Combat training at the divisional centers covered both trench and open warfare. Some 800 French and British officers and NCO's were brought to the United States to give instruction at the training camps in the trench warfare techniques employed on the Western Front. But Pershing feared that too much emphasis on the tactics of static warfare would result in neglect of training for the type of offensive warfare in the open that he believed would ultimately be necessary to defeat the Germans. Following his recommendations, the War Department revised training directives to stress maneuver, rifle marksmanship, bayonet fighting, musketry, and other methods consistent with a basic doctrine of aggressive, open warfare, as well as the tactics of trench fighting.

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Duration of training for the average infantry division before it was mitted to battle was nine months-six months in the United States, two behind the lines in France, and one in a quiet sector of the front. Training time for the individual soldier averaged about the same, except in the last months of the war, when replacements had to be rushed into the line without sufficient training. The war experience revealed that American soldiers could be trained adequately for combat in much less time than the Army had hitherto believed to be possible.

On 6 April 1917 there were about 9000

officers in the Army. The more than 200,000 needed before the war was over came from the Regular Army, the National Guard, the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, and officers' training camps and schools. The War Department inaugurated an officers' training program immediately after the declaration of war. The success of the "Plattsburg Idea," the name given to summer training camps for students and businessmen initiated in 1913 at the suggestion of Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood as a preparedness measure, had resulted in provision in the National Defense Act of 1916 for continuation of camps of this type. The first of four series of officers' training camps was started on 15 May 1917. It consisted of 16 camps, held at 13 conveniently located posts easily accessible to the 16 divisional areas into which the country was divided, and produced 27,000 commissioned officers. A second series, 27 August-27 November 1917, provided an additional 17,000. Beginning with the third series, 5 January19 April 1918, most of the officers' schools were conducted under division control at divisional camps. When divisions were scheduled for oversea shipment before the attached officers' schools had run their course, the schools were consolidated into Central Officers' Training Schools, of which there eventually were eight. Some 32,000 officers were commissioned from the third and fourth series schools, the latter running from June 1918 to February 1919.

The existing educational facilities of the country were called upon to assist in the training program. In the summer and fall of 1918, officers and technicians were trained in National Army Training Detachments organized in 135 schools, in summer camps for students and instructors, and in the Students' Army Training Corps established in 552 institutions. The number of students taking military training in public high schools increased from 25,000 in 1916 to 112,000 in 1918.

Great efforts were made to provide adequate and up-to-date instructional materials and training devices in the schools and camps. Training manuals were revised or prepared anew, often on the basis of data appearing in French and British training literature. Many instructional films were made on a

variety of subjects under the general title, The Training of the Soldier, and were widely used in the training centers.

No entirely satisfactory solution was found for the replacement problem, either at home or overseas, in World War I. The first plan adopted was to have the depot brigades in the 16 National Army cantonments train all replacements. The War Department had devised this system for replacements at a time when the opinion still prevailed that American military participation in the war would be on a very limited scale. With the adoption of the 30-division program it became evident that the system was inadequate, since the depot brigades were fully occupied in receiving recruits raised by the draft. As a temporary expedient, replacements required overseas and in divisions about to embark were drawn from units scheduled for later departure, a practice which lowered troop morale and disrupted training schedules. Replacement conditions in the A.E.F. were even less satisfactory. During the great Allied offensives in the late summer and fall of 1918, Pershing had to break up entire divisions and skeletonize support units to replace the heavy losses in frontline troops.

Beginning in April 1918, centers devoted exclusively to training replacements were established at cantonments vacated by the divisions sent overseas. Unfortunately, the replacement training rate of these centers increased too slowly to make up more than a small percentage of A.E.F. losses during the great drives of September-November 1918. Their development was delayed by the need for physical alterations in the cantonments, by the shortage of instructors, and by the influenza epidemic which was taking a severe toll of Army personnel everywhere in late 1918. In the period from January to November 1918 only about 236,000 replacement troops were shipped overseas.

