Part 11 (1/2)

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 finis.h.i.+ng some necessary work he went to Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Pers.h.i.+ng 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 friends.h.i.+p 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.