The army behind the army
type: ebook
publisher: Project Gutenberg
license: license
issued: 2025-09-08
rights: Public domain in the USA.
downloads: 393
creator: 3963
marc010: 19015649
marc260: $aNew York :$bC. Scribner's sons, $c1919.
description: "Each chapter was written with the co-operation of the chief and subchiefs of the branch of the army with which it deals."
table of contents: The ears of the army -- "Essayons" -- The gas-makers -- The "Q. M. C." -- Ordance -- Fighters of the sky -- "M. I." -- "Treat 'em rough" -- "Get there!" -- Menders of men.
marc508: Peter Becker and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
marc520: The Army Behind the Army by E. Alexander Powell is a historical account written in the early 20th century. It explores the often unseen services and technologies that sustained the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I—especially communications, engineering, transportation, and other logistical arms. The focus is on how specialists and technicians, rather than front-line troops alone, made large-scale modern warfare possible. The opening of the volume recasts the Signal Corps as the army’s “nerve-system,” replacing the flag-waving myth with telephones, radios, pigeons, runners, panels, lamps, and an extensive wire network. Powell outlines the corps’ rapid expansion, its recruitment of U.S. telephone talent (including female operators), the creation of color-coded outpost wire, and secrecy tools like buzzerphones and twisted-pair lines. He highlights listening-posts that tapped enemy currents, radio-intercept and direction-finding teams that mapped German nets and even staged a deceptive “false corps net,” and the reliability and heroism of carrier pigeons when every other link failed. A photographic branch—air and ground—trained specialists to map, report, teach, and buoy morale with films that countered enemy propaganda. The section closes with striking innovations: radiotelephony with aircraft, multiplexing many calls over a single wire, trees used as natural radio antennae, and a practical, unbreakable cipher-transmission device. The narrative then turns to the Engineers—motto “Essayons”—showing their vast remit from fighting as needed to building railways, ports, roads, and forests-to-lumber operations, operating inland waterways, shipping complete locomotives, and even fielding armored railcars, before introducing the life-or-death problem of supplying water to armies on the move. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
marc904: https://archive.org/details/armybehindarmy00powe
marc905: 20221019105536powell
marc906: 1919
marc907: us
language: en
subject: World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
  member of: LCSH
subject: United States. Army
  member of: LCSH
subject: D501
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type: Text
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bookshelf: Category: History - American
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bookshelf: Category: History - Modern (1750+)
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bookshelf: Category: History - Warfare
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3963
type: agent
name: Powell, E. Alexander (Edward Alexander)
birthdate: 1879
deathdate: 1957
alias: Powell, Edward Alexander
alias: Powell, E. A. (Edward Alexander)
webpage: E. Alexander Powell

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E. Alexander Powell
description: en.wikipedia