There was much to teach in that three months' course. How long will it take to reach all the units of a division, billeted in ten villages in an area of ten square miles, with an order for movement? How will it be sent? How will it be written after consultation with G-1, who knows the transport available? Which units will march out first? How long will it take to entrain those going by train? If the motor transport, and the horse-drawn transport, too, have to go overland, what roads will they take to reach their destination? Have the drivers their maps? In making a relief in the trenches, how long will it take to march up and complete the task?
Four German prisoners say one thing, four another, and three another. Take their reports in connection with aeroplane reports and general observation. What is your decision as to the enemy's strength on your front? Two additional divisions are suddenly brought into your sector. How are you to feed them? An attack is planned to pinch out a salient. How long is to be your artillery preparation? What its character? What points will you cover with the corps artillery fire? What with the divisional howitzers? There is your map with the information in G-2's possession for G-3 to consider in working out details. The infantry must be preceded by a barrage worked out with a mathematical accuracy, that will be practicable for the gunners and the infantry. All the fundamentals of technical knowledge were what arithmetic, algebra and geometry, and the strength of materials are to a bridge builder, in solving the problems presented to civilians, lawyers, engineers, and scholars of ages from twenty-five to forty-five, who worked them out and went to recitation in a school-room where they sat at little desks, as they did in boyhood days.
The number of hours of study a student put in at Leavenworth had been a test of capacity—the reason for Leavenworth's existence. While officers who did not take the course were regarded somewhat in the light of outsiders, "We'll show these cits what it is to work," as one regular said. Langres was a very sweatshop in scholastic industry. It was a combination of learning and an infinite amount of clerical detail for men many of whom were used to having their details looked after by clerks. British and French officers, acting as instructors and lecturers, elucidated the problems on the blackboard. As one saturated with war on the Western Front listened to preachment of fundamentals, I was impressed with how much the average man who has not seen war, and has taken his conception of it from a soldier charging or firing a gun, had to learn before he had the a b c's of modern war.
One also wondered if all the hard work were always to the purpose. Practical Allied officers, who were always polite, thought that the students did so much grinding that they became dull and stale; we were trying to teach them too many generalities. A knowing regular said one day to a reservist: "You are too serious. The thing in the army is to make a show at this sort of gymnastics,—then use your common sense when you reach the front." This was in kind with a remark of one regular officer about another, whose information had led us astray: "I know him—a regular West Point trick. You must pretend you know, and be very definite in the pretense. That often gets over." It seemed to me one of the faults of the West Point system.
The regulars had the advantage at Langres in that they had been ingrained in the military instinct, which is what is called the mathematical sense in a schoolboy who finds mathematics easy; but if the instinct were only that of cadet days and of company drill, and their minds had not grown, they suffered from the little learning which is a dangerous thing. Though the average Leavenworth man—not in all cases a class A man—did not see, despite the Canadian example, how anyone could become a staff officer in a few months when you had to study at Leavenworth for years, it soon became evident that some of these reserve officers with finely trained minds, used to the application and competition of civil life, were showing themselves the superior of the regulars. This in the scholastic sense, without considering practice in action. There was one Leavenworth man I knew who, though a master at solving problems in the classroom, seemed unable to solve any problem in action. Beside the Langres school we had a school of the line, and a candidates' school where men who had shown their leadership as privates in combat might be educated in theory for commissions. The reserve graduates of Langres were being sent out in the spring and summer of 1918 to be assistants in the G sections of army and corps and divisions. In a few instances they even became chiefs of section of division staffs. They were promised that one day they might wear the black stripe of the General Staff on their sleeves as the reward of efficient service. "Doping the black stripe" was the slang phrase for the grind at Langres. One day the reserve graduates might also have promotion, and one day, too, the reserve officers, captains and lieutenants and a few majors of the line, arriving with the divisions from the training camps—as our organization grew and was knit together—might also have promotion.
About this time promotion was becoming a form of intoxication with the regulars. They must be cared for first; in due course, after the reservists became soldiers, the reservists would have their turn. New tables of organization were being devised which called for more high-ranking officers. Without rank the work could not be done, said his chiefs to the Commander-in-Chief, who once greeted one of them with the remark: "How many lieutenant-colonels must become colonels in order to do this job?" The regulars kept apart from the reserves, forming a group in their own world. In their messes the talk ran on promotions: each new list brought its tragedies for men who found themselves jumped, and its triumphs for those who had jumped them. If you were not frequently promoted, it was taken as a sign that you were not "making good." Promotion depended upon the good will of your superior, and sometimes, naturally and humanly, upon the fact that you might have served with him at an army post. Promotion became unconsciously corrupting. Some younger men who received their stars after swift passage through the lower grades hardly bore their honors with the equanimity of their elders. One chief of staff I knew had a Napoleonic grandeur. He hedged himself about with the etiquette of royalty. If he had been presented with a three-cornered hat of the kind that Napoleon wore, he would have accepted it in all seriousness. Unhappily his work was not of the Napoleonic standard. There was another chief of staff who was just the same man as a brigadier-general that he had been as a major. He never seemed busy; his work was always in order; his tactics were successful. He knew how to win men to his service, how to delegate authority. Had he been given command of an army he would have carried on in the same imperturbable fashion.
"It will be hard on some of us regulars," he remarked, "when we wake up the 'morning after' and find ourselves majors back in the good old Philippines."
Naturally, in this environment, the reservists caught the contagion of promotion. If promotion were the criterion of having done your "bit," well, then, what would your friends think of you if you returned with the same rank you had when you left home? When you did return, you found that your friends could not remember whether you had been a major or a colonel. They were relieved if they might call you "mister" or Tom or George. It didn't matter to them what kind of insignia you had as long as you had been "over there," doing your bit. They had perspective which was hard to preserve in France.