No acknowledgment or reply was ever received from either source.
Early in April he received notice that the Department of the East of which he was then commander was abolished and in its place three new and smaller departments created, in spite of vigorous protests by several Governors of Atlantic States. He was offered any one of the following { 226} three military positions that he might select--the Philippines, Hawaii or the "less important post" at Charleston, South Carolina.
He at once selected the post at Charleston.
On May 12th he proceeded to Charleston and began the organization of the Southeastern Department. In the months immediately following he had selected and laid out eleven large training camps and had taken charge of the supervision of three officers' training camps, one at Oglethorpe, one at Atlanta and one at Little Rock.
On August 26th he received orders to proceed to Camp Funston in Kansas to command the cantonment there and train for service a division of national troops designated as the 89th Division.
Towards the end of the year he was ordered to proceed to Europe to observe the military operations of the war. Leaving Camp Funston the day before Thanksgiving, he landed in Liverpool on Christmas Day, 1917. In London he called by invitation upon General Robertson, the British Chief of Staff, and upon his old friend, Sir John French. He then proceeded to Paris on December 31, and between January 2nd and 14th, 1918, { 227} went over the British front with Generals Cator and Rawlinson. On the 16th he was at Soissons with the French.
For the next few days the examination of the French front continued at and near the Chemin des Dames sector.
On January 27th he went with some French officers and men and a number of American officers to look into the work of the 6th French army training school, where artillery practice was in progress at Fère-en-Tardenois. He was standing behind a mortar, the center man of the five officers watching the gun crew fire the mortar, when a shell burst, or detonated, inside the gun.
The entire gun crew was blown to pieces. The four officers on either side of General Wood were killed. He himself received a wound in the muscles of the left arm and lost part of the right sleeve of his tunic. Six fragments of the shell passed through his clothing and two of them killed the officers on either side of him. He was the only man within a space of twelve feet of the mortar who was not instantly killed. Many were wounded, including two others of our own officers.