Military bivouac

“ A number of men were, however, busily engaged in throwing up the sand, and arms gleamed amid some tents pitched around the solitary wooden shed in the centre. A schooner lay at the wharf, laden with two guns and sand-bags, and as we passed through the narrow channel several men in military uniform, who were on board, took their places in a boat which pushed off for them, and were conveyed to their tiny station, of which one shell would make a dust heap. The Mobilians are fortifying themselves as best they can, and seem, not unadvisedly, jealous of gun-boats and small war-steamers. ”

“ Three passengers disembarked from her and made their way aboard. The main deck of the craft under an awning was heavily encumbered with trunks, tin boxes, hand baggage, tin bath-tubs, gun cases, and all sorts of impedimenta. The tugboat moored itself to us fore and aft, and proceeded to think about discharging. Perhaps twenty men in accurate replica of those in the small boats had charge of the job. They had their own methods. After a long interval devoted strictly to nothing, some unfathomable impulse would incite one or two or three of the natives to tackle a trunk. ”

“ I have hurt my left foot badly, and at times I feel an overpowering fatigue, but one must carry on all the same. The bivouac is admirable. Big fires warm up the soup for the troops. The little stream shimmers, all red, and encircles the bivouac. The day ends; splendid. Some Cuirassiers bivouac a little higher up on the village green. We hear them singing the Marseillaise. We [39] sleep in a barn in heaps one on the top of the other.
19th August.—The 4th squadron is on reconnaissance. We start alone, at a venture. We are in the saddle all day. ”

“ In the evacuation of friendly casualties by cargo airplanes, the use of helicopters for rescue of air personnel shot down by the enemy and the evacuation of wounded, and the high state of aircraft availability maintained by ground personnel working under hazardous and extremely adverse conditions because of intense cold, personnel of the entire 1st Marine Air Wing displayed fortitude, courage, and marked esprit de corps. ”

“ In another context, during WW2, more than one hundred thousand airborne troops parachuted from transport aircraft with their weapons and gear as part of military operations. At least equal in numbers, cargo parachutes lowered food, equipment, ammunition and other essential supplies to the fighting forces and to isolated civilian communities. Parachutes also have a wide range of uses in peacetime, as examples, sports parachuting, 'fire jumpers' fighting forest fires, and rescue operations in terrain or other circumstances that preclude less hazardous access. ”

“ One gallon won't take us all the way home."
"I wish it would, but I know better,'" was the reply. "Listen, Jack! We must keep moving along until dawn comes. Then, if the coast seems clear, we've got to drop down and make a landing."
"Oh! If we do that it's all up with us, and we'll be bound for a German prison camp on our first outing trip."
"I hope not," the pilot replied instantly. "My object is to try to run across a supply of gasolene and commandeer it. It's a toss-up whether we can find any, with the country drained so well by the military authorities. ”

“ Floating on the glasslike surface of the lagoons, the guns fired a few shots and then changed position, making it utterly impossible for the enemy to locate them. The entire auxiliary service of supplying this floating army was adapted to meet the lagoon warfare. Munition dumps were on boats, constantly moved about to prevent the enemy spotting them. Gondolas and motor boats replaced the automobile supply lorries customary in land warfare. Instead of motor ambulances, motor boats carried off the dead and wounded. Hydro-airplanes replaced ordinary fighting aircraft. ”

“ She follows the “landing” boat at a short distance, and her duty is to cover her retreat if the natives should attack the landing boat by at once opening fire, and giving those in that boat a chance of pushing off and getting out of danger, and also she sometimes receives on board the “recruits” as they are engaged by the recruiter—if the latter has not been knocked on the head or speared.
On nearing the beach, where the natives are waiting, the officer in the landing-boat swings her round with his steer oar, and the crew back her in, stern first, on to the beach. ”

