the watch in the dirtiest weather, unable to sleep, tossed and battered
by the incessant rolling, without warm food, facing the constant peril of
being swept overboard and knowing that their boat could not stop to pick
them up. American submarine-chasers and converted yachts, mine-sweepers
on their beneficent and hazardous duty, were equally active. Naval
aviators cooeperated with the British to patrol the coasts in search of
submarines. Late in 1917, six battleships were sent to join the British
Grand Fleet, which was watching for the Germans in the North Sea, thus
constituting about twelve per cent of the guarding naval force. More
important, perhaps, was the American plan for laying a mine barrage from
the Scotch coast across to Norwegian waters. The Ordnance Bureau of the
navy, despite the discouragement of British experts, manufactured the
mines, 100,000 of them, and shipped them abroad in parts ready for final
assembling. The American navy was responsible for eighty per cent of the
laying of the barrage, which when finished was 245 miles long and twenty
miles wide. The complete story of the achievements of the navy cannot now
be told in detail. It was not always inspiring, for numerous mistakes
were made. Confusion of counsels in the Naval Board left one important
bombing squadron so bereft of supplies that after an expenditure of four
millions only two bombs were dropped in the entire course of its
operations. But there are also to be remembered the unheralded stories of
heroism and skill, such as the dash of the submarine-chasers and
destroyers through the mine fields at Durazzo, and the work of our naval
guns in the attack on Zeebrugge.

The armies, safely brought to France, were meanwhile undergoing the
essential intensive training, and the task of organizing the service of
supply was being undertaken. The training given in the United States
before sailing had been in the ordinary forms of drill and tactics; now
it was necessary that there should be greater specialization. Numerous
schools for the training of officers were established. For the troops the
plan for training allowed, according to the intent of General Pershing,
"a division one month for acclimatization and instruction in small units
from battalions down, a second month in quiet trench sectors by
battalion, and a third month after it came out of the trenches when it
should be trained as a complete division in war of movement."[10] The
entire proc