[Illustration:  Crowd on the lake front in Chicago almost Smothers returning soldiers of “Fighting 8th” (370Th infantry).]

It is known that a contingent of them accompanied the very first forces that went abroad from this country.  In fact, it may be said, that the feet of American Negroes were among the first in our forces to touch the soil of France.  It is known that they numbered at least 136 different companies, battalions and regiments in France.  If there were more, the records at Washington had not sufficiently catalogued them up to the early part of 1919 to say who they were.

In the desire to get soldiers abroad in 1918, the policy of the administration and the Department seems to have been to make details and bookkeeping a secondary consideration.  The names of all, their organizations and officers were faithfully kept, but distinctions between whites and blacks were very obscure.  Until the complete historical records of the Government are compiled, it will be impossible to separate them with accuracy.

Negro non-combatant forces in France at the end of the war included the 301st, 302nd and 303rd Stevedore Regiments and the 701st and 702nd Stevedor Battalions; the 322nd and 363rd Butchery Companies; Engineer Service battalions numbered from 505 to 550, inclusive; Labor battalions numbered from 304 to 348, inclusive, also Labor battalion 357; Labor companies numbered from 301 to 324, inclusive; Pioneer Infantry regiments numbered 801, 809, 811, 813, 815 and 816, inclusive.  These organizations known as Pioneers, had some of the functions of infantry, some of those of engineers and some of those of labor units.  They were prepared to exercise all three, but in France they were called upon to act principally as modified engineering and labor outfits.  They also furnished replacement troops for some of the combatant units.

Service was of the dull routine void of the spectacular, and has never been sufficiently appreciated.  In our enthusiasm over their fighting brothers we should not overlook nor underestimate these.  There were many thousands of white engineers and Service of Supply men in general, but their operations were mostly removed from the base ports.

Necessity for the work was imperative.  Owing to the requirements of the British army, the Americans could not use the English Channel ports.  They were obliged to land on the west and south coasts of France, where dock facilities were pitifully inadequate.  Railway facilities from the ports to the interior were also inadequate.  The American Expeditionary Forces not only enlarged every dock and increased the facilities of every harbor, but they built railways and equipped them with American locomotives and cars and manned them with American crews.

Great warehouses were built as well as barracks, cantonments and hospitals.  Without these facilities the army would have been utterly useless.  Negroes did the bulk of the work.  They were an indispensable wheel in the machinery, without which all would have been chaos or inaction.