So the trains of munitions passed the trains laden with the products of war, the knowledge of whose sacrifice is the only value of war. Right and left through the intermediate zone, from Orléans to the Mediterranean, were more repair shops, remount depots, training camps for aviators, tank crews, machine-gunners and carrier pigeons, each worker striving for the same purpose that shoveled the coal into the locomotive firebox or slipped a shell into a gun or a cartridge into a rifle. At Is-sur-Tille, near Dijon, was another "hump," which looked down on what seemed a training camp in its streets of mud: for there was mud in the S. O. S. as well as at the front—mud kept soft by the damp atmosphere when autumn rain was not falling, and deep by the trampling of many feet. Here, as at Gièvres, the train sent its cars on their way to the warehouses to which their contents belonged; here you felt at first hand the breath of the front in all its hot and pressing demands; here was the largest bakery, with cement floors and all up-to-date apparatus, directed by the head of one of our large bakeries at home, rolling out the round loaves with the ease of peas shelled from a pod. All night long, as at Gièvres and at the base ports, the switch engines coughed forth their growls as they shunted cars, and the laborers worked at loading and unloading. The officer in charge in his little office was directing as insistent an excursion business as ever fell to the lot of man. His nightmare, and the nightmare of all the regulating officers of the S. O. S., was moving cars. Every hour a car was needlessly idle was waste. This called for labor, and more labor—for more warehouse space, for more locomotives, for more sidings; but as they were not forthcoming, why, man and machine must be made to do more work. The excess strain on either was not considered. The pressure was the same as that for the relief of a city stricken by fire or earthquake.
Beyond Is-sur-Tille at Saint-Dizier was another, a supplementary, regulating station for the Meuse-Argonne battle, which during the battle fed, apart from the troops in the Saint-Mihiel and other sectors, 645,000 men and 115,000 animals. Regulating stations did the detail, while Gièvres and the base ports did the wholesale. They saw that each division received its daily rations of food and ammunition. Each division had its "cut in" of cars, with all its daily supplies, which was made up a day in advance and sent to the divisional railhead. Knowing the needs of the divisions, a regulating station sent its requisition back to the big warehouse centers, while it always tried to keep on hand a small amount of all articles likely to be needed in haste. When we were swinging our divisions around for the Château-Thierry emergency, one division had seven railheads in eight days; its trains were on hand on each occasion. They must be; otherwise the divisions went hungry. All other demands must yield to the routine which brings the morning milk and the grocer's boy to the kitchen door.
At the railhead you felt not only the breath of battle but that throbbing suspense and intensity of purpose which is associated with men in action. Here came the empty trucks and wagons from the front, and the ambulances traveling in their convoys on the crowded roads up to the zone of fire, while men worked in darkness. Here the wedge from home was narrowing under the hammer strokes, until you could feel it splitting the oak—the hammer strokes of the hundred millions, their energy, their prayers and thoughts.
Those empty trucks seemed ever hungry, open mouths, the mute expression of the call for more, and still more, of everything with which to keep up the driving—more replacements as well as material.
When the front wanted anything, it was wanted immediately. Improvise it, purloin it, beg for it, but send it, was the command that admitted of no refusal. If this officer could not get it, put another in his place who could. Officers when they lay down for a few hours' sleep had their telephones at their elbow, ready as firemen to answer the call. Men worked until the doctors ordered them to the hospital—that they must do. They could do no more. The S. O. S. could not send guns or tanks when it had none from home; but American resourcefulness surpassed its own dreams of probabilities. Harbord could well say to Pershing: "I've straightened out things in the S. O. S."
XXIV
REGULARS AND RESERVES
Isolation of West Pointers—College graduates not dissociated from the community—The monastic ideal of the founder of West Point—And the caste ideal—The officer a cleat on the escalator of promotion—Out of contact with America—Five years to make a soldier—A clan tradition—A blank check to the regulars.
Before our entry into the war our busy people had occasional reminders that we had a United States Military Academy for training army officers. Its gray walls on the bluffs at West Point were one of the sights of the Hudson valley to passengers on river steamers. There was an annual football game between the West Point and Annapolis cadets. As every schoolboy knew, both teams were better than those of the small eastern colleges, but not so good as those of the large eastern colleges. The cadets were in the inaugural parade. Their marching thrilled observers with an excellence which, however, is always expected from professionals, whether ballplayers, billiardists, actors, pugilists, circus performers, opera singers, or poets. It was the cadets' business to march well. Of course they were superior to amateurs in their own line. Investigations of "hazing" had also at one time attracted wide attention to the Academy. Some of us were horrified, and others of us amused—still others disinterested as long as they did not have to take the dose themselves—at reports of first-class men having to swallow large draughts of tabasco sauce in order to toughen their stomachs for the horrors of war.