The Yanks are coming!

Introduction

" You should say to mudder, Louie, dot it iss in dis United Stateser army notting at all like vot ve talked about ! "

The young Jewish boy, clumsy in the unaccustomed olive-drab of the national army, was bidding an older brother good-by in a train at Camp Upton, Long Island. Camp Upton is one of the sixteen cantonments in which the men of the national army are being trained. The brother, in his citizen clothes, was unmistakably a foreign-born product of the New York slums — undersized, stooped, and shriveled. He was leaving for the city after his first visit to the soldier boy of the family who had been in camp but little more than a week.

" You should say to mudder dot it iss notting like vot ve said," the boy in uniform repeated earnestly. " It iss all a difference. I got it a fine captain, und I am telling you, Louie, dot man iss like a fader to

V vi Introduction me! You should say to mudder how dis morning he speaks mit me like I am a somebody und tells me things. I got it plenty good stuff I should eat und a good place I should sleep, und ve are all heppy like anything, Louie. Mebbe some day I get hit mit a bullet in France, or something — who knows ? — but now everything iss fine like anything, Louie. You should say so to mudder, Louie — und, lissen, Louie — you should say to mudder dot it iss not bull I tell her. You should say to her it iss not bull, Louie!"

The Jewish boy in the uniform had the right idea. The message he sent to his mother was not bull. He had expected cruelty in the army, and he had found kindness; he had looked for humiliation, and he had found pride. He had learned that, while he might lose his life on the battle field, he would not be driven to lose his self-respect in the barracks or on the parade ground. A foreign enemy may break that boy's body when he goes over the top, but no officer of his own country is going to break his spirit beforehand. And I want to say to you — you

Introduction vii doubter of American patriotism, whoever you may be — that when that boy understood he was to have fair treatment before the time he went over the top, 99 per cent, of whatever reluctance he may have had to serve as a fighting man vanished. That boy, in common with hundreds of others in this country, had not feared death in battle so greatly as he had feared degradation in service.

The average, everyday, go-to-business-and-comehome-again American citizen, both native and foreign born, always hated the idea of service in the army. He hated it not because he objected to fighting in his own defense, but because he believed that an army was necessarily an undemocratic organization akin in form and spirit to the old class-ofiicered military bodies of Europe.

The brutal truth is this: To the mind of the average American the army was an organization that a man joined when he was broke, tired, and hungry, and yet didn't feel quite bad enough to commit suicide.

The average American always thought of the viii Introduction average army officer as a man who might possibly be human, but probably wasn't. He was glad to cheer him as he rode by at the head of a parade, but serve under him as a stranger, and an enlisted man in the ranks? If necessary in the defense of his country, but the idea of it stung. The little that Mr. Average American knew, and the much that he had heard of army discipline and the methods of its imposition, made soldiering, to his mind, a sort of penance which one must pay for the privilege of fighting and even dying for one's country. The average American, both native and foreign born, has had a stubborn distrust of any army organization and of army officers as a class.

Being what I am, an American citizen, I did not go to Camp Upton with an open mind. I went there predisposed in favor of the men in the ranks, and with a stupidly stubborn prejudice against the officers as a class.

One of the first officers with whom I talked, a captain of infantry and a Plattsburg graduate, swung hard and landed fair on the solar plexus of

Introduction ix my prejudice. I left him an opening for the blow by making use of the phrase " officers and men."

" There are not * officers and men ' in this army," he corrected me sharply. " There are only men. Some of us have been commissioned by the President of the United States to serve as officers, and others of us have been selected by the President of the United States to serve in the ranks; but we are all ' men.' Don't forget that! "

As a reporter I became accustomed to hearing men make use of the vocabulary of idealism for purposes of publication only. When the captain made his little speech I smiled, and then very suddenly I quit smiling, for it was borne in upon my consciousness that he meant what he said. He was not talking merely for purposes of publication. He was not kidding. What he said was " not bull."

When I left that man v^ho was an officer — that officer who was a man — I left in a mood to learn ; and I want to tell you, Mr. and Mrs. American, what the men — the men of all ranks in the national army — taught me.

Introduction

I am writing only of the human elements in the experiment known as the national army. I am not interested in figuring out how many times around the world the shingles used on the roofs of the barracks in the sixteen huge cantonments would reach if they were laid end to end. I am vitally interested in knowing — and telling — what the men of the national army, selected and commissioned, think of themselves and the experiment of which they are a part ; I am vitally interested in knowing and telling of the initial effect of that experiment on the men and so on the heart of the United States.

