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[IX]
THE GREAT WAR
On April 6, 1917, war having been that week declared by the United States against Germany, Major-General Leonard Wood, ranking officer in the United States Army--that is to say, the man occupying the senior position in our army--being then in sound health of mind and body and fifty-six years of age, wrote and personally delivered two identical letters, one to the Adjutant-General of the Army and the other to the Chief of Staff, requesting assignment for military service abroad.
No acknowledgment or reply was ever received from either source.
Early in April he received notice that the Department of the East of which he was then commander was abolished and in its place three new and smaller departments created, in spite of vigorous protests by several Governors of Atlantic States. He was offered any one of the following {226} three military positions that he might select--the Philippines, Hawaii or the "less important post" at Charleston, South Carolina.
He at once selected the post at Charleston.
On May 12th he proceeded to Charleston and began the organization of the Southeastern Department. In the months immediately following he had selected and laid out eleven large training camps and had taken charge of the supervision of three officers' training camps, one at Oglethorpe, one at Atlanta and one at Little Rock.
On August 26th he received orders to proceed to Camp Funston in Kansas to command the cantonment there and train for service a division of national troops designated as the 89th Division.
Towards the end of the year he was ordered to proceed to Europe to observe the military operations of the war. Leaving Camp Funston the day before Thanksgiving, he landed in Liverpool on Christmas Day, 1917. In London he called by invitation upon General Robertson, the British Chief of Staff, and upon his old friend, Sir John French. He then proceeded to Paris on December 31, and between January 2nd and 14th, 1918, {227} went over the British front with Generals Cator and Rawlinson. On the 16th he was at Soissons with the French.
For the next few days the examination of the French front continued at and near the Chemin des Dames sector.