With Our Soldiers in France | Page 8

of the broad cowboy hats and the khaki uniforms of the
American soldiers, arouse us to the realization of a world at war and the
fact that our boys are here, fighting for the soil of France and the
world's freedom.
We are in a typical French farming village of a thousand people, and
here a thousand American soldiers are quartered. A sergeant and a
score of men are in each shed or stable or barn loft. The Americans are
stationed in a long string of villages down this railway line. Indeed it is
hard to tell for the moment whether we are in France or in the States.
Here are Uncle Sam's uniforms, brown army tents, and new wooden
barracks. The roads are filled with American trucks, wagons, motors,
and whizzing motorcycles, American mules, ammunition wagons,
machine guns, provisions, and supplies, and American sentinels down
every street.
These are the men of the First Division, scattered along behind the
French lines, being drilled as rapidly as possible to take their place in
the trenches for the relief of the hard-pressed French. The nucleus is

made up of the men of the old army, who have seen service in Cuba,
Porto Rico, the Philippines, Texas, or along the Mexican border. And
with them are young boys of nineteen, twenty, or twenty-one, with
clear faces, fresh from their homes, chiefly from the Middle
West--from Illinois to Texas.
The first thing that strikes us as we look at these men is their superb kit
and outfit. From the broad cowboy hat, the neat uniform close fitting at
the waist, down to their American shoes; from the saddles, bits, and
bridles to the nose bags of the horses; from the guns, motors, and trucks
down to the last shoe lace, the equipment is incomparably the best and
most expensive of all that we have seen at the front. The boys
themselves are live, clean, strong, and intelligent fellows, probably the
best raw material of any of the fighting forces in Europe. The officers
tell us that the American troops are natural marksmen and there are no
better riflemen in the war zone. The frequency of the sharpshooters'
medals, among both the officers and the men, shows that many of them
already excel in musketry.
The second impression that strikes us is the crudeness of the new men,
and the lack of finish in their drill, as compared with the veteran troops
of Britain and France. The progress they have made, however, in the
past few weeks under their experienced American officers of the
regular army has been truly remarkable.
The next impression we receive is the enormous moral danger to which
these men are exposed in this far-away foreign land. During the whole
war it is the Overseas Forces, the men farthest from home influences,
who have no hope of leave or furlough, who are far removed from all
good women and the steadying influence of their own reputations, that
have fared the worst in the war. The Americans not only share this
danger with the Colonials and other Overseas Forces, but they have an
additional danger in their high pay. Here are enlisted men who tell us
that they are paid from $35 to $90 a month, from the lowest private to
the best paid sergeants. When you remember that the Russian private is
allowed only one cent a day, that the Belgian soldier receives only four
cents a day, the French private five cents, the German six cents, and the

English soldier twenty-five cents a day, most of which has to go for
supplementary food to make up for the scantiness of the rations
supplied, you realize what it means for the American soldier to be paid
from one to three dollars a day, in addition to clothing, expenses, and
the best rations of any army in Europe.[1]
Some of these men tell us that they have just received from two to three
months' back pay in cash. Here they are with several hundred francs in
their hands, buried in a French village, with absolutely no attraction or
amusement save drink and immorality. In this little village the only
prosperous trade in evidence is that in wines and liquors. The only
large wholesale house is the center of the liquor trade and the only
freight piled up on the platform of the station consists of wines and
champagnes, pouring in to meet the demand of the American soldiers.
There are a score of drinking places in this little hamlet. Our boys are
unaccustomed to the simple and moderate drinking of the French
peasants, and they are plunged into these estaminets with their pockets
full of money. Others under the influence of drink have torn up the
money or tossed it recklessly away. Prices