William Slavens McNutt.

Contents

PAGE

Introduction v

What Are We Going to Get Out of It? . . . . 206

II Why I Am There

The dawn is loud with the urgent bray of many bugles sounding reveille as I hurry along a dark roadway in the national cantonment of Camp Upton to keep my date with a lieutenant of infantry who is taking out a detail for their first work on the rifle range. I am there because a soldier's mother has said to me furiously : " They're teaching my boy to commit murder ! I suppose it's inevitable ; I sup-

The Yanks are Coming!

pose that it's necessary for him to learn the terrible things they're teaching him, to maim and kill; and I'm almost afraid he's coming to like it. I believe he gets a thrill out of some of the horrible things he's learning to do. If he isn't killed, he'll be brutalized for life ! " I am there because I have heard a navy officer of high rank say : " The only w^ay to win this war is by murdering Germans." And a civilian reply: "We hate this talk of murdering. We know that we've got to do murder to win the war. We know that we've got to do it, but we hate to hear of it." I am there because a reserve army officer has said to me with a shrug of nausea: " Winning this war is just a matter of wholesale murder, you know ; that's all it amounts to."

Through the slowly evaporating darkness I make out shadowy formations of men in line on the company streets. I hear chilled morning growls and shivery laughter, the sharp bark of men answering to roll call, the shuffle of hurrying feet and the clank and bang of mess tins. Forty thousand American men, the you and I and the rest of us of Yesterday, are gulping through breakfast, hurrying to get at To-day's business of learning how to kill !

I arrive at the appointed barrack. Breakfast is over and the place is noisy with the clatter and stamp of men hurrying out. A sleepy sergeant serves me a big tin of coffee in the bare orderly room. I follow the lieutenant out. It is still dark. We find twenty-seven men lined up waiting. A sputter of orders from the second lieutenant and they start clumping away through the dim light between the rows of barracks. Soon we have covered the space occupied by the barracks and emerge on a large open plain scarred with practice trenches and adorned with log frames some seven feet high, from the top of which hang rows of dummies swung to represent men.

In every direction I see details of men on the march. From everywhere I hear the shout of orders. The men of the detail I follow are marching at route step, whistling and joking. Their gun barrels make a black, bobbing stubble of steel against the lightening eastern sky. The men start

The Yanks are Coming!

singing a popular song. Certainly not a bloodthirsty crew by their manner. Yet they are afoot to learn how to kill !

Ill THEIR FIRST SHOT

We pass rapidly through a forest of low-growing brush oak. Five miles over a winding road and we come out upon the rifle range. A half-mile line of white squares with round black centers for bull'seyes. The men march to the shallow firing trench marking the loo-yard range and stack their arms. They are stamping about, slapping their bodies with their arms, warming their fingers at the fires, making boasts and wagers.

" Go you half a buck I shoot better'n you do."

" What d'ye think ! I never shot a gun in me life."

" You got nothin' on me. I never shot before in my life."

"Honest?"

" I'm tellin' you true."

" I got you for half a buck."

A sergeant from an adjoining company swaggers over. " Any you guys in Company I want to lose some money bettin' on your eyesight ? "

" What d'ye want to bet on? Company average?"

" Sure."

" You know we guys never shot before."

" Neither did we. This is our first time out."

" Well, we may do pretty rotten, but Company I ain't as bad as Company K at anything. Whatever you dig up we'll cover."

The sergeant goes back to his own company to busy himself with a petty collection that is quickly covered with a pool from Company I. My friend the lieutenant looks at his watch and nods. " Time ! Company I fall in. First order up."

A crackle of orders runs down the half-mile line of men. The first order of men from each detail step forward and throw themselves prone in the shallow intrenchment with its foot-high parapet for a rifle rest. There is a half-mile of recumbent men in that intrenchment. There is a subdued clack of working bolts as the pieces are loaded and the line breaks out in a sudden rash of noise. A half mile of American men are lying on their stomachs in the dirt firing their first shot in the Great War. A very small corporal is lying just at my feet. He is of such size that I imagine a woman might marry five or six like him before properly becoming liable for bigamy! He grips his piece tightly, shoves the muzzle in the general direction of the targets, shuts his eyes, makes a horrible face, and yanks at the trigger. There is a report and the gun bucks in his hands. For a moment he lies doubled up, eyes closed, evidently waiting for something to happen. Then he opens his eyes, looks about him, realizes that he has fired the piece successfully, and gives a whoop of delight.

