HOW THE AMERICAN ARMY GOT ITS WOOD 



1141 



of the construction. In other words, the Forestry 

 Troops have made good on the work for which they were 

 brought to France." 



When these men left for France their friends knew 

 they would make good. With what a vengeance they 

 would fulfill these expectations and what remarkable 

 records they would make in spite of countless and con- 

 stant handicaps, could hardly have been dreamed of in 

 advance. But these stalwart sons of America, hardy 

 woodsmen and sturdy sawmill operators, went into the 

 fight with the same grim determination that inspired 

 their fellows at Belleau Wood and Chateau Thierry, at 

 St. Mihiel and in the Argonne. They wanted to go to the 

 front but could not. But they failed in no task that was 

 assigned to them ; in fact, they did more than was asked 

 of them and smashed record after record in their keen 

 rivalry to help crush armed autocracy. They put up a 

 winning fight which will stand among the brilliant 

 achievements of the war on the pages of history. 



Both with the French mills, old-fashioned and man- 

 driven, which they were compelled to operate when they 

 first arrived, and to some extent even up to the end, and 

 with the modern American mills which arrived later, the 

 lumbermen began from the day of their first cutting to 

 hang up one record after another with patriotic regu- 

 larity. Mills which were rated at 10,000-foot capacity in 

 a ten-hour day were sent 

 throbbing ahead full speed 

 and made to turn out 25,000 

 and 30,000 feet a day, with 

 shifts working night and 

 day in most instances. One 

 20,000-foot mill made the 



M.\J0R E. H. M.^RKS 



MAJOR A. W. CORKINS 



high- water mark of the 

 war when the 27th Com- 

 pany in 23 hours and 35 

 minutes cut 177,486 feet of 

 lumber. 



It was not only in produc- 

 tion but in many other ways 

 that the men of the 20th showed their prowess, their 

 ability to surmount almost insuperable difficulties and 

 to work under conditions which were entirely new to 

 them. 



The incident — if such it should be called — might be 

 related of how on one occasion a 10,000-foot mill was 

 moved a distance of twenty-five miles and in forty-seven 

 hours from the time it stopped buzzing in its original 



location was sawing logs in the new section of woodland. 

 Five days had been allowed as a reasonable time for 

 moving this mill. Such feats were not rare occurrences, 

 and similar ingenuity and ability to meet emergencies 

 were shown by the forest regiment many times during its 

 stay in France. 



These men had gone over to France for a purpose 

 and they were not to be stopped by difficulties and 

 obstacles. If they did not 

 find the facilities which 

 they needed at hand, 

 they turned in and manu- 

 factured them from what- 

 ever material was avail- 

 able. In the early days 

 particularly they had to 



MAJOR B. F. WADE 



LT. COL. C. S. CHAPMAN 



resort to all sorts of ingen- 

 ious expedients. There was 

 urgent need of supplies for 

 the American army, which 

 was beginning to pour over 

 rapidly. The men of the 

 forest regiment knew this, 

 and they were not going to allow their "buddies" in the 

 infantry and artillery to suffer for lack of barracks and 

 warehouses and hospitals, if there was any way under 

 God's heaven to prevent it. And so American ingenuity 

 was put to the test, and it came out on top. If horses 

 had not yet arrived, the men formed themselves into 

 teams and dragged out the logs by man-power. If the 

 horses arrived before their harness, pieces of burlap and 

 bagging, rope and nails were "composed" into some of 

 the most picturesque harness the world had ever seen. 

 It is probable that the horses themselves had many a 

 chuckle over some of the ludicrous outfits to which they 

 were fitted. Of course, they were too polite to do this 

 before the men, but when they were in their stalls for the 

 night they must have laughed heartily, and probably 

 have carried on a conversation which would have given 

 Kipling fine material for a new animal story. 



The officers and men of the forest troops had to im- 

 provise in many waySj even to language. Here is what 

 Sergeant Oliver M. Porter, Yale Forest School '15, who 

 was out buying cordwood supplies for the A. E. F., wrote 

 back to the States on that subject. He says : "I hardly 

 Unow my mother tongue. Speech with me has become 

 an unrecognizable mixture of English, French and Span- 