“ Mules from Spain and Texas, loaded with ammunition, kicked and plunged, more oxen drew more soberly the great naval guns, which lurched as though in a heavy sea, throwing the blue-jackets who hung upon the drag-ropes from one high side of the trail to the other. Across the plain, and making toward the trail, wagons loaded with fodder, with rations, with camp equipment, with tents and cooking-stoves, crowded each other as closely as cable-cars on Broadway. ”

“ At one o'clock the performance recommences. Again a carapace is formed. An artillery officer shouts to us as he passes—
'You are in a very dangerous zone.'
No doubt of that!
This evening we bivouac out in the open.
The 8th of September, en route at four in the morning. We are massed in reserve behind stacks of straw, where we see something of the battle. The Germans appear to have the advantage. Their guns shower upon us huge projectiles which, on bursting, release a heavy black smoke. Violent replies by our 75's. A village to our right is aflame. ”

“ Related to the aviation service, to the extent at least that they observe from an aerial post, are the balloon men of the navy, officers who go aloft with great gas-bags, which, when not in use, are carried on the decks of the larger war-ships engaged in work. From the baskets of these sausage-shaped balloons the observers, armed with telescopes and binoculars, the ocean and the ships of the convoy lying like a map below, sweep the surface of the water for lurking submarines and enemy raiders. ”

“ It seems probable also that aircraft will soon be recognized as inherently adapted to preventing the landing of hostile troops, by dropping bombs on the troops, while they are in process of disembarkation, while proceeding in small boats to the shore, and while in the act of landing on the beach, with their guns, ammunition, supplies, horses, and impedimenta of various kinds. ”

“ In their job o' work of bombing U-boats, attacking Zeppelins, fighting enemy seaplanes, and carrying out reconnaissance and convoy duties, there is as much romance as in any particular effort in the war. In the future, grown great in size, the boats will form the winged Navy, and will carry mails and passengers over the water-routes of all the world.
Boat seaplanes, or flying-boats as they are called by the men who use them, are a true type of aircraft designed for dealing with the chances and hazards of flying over the sea. ”

“ DOUGLAS C-47 TRANSPORT TOWING GLIDER. The gliders carried both men and equipment and could be landed in almost any flat pasture. The C-47 aircraft—the work horse of the war—was similar to the commercial DC-3, a standard type passenger carrier in the United States for some years prior to the war. The C-47, unarmed, was used during the war for carrying personnel and cargo of all sorts, towing gliders, dropping parachute troops, and parachuting supplies to isolated units and equipment to partisans behind enemy lines. The British called it the Dakota. ”

“ In the year before Pearl Harbor the Navy had acquired only a few hundred new airplanes. We did have, however, a group of young men who had been living and breathing aviation for the past fifteen years. They knew what was needed in the way of new fighting planes and they knew how to train thousands of new naval aviators when the time came. But it took the tremendous sweeps of the Nazis in Europe and the shadow of Japan across the Pacific to unloose the flood of fighting planes which was to give the United States Navy the greatest aërial fighting force ever launched. ”

“ Such things may bother an aviator when over the enemy's country, because if a landing seems necessary in order to avoid a fatal drop, there must always arise the risk of capture. How much more serious would even the smallest engine trouble become, once they were far out over the ocean with nothing in sight as far as the eye could reach save an endless vastness of rolling waters beneath, and passing clouds overhead? ”

“ Gun-boats, or police junks, are ubiquitous. A very low freeboard and no cabin, with the exception [103] of a kind of deck-house quite aft, where the helmsman stands, one mast hoisting a gracefully-cut sail with alternate blue and white cloths, a small muzzle-loading cannon in the bows, and a crew of ten or a dozen in quaint uniforms, who, when wind fails, take to the sweeps, and standing up facing the direction in which they are going, and keeping good time, propel the boat at a fair pace. When at anchor an awning in blue and white stripes affords a commodious shelter. ”

“ Without a keel the catamaran would make a lot of leeway. If the wind held from the northeast, it could easily blow them ashore on a Jap occupied island. The wisest plan would be to get as far to windward as they could before dawn.
“Let us take the paddles, Miss Wilcox,” he said. “My crew will relieve your native boys until it’s time to hoist sail. Then perhaps we can figure out a way to beat the leeward drift.”
“We’re at your orders from now on, Lieutenant,” the girl replied. “None of us is a navigator. If an American bomber crew can’t take us through, no human power could do it.” ”