ECONOMIC MOBILIZATION AND LOGISTICAL PROBLEMS. Construction of military housing and training facilities was only one aspect of the immense logistical demands made upon the American economy by the war. Success of our military effort hinged upon

the efficiency of the economic mobilization at home. Before the war few Americans had anticipated the enormous strains that would be placed on the financial resources, the transportation system, the industrial facilities, and almost every other phase of the nation's economy. Consequently the existing governmental machinery for directing economic mobilization had to be drastically reorganized and expanded.

In August 1916 Congress had authorized formation of the Council of National Defense, to be composed of the Secretaries of War, Navy, Agriculture, Interior, Commerce, and Labor. Its function was to advise on the coordination of industries and resources for national security. Formation of the Council was consistent with the Army's decision of late 1915 to depend upon private industry to supply its needs in the event of war. The real work of the Council was done mostly by its Advisory Commission, composed of expert representatives from the major segments of the economy.

The Council and its Commission could do little more than offer advice, but they represented a significant stage in the development of economic mobilization machinery. Most of the operating agencies subsequently established, as well as the basic concepts under which they functioned, originated in the Council. Thus, on 3 March 1917 the Council formed the Munitions Standard Board to lay down standards for making munitions of war. It was superseded in April 1917 by an enlarged General Munitions Board, which in turn was transformed into the War Industries Board on 28 July 1917. None of these agencies, however, was granted sufficient authority to insure orderly economic mobilization. By March 1918 the economy was on the verge of collapse because of the unresolved conflicting and overlapping demands made upon it by the various Armed Services.

To meet this crisis the President reorganized the War Industries Board on 4 March 1918 and appointed Bernard M. Baruch, an early member of the Advisory Commission, as its chairman. Baruch was given enough authority to make the Board an effective operating body and the single most important

agency in the economic mobilization program. Maj. Gen. William Goethals, War Department General Staff, was the senior Army representative on the Board, and his assistant, Brig. Gen. Hugh S. Johnson, proved to be its most influential functioning military official.

A number of other agencies were established to supervise activities in special areas of the wartime economy. Especially significant were the Food Administration, Fuel Administration, National War Labor Board, War Trade Board, Railroad Administration, and United States Shipping Board (and its Emergency Fleet Corporation).

Production of war materials for the Army was only one of many demands made upon the wartime economy, but certainly one of the most important. By 1918 the strenuous efforts to convert American industry to production of the weapons of war needed by the A.E.F. were beginning to bear some fruit, but until the end of the conflict the United States remained dependent upon the Allies for much of the armament and munitions used in France. By adopting a modified version of the British Lee-Enfield rifle which would take U. S. ammunition, in place of the Springfield, American manufacturers produced most of the rifles and cartridges needed for the Army. Production of Browning machineguns and automatic rifles was not sufficient to supply A.E.F. requirements until the late summer of 1918, so American units had to use the less effective British and French models. Practically all the artillery used in combat by the A.E.F. was purchased from the French, except for a few large naval-type railroad guns. All of the tanks and most of the airplanes employed by the A.E.F. were of French or British manufacture, although the United States produced some 13,500 Liberty airplane engines for use in Allied aircraft. When the war ended, the Aviation Service of the A.E.F. had 45 squadrons in combat, one-fourth of them flying American-built aircraft.

Extreme difficulty was encountered in the area of transportation, both at home and overseas. Congestion and confusion on the eastern railroads became so great in late 1917 that the President finally ordered their seizure, and ap

pointed his Secretary of the Treasury, William G. McAdoo, as Director General to administer them.

Without a doubt the greatest logistical achievement of the war was moving some 2,000,000 Americans 3,000 miles across the Atlantic and then keeping the supply line to this vast army adequately filled. When we entered the conflict the German unrestricted submarine campaign was destroying Allied shipping at a rate which threatened to force England out of the war in a few weeks. Furthermore, the United States, ranking far down the list of the nations of the world in the size of her merchant marine, possessed only a fraction of the number of cargo vessels and troop transports required to fill the needs of the A.E.F.

