Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-04-28
|ROOSEVELT'S SON
TELLS OF ARMY'S
UJNPREPAREDNESS
Even Regulars Knew Nothing
of Modern Warfare,
Writes Captain


fight for American preparedness. He
has written for Everybody's Maga-
zine the story of the unprepared
state in which even the regular army
entered the conflict
Captain Roosevelt writes to put on
record into how demoralized a state
from military point OF view the
nation had been brought by pacifists,
and how many lives were uselessly
sacrificed in this way by those
bloody priests of inefficiency."
He charged that even the regulars
went to France at the outbreak of
war utterly ignorant, officers and
men alike, of the rudiments of mod
ern battle science. Not only this,
but also without even the most nee
essary offensive and defensive equip
ment to meet the troops of Germany.
Virtually all of this equipment, he
says, had to be borrowed from
France or Britain.
Wood Punished For Efficiency
1t took a month. he says, after the
First division landed in France be-
fore the men could be sufficiently
outfitted by the Allies even to begin
training.
It took four months before what
the people at home called our
splendidly equipped and trained reg
ulars" were able to go into the
trcnhes for training. Even then
they were sent in with three French
men for every American. He begins
his exposure of the utterly supine
unpreparedness of America with the
introduction of the Plattsburg idea
and what that disclosed. He says:
General Leonard Wood was the
only man in the United States able
to combine deeds with words. He
not only spoke for preparedness,
but because of his position he was
able to start a system of summer
military training camps for boys in
high schools and colleges-this in
spite of the active hostility of our
then pacifist government,
Though poorly trained, the per-
sonnel was good. But modern ma
terial was entirely lacking. The auto
matte rifle (where the recoil is
taken up by the body of the mani
and the machine gun (where the
recoil is taken up by fixed tripod
were unknown, not only to the stu
dent officers, but to nearly all the
officers of the regular army.
The Lewis automatic rifle, three
years successfully used by the Brit
ish and Belgian armies in actual
warfare, had been, after several
highly successful trials, condemned
by our War Department; hence its
advances were known only by few
who had seen the trials. | was with
General Wood when these trials
were given in 1916. The Benet-Mer-
cier. too heavy to be carried by
'doughboy,' yet not placed on fixed
rests, had the disadvantage of be-
ing neither an automatic rifle nor q
machine gun.
New Weapons Unknown to Them
1T was here that the inefficiency
of the Regular Army when dealing
with present war conditions became
glaringly evident. The men training
there to become officers of the new
National Army had no training with
grenades, hand or rifle. The Stokes
mortar and the steel helmet were
utterly unknown to them. There
were no airplaneS, no gas masks nor
poison gas drill, and an entirely in
adequate equipment for artillery or
cavalry training.
Many a weary hour have we
wasted on wigwag and semaphore
signaling, only to find out later that
the European armies had long since
abandoned these methods as inn
practical and substituted the blink
er lights. T. p. s. (ground wireless)
and wireless. Not until long after
l had landed in France did | even
hear of those methods. to say moth
ing of learning how to handle
them"
Just before going into training
Captain Roosevelt was transferred
to the Twenty-sixth Infantry. The
men lacked gas masks and had to
borrow them from the French, art
er a disastrous experiment with
masks sent out by the War Depart
ment. These latter leaked like
sieves. The "splendidiy equipped reg
ulars" were also without automatic
rifles, machine guns, grenades, rife
grenades, steel helmets, signal
rockets, carrier pigeons or equip
ment for blinker signaling. All OF
these We're supplied to the regulars
by the French or the British.
Lack or equipment and lack OF
| training and organization made IL
| impossible to start our actual train
ing in modern warfare, based on the
lines developed by the English,
French and Germans, until July "a,
! 1917-one month less than two days
| after our arrival in France. And
even then we could only simulate
| the varied equipment required by
an infantry company in modern
warfare. Such vitally necessary ar
| tiles as gas masks and steel helmets
| did not arrive until August, 1917.
Eventually most of our borrowed
regalia did come. and in October we
were all cheered by the news that
were to go to the trenches. The en-
thusiasm was somewhat dampened,
however. when about two weeks be-
| fore we started we found all our
1917 rifle ammunition to be defec-
tive. 1t had passed the factory tests
and the careless eyes of government
inspectors, and had been sent TO us
overseas where the difference meant
the difference between life and death
to our soldiers. Fortunately, it had
been discovered by the troops in
time to substitute the 1916 and 1917
ammunition.
81 believe it was October IS,
1917, that we moved up for the first
time into the firing line. Nearly four
months after landing in France our
'splendidly equipped and trained
regular division was considered by
the Allied command only sufficiently
trained to be placed in the line with
the proper battalion portion of one
| American battalion to one French
l regiment of three battalions."