The War Department was so anxious to keep our men warm and comfortable that it bought up all the wool in the country. The army had to have thirty-five million more pairs of woolen socks than were made for the whole nation in 1914. It used more woolen blankets in one year than the one hundred million people in the United States buy in two ordinary years.
Attacks carefully planned
241. A War of Science. Every movement in the war had to be planned as exactly as possible. This was a war of science, rather than a war of dashing adventure, as those in the past had been. Before attacks were made on the enemy, a barrage, or curtain-like rain of shells, was turned on his lines. This "curtain of fire" moved forward at a fixed rate, and the men walked behind it. They had strict orders to go only so many yards a minute, or their own guns would kill them.
Use of poison gas
Poison gas was one of the new weapons of this war. It caused almost one-third of our losses in 1918. Science produced new gases so rapidly that inventors had to be continually making new gas masks to strain out the deadly fumes. Over thirty kinds of gas were used during the war.
No one commander could be present at once on every part of the hundreds of miles of battle-lines, or even a small part of them. The war had to be carried on largely by telephone. The Americans strung one hundred thousand miles of wire in France.
THE TANK, A NEW WEAPON IN THE WAR
Pershing trained for his work
242. Pershing Heads the Army. The youngest of American generals, John Joseph Pershing, was put at the head of the American forces. The choice of Pershing was hailed everywhere as a wise one. A war so immense and mechanical needed a general who had studied the art of war thoroughly, as Pershing had. He had seen much actual fighting, and was the only American general who had commanded a division in actual war. He carried with him the love and respect of all national guardsmen. They would have followed him anywhere he wished to lead.