Mention should be made also of the Army Candidate School at Langres, France. The school was located at Fort Dela Bonnelle, and 62 non-commissioned officers representing all the colored combat regiments in France were enrolled there. Of this number, one sergeant died, two became ill at examination time, and 56 received commissions. This was the best record for the proportion receiving commissions of all the 17 platoons represented there. Of this number all whose initials ranged from A to D were sent to the 370th Infantry; the others were distributed throughout the 92nd Division. The 325th Signal Corps Battalion attended school at Gondrecourt, and made one of the best records of any battalion from the standpoint of hardworking students and improved efficiency, while the five colored company officers of the 167th F. A. attended school at La Cortrine, and the colonel in charge of the school reported that they made the best record for studiousness and work accomplished in a period of two weeks of any American units in a given length of time.
There were other schools where some colored soldiers secured training in wireless telegraphy and other technical subjects, and 33 2nd lieutenants received instruction at the French Artillery School at Vannes. While visiting that city during their period of training there, the writers were told by a French general with whom they conversed while waiting for a train, that these men all showed superior mental capacity, and were much loved by all the French citizens because of their splendid behavior and gentility of manners.
Another phase of educational work among the troops was the developing of libraries. In this work the American Library Association was the moving spirit. Thousands of volumes of books were contributed to this Association by the American people, and the Y. M. C. A. acted as a medium by which they were placed within reach of the soldiers. This offered a special opportunity for colored welfare workers to give another kind of training to soldiers that thousands were unable to get in their home cities. In very few cities in the South are any library facilities provided for the colored people. They are not permitted to go into the public libraries, and only a few cities have colored Branch Carnegie Libraries, such as Louisville or Houston, or a colored library established through other channels such as the one in Guthrie, Oklahoma. As a result, thousands of men coming from the South had no training in the use of libraries, and special attention had to be given everywhere to instituting and teaching booklending systems; otherwise all books would have disappeared in a day or two, not to be read always, but to be utilized in various and sundry ways such as a hiding place for letters, or a pad upon which to write. In time they all learned, however, to borrow and return books in a given time, and the library soon became the most popular place about the hut. It was always kept warm and attractive and it was the only place about the hut where one could make himself comfortable in an arm or steamer chair. Through the generosity of the American public, magazines and periodicals became plentiful after the Armistice was signed, and the soldiers would tarry late, often until taps, before they would tear themselves away from the news item which brought such interesting information from home.
1. Library at Camp Lusitania, St. Nazaire, France. 2. Colored College Students at University of Beaune. 3. Colored Students in Farm School, University of Beaune.
Large and valuable libraries were established for the colored soldiers at Camp Lusitania, and the Embarkation Camps at St. Nazaire, in the Leave Area at Challes-les-Eaux, at Camp Romagne, at Camp President Lincoln, Brest, and at the two colored huts at Camp Pontanezen, and were of invaluable service in educational and cultural work among the soldiers. Through these channels and the opportunities offered through the different Y. M. C. A. and Army Schools, the colored men received a new impetus and a new vision, and with the assistance of the training that comes from travel and contact, have returned to their homes better equipped for citizenship and future service to their race than they possibly could have been otherwise through all the years of a lifetime.
Group of soldiers, the majority of whom assisted in the work of education at Camp Lusitania, St. Nazaire, France
“They said they were too slow, too dull, too this and that to do it,