being among the first
expeditionary force to set foot upon the soil of the battle torn
Republic. This force arrived there in June, 1917, and was composed of
marines and infantry from the Regular army. Floyd Gibbons, the intrepid
representative of the Chicago Tribune, speaking of the first Negro
contingents in his remarkable book entitled, "And They Thought We
Wouldn't Fight", said:

"There was to be seen on the streets of St. Nazaire that day some
representative black Americans, who had also landed in that
historical first contingent. There was a strange thing about these
Negroes. It will be remembered that in the early stages of our
participation in the war it had been found that there was hardly
sufficient khaki cloth to provide uniforms for all of our soldiers.
That had been the case with these American negro soldiers.

"But somewhere down in Washington, somehow or other, someone
resurrected an old, large heavy iron key and this, inserted into an
ancient rusty lock, had opened some long forgotten door in one of
the Government arsenals. There were revealed old dust-covered
bundles wrapped up in newspapers, yellow with age, and when these
wrappings of the past were removed, there were seen the uniforms of
old Union blue that had been laid away back in '65--uniforms that
had been worn by men who fought and bled and died to save the
Union, and ultimately free those early 'Black Americans'.

"And here on this foreign shore, on this day in June more than
half a century later, the sons and grandsons of those same freed
slaves wore those same uniforms of Union blue as they landed in
France to fight for a newer freedom; freedom for the white man no
less than themselves, throughout all the earth.

"Some of these Negroes were stevedores from the lower Mississippi
levees; who sang as they worked in their white army undershirts,
across the chest of which were penciled in blue and red, strange
mystic devices, religious phrases and other signs, calculated to
contribute the charm of safety to the running of the submarine
blockade.

"Two of these American Negroes, walking up the main street of St.
Nazaire, saw on the other side of the thoroughfare a brother of
color wearing the lighter blue uniform of a French soldier. This
French Negro was a colonial black from the north of