New Britain herald., 1919-01-02
ARMY SIGNAL CORPS
 DOES GREAT WORK
lnstalls Thousands of Telephone StatioDS- Strings Miles Of Wire

| S. respondence of The Associated Press,) In an army the size of this, scat tered throughout the length and breadth of France from the seacoast to the Swiss border, the problem of communication is second only if not of equal importance to that of SUD- plies.
 When the American forces came to France it was one of the first efforts to which American ingenuity and in- vention was directed and the signal corps, under which communication falls, met 1t as have the other or ganizations of the American Expedi- tionary Force Existing French telegraph and telephone systems were overburdened. There was little left for us and Brigadier General F. Rus sell, chief signal officer, and his staff of experts tackled the job.
 What they have done in construc- ton is shown in some statistics fur nished to The Associated Press. The Signal Corps has built approximately 1,750 miles of poles which it has strung 4,175 miles of wire. Tn ad- dition about 2,000 miles of American wire has been strung on existing sys- tems for our use and it has leased and operates more than 5000 miles of French wire. Exchange lines to the extent of 12,750 miles have been built and to operate these lines it has 244 telephone offices 1905 tele- phone stations and 102 telegraph offices.
 All through France, from the base ports to the front lines occupied by the American forces, throughout our training areas in fact nearly every where, the shining copper wires on American cross bar poles, so differ ent from the European system, arc a new feature of the landscape and frequently one heard newly arrived Am erican soldiers exclain1 That's American" On main line systems with many wires the French custom arily use two poles side by side and the wires are strung on cross bars between, and others on single insu- lators fastened direct to the pole. The long distance telegraph and telephone system constructed by the Signal corps Is entirely maintained by its own personnel and in addition some 5000 miles of leased wires are maintained by 1t,
 All this construction has been made by Signal corps battalons with inn plements and material from the United States with the single excep- ton of poles, most of which were ob- tained in France. Tn construction. maintenance and operation the stand ard practices of the United States have been followed and the American expeditionary force has been given service equal to the best obtainable in the mmercial world. and admitted in have followed troops wherever troops went, down front line trenches ovtA~ shell swept and machine gun raked areas to lay and keep their wires so that communications might be main- tained. The Signal corps has a los1g list of brave dead and brave Wound- ed, more honored perhaps, because they could not fight back.
 The telephone service of the Corps was opened on June 24, 1917, and since then there have been handled nearly nineteen million local calls and more than one million long distance calls.
 Since the Signal Corps telegraph system began to function on August 19 Of last year more than five and one-ha1f million messages have been handled, aggregating more than one- third of a billion words
 Manning these wires arc many formed members of the Traffic De- partm ent of the Asso ciated Press, graduates of the key and the fastest wires in the world. Among them are Sergeant J. L.. Belden, formerly Of Dallas, Tex, who has charge of the
 base signal office at Bordeaux. Among the fifty men under his direction are Percy Hall, formerly at St. Louis and w. E. Ryan of Burlington, Ia.
 Sergeant Ben Ton, formerly in the New York office of The Associated Press, is in change of the base signal office at Tours and several Associated Press stars also are attached to that office. Corporal A. E. Phares, of Fort Worth, Texas, is stationed at Bar-le- duo. Other former Associated Press men scattered along the lines of com munication include H. IA. Goethe, of Duluth; w. c. Doody, of Indianapolis; F. R. Kazmarek, of Houston; o. A. Rosenauer, of Detroit; E. F. Truxton, of Michigan and Montana; E. J. Nor ris and Ben Hall, of Philadelphia Frank F. Johnson and J. F. Johnson, of Kansas City; H. 7 F. Fisher, of Champaign, H., and C. c. Madison, of Kansas City
 When the corps of newspaper cor respondents was moved up to the front lines with the beginning of the American action in the Argonne, cer- tain wires were turned over for their use and one day there walked in Corporal J. F. Wilson, who was long stationed at Salt Lake City and other western division stations of The As sociated Press. He brought his side sender, or Dug in operators par lance, quietly cut it in on a table in the French telegraph office, and be- gan business. The second night, when the French operators had