The remarkable record made by the Negro in the previous wars of the country was fully equaled by that in the Great War.  Negro soldiers fought with special distinction in the Argonne Forest, at Chateau-Thierry, in Belleau Wood, in the St. Mihiel district, in the Champagne sector, at Vosges and Metz, winning often very high praise from their commanders.  Entire regiments of Negro troops were cited for exceptional valor and decorated with the Croix de Guerre—­the 369th, the 371st, and the 372nd; while groups of officers and men of the 365th, the 366th, the 368th, the 370th, and the first battalion of the 367th were also decorated.  At the close of the war the highest Negro officers in the army were Lieutenant Colonel Otis B. Duncan, commander of the third battalion of the 370th, formerly the Eighth Illinois, and the highest ranking Negro officer in the American Expeditionary Forces; Colonel Charles Young (retired), on special duty at Camp Grant, Ill.; Colonel Franklin A. Dennison, of the 370th Infantry, and Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, of the Ninth Cavalry.  The 370th was the first American regiment stationed in the St. Mihiel sector; it was one of the three that occupied a sector at Verdun when a penetration there would have been disastrous to the Allied cause; and it went direct from the training camp to the firing-line.  Noteworthy also was the record of the 369th infantry, formerly the Fifteenth Regiment, New York National Guard.  This organization was under shellfire for 191 days, and it held one trench for 91 days without relief.  It was the first unit of Allied fighters to reach the Rhine, going down as an advance guard of the French army of occupation.  A prominent hero in this regiment was Sergeant Henry Johnson, who returned with the Croix de Guerre with one star and one palm.  He is credited with routing a party of Germans at Bois-Hanzey in the Argonne on May 5, 1918, with singularly heavy losses to the enemy.  Many other men acted with similar bravery.  Hardly less heroic was the service of the stevedore regiments, or the thousands of men in the army who did not go to France but who did their duty as they were commanded at home.  General Vincenden said of the men of the 370th:  “Fired by a noble ardor, they go at times even beyond the objectives given them by the higher command; they have always wished to be in the front line”; and General Coybet said of the 371st and 372nd:  “The most powerful defenses, the most strongly organized machine gun nests, the heaviest artillery barrages—­nothing could stop them.  These crack regiments overcame every obstacle with a most complete contempt for danger....  They have shown us the way to victory.”