The S. O. S. had been arranged to meet the demands of an army in our own sector. Its plan was disrupted by the switching of our troops to Château-Thierry and Picardy to meet the German offensives. The mobilization for Saint-Mihiel brought us back to our own sector. After Saint-Mihiel came the Argonne concentration, called into being by the hope of a speedy end of the war through one supreme effort by all the Allies. Should our new troops, thrown in action without sufficient preparation, and the veteran troops, thrown in without time for recuperation after Château-Thierry and Saint-Mihiel, go without food and ammunition, we might have a disaster. The wisdom of our insistence that we could form and supply and fight an integral army, instead of infiltrating our men into the British and French armies, was on trial. Victory and our soldiers' lives were at stake.
The battle was to be fought not only against machine-gun nests, but in the sweating effort of stevedores, of mechanics, and laborers, in the roar of foundries, in the rattle of trains far from the sound of the guns. For officer personnel in the S. O. S. we had first, of course, the regulars, those of the old quartermaster department and of the engineers, who would not ordinarily command troops, and those who could be spared from the zone of advance where every able fighting officer was required. These must be few, compared to the numbers of the whole. Second, we had all the men in the thirties, forties, and fifties, experts in every calling, who had come to France in their enthusiasm, in answer to the summons, in the days when the thing was for every man to serve in uniform in France. These were too old for combat, even if they thought they were not. They could not stand the physical hardship of the front, however brave their spirit. The S. O. S. was the place for them. There, or in building the organization of supply at home—which was primarily important—the nation could make the best use of their training in civil life. Third were younger officers, from the Guard or a training-camp, caught by the card-index system classifying occupations, and separated from their regiments because they were experts in some line of activity which was short of personnel in the S. O. S. They knew how to fight; but their knowledge of something else, their superiors thought, not they, was more useful to the nation.
For mechanics we had all the men skilled in trades at home who were as ready to give up high wages for a soldier's pay, and to work double union hours, as they would have been to stick tight in a fox-hole against a counter-attack, if they had had the chance. These came in their thousands, living under conditions far more miserable, in contrast to their habits, than their officers—from railroad trains and shops, bakeries, cement factories, contractors' firms, and every industry on the list—the typical American army, which has made industrial America.
For labor we had all we could pick up abroad: able-bodied German prisoners, middle-aged and invalided French territorials, Senegambians, Turcos, Belgians, Spaniards, Chinese, Annamites. From home we had, aside from expert labor, chiefly the colored men, who had no rivals in "rustling" cargo. At the docks their giant strength and their good-natured team-play were supreme; but they were in evidence all the way forward to the shelled roads which they were repairing back of the front where their kinsmen had their place in line.
The feeling between the regulars and reserves, which I shall describe in general terms elsewhere, was bound to be most acute in the S. O. S. Suffice it to say for the present that it was a gospel with the regulars that they should hold all the high commands in the S. O. S. as well as at the front. It was granted that the regulars must be absolute in the zone of advance, and all reserves their pupils or "plebes"; but how was the manager of a great railroad, of a bakery, of a contracting firm, a chemist, a civil engineer who had built tunnels and bridges, or a business organizer, to feel that a regular officer was his superior in his own line? The answer of the regular was that only he understood how to coördinate all policy for military end,—the old, old answer of the inner temple of mystery, from the days of the Egyptian priests to the present. The regulars said, too: "How can we tell who is the real expert? These big men from civil life are jealous of one another. To appoint one over the heads of others would bring friction. We know war. Supply is a part of war. And we shall keep matters in our own hands——" and promotions, too, as the reserves might whisper.
A point which the regulars dwelt upon even more emphatically was that the reserve officers did not know discipline and army forms. Some of these reservists had directed thousands of men in organizations at home, without knowing how to drill a company. In their experience, building railroad yards and warehouses did not require military etiquette. The men under them held even stronger convictions on the subject. They were doing the same kind of work that they did at home, and amid peaceful surroundings. If they were workmen and not soldiers, why should they have to submit to all the distinctions between rank and file? Must they salute every man with a gold bar who happened to pass along, when he was no nearer the front than they? He was not their boss. What mattered, except that they were "on the job"? Why did not these officers pay more attention to getting the tools and material whose lack hampered progress? The officers could only turn to their seniors, who turned to other seniors, on through the channels of authority, to the lack of shipping, and to the plants at home, where the workmen were being driven equally hard, but did not have to wear uniforms and crook elbows in salute. As for army forms, the reserve officers were ready to comply with them if they could find that there was any settled system; but army forms seemed to change to meet the requirements, as the reservists sometimes thought, of delaying action, when that suited a commanding officer's idea.
Meanwhile, why should the assistant to the chief baker be an infantryman? Not that he wanted to be in the S. O. S.: he wanted to be at the front. Was the baking of bread taught only in the army? For the army, yes, thought the regulars. The complaints of the soldiers about the quality of the bread, which were warrantable, seemed to indicate that the regulars might have escaped blame by giving the responsibility to a civilian baker. A reserve officer whose business was automobile manufacture, serving in a repair shop under a cavalryman, did not deny that the cavalryman knew how to lead a squadron in a charge, but did he know about mending broken motor trucks? The civil engineer, who had once executed a contract for five millions, as he reported to a young West Point engineer who had been a lieutenant when we entered the war, might ponder the difference between theory and practice. A regular engineer lieutenant-colonel of twenty-nine said: "From what I have seen of the eminent civil engineers, I should think that they ought to be my subordinates." He was young; so was Napoleon at Marengo and Austerlitz. Both were soldiers.
When reserve officers, because of their expertness, were given authority, it did not mean that they were always able to exercise it. One who came to France under the express condition that he was to be supreme in his branch found that he was made a subordinate. What could he do? Resign? Resign in time of war? There was another to whom General Pershing said: "You go ahead. I give you carte blanche in your work." One day he was called on the carpet by his regular senior for acting on his own authority. "Who told you to do this?" asked the superior.
"General Pershing!"