The soldier pulled a paper out of the pile, and read: “Observer at Providence reports that hostile forces entrained cavalry, field and heavy artillery and ammunition columns at regular rate of two hours for full military train. Time for loading siege material, 3½ hours.”[138]
Officers Had Never Handled Men
He tossed the papers aside. “When did any of our officers ever have to handle thirty thousand men?” he asked. “How many of them ever handled as many as ten thousand? Last week, two regiments were left without food for two meals on a practice march because their commissary failed to supply travel rations. Day before yesterday seven boxes of provisions were found lying in a company street without any one to claim them. Those were militia; but our own officers equally lack experience in handling such a big contract as a whole army.[139]
“Do you know what it means to see that an infantry division gets its material? Do you know what we’ve got to send into battle with it? It means an ammunition train of 165 4-mule wagons, and more than 700 mules and horses. Then there are the other supply trains, the pack trains and the engineer trains—135 more wagons and 600 animals. There are ninety ambulances and wagons with their animals. And this is without counting the horses for the cavalry and the signal corps! I tell you, Mr. President, if we unload that mess in the face of an enemy like the one down there,” he pointed southeastward, “it will never get back here!”[140]
“And if you stay here! Won’t you be attacked?” asked a member of the President’s party.
“I think not.” The General turned to the chart again. “See here! He’s got a great big territory to hold already. When he has New York City and Harbor to control also, I think he’ll be too well occupied to attack us until he brings reënforcements across. At any rate, he can’t come at us, except from the direction of New York City up the narrow river valley, or from the direction of Massachusetts through the Berkshire Hills. We can make the banks of the Hudson a difficult place for him. And the longer we can hold on here, the longer the ordnance works at Watervliet can continue to turn out the heavy guns that we need so sorely. Watervliet, Mr. President, in my eyes, is the most precious thing we’ve got to guard just now.”[141]
“Stay!” Says the President
The President arose and walked to the window. For a quarter of an hour he looked out over the rolling country to the East where the soft blue curves of the hills were cloud-like against the April sky. Then he returned. “Stay where you are,” he said, “as long as you can, or think wise. New York will have to fall. Good-by. We’ll go back to Washington and do our best. Good luck to you, and to your Berkshire Hills.”
“They are good American hills,” said the General, smiling for the first time. “They are giving our men the only protection they’ve had against aeroplanes since this thing began.”
The spreading, crowding groves that crowned them and made them famous for their loveliness, now made the multi-folded Hills a welcome cover for the harassed American troops. They reduced to a minimum the effectiveness of scouting from the air, and increased to a maximum extent the efficiency of cavalry and motor troops that knew the country. Among their laureled slopes and in their vales and intervales, was good territory for artillery defense.