Our Army at the Front

e convoy fleet alongside. It was a gray morning, and at first the ships were hardly more than nebulous patches of a deeper

s, had arrived in the very early morning, before the inhabitants of the little seaport town were

hat something is afoot-what with three years of big hap

t a welcome to the first "Old Glory" to be let loose to the harbor winds. Forming rapidly behind the Americans were French men, French women, a

m inconvenient places to convenient ones for the loading of coaster steamers. They said little enough, having learned that a res

ines of dull yellow banding the gray hulks, and then the yellow lines

direct for the quay, and the solemn business of land

to the quay to be heard, the transport band played "The Star-Spangled Banner," while all the soldiers stood at salute, and then they played the "Marseillaise," while everybody on ship and shore stoo

ed men drink in the saloons over here?" and there was a miscellany about apple pie and doughnuts, cigarettes, etc. A

shore and on board. To the privates of the First Division it will always be the incomprehensible nonsense that goes by the name of the French language, spok

aims, or to propound their private philosophies that way. They granted the right of the French to talk how

hey left home, nor interminable hours of French-grammar instruction on board the troop-ships, had really got it deep inside the American private's head that French

as war, across a narrow channel from that stanch English-speaking race who brought both their tea and their lang

as later, throughout the fighting areas, the American soldiers learned to u

the housekeeping necessities had been installed by General Pershing's staff-officers, and signs in good, plain English showed the proper roads. And as the single files of soldiers began to descend the ga

reets before the last companies were overside, and the first transport was free to go back and give place to th

ough the quay-sheds to the little street, formed and swung away, and one ship after another disgorg

y got there. Their pace was easy, because of these things, and they probably would not have put out any French eye with their flawless marchin

e soldiers were tall, thin, rangy-looking, with a march that was more lope than anything else and a look of heaving their packs along without much

. And, set apart by their olive drab as well as by their size and comportment, they gave that First Division's first march in France a quality of real distincti

the visitors, built almost at the top of a hill, looking down over green fields and roun

d had to bring most of their first supper, and the ca

s and all others they could commandeer to help them were rushing about preparing things to the very top of their bent. Nobody had town-leave for the first d

y entrance, was swarming with officers of both nations and all degrees of rank. General Pershing was there, with his aides and m

h formal and informal welcomes, and there were more busy majors and ca

rstood them or not, would have addled an older head than hers. She could run her hotel with the best of them, but when perfectly sane-looking young officers a

of red plush was drawn up around a big table in the hallway, and livid red wall-pape

d here, though the first rule for this consolidation laid down by a grizzled French general with but one arm left, was that "there was no lon

German music that had been heard from that piano for many a moon. Possibly those of the French who knew what the tune was recognized also that America had turned a point in more ways than one in coming to France, not least among them being making good American soldiers out of erstwhile good Germans. Nobody seemed much astonished or put out when within the day a goodly number o

ear the sailors scolding the French waitresses for calling lemons "limons," and trying

iers forgave him, but the civilians did not. It was thei

stead of trying to prevail on them to adopt something French. They sent, perhaps to Paris, to get Engl

rs under his arm before any afternoon is what it should be. And so the soldie

. The motor-cycle with the side-seat, which was later to be the distinguishing mark of the American Army in Paris, made its appearance in the seaport within a day or two of the first transp

slightly, because their own army used him on occasion. But no Frenchman

gathered around the big negro stevedores in long navy-blue coats, scarlet-lined, with brass buttons all the way up the front, ov

spoke French. It was when they first saw a Senegalese in French uniform, triple-black with tropic suns, but to them a mere one of themselves, and whe

ged their way onward, none the wiser if the Senegalese, in his tu

d itself a little and the French more, and finally settled down to its short wait

divisions to come on the "bridge of ships," the first had to p

e off afternoon hours. After a bit town-leave was heavily curtailed, but there was a disp

ies and longer indulgences, they entrained on the late afternoon of July 2. There was no measuring the disappointment of the ones who were

atched from the seaport they were sent direct across France to the points behind the lines where their trai

of the doin