The Career of Leonard Wood Part 11

For the next few days the examination of the French front continued at and near the Chemin des Dames sector.

On January 27th he went with some French officers and men and a number of American officers to look into the work of the 6th French army training school, where artillery practice was in progress at Fere-en-Tardenois. He was standing behind a mortar, the center man of the five officers watching the gun crew fire the mortar, when a sh.e.l.l burst, or detonated, inside the gun.

The entire gun crew was blown to pieces. The four officers on either side of General Wood were killed. He himself received a wound in the muscles of the left arm and lost part of the right sleeve of his tunic. Six fragments of the sh.e.l.l pa.s.sed through his clothing and two of them killed the officers on either side of him. He was the only man within a s.p.a.ce of twelve feet of the mortar who was not instantly killed. Many were wounded, including two others of our own officers.

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After a night in the field first-aid hospital, where his arm was dressed, he motored approximately a hundred miles to Paris the next day and went into the French officers' hospital in the Hotel Ritz.

This hospital was in the old portion of the Ritz Hotel. General Wood was the first foreign officer to be admitted to it. It was full of wounded French officers and men from the different fronts; some of them from Salonika; some sent back from Germany, hopelessly crippled, and held as unfit for further service by the Germans; and many from the Western front.

Here he got very near the soul of the French Army and came in touch with that indomitable spirit which made that army fight best and hardest when things looked darkest. Thanks to an excellent physical condition he made a rapid recovery, described by French surgeons as found only among the very young. He was a guest of the French Government while at the hospital and received every possible courtesy.

On the 16th of February after having talked with many of the French officers in the hospital and called, at their request, upon Clemenceau, President Poincare, Joffre and {229} others, he left Paris entirely cured of his slight wound and proceeded to the headquarters of the French Army of the North at Vizay. There he met and talked with Generals D'Esperey and Gourand, visited Rheims and Bar-le-duc and spent the day of the 20th at Verdun.

During the next few days he visited the United States Army headquarters at Chaumont and Toul and was back in Paris on the 26th, when he received orders from the A. E. F. to return to the United States by way of Bordeaux. On the 21st of March he arrived in New York and was summoned four days later to appear before the Senate committee on military affairs to report his observations.

He was then examined by the Mayo examining board, p.r.o.nounced absolutely fit physically and on April 12th resumed command of the 89th Division at Camp Funston, Kansas.

The training of this division was practically finished in late May and the 89th was thereupon ordered abroad for service.

After seeing some of the elements of the division off for the evacuation station at Camp Mills, Long {230} Island, New York, General Wood left Funston himself and proceeded to Mills to see to the reception of his division and look to its embarkation. He arrived at the Long Island camp on May 25th and there found an order from the War Department relieving him of his command of the 89th Division and instructing him to proceed to San Francisco to a.s.sume command of the Western Department. After finishing some necessary work he went to Washington on the 27th and saw the Secretary of War. Little is known of what took place at this conversation except that General Wood requested that he be reinstated in his command of the 89th Division and sent abroad, which was refused.

Wood saw the President, explained the situation and was told that the latter would take the matter under consideration.

No consideration was ever reported.

Meantime the order sending him to California created such an uproar throughout the United States that it was rescinded and General Wood was ordered to Camp Funston again to train a new division--the 10th--which was ready to go {231} abroad when the armistice was signed on November 11th.

This const.i.tutes General Wood's services to his country during the period of the war.

Much might be said in regard to this history. Much might be surmised as to the causes which led to keeping the man who was the senior officer of the army out of the war entirely. Much--very much--has been said throughout this country in and out of print during the past two years. The theory that he was too old for active service could not be a reason, since he is younger than many general officers who did see service abroad--younger as a matter of fact than General Pershing himself. It is hardly conceivable that physical condition could have been a reason, since at least twice in the last two years he has been pa.s.sed by expert physical examination boards in the regular routine of army life and found sound, mentally and physically. He does, to be sure, limp and has had to do so for years on account of an accident in Cuba fifteen or sixteen years ago. Yet this could hardly unfit him for service in France when it did not unfit him for service in the {232} Philippine jungle, or the active life which he has led for the past ten years.