An American admiral, William S. Sims, who was the U. S. naval representative to Great Britain in early 1917 and later became commander of U. S. Naval Forces in European Waters, played a key role in persuading the British admiralty to adopt the convoy system. Once this system was put into effect, in late 1917, Allied shipping losses declined rapidly and the continuous supply of the A.E.F. was assured for the time being. The U. S. Navy made its major contribution to the war in cooperating with Allied war fleets to defeat the submarine menace in the North Atlantic. Bases were developed, for the nearly 80 American destroyers engaged in convoy duty, at strategic points on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Europe. The Naval Air Service escorted shipping and bombed enemy submarine bases on the Belgian coast. American submarines operated against German U-boats, and American minelayers helped to plant some 56,000 of the 70,000 mines in the great North Sea minefield designed to trap enemy undersea craft.

But removal of the submarine threat solved only one aspect of the oversea logistical problem. An answer had to be found for the acute shipping shortage. Here again we provided a partial solution by undertaking a huge shipbuilding program. Nearly a million tons were built under the direction of the Emergency Ship Corporation. Additional shipping was acquired by seizing Ger

man and neutral (mainly Dutch) vessels caught in American ports, commandeering private ships, and reducing drastically the turnaround time of transports carrying American troops. By dint of these efforts, nearly half of the 2,000,000 men of the A.E.F. and most supplies were transported in American vessels. Allied shipping, mostly British, moved the rest.

THE SERVICES OF SUPPLY IN FRANCE. When the troops and supplies of the A.E.F. reach Europe, they became the responsibility of the Services of Supply. Shortly before he arrived in France, Pershing established an organization to provide the A.E.F. with facilities for its supply, shelter, transportation, replacement, evacuation, and other logistical requirements. This organization was designated successively the Line of Communications (5 July 1917), Service of the Rear (16 February 1918), and Services of Supply (13 March 1918). As the number of American troops in France increased, the supply organization expanded until on 11 November 1918 nearly a third of the A.E.F., as well as many prisoners of war and civilians, were employed in its multifarious activities. At the height of its operations the Services of Supply (S.O.S.), for administrative purposes, was comprised of eight Base Sections located around ports of debarkation; an Intermediate Section, operating in communication centers along the rail routes of west central France; and an Advanced Section, functioning in the area immediately behind the front. In addition there were two independent districts, one at Paris and the other at Tours. The Commanding General, S.O.S., who was directly responsible to Pershing, had his headquarters in the last-named city.

Major facilities of S.O.S. were concentrated near the ports of debarkation in southwest and southern France and along the rail net running south of Paris to the northeastern provinces of Champagne and Lorraine, center of A.E.F. activities. (For a fuller discussion of the choice of this area as the American sector, see below.) These ports and rail routes were less burdened than those farther north, which were being used to

supply the British and French armies, and they provided a more direct connection with that zone of operations where the largest number of American troops were located.

Through its General Purchasing Board the S.O.S. bought a vast number of articles in Europe to reduce the burden on scarce shipping. Additional tonnage was saved by setting up an extensive salvage program.

In the early summer of 1918 the logistical requirements of the A.E.F. multiplied so enormously that S.O.S. appeared to be on the verge of a complete breakdown. In this crisis Pershing reorganized it in order to give it greater administrative flexibility and to clarify command relationships. On 29 July 1918 he assigned Maj. Gen. James G. Harbord, one of his ablest combat officers, as its new commander. Harbord quickly boosted the lagging morale of S.O.S. troops by introducing a spirit of competition among supply and service units, and thereby increased the movement of tonnage by some twenty percent.

