Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 151, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1918 — THESE TWO MEN REFIT THE ARMY [ARTICLE]

THESE TWO MEN REFIT THE ARMY

Lively Work of Major Fawcett and Captain Thrall at Camp Blank. SPRUCED UP FDR OVERSEAS — ■— I Hungry and 111-Clad Soldiers Well Fed and Made Spick-and-Span for the Voyage to Battle Front In France. Washington.—Maj. George W. Fawcett is the camp quartermaster at an American embarkation camp. It is his first business to see that troops going overseas find comfortable, healthful temporaryquarters, and have plenty of food. The camp is more than a rest resort for ; travelers. When it was established less than a year ago incoming troops were warned that they inust not rely on getting any of their overseas outfit here. This is so completely changed under Major Fawcett’s administration that there is nothing an organization can possibly need which this camp will not supply nearly as fast as the men can be marched up to his warehouses to take the supplies away. Major Fawcett has a ten-foot square office in an unpainted shack. He sits at a little desk with two clerks, one behind him and the other at his side. A telephone receiver is strapped over his head all the time. The officers requiring supplies for the present and future who come into this camp make mistakes, big and little, but not one of them has ever got anything worse than an amused or an astonished grin from the camp quartermaster. “It is easier and quicker to give a man what you know he wants,” the major says, “than to waste your time, his, and the government’s, by quarreling with him because he has not put his needs in proper shape.” Makes It Easy for Them. Army regulations require particular printed formulas for requisitions, prepared with scrupulous attention to small details. Major Fawcett has taught his men to accept any scribbled memorandum on the back of an envelope or a bit of wrapping paper, tell the applicant for supplies to come back in half an hour, and, then, when he returns, hand to him a perfectly arranged form of requisition, stating all his needs with military exactness, and at the same time directing him to a storehouse where his supply is already waiting. The interior traffic of the camp has increased until 100 big motortrucks are tearing through the streets from dawn until dark, and half of them

work far Into the night The more the camp speeds up the more troops Major Fawcett invites the war department to send through the camp. The ideal of seeing to it that no man crosses the seas for service with clothing and equipment which Is not new, or as good as new, has just about been reached. Troops are detrained from the interior In dusty, faded clothing, patched and pulled out of shape, and go onto their ships in an incredibly short time dressed up like a show window display. His lieutenants In charge of money disbursements, subsistence, construction, transportation, and reclamation are at his door with brand-new complications every few minutes. Bewildered supply officers, who have come to the camp without the slightest Idea of what is expected of them (and who would have resigned before coming had they known) appear at his door looking scared; they listen for a Tew minutes to the general run of his telephone conversation, forget their scare, answer his questions with a promptness and a definiteness which seem to surprise the men themselves, and go out with their heads up, smiling confidently, and accomplish changes and refittlngs and substitutions such as they had never dreamed of. Work Well Divided. The work under Major Fawcett subdivided itself naturally so that no disproportionate burden falls on any one department, with one exception. Fqr accounting purposes it is absolutely necessary that one man should have charge of what, in quartermaster language, is called “property.” He must sign every invoice and assume responsibility for it financially. This Job under Major Fawcett is that of Capt. C. E. Thrall, Q. M. R; C. Captain Thrall has counted it a big night when he has had more than four hours’ sleep since the war started. Captain Thrall has never been

caught rattled. He swears now and then, but laughs at himself when he swears and he never lets anybody elxe get rattled. Captain Thrall Is a much more tired looking man than he was a year ago—but like his chief he has found that the best way to keep men moving is to meet Ignorance and stupidity alike with a friendly grin and straighten them out as they go along. Major Fawcett left the regular army 17 years ago and was for many years purchasing agent for the Philippine constabulary. Captain Thrall came from the ranks of the regular army.