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001 76843
003 UtSlPG
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010 _a19015649
040 _aUtSlPG
041 7 _aen
_2iso639-1
050 4 _aD501
100 1 _aPowell, E. Alexander
_q(Edward Alexander),
_d1879-1957
245 1 4 _aThe army behind the army
264 1 _aSalt Lake City, UT :
_bProject Gutenberg,
_c2025
300 _a1 online resource :
_bmultiple file formats
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
500 _a"Each chapter was written with the co-operation of the chief and subchiefs of the branch of the army with which it deals."
500 _aRelease date is 2025-09-08
505 0 _aThe 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.
508 _aPeter 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)
520 _aThe 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.)
534 _pOriginally published:
_cNew York: C. Scribner's sons, 1919
653 _aWorld War, 1914-1918 -- United States
653 _aUnited States. Army
856 4 _uhttps://archive.org/details/armybehindarmy00powe
856 4 0 _uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76843
999 _c117568
_d117568