Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 237, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1918 — ARMOR for MODERN FIGHTERS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ARMOR for MODERN FIGHTERS

Many Models Hate Been Made and Are Now Being Tried Out by Americans at the Front,

<« jar ANY a visitor wandering IW/I through the labyrinthian de}V g lights of the Metropolitan Museum in New York and coming upon the collection of arms and armor in the main gallery has reincarnated a past of tall knights and gentle ladies, has fancied himself a Launcelot or Guinevere, in the city’s splendid collection of mail and plate, of decorative trapping, battle axe, spear and broad or long sword. And many, no doubt, have stood in fascination before the medieval armorer’s workshop set in a paneled recess of carved oak to the left of the gallery, a miniature bit of Old World charm, worn anvifs, hammers whose stroke has rung through centuries of steel on steel, modeled knights in the gay panoply of the Middle Ages, and the accoutrements of a warfare when combatants clashed to the sound of trumpets* But only a few of the visitors to the museum have been fortunate enough to get lost in the cool, corridored basement and find, tucked away in an inconspicuous corner, a complete practical armorer’s shop, where a master armorer plies his inherited art with a skill that puts him on a level with some of the great master armorers of the Middle Ages, writes N. H. McCloskey in New York Tribune. This artisan is M. Daniel Tachaux, and those few who have been permitted to swing open his shop door —a door quite like many another along the corridor —may well count themselves among the fortunate blessed, for they have seen a shop like no other in this country—A show now closed to the public and guarded by all the impassable and invulnerable barriers of government regulation. For here, in a workroom originally established for the purpose of cleaning, repairing and, in some rare cases, restoring pieces of defective armor, M. Tachaux and his young French assistant, Sergeant Bartel of the ordnance department, are carefully working out designs and models of defensive armor that can be worn by the allied soldiers, and which it is expected will result in cutting down to a very great degree, as . the helmets have already done, the percentage of killed and wounded in this present war. Forty Models Now at the Front. When the xyar broke out Mr. Robinson, director of the Metropolitan Museum, learning that the government * was in need of models for the preparation of armor, obtained the sanction of the trustees in placing the department of armor at the disposition of Secretary of War Baker. Bashford J3ean, curator of the department and a 7 man who has given his life to the study of the subject, was commissioned as a major and immediately sent abroad to report on the status of armor —what was already in use and what additions might feasibly be made. He returned to the United States late in January of the present year, and has since kept the armor workshop of the museum •’busy, on holidays and weekdays, turning our models in accordance with the suggestions of General Pershing and the ordnance department. After careful and patient experimentation by experts forty models have been made, and are even now being tried out on the fighting front. Here in the little workshop where the sun comes in through miniature panes and is deflected in myriad colors by small tools, age old; bits of brass and bronze, steel bright from pounding and armored suits wrought with the intricate traceries of medieval decoration, M. Tachaux plies with deft skill and the ease of long practice the very tools used by his ancestors and folded down from father to son through hundreds of years. The museum'has collected from all parts of the world the implements used in the fabrication of ancient armor, comprising some ninety kinds of anvils and “stakes,” several hundred different of hammers, curious shears and Instruments whose use would be quite unknown were it not that six j agjßorers —heirs of a past skill are Irving today. One of these is in Dresden, one in Switzerland, two in Japan, one in London and the other America has in the person of M. Tachaux, who has~collected about him the dusty romance of kn almost forgotten art and

in this corner of an ultramodern city has labored to preserve the relics of those storied centuries when knights were bold and ladies passing fair. Now, thanks to him who has kept alive an art long considered dead, this country is able to benefit by the advice of an expert in metals, and no longer does M. Tachaux labor over ancient pieces, but bends all his efforts, all his cunning and all his knowledge, to the making of armor that can be worn by the modern soldier armor heavy enough to be invulnerable, light enough to carry. Revive Work of Old Masters.

