In one city, the soldiers informed us, colored Americans were confined to certain streets in order that their contact with the French people might have all possible limitations.
Following is a copy of an order gotten out, and a duplicate preserved:
HEADQUARTERS SECOND BATTALION,
804th Pioneer Infantry,
A. E. F., France.
Warcq, France, March 20, 1919.
Enlisted men of this organization will not talk to or be in company with any white women, regardless of whether the women solicit their company or not.
By Order of Captain Byrne.
A True Copy,
S/L/D/
This propaganda was spread from the streets of the large cities to the topmost peaks of the Alps Mountains, away up among the little shepherd girls, who knew nothing except what others came up to tell them. “Soldat noir-vilain,” they remarked to the writer one day, while she sat down to gather strength to finish her trip to the little chapel whose ruins stood on the highest pinnacle; even their minds had been poisoned with the thought that “black soldiers were villains.”