Solicitous for the welfare of the Expeditionary Force and determined that its members should not fall below the high standard it had established of individual worth and soldierly quality, the War Department met the problem of leaves of absence in a strange land by establishing “leave areas” in especially interesting sections of France wherein was offered a varied program of rest, change, recreation and entertainment. More than a dozen famous resorts in the Alps, the Pyrenees, along the Riviera and elsewhere were leased in whole or in part and put in charge of the Y. M. C. A., which saw to it that the men on leave had a thoroughly good time. Once in four months each soldier in service was entitled to a week’s outing at whichever one of these leave areas he preferred to visit. Beginning in the winter of 1918, during the first year of the operation of this system 220,000 soldiers were thus given an opportunity for recreation and sent back to their duties wholesomely refreshed.
Several civil organizations coöperated with the War Department in work for the welfare of the soldier in training and overseas and very greatly aided the Government in its effort to enable the men who composed the army to return to their homes better and more capable men than they were when they left upon their country’s service. These and their activities are described in more detail in the chapter on “Big Brothering the Army.” But here the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations, the War Camp Community Service, the Jewish Welfare Board, the Knights of Columbus, the Salvation Army and the American Library Association must be referred to briefly because of the very great importance of what they did for the welfare of the American soldiers and because of their influence upon the character of the American Army.
More than five hundred service buildings were operated by these organizations in the various camps and cantonments in this country alone, and many hundreds more overseas. They furnished to the men wholesome club life, in comfortable houses, with music, games, lectures, reading and writing facilities and athletic equipment. The Young Women’s Christian Association built, furnished and officered at least one hostess house in every camp, wherein the women relatives and friends of the soldiers could meet them in homelike surroundings. The American Library Association installed in the camps specially designed buildings, manned them with trained workers and provided many thousands of volumes which were kept in constant circulation.
The War Camp Community Service worked in the localities surrounding the camp, where it aided the citizens in efficient expression of their universal spirit of hospitality and friendliness toward the troops, maintained clubs for soldiers on leave, provided information bureaus, recreation and entertainment, and, in general, helped to create and preserve between the men in training and the community in which they were located a normal and helpful social relationship.
So, in a year and a half, America expanded her army of 212,000 into an army of 2,000,000 men overseas, a million and a half in training, and two million more preparing, as these latter were sent across the ocean, to take their places in the cantonments. She turned this democratically chosen material from raw civilians of peace-loving traditions into gallant fighters and fused a heterogeneous mass of nationalities into a solid body inspired by and fighting for American ideals. It was an army so eager to get into the struggle for liberty and justice against militarism and autocracy and its spirit was so high and unanimous that every regiment leaving a cantonment for overseas service celebrated the coming of its orders with enthusiasm and was envied by all those not yet chosen. It was an army that, above everything else, was the expression of the mind, the heart and the soul of the American people. Almost every home in the nation had some part in it and it went upon its war adventure with the prayers, the blessings, the love and the ardent wish to serve its needs of the whole people. Never was an army sent to war so fathered and mothered, so big-sistered and big-brothered, so loved and cheered by an entire nation and provided for by its Government with such care and far-seeing vision as this that sailed from the ports of America for the battlefields of France.
CHAPTER VII
MAINTAINING THE ARMY IN FRANCE
To receive, care for and handle the army in France made necessary prodigious works that, like everything else in the prosecution of the war, had to be planned and executed at the highest possible speed. While the making of the army, the building of cantonments, the development of flying fields, the creation of an industry for the supplying of munitions, the building of shipyards and ships, the expansion of the navy, and all the multitude of wartime tasks to which the nation at once turned its energies were being pushed breathlessly forward, a vast development of facilities had to be begun and carried on in France before our army and its supplies could even be landed upon French shores and transported to the front.
The chief ports of France were already being utilized to their utmost capacity by France and England, and for either of these nations to give up any portion of the port facilities they were using would have meant a serious detriment to their war effort. Therefore it was necessary for the United States to develop sufficiently for our needs the smaller and more backward harbors and port towns. Our shipments of troops and supplies began to land in France at the end of June, 1917, and at once the ports it was possible for America to use became badly congested because of the lack of unloading facilities. In response to the sore need of our war associates and their urgent request our khaki-clad men were sent over in a constantly increasing stream that grew month by month to ever larger proportions. With each 25,000 men it was necessary to dispatch simultaneously enough supplies of every sort to maintain those men for four months. And at the same time had to be shipped the varied kinds and immense amounts of material for the development of the ports, the building of storehouses, the making of camps, the providing of railways and rolling stock, and all the rest of the work to be done.
As the vessels carrying all these war necessities crowded into the small and undeveloped French ports in the summer of 1917 they had to wait their turns at the docks. It often happened that a ship would discharge the most needed part of its cargo, give up its place to some other ship which also carried sorely needed supplies and wait for another turn to land the rest of its load. Sometimes, so great was the congestion because of the lack of berthing and unloading facilities, a ship would find it better, rather than wait for another opportunity, to return to the United States with part of its original cargo still aboard, reload and cross the ocean again, when it would appear at the French port by the time its next turn came around.
By the following summer, a year after these things were happening, so enormous were the developments and improvements this country had made, that with 250,000 and sometimes even 300,000 soldiers per month pouring into the French ports, with all the vast amounts of food, equipment, clothing and munitions for their use that went in with them, and with all the huge and varied quantities of construction material also being landed, the port facilities were equal to all needs and docks, warehouses and unloading machinery were ready for the still greater demands upon them which would presently have followed if the war had not come to an end.