348 THE AMERICAN FOREST ENGINEERS IN FRANCE 



to large damage claims for injuries to the carefully regulated French 

 forests. The enormous demands in prospect during the summer of 1918 

 made it necessary, in any event, to organize a special fuel wood service 

 on a much larger scale. The Quartermaster Corps thereupon assigned 

 10,600 of its service troops to this duty in the Advance Section. This 

 project was placed under the direction of a lieutenant-colonel of the 

 Forestry Section with a supply officer from the Q. M. C. Thirty-three 

 officers and non-commissioned officers were furnished by the Forestry 

 Section to locate and acquire the timber needed and supervise its cutting. 

 The Quartermaster troops included fifteen pack trains, two wagon trains, 

 and a motor truck company. 



This hastily assembled organization conducted thirty-eight fuel wood 

 camps, all told, in the hardwood coppice forests of northeastern France. 

 Its operations were distributed through practically all of the divisional 

 training areas in the Advance Section and six companies were employed 

 during September and October, 1918, to supply the troops constituting 

 the First Army. It was a task of no small difficulty to organize and 

 equip this enormous force of woodcutters. As usual, the question of 

 transport was the kernel of the problem. Every sort of available equip- 

 ment which could move fuel wood was utilized tractors, motor trucks, 

 40 and 60 centimeter sectional track, lumber wagons, escort wagons, 

 two-wheeled French carts, and sleds. Chutes made of corrugated iron 

 were employed at several operations ; and a deal of fuel wood was dragged 

 or carried out to hard roads by sheer man power. Forty-centimeter sec- 

 tional track with light cars, moved by mule or man power, proved to 

 be very serviceable equipment. The fuel wood camps were placed, as 

 far as possible, right in the troop areas, and much of the wood, once 

 placed on hard roads, was distributed by the transport equipment of the 

 division which used the fuel. 



In spite of the difficulties encountered, the special fuel supply unit 

 was thoroughly successful and tided the Army over the shortage of 

 fuel wood which would otherwise have been acute during the cold months 

 of 1918-19. A total of 930,000 cubic meters was cut, giving the Army 

 a comfortable surplus over its requirements and indeed permitting the 

 turning over of considerable quantities of fuel to the French when the 

 Advance Section was evacuated. 



WHAT THE FOREST ENGINEERS ACCOMPLISHED 



The Beginning and the End. The first log was sawed by American 

 forestry troops at a little French mill in the Jura Mountains on Novem- 

 ber 26, 1917. Three days later the first American sawmill in France 

 began operating in a forest of Scotch pine on the Loire River. Prior 

 to these dates another camp of forestry troops in the southwestern 



