Wood had obtained his major’s commission promptly as red tape went and was soon rigged out in a fine new Rogers Peet uniform. Robert Wood, Jr., a student at Harvard in 1915, had gone to France as a volunteer in the American Ambulance Field Service, had had himself transferred, became an artillery officer with the French, won the Croix de guerre, was gassed, and recovered. There are doubtless many cases of father and son who both served as officers overseas, but these two happened to be the first I’d ever met, and I enjoy it when they exchange reminiscences of those old days. They don’t do it often — and when they do, they usually get into violent arguments.
Sailing orders came for Wood, Senior, in August, directing him to join a group of Signal Corps officers who were to sail September 9, 1917, on the Adriatic. Like most of Wood’s experiences with military routine, this embarkation seemed to him puzzling and illogical. He was ordered on board two days before the boat was scheduled to sail — all with the greatest secrecy. The ship was docked on West Street in New York in full view of a group of saloons kept by German-Americans. If there were spies around, Wood reasoned, they would be in touch with the proprietors of these saloons, all of whom must have been able to see that the Adriatic was still in dock and that company after company of officers and men had gone on board. Wood says they could swarm all over the decks until the Adriatic started down the river, but once it got under way, they had to go below for fear some spy might be on the Jersey shore with a telescope. Finally, with all hands below and no smoking allowed, the Adriatic steamed down the North River and on its way to Halifax, where they were to join the other seven ships of the convoy.
I quote from Wood’s notes.
Several days out from Halifax harbor, we had our first boat drill. Each lifeboat and raft was put in command of an American officer; why I don’t know. “Our little group” consisted of Professor Augustus Trowbridge of Princeton, one of my closest friends since Berlin student days, Professor Theodore Lyman of Harvard, and three men from the Western Electric Company, Buckley and Shreeve in uniform and Colpitts in civilian disguise! Trowbridge and I were put in command of a life raft and its adjacent boat respectively, and I was ordered to bring the army squad assigned to my boat from the lower deck to the boat deck at 3:00 p.m. When the time came I discovered, to my relief, a sergeant in my group, and I ordered him to bring the squad to Boat 12 on the upper deck, for I felt sure that if I attempted to accomplish the maneuver I should end by marching the squad over the rail and into the ocean. After the drill was over, I dismissed my squad, and Trowbridge and I went below and had a couple of drinks. Later on I went up to the boat deck for a breath of air before dinner, and discovered Trowbridge’s squad still standing at ease by the boat. “What are you men doing here?” I asked. The sergeant grinned and said, “We’ve not been dismissed, sir”.
We sailed on night after night, the weather growing colder and colder, and the North Star climbing toward the zenith. One afternoon it occurred to Colpitts that it was the night of the autumnal equinox, on which both latitude and longitude can be calculated from the elevation of the North Star and the time of sunset. I made a quadrant out of two sticks of wood and a protractor. By sighting one stick on the horizon and the other on the star, I determined its elevation, given which Colpitts, who had timed the sunset, worked out our position in a few minutes. This news spread rapidly in the smoking-room, eventually reaching the bridge, throwing the ship’s officers into a frenzy, as all information regarding the course we were sailing was a dead secret. Next morning we discovered the ship’s officers had set all of the clocks available to passengers three-quarters of an hour ahead, to confuse and baffle the scientists aboard.
One afternoon we were asked to have tea with the Captain, who told us the destroyer escort would pick up our convoy about half past seven. By seven everyone was on deck scanning the horizon. Presently someone said, “There they are”, and sure enough there they were, four tiny black matchsticks outlined against the sky. Presently another four, a little to one side. So great was the speed of approach that you could visualize the curvature of the earth. It was almost like watching a motorcar coming over a hill top. Presently they were all around us, and one slim gray craft with a wicked-looking, scarlet red, four-inch gun in her bow slipped by within a few yards of the Adriatic, and five hundred Americans cheered themselves hoarse.
After a dramatic trip from Liverpool to Southampton in five trains, each with a double locomotive, they finally arrived at Havre at five on a September morning, and were ordered to proceed to British Rest Camp No. 2, which they were told was on top of a hill about two miles from the city. There they were to await orders for transportation to Paris.
They waited on the dock for some time and then began to question themselves whether “the long, low, gray cars” which were provided as transportation for officers in the stories of war correspondents would materialize! Finally, they realized that they were expected to go on foot. So they marched up the dock, feeling very important — four majors and a captain, all in brand new Rogers Peet uniforms — with their coats unbuttoned and their hands in their pockets.
As they reached the head of the dock, a British sergeant who was washing his face in a basin in front of a British barracks looked at them with a grin, and, making a trumpet of his hands, bawled out in a voice that could be heard at the extreme end of the barracks, “Jesus Christ! Look who’s here!” The Americans, saving what little face they had left, passed on looking straight ahead, pretending they had not heard him.
A little further on they passed a detachment of British soldiers who were escorting a squad of German prisoners from the docks to the barbed-wire barricades. Several German officers were among them, and as they passed the group, they heard one officer say in German to his companions, “I wish I could take one of them home with me for a souvenir”. Wood had neglected to obtain authorization to report directly to the French Bureau of Inventions which had asked through the State Department to have him commissioned and sent over. Had he not neglected this, it would have freed him from a lot of red tape. As it was, he was forced to report to the Chief Signal Officer of the A.E.F., General Russell, then in Chaumont. But he managed, partly by playing hooky, to get in touch and keep in touch with most of his internationally uniformed professorial colleagues — with the other “sheep in wolves’ clothing”.
Here now comes a lot of unadulterated Wood, concerning what war research was — and probably still is today — among scientists and physicists. It presents a sad and at the same time stimulating picture.
Says Wood:
Along with the really valuable research that was going on there was a lot of futile or crazy war research, very technical, most of which never amounted to anything. I was continually reminded of Gulliver’s voyage to the island of Laputa, where crazy scientists were working on crazy problems.
The laboratories of the Sorbonne, École normale, Collège de France, and other institutions of learning in Paris were peopled by scientists, old and young, most of them in the horizon-blue uniforms of the French Army, puttering around on things to make war simpler, faster, or more frightful.