had to be put into the line or into training. The necessity for construction, however, made it necessary to hold out temporarily certain combat troops for this work before sending them to the front. This ever-changing personnel, including supervision as well as labor, made the difficulties great. Some Chinese labor was obtained from the French, and Marseilles and the Mediterranean ports were combed for labor, with results that gave us men of a dozen different nationalities and men physically weak and diseased. Russians from divisions that would not fight and Italians from troops that were not considered safe to put into the fighting line were also used. All of this labor was lacking in skill. Differences in language and in customs frequently caused refusals to work and there was always much misdirected energy. The Chinese at first were like a drove of chickens, and in some cases where large numbers were employed it was necessary to give them a certain amount of military drill to obtain prompt feeding and moving from barracks to work. To add to the difficulties of the construction officers, in general, all labor, both foreign and American, had to be fed, clothed, and taken care of by the engineer officers supervising the construction. Normally, technical supervision would be all that would have to be given.

Materials.-Any materials that could be obtained had to be used and in many cases structures had to be designed to fit available material. For instance, round poles had to be used in place of square poles in many cases. Rough lumber had to be used throughout. Lumber obtained from Switzerland and in many cases from our own mills was often not squared.

Steel buildings shipped from America and England arrived with vital parts missing, and substitutes of wood and steel had to be improvised.

Water tanks had to be designed and fabricated on the work. To meet the need for encircling bands, turnbuckles had to be improvised.

Water pipes had to be laid by utilizing all sizes of pipes and pipe fittings available.

The first storehouse in Gievres was erected with round poles and the roughest kind of lumber cover and tarpaulins.

Entire houses in the camouflage depot were made of canvas, as lumber was not available.

Plant machinery, etc.-Machinery generally reached the construction plant with vital parts missing, and months would be lost in supplying such parts or by making substitutes.

Certain pumps for the ice plant at Gievres were never obtained. The pipe line broke eight times, through defective pipe. Substitutes had to be improvised to meet the situation.

When road rollers were obtained, they were frequently not operated, due to missing parts.

Railroad transportation.-Rail transportation was always so short that construction materials could not be delivered as needed, since food and ammunition had priority. On the French railroads, cars were frequently completely lost, which resulted in failure to receive necessary materials. At the date of the armistice, the construction forces were short on promised deliveries at least 30,000,000 feet of timber, though there was probably double that, amount at the mills and at ports. The monthly output of the mills was approximately 50,000,000 feet. Piles 60 to 100 feet in length for the wharves at the ports had to be transported from the Vosges Mountains, in eastern France, and deliveries were always slow, due to car shortages and the difficulties experienced in getting the desired lengths to railroad points.

The construction of the railroad yard at Gievres was carried on for months Iwith only one or two days' supply of ties on hand, on account of shortage of railway transportation. Careful supervision was, therefore, necessary to see that only absolutely necessary tracks were laid, and that ties were used sparingly and with extended intervals. Splice bars were frequently used with half the required number of bolts. In many cases ballast could not be hauled, so tracks had to be maintained without ballast. At Liffol-le-Grand in August, two months before the wet season, we had about 65 miles of track graded, 35 miles laid, with less than 5 miles of track ballasted.

Motor and wagon transportation.-All available transportation had to be sent to the front line, so construction lines had to do without. The conditions in the advance section were so bad, on account of lack of motor transportation, that our materials piled up at railway stations to such an extent as to cause trouble with the French officials, and this in spite of the fact that there was the greatest shortage of materials at each individual camp.

Tools.-There was always a shortage of proper working tools, and it was difficult to equip properly even the labor available. In many cases French tools had to be used, such tools not being at all suited to American workmen, on account of their different pattern and being so deficient in strength as to be constantly breaking.

Contract work.-A number of contracts were made with French, English, and American firms, but since none of these firms could accomplish the work fast enough, most of them had to be taken over or great assistance given the contractor. In the advance section all contract work had been revoked some months previous to the date of the armistice. Practically all the work of Stone & Webster had to be done by the Director of Construction and Forestry.

I would like to say in conclusion of this part of the testimony that there could hardly be a more diversified line of work than was done by the Engineers in France, which included all construction of port facilities, docks, wharves, storehouses, railroad tracks, sidings, switches, and the construction of something like 20,000 barracks in various parts of France, the construction of remount stations, remount depots, office rooms, alteration of French barracks and making them suitable in part for offices and things of that sort; and, in short, almost every conceivable form of construction. There is hardly a type of construction that could be thought of that was not included in the work of the Engineer force in France. I consider that the work they did over there was as well done as was the work of any staff department over there, and it was exceedingly creditable. I do not see very well how it could have been done better.

There has been brought to my attention an article prepared for publication which presents very clearly a statement of the way the Engineers performed their construction duty in France, which contains some rather detailed items of interest, and it is available for the record of your hearing as a more complete statement on this subject in case you desire it.

Mr. MCKENZIE. Can you leave that for insertion?

Gen. HARBORD. Yes; that is the reason I brought it up here.

(The paper furnished by the witness is here printed in full in the record, as follows:)

[From January-February issue of the Military Engineer, Journal of the Society of American Military Engineers.]

THE MILITARY ENGINEER-ENGINEER CONSTRUCTION IN FRANCE-WORK OF THE DIVISION OF CONSTRUCTION AND FORESTRY,1 A. E. F.

