Length of WW1 basic training?

[bellasilva]

I recall reading somewhere that basic training was shortened and hurried with the need to send troops overseas. Is anyone aware if there was a specific length of WW1 basic training (Army), or did it vary?

 

I own a dog tag to a soldier who enlisted on April 27, 1918, and arrived overseas exactly 30 days later, May 27th.

[world war I nerd]

On paper, each soldier's basic training was supposed to be comprised of three months of training at a stateside training camp followed by one month of advanced training in France.

 

Unfortunately, that wasn't always the case. I've read numerous accounts about raw recruits ending up in a combat division within two or three weeks from the date that they first reported for military service.

 

Generally when a division or regiment had completed its basic training it was ordered by the War Department to a port of embarkation (POE) along the eastern seaboard. There embarkation officials subjected the men to rigorous physical & mental exams and inspections. Any man with even the remotest symptom of a communicable or venereal disease was not allowed to board a transport ship. Also some men were deemed mentally unfit, some went AWOL, and some were transferred out of the unit because they or their parents happened to have been born in one of the nations America was at war with. The place of their birth thus made them a potential security risk.

 

Anyway, most organizations passing through a POE were short handed by as many as several hundred men. Because it was imperative that the units boarded the transport ship with as few delays as possible, when short handed, telegrams were dispatched to the closest training camp or camps ordering four, forty or four hundred men to report for duty at a particular POE ... ASAP. As soon as the regiment or division had its full compliment of men it could set sail for France, but not one minute before. As near as I can tell the War Department made no exceptions in this regard.

 

The first men transferred to the POE were usually "Sad Sacks" and non-English speaking immigrants that were unwanted by the commanding officer back at training camp. The rest were made up of inexperienced rookies who'd been in the Army for only a matter of days.