“ To mount in a balloon that one has not constructed, and which [222] one is not in a state to guide, constitutes the easiest of performances. A little cat has done it at the Folies-Bergère."
Now in war service overland the air-ship will, doubtless, have often to mount to considerable heights to avoid the rifle fire of the enemy, but, as the maritime auxiliary described by the expert of the French Navy, its scouting rôle will for the most part be performed at the end of its guide rope, comparatively close to the waves, and yet high enough to take in a wide view. ”

“ A considerable body of the enemy appeared on the sand-hill above the landing-place, but our gun-brig and gunboats soon dispersed them, and we landed without difficulty, except a good wetting as far as the knee, for the water was shallow and our boats could not get nearer than a few yards from the beach. The remainder of the troops followed in the course of the day, and landed with the same success and safety, and next morning the stores, camp equipage, and guns were landed without accident. ”

“ A sufficiently stout rope should be stitched round the seam of the bag; beckets or loops should be left in it at the four corners for convenience of handling; and a wooden tube or stopper should be inserted, and firmly seized in with small cord at one corner.
These bags are most convenient when a supply of water is needed on any emergency, especially if the landing be difficult or dangerous, or the inhabitants hostile. They occupy no room in the boat while empty. The oarsman may pull in unencumbered through the surf; or, if it is necessary to fight, the riflemen may use their weapons. ”

“ This is probably the 'outfit' of the fugitives who reached bivouac this morning, reporting it burned and their comrades killed.
"One of the latter, at least, is alive, but we [221] found him unconscious, although unharmed. He was driving the wagon. The Indians scattered, but are now assembling in the cotton-woods a mile distant. More seem coming to join them. If attacked, we will hold out; but I wish to push on and ascertain what befell the others. We cannot, however, leave the wagon, nor have I force enough to leave a guard. ”

“ A more serious problem concerned transport of vehicles to shore. Because vehicles required deeper-draft landing craft than troops, sandbars that light troop-carrying boats overrode became obstacles to heavier tank and truck lighters. ”

“ The piers and bridges will be used for ships carrying horses, artillery and heavy materials, while the infantry land by boats, under the protection of large guns on shore or of the escorting battleships, should the battle fleet maintain command of the sea. The landed troops should be supplied provisions for many days so that they can begin operations independent of the supply trains.
The time required for landing is considerably less than for loading. The natural desire of the troops to land quickly helps to shorten the time. ”

“ To have attempted a landing in boats, at the distance of fifteen miles from the object of attack, would have been a most tedious and hazardous undertaking, exposed, as the men must have been, to the fire of musketry and field-pieces from the shore, and to the direct enfilade of all the heavy cannon in the enemy's forts and batteries. ”

“ One result of this war will be that carrier pigeons will be bred in larger numbers, and more highly valued than ever—carrier pigeon dovecots in each city at the public expense—while aerial navigation by means of balloons, having lost much of its terrors, will more and more become a common and every-day mode of locomotion. ”

“ Ships' boats, from the jolly-boat manned by lads, hurried ashore to seek stray pursers' clerks with their small plunder, or stewards and servants with bundles of washed clothing—to the heavy launch loaded with water casks pushing out or striving to get in—each boat's crew utterly reckless, and under no control, intent only on breaking their own way in or out, so that it was marvellous how any escaped damage. ”

“ Around them men were swarming like ants, and a crowd in uniform were gathered on the beach to receive us as we landed from the boat of the steamer, all eager for news, and provisions, and newspapers, of which an immense flight immediately fell upon them. A guard with bayonets crossed in a very odd sort of manner, prevented any unauthorised persons from landing. They wore the universal coarse gray jacket and trousers, with worsted braid and yellow facings, uncouth caps, lead buttons stamped with the palmetto-tree. ”