" I betcha I get a bull's-eye next time," he calls to me exuberantly. " I didn't try to hit nothin' that time. I just shot the thing to see how it felt."

The shooting steadies into a continual jarring crackle of sound. The rifles speak a common Ianguage, but each seems to have an individuality of voice. Whup! Sping! Spowie! Puff! Bing! Whup! They speak in the tone of things that sting !

The first and second Heutenants kneel in the dirt by the men, instructing them in the proper hold, sight, and trigger squeeze. Probably not more than one in fifty of all the men on that firing line ever fired a shot before that morning.

" Don't yank at the trigger like that," the lieutenant begs. " A steady, slow squeeze — that's it ! Shut one eye. No, no! Not both eyes. Can't you shut one eye? All right. Tie your handkerchief over one eye until you get used to it. Cuddle the butt up against your shoulder there. That's it. Don't jump like that when you pull the trigger. Your own gun isn't going to hurt you as long as you are on this end of it. Steady now. Plenty of time. Get a bead on that bull's-eye, a slow, steady squeeze, and you've got it. That's the stuff ! "

The red flag indicating a clean miss becomes conspicuous by its absence above the rifle pits. A cheer from the men waiting behind the hne greets each appearance of the white disk telling of a bull'seye. The first order completes its ten shots and retires to wait while the second order goes on with the firing.

" I got six bull's-eyes out o' ten shots," a heavyset corporal tells me excitedly. " What d'ye think o' that? I never shot a gun before, an' I got six out o' ten. I was an ironworker before. D'ye think mebbe workin' in the air like I done got me nerves steady, or somethin' ? D'ye think mebbe I'll get to be a sharpshooter if I keep on like this? I could be one, I bet, huh ? "

'' r was rotten," another confesses dejectedly. " I was scared an' shakin' all over. I never shot before an' I didn't know what was goin' to happen, I didn't get the hang of it at all till the last two shots. I done all right with them. I'll be all right next time."

The lieutenant beckons me, and I go to him.

" They're doing remarkably well," he tells me proudly, fingering the score sheets. " None of

The Real Pacifists II

them have shot under forty-one, and several have done forty-seven and forty-eight out of a possible fifty. Fellows who never shot before! It's remarkable ! "

He goes back to his work of instruction. As soon as he leaves the men surround me.

" Lieutenant say anything about us guys ? He say how we was doin' ? "

*' He said you were doing fine."

"Honest?"

"Sure!"

The men grin happily. They look at the brown field intervening between them and the targets, and the smiles fade to give place to thoughtful expressions. The field is audibly alive with the speaking things of death. The ear is assailed with the brassy, poisonous-sounding squeal of hundreds of hunting bullets giving voice on their swift aerial trail to the targets. Can a man move on that field and live? That is the question in my mind. It is the sobering question in the minds of many about me.

" I hear them Germans is great shooters," a sergeant says seriously.

"Why wouldn't they be?" another speaks up. " Ain't they always been learnin' how to shoot ? An' here we're just startin' ! I bet when we get practice we'll be just as good as them an' a lot better. We got to get practice, ain't we ? "

They appeal to me. Do I think they'll soon be able to learn to shoot as good as the Germans? What they're really asking me is this : Do I think they'll have an even break for their lives when they go into battle against the Germans? Do I believe they'll be able to master their new profession sufficiently to earn themselves a fifty-fifty percentage of life chance when they face the enemy ?

They are so eager! So sincere! All those fine, brave American men out there learning to kill! Yes! Thank God, yes! Learning late, but learning! Learning to kill in order that they may be something more than sheep at the slaughter when they go into action! Learning how to kill so that their lives they lay down on the battle field may not be given in vain !

Learning how to murder? No! If I could only make that " no " mean something to the disordered brains of the well-meaning men and women who have been so mentally rattled about the shock of war that they think upside down and reason with their feet because they are standing on their heads ! If I could make it mean something to the mother who blights herself with the horrible thought that her soldier son is being taught to do murder ! I can make it mean something to the man in arms, and to him I speak :

You are learning to kill, and may you learn your lesson well! You are not learning to do murder. Killing in self-defense is not murder. So far as I know, no court in any land holds that killing in self-defense constitutes murder. There is no law of God nor man that damns a protector who kills in defense of himself or his lawful charge with the crime of the murderer !

