Armistice Day at Independence Hall [Frontispiece]
Opposite page
The Last Shot [4]
The Armistice at a Munitions Factory [4]
Victory [5]
Reconstruction [5]
Camp Street in Le Mans Area [12]
Bath House at Brest [12]
In Camp Pontanezen [13]
Company Street in Pontanezen [13]
1. Entering “Mill” at Bordeaux [22]
2. Receiving Clean Clothing in “Mill” [22]
3. The “Mill” Barbershop [23]
4. Through “Mill” and Ready for Home [23]
Kitchens at Le Mans [30]
Street in Le Mans Area No. 5 [30]
Casuals on Transport Leaving Brest [31]
Boarding Transport from Lighters, Brest [31]
Troops on Battleship Ready for Mess [36]
Warships with Troops Docking at Hoboken [36]
Embarking for United States [37]
Mess Room on Converted Cargo Transport Ohioan [37]
Sailing Day at St. Nazaire [42]
Transport Maui Loading at St. Nazaire [42]
Souvenirs of His Service [43]
Embarking at St. Nazaire [43]
Casuals Waiting to Board Ship at St. Nazaire [54]
Boarding Edward Luckenbach [54]
Embarkation at Bordeaux [55]
Left Behind [55]
Home Again [60]
Welcoming Returning Troops at Hoboken [60]
First Division Parading on Pennsylvania Avenue [61]
Victory Arch in Washington [61]
Overseas Troops Entraining at Hoboken [66]
Veterans Detraining at Camp Sherman [66]
Discharged Soldiers Receiving Final Pay [67]
Making Out Discharge Certificates [67]
Common Grave near Cirey [78]
Lost Military Baggage at Hoboken [78]
Preparing Cemetery at Beaumont [79]
Loading Coffins on Collection Trucks [79]
1. Overflowed Cemetery at Fleville [86]
2. Two Months Later—Bodies All Removed [86]
1. Romagne Cemetery, April 10, 1919 [87]
2. Romagne Cemetery, May 30, 1919 [87]
Portrait of Colonel Ira L. Reeves [94]
Students at Beaune University [94]
Art Students in A. E. F. Training Center, Paris [95]
A. E. F. Students in University of Lyon [95]
Air View of Pershing Stadium, Paris [100]
American Soldiers at University of Grenoble [100]
A. E. F. Soldiers as Comedians [101]
Judging Comedy Horse at 4th Army Horse Show [101]
Disabled Veterans Taking Federal Training [108]
Editorial Conference of Stars and Stripes [108]
Poster Used in Reëmployment Campaign [109]
Employment Office at Camp Sherman [109]
Sending Out the Stars and Stripes [122]
Graduate A. E. F. Students at Edinburgh University [122]
Review of “Pershing’s Own Regiment” at Coblenz [123]
Games in Le Mans Embarkation Area [123]
Portrait of War Department Claims Board [144]
Convalescent Reading Stars and Stripes [145]
Hospital Train in United States [145]
Havoc Wrought by German Guns at Fort near Rheims [164]
“Wipers” Ready for Tourists [164]
French and German Airplane Engines after Combat [165]
Ruined Tanks near Cambrai [165]
American Field Guns on the Rhine [180]
American Gun on Ehrenbreitstein, Coblenz [180]
Destroying Captured German Ammunition [181]
A Captured Ammunition Dump [181]
Preparing Liberty Engines for Storage [200]
Assembling Plant at Romorantin [200]
Flying Field at Issoudun [201]
Lame Ducks [201]
American Airplane Wreckage [212]
Fuel for the Bonfire [212]
German Locomotive Taken Over by A. E. F. Engineers [213]
Engineers Constructing Beaune University [213]
Air View of A. E. F. Ordnance Docks [230]
A Gas Demonstration [230]
Motor Transport in France [231]
Part of A. E. F.’s Surplus Motor Equipment [231]
A. E. F. Supply Train on Way to Ration Dump [246]
A. E. F. Flour on Way to Starving Austria [246]
A. E. F. Horses to be Sold [247]
Storage Warehouses at Jeffersonville Depot [247]
West Indian Laborers Embarking for Home [268]
View of Camp Sherman [268]
In an Army Retail Store [269]
Customers at Opening of Army Retail Store [269]
Wreck of Coal Mine at Lens [310]
Motor Transport Salvage in France [310]
Portrait of Interallied Purchasers [311]

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors acknowledge their indebtedness to Major Robert H. Fletcher, Jr., General Staff, who collected from the various war department bureaus concerned most of the material on which this book is based. Also their thanks are due to the numerous former and present officials of the War Department and officers of the Army who read the manuscript and criticized it constructively.

B. C. & R. F. W.

Washington, D. C.,
September, 1921.

DEMOBILIZATION

CHAPTER I
HALT!

At a few minutes past ten o’clock of the morning of November 11, 1918, the Secretary of War in Washington received from General Pershing a communication informing the Government that eleven o’clock a.m. that day, French time, an armistice with Germany had gone into effect. No message more momentous had ever come to the American War Department. The World War was at an end. It was peace. It was victory.

Over there on that American front which had penetrated the supposedly impregnable Argonne and now commanded the enemy’s main line of communications at Sedan, boys in our own khaki wriggled, charged, fought, plunged ahead all the morning, like the players of some mighty football team gaining every inch of advance possible before an intermission; and finally, as the whistles shrilled and the great silence fell at last upon a theatre that had shaken and roared with the thunder of war for more than four years, they set their heels into the turf of a line that was to be held as a starting-off place if the armistice, too, should prove to be only an intermission and a period of recuperation.

Behind these outpost men were the American Expeditionary Forces, two million strong. Behind the A. E. F. in America was a training and maintenance army nearly as numerous.