Negro soldiers were a source of terror to the Germany throughout the war, and objects of great curiosity to the German people afterwards.  Wherever they appeared in the area occupied by the Americans they attracted great attention among the civilians.  In Treves, Coblenz and other places during the early days of the occupation, crowds assembled whenever Negro soldiers stopped in the streets and it became necessary for the military police to enforce the orders prohibiting gatherings in the public thoroughfares.

Returning soldiers have told how they were followed in the German towns by great troops of stolid, wide-eyed German children who could not seem to decide in their minds just what sort of being these Negro fighters were.  The curiosity of the children no doubt was inspired by stories told among their elders of the ferocity of these men.

The Associated Press has related a conversation with a discharged German soldier in Rengsdorf, in which it is stated that the German army early in the war offered a reward for the capture alive of each Negro.  The soldier said that throughout the war the Germans lived in great terror of the Negroes, and it was to overcome this fear that rewards were offered.

One evening on the front a scouting party composed of ten Germans including the discharged soldier, encountered two French Negroes.  In the fight which followed two of the scouting party were killed.  One of the Negroes escaped the other being taken prisoner.  During the fight two of the Germans left their comrades and ran to the protection of their own trenches, but these it was explained, were young soldiers and untrained.  The reward of 400 marks subsequently was divided among the remaining six Germans for capturing the one French Negro.

The 93rd division, which was made up of the 369th, 370th, 371st and the 372nd regiments of infantry, was put into service green, so green they did not know the use of rockets and thought a gas alarm and the tooting of sirens meant that the Germans were coming in automobiles.  The New York regiment came largely from Brooklyn and the district around West 59th street in New York City, called San Juan Hill in reference to certain notable achievements of Negro troops at a place of that name in the Spanish-American war.

They learned the game of war rapidly.  The testimony of their officers was to the effect that it was not hard to send them into danger—­the hard part being to keep them from going into it of their own accord.  It was necessary to watch them like hawks to keep them from slipping off on independent raiding parties.

The New York regiment had a band of 40 pieces, second to none in the American army.  It is stated that the officers and men in authority in the French billeting places had difficulty in keeping the villagers from following the band away when it played plantation airs and syncopations as only Negroes can play them.

On April 12, 1918, the 369th took over a sector of 5-1/2 kilometers in the Bois de Hauzy on the left of a fringe of the Argonne Forest.  There they stayed until July 1st.  There was no violent fighting in the sector, but many raids back and forth by the Negroes and the Germans, rifle exchanges and occasionally some artillery action.