There has been considerable surmise as to whether his amazing campaign for preparedness, his speeches and his many activities in the officers' training camps organization and administration prejudiced the authorities against him. This again is hardly credible since it is manifestly inconceivable that those men in charge of the prosecution of our part in the great war, with the immense responsibility resting upon their shoulders, could possibly have allowed personal prejudice and favoritism to have played any part in their decision in regard to any man--least of all the most important man in the Regular Army.

Some controversy arose as to whether Wood's friendship and relation to Theodore Roosevelt might not have created hostility in administration and army circles. This again is beyond credence when the importance of the men on both sides is considered and the terrific importance of events at the time is taken into account. Here again it is inconceivable that any man or group of men could at such times and in such circ.u.mstances {233} allow anything personal to sway his or their judgment.

The incontestable fact still remains, however, that the one man in the Army who by his whole life in the United States, in many parts of the earth, had during a period of thirty years been preparing himself for just such an occasion, who had for four years been trying to get the people of the country and the government to prepare, who had appeared before Senate military commissions and other similar bodies and registered his belief in the necessity for certain measures, all of which were adopted by the Government as recommended by him--that the one man who had done all this should not have been selected to do any active service whatever at the front, but should have been offered posts in the Philippines, Hawaii and California when he was applying for service in France. Lloyd George wanted him; France wanted him; and the American Army wanted him.

All sorts and conditions of men throughout the United States expressed their opinion upon the subject during this war period and are doing so {234} still, but the one man who has said nothing is General Wood himself. With his inherited and acquired characteristic of doing something, of never remaining idle, with the habit acquired from years of military discipline and respect for orders emanating from properly const.i.tuted authority, he put in his application again and again for service and then accepted without public comment whatever orders were issued to him.

Here again is the same simple, direct mind of the man who has at no time lost his sense of proportion, who has not become excited because his chance was not given him--the chance for which he had spent long years of preparation--who did not let this outward wallpaper--plaster--showy thing divert him from the essential point, the great beam of our war preparation house--the necessity that every man, woman and child should do all he or she could do to help the Government of the United States carry the war--or our part of it--to a successful conclusion when that Government finally made up its mind to go in.

Wood declined to become a martyr. He had no bitter feelings. He was, as any other man of {235} his prominence and character would be, disappointed at having no opportunity to serve his country at the front. But he took what came to him and did it as usual with extraordinary quickness, effectiveness and thoroughness.

Indeed speculation on the subject is not likely to produce much profit. It is only of importance in the present place as ill.u.s.trating again the make-up of the subject of this biographical sketch. He took no steps other than those regularly and properly open to him to secure service. He attempted no roundabout methods. He kept his own counsel and followed his old maxim of "Do it and don't talk about it." His requests for reasons for denying him of all men the right to fight for his country on the battle line made through proper channels--never otherwise--produced no answers in any case and to this day the whole amazing episode is entirely without explanation.

Meantime the man's characteristic energy and thoroughness produced extraordinary results in other fields.

In his short sojourn in Charleston it was his duty to select and prepare at once a certain {236} number of camps, or cantonments as they came to be called, within the jurisdiction of the South Eastern Department. And this he proceeded to do with great rapidity. Not only were all the sites he selected pa.s.sed without exception, but they proved to be in every instance safe, sanitary and sufficient for the purpose. This was no easy matter with almost every town and city in the South sending delegations to him to ask that it be selected as the site of one of the camps, with the prodigious amount of political influence brought to bear from all sides and with the necessity of offending n.o.body, of making all work towards one end--the immediate preparation for homes for the men who were to make the new army.