You are learning to kill in defense of American women. You are learning to kill in defense of American homes. You are learning to kill in defense of that America which has been the refuge from injustice for peoples from every country against whom and with whom we fight. You are learning to kill in defense of civilization. You are not learning to do murder, nor will your necessary work of killing necessarily befoul you with any of the brutal characteristics of a murderer. Brutality and bravery have nothing in common; murder and killing in self-defense are not synonymous.

IV And Then — Eats

The men finish firing on the first range and retire to the deep trench two hundred yards distant from the targets. There they mount the firing step and have their first practice at shooting from a standing position in a trench. They lunch in the open before the final shooting from the three-hundred-yard range. We retire behind the third and last trench, where the smoke from scores of fires is hovering over the brush. Thick sandwiches and cookies and big tins full of steaming hot coffee — oooh, how good! A young lieutenant with a tin of coffee in one hand, a sandwich in the other, and his pursed lips leaking crumbs seeks me out.

" I've been picked for sniper's duty," he tells me eagerly, after a convulsive gulp that clears the path for speech. " Ain't that great? "

" Fine stuff."

" I'm tickled to death; I'll have scout duty to do, you know. One of my jobs'll be to crawl out into No Man's Land at night and hunt for enemy patrols, see? Then, if I can locate one, I'm supposed to use jujutsu on him and get him back to our trench alive. Gee ! That ought to be mighty lively work, huh? I tell you I'm glad to get a chance at it."

He is a husky, handsome young fellow. His eyes are bright with enthusiasm. I know people who would point him out as a horrible example of the effects of military training and say: "There you are! He enjoys the prospect of this terrible fighting. He's acquiring blood lust."

That young fellow is no more bloodthirsty in his enthusiasm than some young football player who is promised a coveted chance to play in a certain game, a boy who has been given permission to go camping, or a live-wire salesman who earns the opportunity to go after a tough customer. The young lieutenant has been promised the chance to experience the thrill of the dark and the unknown, the chance and the quick-wits matching of individual combat. Don't begrudge him whatever romantic thrill he may be able to derive from expectation or experience. He'll have his fill of mud and monotony and sordid horror.

V

CARRY ON!

After lunch I make my way through the thick brush to a machine-gun range a mile away to the left, guided by the intermittent staccato chatter of a Colt and hoping that I'm not by any chance wandering on to the private reserve of any busy bullets. I come out of the woods in the rear of the gun position. Near a big camp fire a dozen or more American officers are grouped around two machine guns listening to the instructions of an English major. The English officer is a short, spare, peppery veteran with a raspy voice that he can use for the same purpose that a mule skinner uses a blacksnake.

" Burr-wuff ! " he shouts. That's as near as I can get to it phonetically. Two captains leap to their places by the machine gun. The one who sights and operates the piece throws himself flat on his back with his head cradled on the knees of the man feeding. There is some slight delay and the English major breaks into song.

" Come, come ! Carry on ! What are we waiting for? You should have killed a hundred by now. What is it ? What is it ? My word ! Not so slow. We're not having dinner, you know; we're killing boches. What the blinkety-blank's wrong now? Come, come! Carry on! Carry on!"

The gun speaks jarringly. One side of the barrel spits a stream of yellow cartridge cases over the breast of the operator holding the trigger. Three hundred yards distant the blade of bullets slices the ground before the target and throws up a little line of dust.

The major orders a fifty-yard advance. The American officers dismount the piece, go forward at the double-quick and set it up once more. The operator pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. He fusses and tugs. Still no result. The English major calms himself and heaves a deep sigh. He looks at the gun crew like a man with no insurance viewing a total loss. " Oh, my eye ! " he groans sadly. " How dead you'd have been by now ! All right, leave off; leave off! Never mind."

He points to the man who carried the ammunition and who is standing behind the gun curiously watching the efforts of the crew to make it shoot.

" Next time don't stand up behind the gun. You stick up there like a dummy in a shop window. A body would think you were an advertisement for something. You're not trying to sell the gun to the boches, you know. Standing there giving away the gun position! Next time find cover twenty paces to the right or left and try to act like a bit of mud. Yes!"

