer a few days to show the fellers they ain’t no favors played in this battery.”
“Yes, but what about the radio?” asked the Captain. “You should have left one of them on the job.”
“Oh, well, Captain,” came back the “Top” Sergeant, “it ain’t goin’ to make no difference; these airplanes don’t call the station more than once every two or three days and we ain’t got enough men to waste on sitting around awaiting for ’em to call and they don’t do nothing for us when they do call.”
Thus I found one of the main reasons for this early lack of results. These old timers did not take the Air Service seriously. They had no faith in its present capabilities nor its future development. To them an Army was composed of Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery. Every other arm or service was experimental. I am glad to say, however, that later this battery, in fact the entire regiment of Artillery, became very proficient in the work with the Air Service and the results were, indeed, satisfactory to all.
In the actual advance at Château-Thierry the ground liaison—that is, the communication by telephone, wireless telegraph and ground telegraph between the line units and the Air Service—became poorer and poorer as the troops advanced until it was really in a deplorable state. The area over which troops passed was all shell torn and it was impossible to move our flying fields farther up because we could not cease operations in order to make the move since we had no reserve Air units, and worse, we had no fields prepared and the Germans had destroyed theirs in the retreat.
As the days advanced conditions became more terrible. The entire corps headquarters had only one telephone wire and one ground telegraph line to the Corps Advance Headquarters and from there only one out to the various Divisional Posts of Command and in front of those Posts of Command almost everything was done by runners. Our little force at the Corps Air Service Headquarters was all worked down. After the first few days the drive ceased to be exciting and it became purely drudgery and habit. We were all irritable and cross. We were overworked and loss of sleep was showing very much in our dispositions. This particular day things were getting pretty bad up the line. The German artillery was making a strong defense and all of our Command Posts were getting their full share of German artillery fire. At noon our radio operator told me that some one had been trying all morning to put through a message to us, but that we had been unable to receive it. Either the transmitting set at the line was not working or our receiving set was not. At any rate, something was urgently wrong somewhere at the front or they would not have been so persistent. About nine-thirty they started trying to call us and they kept on until eleven-thirty, but the operator could not get anything definite out of the sound. In addition, at about a quarter of twelve they succeeded in getting a telephone call through, but we could not hear. We tried to relay it, but that did not work. We worked an hour on that—until a quarter of one. Then they managed to get a priority call through on the ground telegraph, which telegram was dated at the Post of Command at one-thirty in the afternoon and was delivered to me at one-forty. The telegram read as follows:
“To Chief of Air Service. First Army Corps.