These were men who had years of railroading behind them. Many of them were officered by the same men who had been their directors in civil life. It was no uncommon thing to hear a private address his captain by his first name. One day a private said to his captain. "Bill, you got all the wrong dope on this," to which the captain replied severely: "I told you before about this discipline—if you want to quarrel with my orders, you call me mister."
But military discipline was never a real love with the engineers. "What's military discipline to us? We got Rock Island discipline," said a brawny first lieutenant, when, because he was a fellow passenger on a train with a correspondent, he felt free to speak his mind.
"I won't say it's not all right in its way, but it's not a patch on what we have in a big yard. A man obeys in his sleep, for he knows if he don't somebody's life may have to pay for it—not his own, either, which would make it worse. That's Rock Island. But it don't involve any salutin', or 'if-you-pleasin'.' If my fellows say 'Tom' I don't pay any attention, unless there's some officer around."
This attitude toward discipline characterizes all the special units to a certain degree, though the engineers somewhat more than the rest, for the reason that they had to offer not a mere negation of discipline but a substitute of their own.
But, whatever their sentiments toward their incidental job as soldiers, there was no mistaking their zest for their regular job of railroading.
They found the railways of France in amazingly fine condition, in spite of the fact that they had, many of them, been built purely for war uses, and under the pressure inevitable in such work. Those behind the British lines were equally fine.
As soon as the American engineers appeared in the communication-trains, their troubles with the Germans began. On the second run of the "Lucky 13th" men, a German airplane swept down and flew directly over the engine for twenty minutes, taking strict account.
Then they began to bomb the trains, and many a time the crews had to get out and sit under the trains till the raid was over.
The engineers kept their non-combatant character till after the December British thrust at Cambrai, when half a hundred of them, working with their picks and shovels behind the lines, suddenly found themselves face to face with German counter-attacking troops, and had to fight or run. The engineers snatched up rifles and such weapons as they could from fallen soldiers, and with these and their shovels helped the British to hold their line.
The incident was one of the most brilliant of the year, partly because it was dramatically unexpected, partly because it permitted the Americans to prove their readiness to fight, in whatever circumstances. The spectacle of fifty peaceful engineers suddenly turned warriors of pick and shovel was used by the journals of many countries to demonstrate what manner of men the Americans were.