“I wonder what got those colored boys to volunteer” someone asked their colonel as they were embarking for France.  He replied:  “I have often thought of that.  With many the cause was sheer patriotism.  Others said they had gone into the 15th for social reasons, to meet with their friends.  One—­this seemed to me a most pathetic touch—­said:  ’I j’ined up because when Colonel Hayward asked me it was the first time anyone had ever asked me to j’ine up with anything in my whole lifetime.’”

If any great amount of superstition had existed among the men or officers of the New York regiment, they would have been greatly depressed over the series of incidents that preceded their arrival in France.  In the first place they had been assigned to police and pioneer duty at camps near New York, a duty which no fighting man relishes.  They embarked on the transport Pocahontas November 12, 1917.  Two hundred miles at sea a piston rod was bent and the vessel put back to port.  They got away again December 3, were out a day and had to return on account of fire in the coal bunkers.  A third attempt on December 12, in a blizzard, was frustrated by a collision with a tanker in New York harbor.

After this series of bad starts, anyone inclined to indulge in forebodings would have predicted the certainty of their becoming prey for the submarines on the way over.  But the fourth attempt proved successful and they landed in France on December 27, 1917.  They had hoped to celebrate Christmas day on French soil, but were forced by the elements and the precautions of convoys and sailing master to observe the anniversary on board the ship.

The Colonel undoubtedly thought that those first in France would be the first to get a chance at the Boche, but the department took him at his word, and for over two months his men were kept busy in the vicinity of St. Nazaire, largely as laborers and builders.  Early in 1918 they went into training quarters near St. Nazaire.  The 371st, another Negro regiment, made up of draft selectives principally from South Carolina, was later given quarters nearby.

The black soldiers of the 369th were brigaded as a part of the 16th division of the 8th Corps of the 4th French Army.  From St. Nazaire they went to Givrey-En-Argonne, and there in three weeks the French turned them into a regulation French regiment.  They had Lebel rifles, French packs and French gas masks.  For 191 days they were in the trenches or on the field of battle.  In April, 1918, the regiment held 20 percent of all the territory held by American troops, though it comprised less than one percent of all the American soldiers in France.

Officers of the 369th reported for an entire year only six cases of drunkenness, and twenty-four of serious disease.  The regiment fought in the Champagne, in the Vosges mountains, on the Aisne, at Main de Massiges, Butte de Mesnil, Dormouse, Sechault, the Argonne, Ripont, Kuppinase, Tourbe, and Bellevue Ridge.  It was the first unit of any of the Allied armies to reach the left bank of the Rhine following the signing of the armistice, moving from Thann on November 17th and reaching Blodesheim the next day.