This question of weight and therefore practicability of armor for the man on foot —the man who makes a charge—reverts to the time of Louis XV of France, when the use of defensive protection had practically disappeared and an attempt was made to revive the steel helmet. Indeed, the development of armor from the time of side arms until the use of firearms is one of exceeding interest at this time, in that the government is reviewing the work of some of the greatest of the old masters in armor making, with a view to reinstating the best and most feasible of the old methods of defensive protection. The use of armor dates back to the ninth century B. C. and became more elaborate and complex until the introduction of gunpowder. The helmet was the first body protection to appear and was followed by the cuirass —the latter being used by the Greeks and Romans and reappearing at the time of Charlemagne in the form of a waistcoat made of overlapping metal scales and of rather imperfect execution. What Norman Warrior Wore. In the eleventh century, according to the Bayeaux tapestries as well as the seal of Richard Coeur de Lion, we find the coat of mail assuming first the shape of a redlngote and later that of a bathing suit, completed by a helmet conical at the nose. This, together with the use of leather plates on the feet and hands, constituted the equipment of a Norman warrior.

A study of the sculptures of the Reims cathedral and the evangeliarium of St. Louis (National library) points to the development, in the twelfth century, of a perfected coat of mail, a metal combination united with the helmet by a passe-montagne of steel links; the whole, constituting a hauberk, protected the warrior with the haube —a cylindrical helmet made of pieces of forged metal adjusted by rivets and pierced by two peepholes. At the beginning of the fourteenth century the desire to protect the joints caused the placing of metal plates at shoulder and knee. The haube disappeared and was replaced by a helmet of a type called Bassinet, with a movable visor pierced by holes to permit sight and ventilation. By the middle of the fourteenth century chain armor had disappeared to a considerable degree, and plate armor was taking Its place, the plates at the joints being

extended to the interarticular portions in such a way as to inclose the limbs ,ln metal greaves; the hands were protected by an articulated gauntlet and the foot by an iron shoe or solleret. The body was still covered by a shortened coat about the length of a waistcoat —called the haubergeon —and the whole outfit was known as a “harness,” to which was soon added a steel corselet, prolonged over the abdomen by a sort of skirt of interwoven metallic rings—the “tasselles.” Invulnerable But Helpless. ■Finally, in the reign of Charles VH, the complete cuirass appears, augmented by shoulder pieces and the gorget, which united the armor to the round helmet. The knight was now practically invulnerable, but so weighted down and so awkward of movement that once dismounted he was at the complete mercy of his foe. To lessen his chances of being dismounted, therefore, his horse was equipped with armor, the tout ensemble being a sort of medieval tank. The man on foot, however, needed greater freedom of movement, and so wore considerably lighter equipment, namely, helmet, shoulder -pieces, shield, arm and thigh pieces, knee pieces and a short coat of mall—or haubergeon—to which was added, in many cases, an abdominal demicufrass. This equipment may appear again on the modern soldier practically as worn by the foot soldier in the reign of Charles VH. The elaborate armor of the knight —which, in Its completion, had meant the patient acquisition of centuries—was made useless in the space of some ten years by the introduction of gunpowder. As early as the beginning of the fourteenth century, projectiles had become capable of piercing the armor in use at the time, and little by little the use of such defense disappeared, the tendency being to substitute fabric for metal protection. This gave birth to the epaulet, horse-tail plume, the shako and the bearskin cap. With modern wars, a new device sprang up —namely, individual protection by means of the invisibility of units and scattered formations. From this originated the idea of the service uniform.

Such methods of individual defense were quite satisfactory for combat at great distances; -but in stationary fighting or in trench warfare it is quite another matter, and once again the question of individual armor has arisen, and already we see its use in the shape of the steel helmet, the heavy breastplate worn by the German soldier, the lighter breastplate worn by the English, the armored waistcoats of the Italians and the trench shields used by all armies. The idea of the new armor is not, like that of the Middle Ages, to give complete protection. It Is rather to deflect than to stop missiles, and it does this with a sheet of metal that would be easily pierced by a bullet striking it at right angles.