[By Lieut. Col. J. A. Woodruff, Corps of Engineers, United States Army. Discussion and comment by Maj. Gen. W. C. Langfitt, Maj. Gen. M. M. Patrick, Brig. Gen. Edgar Jadwin, Col. J. B. Cavanaugh, Col. Ernest Graves, and and extract from the final report of Gen. Pershing. See Index map, p. —.]

With the exception of a few barracks erected in the Gondrécourt area by troops of the First Division immediately after their arrival in their training area, the actual work of construction by the American forces in France was

1 [The Division of Construction and Forestry in France in its final form was one of the four great departments of the Engineer organization under the Chief Engineer of the American Expeditionary Forces. Its history began with the arrival of Gen. Pershing in France when Gen. Taylor, the Chief Engineer, assigned to one of his assistants the duty of directing the construction immediately necessary and planning for that ultimately to be required by the American forces.

In August of 1917 the lines of communication were formally organized to handle all phases of supply, housing and transportation in rear of combat sectors. Construction devolved upon the chief engineer of the lines of communication and was so continued until by a reorganization in February of 1918, the lines of communication were designated as the Services of Supply. This included as one of its great operating divisions a Service of Utilities, with Maj. Gen. William C. Langfitt at its head as Chief of Utilities. This service included among other functions a Department of Construction and Forestry and a Department of Light Railways and Roads. In July of 1918, the Service of Utilities was discontinued as such and the two departments named were merged with the previously existing Engineer Department. The chief of

commenced by the Fifteenth (Railway) Engineers, Col. Edgar Jadwin, C. E., commanding. This regiment was one of those raised in May, 1917, as a result of the Joffre Mission to the United States. It arrived at Vierzon July 28, 1917; its equipment, which consisted of about a trainload of tools and plant brought from America, also arrived promptly. The regiment at once began surveys, and construction detachments were distributed without delay to Issoudun, Bordeaux, Gondrécourt, and other important points between the Atlantic ports and the combat sectors.

The Seventeenth Engineers (Railway), Col. J. S. Sewell, Engineers, commanding, arrived at St. Nazaire August 17, 1917; the Sixteenth Engineers (Railway), Col. Harry Burgess, C. E., commanding, arrived at Is-sur-Tille August 26, 1917; the Eighteenth Engineers (Railway), Col. J. B. Cavanaugh, C. E., commanding, arrived at Bordeaux August 20, 1917; the Tenth Engineers (Forestry), Col. J. A. Woodruff, C. E., commanding, arrived at Nevers October 9, 1917 (later consolidated with the Twentieth Engineers, Forestry). Other regiments, such as the Eleventh, Twenty-third, Twenty-fifth, Thirty-third, Fifty-fifth, Thirty-second, One hundred and sixth, One hundred and ninth, Three hundred and ninth, Three hundred and eleventh, Three hundred and eighteenth, Three hundred and nineteenth, and many other regiments and battalions performed valuable service during the time they were in the S. O. S., but the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, Tenth, and Twentieth, by virtue of their early arrival and long service may be consindered as having formed the backbone of the field construction forces of the Services of Supply.

The organization as modified by Gen. Jadwin in May, 1918, consisted of a central office at Tours, the headquarters of the Services of Supply, organized into four sections, viz: Administration, General Construction, Railroads and Docks, and Forestry, all in charge of a deputy director.

The construction work in the field was carried on through section engineer officers whose territory corresponded with that of the sections of services of supply and consisted of an advance section, an intermediate section (divided into two construction sections on account of its extent), and seven base sections, each embracing the territory around a port of debarkation.

The forestry work in the field was carried on through district commanders, each of whom also commanded a battalion of the forestry troops which operated from two to eight sawmills. The districts in the advance section and those in Base Section No. 2, where most of the forestry operations were located, were combined under a section forestry officer. These officers acted directly under the central office for production and shipments outside their own section, but filled local requisitions on orders of the section engineer officer in whose section they were located.

The changing and rapidly increasing force, together with the size which it had attained at the time of the armistice-150,823 men, of which 127,000 were available for werk-and its wide distribution, called for an elastic and adaptable organization and methods.

This was obtained by means of a decentralized organization and the use of type plans as far as practicable. The work was handled by the Director of Construction and Forestry with a central office at Tours, operating through a section Engineer officer in each of the sections. General instructions were originally given to the section Engineer officers, who were supported consistently so long as they observed the general policies of the director and of higher authority. Every possible help was given them by the central office in the securing of men and materials. The central office, under the immediate charge of the deputy director, carried on continuously along established poliutilities became the head of the consolidated department and succeeded to the title of the Chief Engineer, A. E. F. The previously existing activities connected with military engineering operations, engineer supply, construction and forestry, and light railways and roads, were continued as operating divisions of the new and enlarged Engineer organization with a director at the head of each.

For brief periods in the summer months of 1917, Col. C. W. Kutz and Brig. Gen. C. H. McKinstry served successively as chief engineer, lines of communication. Brig. Gen. M. M. Patrick was appointed chief engineer, lines of communication, in September, 1917, and discharged the duties of the position until May 22, 1918, the title having been changed in the meantime to that of Director of Construction and Forestry, with no material change in duties. Gen. Patrick having been appointed Chief of the Air Service, A. E. F.. he was succeeded as Director of Construction and Forestry by Brig. Gen. Edgar Jadwin, who remained in charge of the construction work of the A. E. F. until demobilization of the forces had been practically completed in July, 1919.-Ed.]

See editorial at close of this article.