All Colored Officers will mess at Officers’ Mess in D.-17.
F. M. Crawford,
1st Lt. Infantry, Area “D.”
The Efficiency Board
Several references have been made to efficiency boards and their efforts to remove colored officers from the 92nd Division and other colored organizations. In order that a clear idea may be conveyed as to the type of men who suffered from these injustices, as well as how these boards operated, the life, training, and experience of the first officer of the 92nd Division to undergo such an ordeal, follows in detail:
Captain Matthew Virgil Boutte was born in New Iberia, Louisiana, of Creole parentage; his father was a sugar planter, of the type that used to strap his gun on his saddle girth for protection, and go to the poles and vote, in the days when guns were used to maintain white supremacy in that State.
He sent his son to Straight University, New Orleans, from 1898 to 1903, where he received the rudiments of an education. Afterwards young Boutte went to Fisk, where he finished a high school course, and a four years’ college course; thence to the University of Illinois, where he graduated as a chemist and pharmacist; he then taught quantitative chemistry at Meharry Medical College, and opened a drugstore in Nashville, Tenn. This he disposed of after receiving his commission at the Des Moines Training School. While in Nashville, he joined the Tennessee National Guard, the only Colored National Guard Company in the South. With six months’ training there as a private, he entered the Des Moines School, and was one of the few who received the commission of captain.
On November 1, 1917, he went to Rockford, Ill., where he attended Machine Gun School at Camp Grant, and organized Company 350, Machine Gun Battalion. His company was well trained not only in military tactics, but also to such a high degree of athletic efficiency, that it received a loving cup for winning a cross country run; also won cup for individual running in whole brigade. The winner, Sergeant Bluitt, was afterward commissioned lieutenant.
On June 6, 1918, Captain Boutte sailed for France, with the advance officers’ party of the 92nd Division. They landed at Brest where the colored officers received a taste of the American segregation that afterwards became so annoying in France. Rooms for the entire party, white and colored, had been reserved at the Hotel Continental, but the colored officers were told to go to Camp Pontanezen, where they would find barracks; there they were to sleep on boards with no mattresses, and only one blanket apiece. Captain Boutte protested, and the party returned to Brest, where they discovered that the white officers had not made the French people understand that the rooms held in reserve were for them, and consequently had gone elsewhere. Captain Boutte, being able to speak French quite fluently, was able to get the reserved rooms for the six colored officers. He was sent from Brest to Bourbon les Bains to serve as billeting officer. Here he was told not to take the French people’s kindness for friendship, but to treat them just as he had been taught to treat white people at home. When they found that his ability to speak French gave him ready entrée into French homes, they relieved him of all work as billeting officer, so that he would have no occasion for going among the French people.
On July 7 he was returned to his company. He instructed his men to such a point of efficiency that the inspector of machine-gun tactics commended his work. On July 24 he was placed under close arrest. While under arrest he was forced to ride from one town to another in an open wagon, and between two armed guards, in order that his spirit might be thoroughly crushed, and his humiliation made complete. Twenty-three specifications under the 96th Article of War were placed against him. These dealt with duties imposed upon the Commanding Officer of the Company by the Commanding Officer of the Battalion. After he had been under close arrest for eight days, the charges were submitted to him; following are samples of specifications:
“Why did you command your first sergeant to remain at home instead of having him on the field of drill, as commanded from headquarters?”