A soldier's mother in France

by Rheta Childe Dorr

When this camp is completed and equipped—don’t forget that it has to be equipped—those planes will do more than convoy vessels into the harbor, they will be used to train flyers for a dozen other ports into which our ships and our allies’ ships now steal precariously. There were no seaplanes there when I saw the place. The hangars were soon to be ready, though, and so were the big repair shops, the bunkhouses for the men, the ammunition warehouses, and all the other necessary buildings. There is absolutely no inefficiency over there.

The man who is in charge of most of the mammoth undertaking in and around this seaport now bears the title of colonel. Before he entered his country’s service for the duration of the war he was known as one of the greatest engineers in America. His largest feat was the canal which connects Lake Washington with Puget Sound. To build this canal, which flows through the heart of the city of Seattle, the waters of the big lake, which is nearly twenty miles long, had to be lowered nine feet. To a man who could do that without difficulty or serious accident the work undertaken by our army forces in France was a mere matter of taking one step after another. The first step was getting men, and there was no difficulty about that. The draft furnished the men, or at least the mass of them. Voluntary enlistment furnished experts in various lines. And splendid men they are, those American builders in France. Of one regiment of engineers working for the most part as day laborers there fully sixty per cent. are college graduates.

This seaport lies at one end of a vast railroad system which is carrying our men and all the army supplies from the ocean to the fighting front. It is a good harbor and a famous one from the time of the Romans and even further back than the Romans. But for present-day war needs it is not good enough. It has sandbars and shallows, so one of the engineering feats our men are doing is the deepening of that harbor to admit the largest ships.

Another feat is the enlarging of docking facilities so that supplies for an army of three or four million men may be quickly unloaded. Another still is the building of a five-track spur from the docks to the main line of railroad. It would take many chapters to describe adequately all the construction work that is being done in and around this one city in southern France.

Perhaps it is nobody’s fault on this side of the Atlantic that a great deal of the work has been delayed for lack of tools and machinery, but delayed it has been. For example, pile drivers that were urgently needed came slowly, and when they came were found to be relics of the past and practically useless. Locomotives of the vintage of 1868 were grudgingly furnished, and important work was held up while they were put into shape. Steam shovels came a piece at a time. But no matter. The engineers hustled while they waited and built with what material they had on hand.

If Germany has spies in those camps, and if they have contrived to make reports on what is happening there, the knowledge will bring no comfort to Emperor William and his junkers. The Potsdam fire department which was to dispose of all the army that the United States could send to Europe will be assigned to a simpler task. The mere personnel of that working force of engineers in southern France is enough to make the Germans turn pale.

The man in charge of repairs and equipment of naval aviation, with headquarters in this southern port made a fortune in the automobile manufacturing business and just before the war he retired from business. He is still young, but he had all the money he needed and he wanted to enjoy life in other ways than business. Now he draws the pay of a lieutenant-commander in the navy and devotes what time he has free from his duties to inducing other successful business men to enter army service. This man was on the boat with me coming home from France. He was going back to get three thousand more expert mechanics, and incidentally to persuade one of the biggest millionaire railroad men in the country to put on a uniform.

A captain of engineers who is bossing part of the work of building warehouses was drawing a salary of fifteen thousand a year in the contracting business in New York. Working under him in overalls are master mechanics, machinists, bridge carpenters, skilled men of many trades. They may seem to be wasted on these laboring jobs, but the work has to be done, and there are not enough men of lesser skill to go around. Later these men will be found and the skilled ones will be overseers.

To this end the world is being scoured for laborers. We have Chinese coolies working for us, Japanese, Spaniards, Dutch, Scandinavians. In one camp I saw a large detachment of Africans from Algeria, Mohammedans. They were under the command of French non-commissioned officers, men who had spent years in North Africa and know the language. The colonel in command took me to their quarters and into the cook house, where the noon meal was in preparation. A giant African in a white cotton robe and turban, the sweat running in streams down his face, was making soup in a great copper caldron. Other men, similarly attired and equally hot, were slicing vegetables, cutting bread into big chunks, opening cans of tomatoes and pouring the contents into the stew which formed the basis of the meal.

“I can’t get used to this job of mine,” said the colonel. “A year ago I filled a little army department job at home and was getting old and fat. Now I am responsible for a regiment of engineers and nine hundred workmen, most of whom can’t speak a word of English.