It was all so skillfully handled that there is not a place in the South of any size which has not sounded and does not sound the praises of General Wood. He selected the camps and made them with that experience and knowledge that were his because of the fact that he was an army officer and a doctor who had done much the same thing and had had much the same work in Cuba and the Philippines.

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One would expect something of the sort from any able man with such preparation, but one would not expect such a man to leave the Department with the extraordinary popularity and the mult.i.tude of expressions of good will and affection which Wood carried away with him after these few months of work.

In the midst of the journeyings to and fro to look over possible sites and all the work entailed in preparing the camps he found time to supervise the three officers' training camps already mentioned, which were carried out upon the lines of the earlier ones with the aid of the Officers' Training Camps a.s.sociation.

Upon being transferred to Camp Funston near Fort Riley in Kansas, Wood began in the first days of September, 1917, the training of a new division of raw recruits from the selective draft. He had the a.s.sistance of a nucleus of army officers and some few army men, but the bulk of the division consisted of new men and of new officers recently from the officers' training camps. And this work was well on its way and the division {238} taking form when he received orders to go to Europe.

It is difficult in this limited s.p.a.ce to go into the details of his work abroad, and most of it in any case was technical matter more adapted to a military report. The results of some of his conversations are, however, of interest now as showing the situation as it appeared to important men, military and political, in Europe at that time.

Some one said during the summer of 1918 when asked how much the American man and woman in the street really knew of what was going on in Europe, that if the headlines of American newspapers were disregarded and the actual telegraphic reports themselves read day by day, nearly everything that anybody from commanding generals down knew was known to that reader. There were, of course, many discussions amongst the guiding intellects, political and military, which never saw the light. There were, naturally, plans discussed and never carried out which the American citizen did not hear of at any time.

But the general consensus of opinion seems to be that the {239} American newspaper reader knew almost as much as any one of what was happening and that he certainly knew as much of what was going to happen as the men in the inner circle.

Much that has come out since the armistice shows a condition of affairs almost as the man in the street knew it at the time. In the winter of 1917-18 we knew that a huge drive was scheduled by the Germans on the Franco-Belgian front in the spring. In the following summer we knew the doubtful situation around Chateau-Thierry. In the middle of July we knew that something was happening, that the Americans were beginning to go in in large numbers, that the German "push" was slowing up; and that a turn had been made. Finally we knew that the German army was suddenly retiring, and for a month before the armistice was signed we knew that it was going to be signed. Indeed so sure was the American public of this last that they celebrated the end of the war throughout this great land a week ahead of time, because of a report which, though literally incorrect, was in essence true and known to be true.

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It is not uninteresting, therefore, to review the sentiments and opinions which Wood found upon his arrival amongst the French and English statesmen and soldiers between January 1 and February 26th, 1918.

In London Lloyd George, the British Premier, knew Wood as the administrator of Cuba and the Philippines. He knew also of Wood's experience with, and knowledge of European armies. He was anxious for Wood to be in Europe. He laid great emphasis upon the shortage of American air service which made it difficult for American troops to work as a separate unit without English or French cooperation. He pled for American troops at the earliest possible moment and offered more transportation facilities--even though England had already transported not only her own men but many of ours across the Atlantic.

General Sir William Robertson stated in January that there was an impending crisis coming in the early spring; that Germany would make an immensely powerful drive toward Paris or the channel ports or both; and that in his opinion the Allied lines would hold until the Americans {241} got into the war with full strength. But he made no concealment of the fact that the next six months would be very critical ones.

Marshal Joffre held similar views. Both officers expressed the opinion that the summer of 1918 would be the crisis and deciding point of the war. They, too, felt the French and English lines would hold, but they laid heavy stress upon the importance of more troops from America.

On the French front Wood lunched and had a long talk with General Gouraud and another at Paris later with General Petain whom he knew and who knew well the history of Wood's career in organization and administration. Petain is said to have expressed the hope that Wood might soon be in France on active duty and to have said that when he did come he would put him in command of an army of French and American troops.

As Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, next to the highest rank in that order--General Wood was naturally received by all French officers and statesmen. This order having been conferred upon him some years before because of his record in Cuba and the Philippines placed him in a small {242} group of men, most of them, naturally, French, who are the distinguished men of Europe. His reception by the President of France, by the premier, Georges Clemenceau, and other French statesmen came as a matter of course. But the conversations which took place between the American soldier and these men have never, naturally, been made public except in some of their bare essentials. Nor will any one ever know just what was said unless one or another of the parties to them shall some time disclose it himself.

There seems to be no doubt, however, of the very warm reception which this senior officer of the American army was given. His record in preparedness work, his record in administrative and organization work were all well known to the statesmen of these two countries who were from their experience with colonial matters so well fitted to judge of what he had accomplished along these lines.

General Wood's opinion as the result of his trip was that the American troops should serve by divisions for a time with the French and English rather than as a separate army from the start, {243} because of the fact that all matters of supply, equipment, artillery, air service and so on which were so incomplete in the American service and so complete by this time in the British and French services would apply to the Americans as well as to the others and that the training alongside the veterans of over three years of war would make the effectiveness of the American troops quicker, better and more definite--would in the end increase efficiency and save life.

After having reported to the Senate committee and returned to Camp Funston he took up with immeasurably renewed vigor the work of getting the 89th Division, which he was to take abroad, ready for its service, and all was prepared when the order came for them to move to New York for embarkation. This work of transportation being practically completed and the big division ready to go on board ship, Leonard Wood felt that at last his chance to take his part in the war at the front had come.

It is practically impossible for any one, therefore, to realize just what it meant to him, or would have meant to any man, to receive notification as {244} he was almost in the act of going on board the transport that his command of the division he had trained and organized was taken away from him, another officer put in his place and he himself ordered to the farthest possible extremity of the United States in the opposite direction. It is certainly impossible to express here what his feelings were since n.o.body really knows them.

Imagination, however, which plays so important a part in this world's affairs will play its part here as elsewhere, and some estimate of what effect it had upon the country was shown in the outcry which arose everywhere and which created such sudden wrath that the order itself was immediately rescinded and changed to the Funston appointment.

The character of men is exhibited in infinite ways and by infinite methods, but never more surely than during critical periods when pa.s.sions run high and injustice seems to be in the saddle. It is always at such times that reserve force, mental strength, and all the sound basic qualities which make up what we call character play their important parts in the drama of life. No one has, {245} so far as our history tells us, shown greater strength of this nature than Abraham Lincoln, and it is that reserve, that amazing common sense which "with malice toward none, with charity for all" led him on all occasions no matter how extraordinary the provocation to decline to let personalities, jealousies, or any of the baser pa.s.sions control his actions or influence his decisions.

It would be ridiculous for any one to a.s.sume that General Wood was not cut to the quick by this unexplained action, which took the cup from his lips as he was about to drink, but there never has appeared anywhere anything emanating from him which criticized, questioned or in any way took exception to it. One may read, however, between the lines of his short good-by to the division which he created many thoughts that may have been in his mind and that certainly were in the minds of the officers of the 89th to whom this simple address was the first intimation that he was not to lead them into action in France.

It is so direct, so simple, so manly that, like all such doc.u.ments, it is only with time that its great {246} hearted spirit makes the true impression on any reader. It will take its place in the history of this country amongst the few doc.u.ments which live on always because they exhibit a wise and sane outlook upon life and because they make a universal appeal to the best that lives always like a divine spark in the heart of every man.

It makes the boy in school exclaim, "Some day when I grow up I will do that." It lives in the dreams that come just before sleep as the att.i.tude the young man would like to take when his critical hour comes. It cheers the old, since they can say: "So long as this can be done there is no fear for our native land."