"Well, then you better report to him. You go tell him you have been insubordinate, you haven't been doing things through channels, and see what he says."
This was putting the Commander-in-Chief himself to the test of regular loyalty.
"You tell that narrow-minded regular for me," said Pershing, "to leave you alone."
This did not mean that the reserve officer was left alone. He could not carry all his troubles to the busy Commander-in-Chief, as he struggled against the system.
The reservists, both officers and the whole force of workers, were not meeting as a rule the best class of regulars. A brigadier or a colonel in the zone of advance, who was wearing himself out physically and mentally, or who for less temporary reasons was not efficient, was relegated to the rear, with the idea that he might be good enough for the S. O. S. Yes, anything was good enough for the S. O. S., thought its pestered, nerve-racked workers. Was that colonel or brigadier, who had served his country for twenty or thirty years, to be made subordinate to some railroad man, civil engineer, or manufacturer, who had been in uniform only a few months? He might be sent home; but surely not on the invitation of General Peyton C. March, Chief of Staff in Washington, who had his own domestic problem in derelicts without the further annoyance of importations. So the colonel or the brigadier was cared for in the S. O. S., all the while feeling keenly his humiliation at not having command of a regiment or brigade in combat operations. If he were wise enough to serve his country and keep his health, he only signed the papers turned in by an energetic subordinate, be he regular or reserve; but if he were mischievous in his insistence upon authority, he clogged the wheels of organization,—which is not saying that he was not a worthy, honorable, and agreeable gentleman, even if he were not of much service in building a bridge or a warehouse in a hurry, or in forcing five days' rations through to a division at the front. Considering these things, and considering that every man tied to some humdrum task in the S. O. S. wanted to be up under fire instead of one, two, or three hundred miles away from the guns, it is not surprising that the spirit of corps of the S. O. S. was not good. It was well that Harbord arrived in July; or he might have been too late.
XXIII
THE S. O. S. DRIVES A WEDGE
Depending on Tours—The "front-sick" S. O. S.—Harbord not "Bloisé"—Getting his men together—Building morale—Troops as freight—Brest to the front—Construction figures—Atterybury's job—Sorting supplies at Gièvres—Hospitals and the product of war—Feeding the front from Is-sur-Tille—The point of the wedge at the railheads.
If one division at the front knew little of what another division was doing, how much less its men knew of what was doing in the capital of the Services of Supply at Tours, that ancient city in the center of France. Grand Headquarters in the town of Chaumont, and Army Headquarters in the village of Souilly, were relatively small office affairs, compared to Tours.