America has always lived a lot of its life by wishful thinking. When we got into World War I, in 1917, the war had already been going on for almost three years. And we weren’t the slightest bit ready.
*Out navy was in adequate shape, thanks in part to Franklin D. Roosevelt, our energetic young assistant secretary of that department. But our army was small and ill-equipped, and horribly unprepared. General Pershing was the only officer who had commanded anything larger than a regiment in the field.
*We beat the recruiting drum to expand our army rapidly, and we started a draft. But even once we got men into the boot camps and induction centers, we often couldn’t give them weapons, or even uniforms. Once our men got to France, many of them would be using British or French rifles, helmets, and artillery.
*American women were in uniform for the first time, mostly as nurses, and in that area we WERE fairly well prepared. Jane Delano of Watkins Glen headed up Red Cross nursing AND army nursing. She had foreseen a large war on the horizon, and worked to prepare both programs.
*The government commissioned Red Cross and similar agencies to provide care and support for the troops overseas. To finance this, those agencies were given the exclusive right to sell cigarettes to the soldiers, and even men in hospital deathbeds went without smokes unless they ponied up the price of a pack.
*By the way, prewar Americans considered cigarettes an affectation of gigolos and lounge lizards. REAL men smoked cigars or pipes. The war changed all that.
*Likewise men in the prewar carried pocket watches; wrist watches were for women. But in the midst of combat the pocket watch was clearly impractical, and wrist watches became standard wear.
*Assuming he got American equipment, the infantry soldier was probably using a 1903 Springfield rifle, bolt-action and clip-fed, with a five-round magazine. Khaki and olive drab had been adopted in ’03, so at least our men were wearing reasonable colors for modern combat. They got the “Smoky Bear” hat in 1911, but in action mostly wore the British soupbowl “tin hat” or the more substantial French helmet. They also wore puttees, a “mummy wrap” around the lower leg, theoretically serving to keep mud off the uniform.
*Thousands of local fellows served in the war, and scores died. At 4 PM on Friday, April 5, Dave Clark will attend a Steuben County Historical Society presentation in uniform as his great-uncle, PFC Steven Smith, giving us a “first-hand” account of life in the trenches. The free event is at Centenary Methodist Church in Bath. We hope you’ll join us.