THE FIGHT AT THE TIMBER-LINE 



By John Oliver La Gorce 



Author of "Warfare on Our Eastern Coast," "A Battle Ground of Nature," "Roumaxia and Its 



Rubicon/' "Devil-Fishing in the Gulf Stream," "Pennsylvania, the Industrial 



Titan of America," etc., in the National Geographic Magazine 



AMONG all the stirring struggles 

 that the forces of Nature stage 

 in their wars over disputed terri- 

 tory and their strivings for supremacy, 

 there is none more intense or unrelenting 

 than that at the timber-line, where the ad- 

 vance guard of the Legions of the Forest 

 engages in mortal combat the entrenched 

 troops of King Frost. 



One would have to wander far afield 

 indeed to witness more brilliant tactics or 

 to meet with such masterful strategy as 

 the tree armies employ. 



A far-flung line is this forest frontier, 

 and it has more separate fields of con- 

 flict than there were when the world's 

 effort to break Central Europe's strangle- 

 hold upon civilization was at its height. 



There are three principal battle areas 

 where the forces of King Frost are en- 

 trenched against the trees — the Arctic 

 citadel, the Western America line, and 

 the Himalaya-Alps front. Isolated cam- 

 paigns rage on lone peaks and on short 

 and sequestered mountain ranges. 



On the Arctic front the contending 

 forces are drawn up in battle array at 

 sea-level. 



In the Western America theater, the 

 war zone climbs higher and higher, until, 

 at the Equator, the pitiless strife is waged 

 in the rarefied atmosphere of twelve thou- 

 sand feet or more. Then it sweeps down 

 again until it reaches sea-level at the 

 Strait of Magellan end of the Andes. 



In the hostile area that stretches along 

 the Himalayas and the Alps from west- 

 ern China to eastern France, there are 

 numerous quiet sectors, but a strategically 

 continuous front. 



TREK SOLDIERS ENDURE THE GRIND OE AN 

 UNCEASING CAMPAIGN 



Hardy as trained-to-the-minute men 

 are the tree soldiers that can stand the 

 awful grind of the unceasing campaign. 

 The training camps are scattered all over 

 the salubrious country of the back areas, 

 and only picked troops of tested courage 

 ever reach the firing-line. 



Tropical trees are too soft of fiber for 

 aught but home-guard duty and last-ditch- 

 reserve support. After a few hundred 

 miles poleward or twice as many feet sky- 

 ward they gradually drop out, and hardier 

 and better trained substitutes fill their 

 places, until, at last, the troops that 

 started are, without exception, left be- 

 hind, and fresh ones everywhere reform 

 the serried ranks. 



Where the last palm that typifies the 

 tropical soldiery drops out, a third type 

 begins to fall in line, and by the time the 

 broad-leaved troopers begin to grow 

 jaded, the keen, needle-leaved legions 

 from the pine woods are ready to fill the 

 place of the stragglers, in order that the 

 ranks may be kept full. 



629 DIVISIONS CAEEED TO THE COEORS 



How heart-breaking and stamina-test- 

 ing the long march proves to be is strik- 

 ingly shown by the record of the 629 

 divisions that have been called to the 

 colors between sea-level on the Florida 

 coast and timber-line in the Colorado 

 mountains — including the palm and the 

 palmetto divisions, the oak and the hick- 

 ory, the maple and the birch, and other 

 crack outfits. 



Gradually the divisions are reduced, by 

 desertions and straggling, to brigades, 

 regiments, battalions, companies, and 

 squads, and at length t formations disap- 

 pear ; so that when, finally, the battle field 

 itself is reached, all but a beggarly score 

 are missing, and even these survivors of 

 hardy divisions, the regulars of the tree 

 armies, have been decimated. 



And yet, when the battle front is 

 reached, the Titanic struggle is still to 

 open. No operations in mass formation 

 are possible there. The pine divisions 

 have advanced in great, dark columns, 

 now seeking protection from the bombing 

 expeditions of the air service, now ac- 

 cepting the support of the shock troops 

 of the birch divisions, and again bearing 

 the brunt of the enemy's artillery fire of 

 hail and sleet. 



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