VI TECHNIQUE DOES IT

I leave the field to the caustic major and make my way back to camp. The huge practice ground, with its many assault, bayonet, and bombing courses, is crowded with men in uniform learning how to kill. I hear a whistle, and a line of men with rifles leap from a near-by trench. They pass me at a steady pace, very serious, their bayonets held at high point. There is a shouted order, and with a yell they break into a run, charge shouting up to the parapet of a trench, and leap yelling into it, thrusting with their blades at bags on the ground as they drop to earth.

" Going some! " I say to one of the men as he comes panting back.

"Doing pretty fair, aren't we?" he answers, grinning. " We were rotten at first. Half the fellows would go charging up to the edge of the trench and balk there. Most of the rest of us would sort of slide over and land 'most any old way. But we've got so's we go in now with a jump and a whoop. It's all a matter of practice."

" What line were you in before you came out here?"

" This is my first job," he says, laughing. " I just graduated from Cornell."

VII

REAL SHOT PUTTING

I pass on to another part of the field where a line of men are standing in a narrow, knee-deep trench practicing bomb throwing. They stand with their left hands extended toward the target in the position of a shot putter, sway far to the right, and let drive with an overhand swing. They are throwing at foot-wide ditches twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty feet away. They must drop a bomb directly into one of those narrow ditches to gain a hit.

" How do they get on with it? " I ask the heutenant in charge.

" Immense," he says. " I've got one fellow here who's going to come near being a world-beater." He calls to a sergeant : " This man wants to see you chuck one."

The sergeant shucks off his tunic, balances a bomb and swings. Wow ! The black missile sails up and over and down, a good clean fifty feet, to land within two feet of the object ditch.

" He threw that far his first try," the lieutenant says with a chuckle. " The French officer instructing us throws about thirty-five and I can do forty. Our French instructor was telHng me that he had heard of a man who threw sixty-two feet, when this fellow cut loose with his first throw and heaved it over fifty. It's a different motion than we use throwing a baseball, but baseball arms come in mighty handy."

" I bet I can do better'n sixty when I get practice," the sergeant tells me as he wriggles back into his tunic. " I can do over fifty right along, an' I ain't been at it but a little while. All I need's a little more practice."

VIII WITH THE BAYONET

Near by a detail of lieutenants are thrusting with their bayonets at a hanging row of dummies, working under the eye of an English sergeant-major.

" Steady now," he urges. " Don't go poking about any old way. One steady thrust. That's it. An' mind you watch what you're reaching for. You can't just shut your eyes an' shove your point toward the Rhine an' expect it to get into a boche. Your Hun's all hung about with equipment these days that a point won't go through. You must pick your spot. An' when once you get it into him it's a job getting it out if you don't know the trick. A hard, steady pull, an' mind you don't go off your feet when the blade comes free. You wouldn't believe how a Hun sticks on a bayonet ! "

The Heutenants are working earnestly. They are the ordinary men of the street and shop and school, the office and factory of yesterday, learning how to kill. So quickly do they learn that one standing by for a few minutes may note the improvement in their style.

" Smart chaps these," the English captain in charge of the bayonet instruction says, joining me. " They're learning fast."

" They'll need all they can learn when they get into the trenches."

" My word, yes," the captain agrees with me emphatically. " This fighting's got to be a very complicated game. The crafty fellow in the trenches will soon do away with the dumb one or the poor chap who doesn't know the tricks of the game. But your cbaps are learning fast. All they need is a bit of teaching."

" Just as you leap into the trench you must yell," the sergeant major tells the class. He illustrates alarmingly, a truly terrorizing figure with his bayonet at low point, his eyes distended and his mouth wide open, as he emits a fearful shriek. " Like that. A good loud one. Then, if you miss Fritz, you've scared him to death an' your job's done. No matter how you kill him as long as he's dead. Yes."

IX PRACTICAL PACIFISM

Lie in the dirt and shoot with rifle or machine gun! Stand in a trench and toss an iron bomb! Thrust, cut, twist, sidestep, parry, lunge, and kill ! Measure a man for a vital spot and send the slick steel slithering home! What is this horrible science of seeming butchery that our men are learning by the hundreds of thousands?

Pacifism! Just that. Practical pacifism! Our men are learning war in order that they may so now perform that hereafter the peoples of the world shall be driven to learn war no more ! Our men in arms are busy preparing to preach the gospel of pacifism. They are busy mastering the use of the only voice with which they can make their gospel

IF YOU MISS FRITZ, YOU'VE SCARED HIM TO DEATH ' "