. Bell telephone magazine . oved toSoutheast Texas and Louisiana thelatter part of the month. These lasttwo were preliminaries to joint ma-neuvers, largely in Southern Bell ter-ritory, during which the Second Armydefended against the invading Third. Both for tactical reasons and toavoid disrupting civilian life as much as possible, the Armies chose the mostsparsely-settled sections of the areasfor their practice. For these objec-tives the country chosen was excel-lent: enough stretches of mesquite inTexas, and cypress swamps and pinehills in Arkansas, so that only a fewtowns need be involved.
. Bell telephone magazine . oved toSoutheast Texas and Louisiana thelatter part of the month. These lasttwo were preliminaries to joint ma-neuvers, largely in Southern Bell ter-ritory, during which the Second Armydefended against the invading Third. Both for tactical reasons and toavoid disrupting civilian life as much as possible, the Armies chose the mostsparsely-settled sections of the areasfor their practice. For these objec-tives the country chosen was excel-lent: enough stretches of mesquite inTexas, and cypress swamps and pinehills in Arkansas, so that only a fewtowns need be involved. But from acommunications standpoint it wasntso good. Most telephone lines stayaway from hill and swamp areas. Ihe Army, of course, handled theactual operation of its communica-tions, using its own switchboards, sol-dier operators, and Signal Corps also strung hundreds of miles offield wire between different the backbone of its communica-tions network was the regular com- 192 Bell Telephone Magazine NOVEMBER. ^^^i^iK Portable Central OfficeSouthwestern Bell men helped the Signal Corps to mount this magneto switchboard in an Army truck mercial lines; for, rather than runlines between units which might bemany miles apart and frequently onthe move, the Army leased toll cir-cuits between the two nearest towns,and ran its own lines from the unitheadquarters to Southwestern Belllines. Naturally, the Army requirementshad to be superimposed upon those forregular civilian usage, with as littledisturbance of the latter as , non-Army telephone us-age was certain to increase, ratherthan decrease, during the maneuverperiod. General business was certainto boom (El Dorado, Ark., had onemillion-and-a-half-dollar payday thatpractically cleaned out the stores),and long distance was sure to jump asmerchants frantically tried to replen-ish stocks. On top of that, severalhundred thousand soldiers, and hun- dreds of visitors, were going to bemaking calls, to say noth
Size: 2040px × 1224px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthoramerican, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookyear1922
