The most amusing of the incidental depots was called the Reclamation Depot, at which the numerous articles collected on the battle-field by special salvage units were overhauled and refurbished, or altered to other uses. Nothing was too trifling to be accepted. The "old-clo' man" of No Man's Land was responsible for an amazing amount of good material, made at the Reclamation Depot from old belts, coat sleeves, and the like. Many a good German helmet went back to the "square-heads" as American bullets.
In the same American district there was a great artillery camp, with remount stables, containing thousands of horses and mules. Under French tutelage, the American veterinarians had learned to extract the bray from the army mule, reducing his far-carrying silvery cry to a mere wheeze, with which he could do no indiscreet informing of his presence near the battle-lines. So the mule-hospital was one of the busiest spots in the port.
A short distance from the port, the engineers built a 20,000-bed hospital, the largest in existence, comprising hundreds of little one-story structures, set in squares over huge grounds, so that every room faced the out-of-doors.
Between the port and the hospital, and beyond the port along the coast, were the rest-camps, the receiving-camps, and a huge separate camp for the negro stevedores. Near enough to be convenient, but not for sociability, were the camps for the German prisoners, who put in plenty of hard licks in the great port-building.
Midway between all this activity at the coast and the training and fighting activity at the fighting-line there was what figured on the army charts as "Intermediate Section," whose commanders were responsible for the daily averaging of supply and demand.
In the intermediate section, linked by rail, were the supplementary training-camps, schools, base hospitals, rest-areas, engineering and repair shops, tank-assembling plants, ordnance-dumps and repair-shops, the chief storage for "spare parts," all machinery used in the army, cold-storage plants, oil and petrol depots, the army bakeries, the camouflage centre, and the forestry departments, busy with fuel for the army and timber for the engineers.
The achievement of the first year was literally worthy of the unstinted praise it received. And perhaps its finest attribute was that most of it was permanent, and will remain, while France remains, as America's supreme gift toward her post-war recovery.
CHAPTER XIV
FRANCE AND THE MEDICOES
THE history of the A. E. F. will be in most respects the history of resources cunningly turned to new ends, of force redirected, with some of its erstwhile uses retained, and of a colossal adventure in making things do. Where the artillery was weak, the A. E. F. eked out with the coast-artillery. Where the engineer corps was insufficient, the railroads were called on for special units, frankly unmilitary. A whole citizenry was abruptly turned to infantry. But one branch of the service, though scarcely worthy of much responsibility when the war began, was, nevertheless, the one most thoroughly prepared. The prize service was the Medical Corps, and it was in this state of astonishing preparedness because immediately before it became the Medical Corps, it had been the Red Cross, and the Red Cross knows no peace-times.
The question of what is Medical Corps and what is Red Cross has always been a facer for the superficial historian.