Sidelights on Negro Soldiers

by Charles H. Williams

317TH ENGINEER REGIMENT

The 317th Engineer Regiment was formally organized at Camp Sherman on November 4, 1917, as the sapper engineer regiment of the 92nd Division. Two thousand draftees were turned over to this regiment from the 158th Depot Brigade. After careful examination 1490 of these men were inducted into the regiment. This group included a large number of men who had knowledge of the building trades and also students from well known industrial schools.

After it was decided to organize an engineer regiment in the 92nd Division, considerable discussion arose in the War Department over the question of officers to command it. Negro officers who had graduated at the training school for infantry in Des Moines were suggested, but engineer officials opposed this plan because these men had had no special training for the work. Letters in the War Department files pointed out that from 15,000 applicants to serve in this branch of the service only one Negro, a graduate of Harvard University, had qualified. Although it had been found expedient to have trained engineers as officers in engineer labor battalions, thirty Negro infantry officers with no engineering experience were assigned to the 317th Engineers. White captains were also assigned to the regiment, but were soon transferred and sent to France. During the winter of 1917-18 a War Department inspector investigated the organization and reported that the Negro officers did not have sufficient knowledge and experience to train the regiment, and he recommended that they be replaced by white officers with engineer training. In March, 1918, accordingly white captains replaced the Negro captains, but the Negro lieutenants were retained.

In spite of the unrest caused in the regiment by the change in the personnel of the officers, the training continued. On June 1 the regiment left Camp Sherman for Hoboken, whence it sailed on June 8, reaching Brest on the 19th. Thence it was sent to the Pontenazen barracks, which consisted of stone buildings erected by Napoleon Bonaparte on the site of an old Roman camp. Heavy working details, comprising 85 per cent of the regiment’s strength, loaded baggage and constructed roads and barracks. On June 25 the regiment left for the Bourbonne-les-Bains area, arriving on the night of June 27. Here it was given intensive training for four weeks, and in the area it constructed mess halls, bath houses, warehouses, stables, and railroad yards.

Additional equipment arrived August 2, ten days before the regiment moved into a quiet sector in the Vosges Mountains for intensive training around Ponseux and Archettes, and on August 20 there was further removal to the St. Die sector previously occupied by the 7th Engineers of the 5th Division. Just before this division left for St. Mihiel, it conducted several local attacks down the Fave Valley and around Frappelle, which were finally captured. When then the 317th Engineers began the work of organizing and consolidating the positions left by the 5th Division, they found the enemy active. They constructed dug-outs, repaired trenches, often under shell fire, and mined bridges if these were in danger of being captured by the enemy. They also worked at logging and sawmill operations in order to supply French institutions as well as the fighting regiments at the front with firewood. Especially courageous was the work of twenty-five enlisted men engaged in gas-proofing dug-outs. They worked three days and nights under heavy bombardment where mustard gas and phosgene were used by the enemy, but they continued their labors until all the dug-outs were protected.

On September 24, 1918, the regiment moved into the Argonne between Les Islettes and Clermont, and was assigned to the First Army Corps. The objective of the First Army was to close the Grand Pré gap and flank the armies operating against the French and British. The bombardment for this attack lasted three hours and it was estimated that 100,000 shells were fired. The American artillery averaged a gun every eight meters. After the bombardment changed to a rolling barrage, the men of the 77th, 28th, 35th, 79th, 4th, 80th, and 33rd Divisions went over the top in the greatest attack ever made by United States forces. In this attack one battalion of the 317th Engineers opened the road from Neuvilly to Bourielles, cutting it through to “No Man’s Land” on the night of September 26. The 111th Engineers assisted in this work. The Second Battalion opened the road from Croix de Pierre and Pierre Croisée, while the Third opened the valley road from La Claon to La Harze. In many places these roads had been completely obliterated by the heavy artillery fire. The engineers had to relocate them, often at night, and rebuild them through swamps out of logs and planks in order that the wounded might be carried to the rear and ammunition carts reach the front. Sometimes they used rocks and timbers taken from mined enemy trenches and burned buildings. They built light- and heavy-gauge railroads for hauling shells to new artillery positions on the front, and heavy-gauge railroads in the back areas, especially in the vicinity of Grand Pré. Throughout this offensive from September 26 to November 11 the 317th Engineers spent most of the time building roads and supplying the fighting units at the front with the necessary materials. The men often worked day and night under shell fire, but they labored cheerfully and successfully.

Orders, letters, and memoranda bear testimony to their achievement. The chief engineer of the First Army, Colonel G. R. Spaulding, in expressing his appreciation of what had been done by the troops aiding in the construction of railroads in the First Army area, wrote on November 10, 1918: “Especial credit is given to the 317th Engineers which were very instrumental in the rehabilitation of the lines in the Fôret d’Argonne and on the line from St. Juvin to the north.” General Pershing wrote to Lt. Col. J. Edward Cassidy on April 7, 1919, thanking him for his services and saying, “With the 317th Engineers on the front you gave us valuable service.” Lt. Colonel Cassidy himself in his order to the regiment on February 3, 1919, commended it for being true in the fullest sense to the trust reposed in it by the American people and for doing work of a high and efficient order. Said he: “For more than a hundred years the Corps of Engineers has maintained a proud record of achievement, whether in peace or war, from the blazing sun of the tropics to the eternal ice and snow of the Arctic regions, and it is a pleasure to the commanding officer to be able to say that your work has been in accordance with the best traditions of the Engineer Service.”

The 317th Engineers “played the game” without fear and without grumbling in the St. Die sector and in the Argonne-Meuse offensive. For nearly three months the regiment did front line work, first as a part of the 33rd Corps of the 7th French Army in the Vosges Mountains at Frapelle, Lafontanelle, Lesseux, and other points in the St. Die sector, and later as a corps regiment of the First American Army, at Neuvilly, Bourielles, Cheppy, Varennes, Four de Paris, Abri de Crochet, La Besogne, Lançon, Grand Pré, St. Juvin, Briquenay, St. Georges, and Le Mort Homme in the Argonne region, and at Buzancy in the Ardennes. For this work it was generously commended by the officials in the American Army and it deserved the sincere gratitude of all the American people.