The University of Michigan

by Wilfred Byron Shaw

Of the little company of Americans in the French ambulance service, among whom were a number of former students of the University, were the two Hall brothers, sons of Dr. Louis P. Hall, '89d, Professor of Dentistry in the University. Richard Nelville Hall, '11-'12, who later was graduated from Dartmouth, was killed on Christmas morning, 1915, when his car was struck by a stray shell, the first American to be killed in the ambulance service. His brother Louis P. Hall, Dartmouth, '12, Michigan, '14e, later became a lieutenant in the French army, and eventually captain in the American Expeditionary Forces.

It will thus be seen that Michigan's share in the war did not await the entry of America among the Allies, although it was not until the forces of the country were definitely enlisted that her real contribution, in men and services, was made. With the opening of the great training camps, the alumni, particularly those of more recent years, as well as the students of the University volunteered literally in thousands, and Michigan was soon represented by men and officers in every branch of the service. They were in the first contingent of the expeditionary forces, the Rainbow Division, and figured prominently in the earliest fighting about the St. Mihiel salient, at Cantigny, and later with the Marines at Belleau Wood. Many were of course held in America, to their disgust, to train the new levies under the draft law, while others were assigned particular duties for which their special training had fitted them. Thus we find Michigan represented everywhere in the Medical and Dental Corps, the early engineering battalions, the rapidly evolving work of the signal corps, the military intelligence and censorship divisions, gas warfare and gas defense, publicity, and perhaps above all, the aviation service, for which the young college man seemed peculiarly fitted. There were several Michigan men among the first aviation sections in France; several were killed and others captured in early combats. The arrival of the later contingents brought Michigan men with every division; they were everywhere in the Argonne battle, they were with the famous "lost battalion," and with the American forces included in the British sectors, as well as among the engineers who helped to stop the gap after the disaster to the Fifth British Army.

Perhaps the most striking contribution Michigan made towards winning the war was in manning the big naval guns which did more than any one thing to cut the German lines of communication through the gap by Sedan between Longuyon and Montmedy. It is not too much to say that it was the work of these guns, in the hands of the men and officers recruited largely from the two naval divisions who left the University in the spring of 1917, that formed one of the great arguments which led to the Armistice of November 11. These two divisions of about seventy men each were organized in the fall of 1916, and with the entry of the United States in the war were immediately mustered into service with Professors J.R. Hayden of the Department of Political Science and Orange J. McNiel of the Engineering College as the commanding officers. For some time they were held in Ann Arbor, where they were quartered in the Gymnasium, later going to the Great Lakes Training Station for further preparation.

Within a short time they were assigned to the various rifle ranges which were being established up and down the Atlantic coast by Major Harllee of the Marine Corps and given intensive training in gunnery. So well did they show up in this specialized task, for intensive training in marksmanship was one of the Navy's great needs, that little squads of the men were sent everywhere to install and open up new ranges. Meanwhile the need of big guns on the French front was becoming more and more apparent and one officer, Captain, and later Admiral, Plunkett bethought him of a number of great 14-inch navy guns which were not in use. He conceived the idea of mounting these on railway carriages and making great mobile batteries of them. At first he was laughed at; it was impossible to make heavy enough trucks to carry such a weight; and then, where were the expert men to man them? He replied that he knew where he could get the men and called in experts to design the carriages. The result was that in just fifty days the first gun was successfully fired from the railway mounting at the proving ground at Sandy Hook, by the Michigan Naval Volunteers. When the guns were shipped to France all the Michigan men available were sent with them and formed the effective nucleus of every crew. They wore the marine uniform with naval insignia and were under naval discipline throughout; they went "fore" and "aft" on the great trains which accompanied each gun, pointed their pieces to "port" and "starboard" and were rated according to navy ranking.

Their great task came when the guns with their equipment first landed at St. Nazaire. Not only was it necessary to assemble the guns, but also the locomotives and accompanying armored cars. All of this work was done by the men of the two units as officers and petty officers. When these guns finally got into action, they outranged every battery on any front and, striking at the German railway lines of communication, now from this point and then that, they threw the whole "neck of the bottle" toward which the American forces were driving into hopeless confusion. Of the men in these two battalions over sixty percent received commissions, and of the others, almost all held high ratings as petty officers with responsibilities ordinarily only assumed by commissioned officers.

With so great a number of Michigan men with the expeditionary forces, the University was particularly interested in their welfare while "over there." From the first Michigan took a prominent part in the establishment of the American University Union in Paris, of which President Hutchins was one of the first Board of Trustees. Professor Charles B. Vibbert, '04, of the Department of Philosophy was appointed Director of the Michigan Bureau by President Hutchins and was made one of the Executive Committee in Paris. Here he rendered most effective service to the hundreds of Michigan men who used the club house, a large hotel in the heart of Paris, as their headquarters. He was also assigned as his special duty, the promotion of friendly relations between the Americans and the French people of Paris, and so successful was he in this task that he was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government. After the end of the demobilization period he remained in Paris for a time as Director of a permanent Union which succeeded the war organization. Two other representatives of the University, Mr. Warren J. Vinton, '11, for some time Professor Vibbert's assistant, and Assistant Professor Philip E. Bursley, '02, one of the general secretaries, were on the Union's staff.

No review of Michigan's record in the war would be complete without a word as to the share of the Faculty. As never before this was a war of scientists and technically trained men. There was hardly a subject taught in the University which did not fit in somewhere, while the work of such departments as chemistry, physics, astronomy, mathematics, and the various branches of engineering, to say nothing of the Schools of Medicine and the Colleges of Dentistry and Pharmacy, proved absolutely indispensable. Long before this country entered the war Dean M.E. Cooley had offered his services to the Government, when the crisis which he and many others foresaw, should come.

In all there were 162 members of the Faculty in various forms of war service, a large proportion of them in uniform. Among those to whom were assigned particularly noteworthy tasks were Dean Victor C. Vaughan, '78m, of the Medical Advisory Board of the Council of National Defense and later Colonel on the staff of the Surgeon-General in Washington, where was also Dr. Walter R. Parker, '88e, Professor of Ophthalmology, who as Lieutenant-Colonel in the Medical Corps had charge of head surgery. Dr. Udo J. Wile, Professor of Dermatology, Major in the Medical Corps, was among the earliest medical officers abroad, where he was in charge of the first American hospital in England, near Liverpool.

In the Literary College, among the many who early entered service were Jesse S. Reeves, Professor of Political Science, who entered the Aviation Service and later the Judge Advocates' Department, holding the rank of major; Peter Field, Associate Professor of Mathematics, who, as Major in the Ordnance Department, had charge of the tests and ballistic computations, as well as serving as armament officer, at the Sandy Hook proving grounds; Moses Gomberg, '90, Professor of Organic Chemistry, who as Major in the Ordnance Service made valuable investigations, and Professor H.R. Cross of the Department of Fine Arts, who held an important post with the Red Cross in Italy.

The men of technical training of the Engineering Faculty were especially in demand and practically every man in one Department, that of Chemical Engineering was in service. Alfred H. White, '93, Professor of Chemical Engineering, became Lieutenant-Colonel in charge of the construction of the great government nitrate plants; Walter T. Fishleigh, '02, '06e, Associate Professor of Automobile Engineering, as Lieutenant-Colonel, was, with Major Gordon Stoner, '04, '06l, Professor of Law in the University, in charge of the design and purchase of all the ambulances for the Medical Corps. Lieutenant-Colonel William C. Hoad, Professor of Sanitary Engineering, took charge of the sanitation of the big training camps.