Almost as rapid as the work on the cantonments and camps was that which had to provide hospitals, flying fields with all their many buildings for varied uses, huge storehouses and port and terminal facilities. At half a dozen of the Atlantic Coast cities port terminals with warehouses and wharves had been completed or were nearing completion at the end of hostilities unprecedented in size and completeness of equipment in our own or any other country. One storage warehouse provided 3,800,000 feet of storage space and another, for ordnance supplies, had 4,000,000 square feet of space into which were fitted seventy-five miles of trackage and 9,000 lineal feet of wharf frontage.
For the production and storage of certain kinds of ordnance great plants had to be built at the highest speed and, for the most part, because of their dangerous possibilities, in out of the way places where the problem was complicated by the necessity of providing housing not only for the workers who would operate the plant but also for those engaged in its construction. An instance of one of these, and there were many others, was a smokeless powder plant the building of which in eight months transformed farm land along a riverside to a busy town, containing 3,500 people, into which had gone 100,000,000 feet of lumber. It had rows of barracks for single men, blocks of cottages, other blocks of better residences, huge storage houses, laboratories, manufactories. A pumping and purification plant built among the first of the structures took from the river 90,000,000 gallons of water per day and made it fit for use. While the plant was being erected from 200 to 400 cars of freight were unloaded daily. Construction projects of this class, including plants for the production of gas, nitrate, picric acid, powder and high explosives, presented complicated problems and their cost ran from $15,000,000 to $50,000,000 each. And all were erected and in operation within a few months from the day of the first work upon them.
Eighteen months of war saw the construction of nearly five hundred important projects of these various kinds at a cost of over $750,000,000, all of them rushed to completion at the greatest possible speed.
CHAPTER III
FEEDING AND EQUIPPING THE ARMY
The Quartermasters Corps, which formerly totaled 500 officers and 5,000 enlisted men, with its facilities and routine adapted to the feeding and equipping of an army of 127,000 men, had at once not only to meet the needs of the vastly expanding forces and to keep abreast of the actual growth and immediate demands of the army as it came into being, but it had also to anticipate and prepare to meet what would be the much greater needs of a much larger army six or eight months in advance.
While a million and a half of men were being examined, classified and called to service and more than thirty cantonments and camps were being built in which to house and train them and other construction projects were being rushed forward, the Quartermasters Corps had to provide their uniforms and clothing and accumulate in storage the food for their subsistence. At the same time, it had to make sure that it could meet the constantly enlarging needs of the coming months when the army would grow like a Jonah’s gourd with every passing week. Production had to be stimulated and turned aside from its usual channels and enormous quantities of material used for new purposes. It was an emergency that required the practical making over of the methods and purposes of American industry and in the process the Quartermasters Corps had to be both the directing and supervising agency and the channel of communication between industry and the army.
A soldier’s outfit of clothing for a year cost $65.51 and numbered twenty-three different items of a dozen different branches of manufacturing industry. The initial equipment for one man’s shoes alone cost $14.25. During the sixteen months from April 1st, 1917, to the end of July, 1918, the army was supplied, among other things, with 27,000,000 pairs of shoes, field and marching; 29,800,000 pairs of breeches, light and heavy; 19,800,000 coats, both wool and cotton; 192,200,000 shirts, undershirts and drawers, for both summer and winter wear; 156,600,000 pairs of stockings of cotton and light and heavy weight wool; and 21,000,000 blankets. And by the end of July the Corps already was taking measures to provide the clothing necessary during the coming year for the army of 5,000,000 men for which the War Department was preparing. That meant it must have on hand whenever and wherever they should be required, among many other things, all of which at the signing of the armistice it had either ready or in sight, 17,000,000 blankets, 28,000,000 woolen breeches, 34,000,000 woolen drawers, 8,000,000 overcoats, 33,000,000 pairs of shoes, 110,000,000 pairs of stockings, 9,000,000 overseas caps, 25,000,000 flannel shirts.
Ten great storage depots were maintained in as many different regions of the country where huge quantities of equipment were kept and from which the camps in that district were supplied. Other storage plants had to be kept full at the ports of embarkation from which the troops bound for overseas service were outfitted. On the other side of the Atlantic stock depots were maintained with complete equipment for ninety days’ supply for all the troops, numbering finally over 2,000,000, that were sent overseas. As an indication of the enormous quantities of clothing which had to be sent across the Atlantic, on the first of July, 1918, there were, along with similar large quantities of other supplies, on docks in the United States ready for shipment, 2,700,000 blankets, 840,000 pairs of spiral puttees, 7,500,000 pairs of stockings, 1,400,000 pairs of field shoes, 203,000 pairs of hip rubber boots, 713,000 overseas caps, 697,000 woolen breeches, 709,000 overcoats.
A force of inspectors kept the output of the manufacturing contractors constantly under rigorous watch and whenever supplies were not up to the specified standard they were rejected. Because it is of the first importance that a soldier’s feet be always in the best condition, great care was taken in properly fitting each individual. A scientific means was devised of measuring the soldier’s foot when he received his first pair of shoes and of testing the fit so that he could be sure of entire comfort in his foot-gear, no matter what the length of the hikes he should take. And after being perfectly fitted the first time, with each successive pair—each year in the service in the United States he received three pairs and four pairs for each year abroad—he had only to ask for another exactly similar.
The American army has always been a well fed army. In the pre-war days, when it was the smallest army maintained by any large state, experts from other nations, versed in the quantity and quality of army rations, said that the American was the best fed of all armies. And this was still true during the great war, though its numbers leaped on by magic strides. Whether in training at home, in camp on the other side, or on the battle front, the American soldier had better food and more of it than the soldier of any other nation. For instance, extra rations from American supplies were issued to American soldiers when brigaded with those of any other army, in addition to those supplied by the commissariat of the army with which they were working. No experiments were made upon the doughboy in the matter of food and experts saw to it that his ration was agreeable to the taste, well-balanced and nutritious. That it was good was proved by the fact that the average soldier gained from ten to twelve pounds in weight after entering the service.