fire for the first time, the young soldiers of Maj.  Gen. W. R. Smith, rivaling in combative spirit and tenacity the old and valiant regiment of General LeJeune, accomplished all the tasks set for them.”  Every American knows full well the bright record of the 2d Division of Infantry, the regulars of which were composed of the 5th and 6th Marines and the 9th and 23rd Infantry.  These are the boys who stopped the Germans up in Belleau Wood when the boches were headed for Paris and cocksure of getting there, blandly unaware that they were goose-stepping toward an American knock-out.

OUR COLORED TROOPS WIN CREDIT

American negro troops had a considerable share in the last few months of fighting, and acquitted themselves in a highly creditable manner.  They were great trench diggers and trench fighters, and their endurance on the march was a marvel to the allied armies.  They were very popular with the French people, who were delighted with their good nature and their never-ceasing songs.  Regular negro melodies these songs were, nearly all of them of the camp-meeting variety—­and sung with that choral beauty which especially distinguishes all of their musical performances.  The negro notion of war and indifference to death was instanced in the case where a white officer overheard one of them at the zero hour call out, “Good night ol’ world!  Good mawin,’ Mistah Jesus!” as he went over the top.

“The colored boys,” said Charles N. Wheeler, a distinguished correspondent with the American armies, “are great fighters, and are no better and no worse than any other group of American soldiers in France, whatever the blood strain.  They do take pardonable pride in the fact that ‘Mistah’ Johnson, a colored boy, was the first American soldier in France to be decorated for extraordinary bravery under fire.

  THEY CAN FIGHT AND SING

“The color line has about died out in the American army—­in France.  They play together, sing their songs together—­the blacks and the white—­and they go over the top together.  They come back together, too, the wounded, and there is no thought of the color of a man’s skin.  They mix together on the convoy trains going up to the front, and all sing together, sharing each other’s dangers and their joys.  It is not an uncommon sight to see a crowd of white doughboys around a piano in some ‘Y’ or Red Cross hut, singing to beat the band, with a colored jass expert pounding the stuffing out of the piano.  The white boys enjoy immensely the wit of the colored comrades, and many a bleak and drab day of privation and suffering is made a bit brighter by the humor that comes spontaneously to the lips of the ‘bronze boys.’

“The children of France love them.  I suppose that is because they wear American soldiers’ uniforms.  I have seen scores of white children holding the hands of colored boys and trudging along on the march with them or romping into their tents and sitting on their knees and just exuding the affection that all the children of France have for anything and everybody from the United States.”

CHAPTER V.