ORGANIZATION AND TRAINING OF THE A.E.F. IN FRANCE. The decision of our Government to form a separate American Army on the Western Front was clearly enunciated in the instructions which the Secretary of War gave to General Pershing at the time of his appointment as Commander in Chief, A.E.F. Pershing was to cooperate with the Allies in operations against the Germans, but at the same time was to maintain the American forces as

a separate and distinct component of the combined forces . . ." Nevertheless, almost from the very beginning of the Allied consultations on use of American troops in France, the French and British, hard pressed for manpower, brought great pressure to bear on Pershing and the War Department in favor of amalgamating American combat units with experienced Allied units. They contended that this was the best way for inexperienced American troops to gain combat training, and the quickest and most effective means for giving the warweary Allied armies desperately needed help against the Germans. The British offered to make ships available to trans

port infantry and machinegun units from the United States, provided that they be trained and employed in the British zone of operations.

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While Pershing made some sions to these Allied demands, especially during the critical period of the great German offensives in the spring of 1918, he consistently adhered to the American contention that only by formation of an independent American army in France could the A.E.F. attain that selfconfidence and sense of national pride essential to a successful fighting force. He constantly emphasized the importance of shipment from the United States of all types of troops needed to form divisions, corps, and army units. Only in this way could he build a well-balanced force that would furnish opportunities for giving higher officers the training in staff and command responsibilities which they had not been able to acquire in the small peacetime Military Establishment.

When the Allies found themselves with their backs to the wall in the spring of 1918, both the Americans and the British and French made concessions to expedite the shipment of American troops and the use of American units where they were most needed on the Western Front. Thus, by the London and Abbeville agreements of April and May, arrangements were made for the British to transport American troops to France at a greatly accelerated rate, but with priority for infantry units to be trained and used in the British and French zones until the crisis had passed. In return the British and French acknowledged in principle that an independent American army under its own commander should be formed as early as possible. The speedup in troop shipments from the United States brought nearer the day when there would be enough American units in France to form an operating field army.

Selection of a zone of operations for the proposed million-man American army occasioned far less difficulty than the matter of shipment and employment of American troops. The British were committed to the northern part of the front in Flanders, Artois, and Picardy, near the Channel ports so vital to them.

The French were most concerned with the central sector which protected the approaches to Paris. This left available the quiet zone in Lorraine southeast of Verdun, occupied in 1917 by only a few French units. After consultation with the Allied leaders, Pershing and his staff agreed in July 1917 to take over responsibility for this part of the front.

Strategically the sector was attractive because it offered several worthwhile offensive objectives in the German-held territory beyond, including the fortress of Metz, the Briey iron mining district, and very important lateral rail communications. Logistically it was the most satisfactory area for the A.E.F. because, as previously noted, it could be readily supplied by the less congested ports and railroads of southwestern and southern France. Finally, from the standpoint of training, the region back of the sector contained extensive areas where A.E.F. divisions could carry on joint activities with French divisions.

On 1 September 1917 Pershing moved A.E.F. headquarters from Paris to the Damrémont Barracks at Chaumont, centrally located some distance behind the Lorraine front. He decided to adopt a scheme of staff organization for the American forces similar to that in the French Army. This divided the staff into three main divisions-a general, a technical, and an administrative staff. In A.E.F. headquarters (G.H.Q.) the general staff consisted of five sections operating under a Chief of Staff and his assistants. The sections dealt respectively with administration (G-1), intelligence (G-2), operations (G-3), supply (G-4), and training (G-5). Similar general staffs, modified to conform to special needs, were organized for all armies, corps, and divisions. Pershing took immediate steps to train the large number of staff officers that would be needed to insure proper exercise of control in a force the size of the A.E.F. A General Staff College was established at Langres to give selected officers a three-month course in staff functions.

In the area around Chaumont many divisional training centers and special schools were set up to carry on troop training and to provide instruction for subordinate commanders, specialists, and candidates for officers' commissions. Di