What America did

by Florence Finch Kelly

A great part of the material for this development had to be shipped from the United States, as well as the tools with which the work was done. The piles for the building of the docks, the lumber for the barges on which to place the pile drivers, the material for long blocks of storehouses, the rails and cars and locomotives for the making and operating of hundreds of miles of track, lumber for the building of barracks for the thousands of workmen, dredges, cranes, steam shovels, tools and materials of every sort—almost all had to be shipped from the United States and unloaded at the small, congested French ports, which were being enlarged and developed all the time that this work of unloading was going on in the cramped and crowded space.

In all, more than a dozen French ports were used by the American Government and in each one more or less expansion and development had to be done to make it serviceable, and in all the more important ones a very great amount of development work was instituted and carried through at breakneck speed. So much was done that through the last months of the war it would have been of little strategic value to the Germans if they could have gained possession of the Channel ports of France, for which they had striven mightily in order to cut off communications between England and the British armies in the field, for by that time there was room for them also at the more southerly ports. St. Nazaire was opened first and was followed by Bordeaux, Brest, Le Havre, La Rochelle, Rochefort, Rouen, Marans, Tonnay-Charente, Marseilles and others.

One of the Docks in a French Port Developed by the United States

St. Nazaire, through which poured immense numbers of American troops and vast quantities of supplies, in the early summer of 1917 was a sleepy little fishing village with a good natural harbor which was used only by occasional tramp steamers and coastwise shipping. The berthing and unloading facilities were meager, small, old and dilapidated. The harbor basin was dredged and enlarged, piers were built affording three times the former berthing capacity, the unloading facilities were multiplied by ten. At Bordeaux, in June, 1917, there were berths for seven ships and no more than two ships per week could be unloaded. Dredging and construction made it possible for seven ships at the existing pier to discharge their cargoes at the same time and inside of eight months docks a mile long, which the French told the American engineers could not possibly be finished in less than three years, were built on swampy land, concrete platforms, railroad tracks, and immense warehouses were erected and huge electric cranes were set up for lifting cases of goods from ships to cars. Approximately 7,000,000 cubic feet of lumber were used in this construction, nearly all of it shipped from the United States. In less than a year it was possible to unload, instead of two ships in a week, fourteen ships all at the same time. The amount of development, of dredging and construction, that had to be done at these two ports alone indicates the size of the task which awaited the United States Government overseas before our men and their supplies could even be landed in France.

There were very few supplies available in Europe for the American Army. Practically everything for their maintenance had to be shipped from the home base, and no chances could be taken with the possible cutting of the line of supply by enemy operations at sea. Therefore, for every soldier sent to France there went an amount of food and clothing sufficient to meet his needs for four months—an immediate supply for thirty days and a reserve for ninety days. The supply was kept at that level by adding to the amount already sent, with each fresh unit of 25,000 men embarked from America, the increase needed for them. As our Army overseas grew to 500,000, to 1,000,000, to 2,000,000, and with each new leap of the numbers subsistence and clothing for their four months’ use also crossed the ocean, great cities of warehouses sprang up, almost overnight, for the storing of these immense quantities of goods. Each port had its base supply depot a few miles back from the shore where were stored the materials as they were unloaded from the ships. Here was kept, in the depots of all the ports, a part of the reserve sufficient to maintain the entire Army, whatever its size at any given time, for forty-five days. Well inland, midway between the base ports and the front lines, was another series of warehouse cities to which the goods were forwarded from the base warehouses and from which they were distributed to the final long line of storage depots immediately behind the battle zones. In the intermediate warehouses was kept constantly a thirty days’ supply for all the American forces in France and in the distributing warehouses behind the front and at hospital, aircraft and other centers of final distribution there was always on hand a sufficient supply for fifteen days. Most of the material for all this vast network of storage houses had to be shipped from the United States. This was especially true of the base supply depots and the early construction. Later, much of the wood was cut by American engineering troops in French forests. Let two or three of these warehouse cities afford an idea of the immensity of the task of housing the supplies for our armies.

At the St. Nazaire supply depot nearly two hundred warehouses afforded 16,000,000 square feet of open and covered storage. Back of Bordeaux there was wrought in a few months a transformation from miles of farms and vineyards to long rows upon rows of iron and steel warehouses, each fifty by four hundred feet and affording, all told, nearly ten million feet of storage. At Gievres, what was a region of scrub growth upon uncultivated land became in a few months an intermediate supply depot of three hundred buildings, covering six square miles, needing 20,000 men to carry on its affairs and having constantly in storage $100,000,000 worth of supplies.

These and all the other depots had to have their barracks for the housing of the thousands of men for their operation. In each one a sufficient supply of pure water had to be developed, for nowhere in France was there enough wholesome water for American needs. Usually either artesian wells were sunk or existing sources were enlarged and purified, and reservoirs, tanks and piping were installed. One water-works and pumping station had a capacity of 6,000,000 gallons a day. Let a supply depot at which 8,000 enlisted men were employed illustrate them all. Rows of neat, two-story barracks housed the men and a huge mess hall, which served also as church, theater and entertainment hall, accommodated 3,100 men at a sitting and allowed 6,200 to dine in an hour. Planned on scientific principles, its overhead service, from which the food was heaped on the mess kits of the doughboys, enabled them to pass quickly in an unbroken line from the serving stations, of which there was one for each company, to the dining tables. Four smaller dining halls seating 500 each added the accommodations necessary for the entire camp. The food was cooked in two large, concrete-floored kitchens, each 312 by 60 feet and having thirteen big stoves, and in two smaller kitchens of three stoves each. An underground sewer carried the camp refuse to the sea, there were plenty of hot and cold shower baths and the whole was lighted by electricity.

At all large supply stations and permanent camps there were huge bakeries, each baking thousands of pounds of bread every day, coffee roasting and grinding plants—one of these prepared 70,000 pounds of coffee per day—ice and cold storage plants that made their own ice, of which one had a daily capacity of 500 tons of ice and held 6,500 tons of beef, big vegetable gardens cultivated by soldiers temporarily unfit for duty at the front, hospitals, nurses’ and officers’ quarters.

Within a few weeks after our entrance into the war, and before the first troops had sailed for France, a railroad commission was at work there studying the transportation problem which would have to be solved and preparing for the huge organization which would have to be set up before we could give efficient aid. At first the American Army was simply a commercial shipper over French lines, then American cars and engines were sent over and operated by American personnel on the French roads, under French supervision, and a little later most of the American lines of communication were taken over by the American Army. And hundreds of miles of railroads and switches were built and operated at terminals, between base ports and supply depots, in the supply stations, at the front, and between camps and other centers.