Although most of this baggage was obviously the property of individual soldiers, the search also turned up a great deal of government property. This included some twenty rolling kitchens in good condition, abandoned for one reason or another, hundreds of rifles and pistols, numerous helmets, many uniforms still wearable, and even bags of mail which had never reached destination. The searching parties came upon a lone army mule resigned to its apparent fate of ending its days as an adjunct to an impressive manure pile in a French peasant’s dooryard.
By the time the search was complete and the baggage had been collected, the troops were then moving in such numbers up to the French ports of embarkation for their passage home to the United States that it was found to be impossible to restore their lost property to them en route. The Baggage Service in France was able to hand over to their owners only about 50,000 pieces of baggage. In early June, 1919, it was decided to ship all the remaining unclaimed baggage to Hoboken, where the owners could obtain it after their return to the United States. The baggage thus shipped filled sixty-three baggage cars and provided a large part of the lading of an entire cargo transport. With the baggage to Hoboken went the records from Gievres, to be used by the Lost Baggage Service at Hoboken in restoring property to overseas soldiers returned to the United States.
The A. E. F.’s Baggage Service, besides finding and caring for lost baggage, was charged with the important duty of acting as the baggage agent for the returning expedition. There was no counterpart to such an organization before the armistice. Had there been, the Expeditionary Forces would have had practically no baggage problem at all, so far as the loss of baggage en route was concerned; for, on the way home, thanks to the new Service, the troops lost scarcely any baggage. Here, then, was another new military organization called into existence by our experience in the World War; one which proved its usefulness and thereby won a place for itself in any plans for large military operations in the future. The Baggage Service saved its own cost over and over again, for the Government itself is often responsible for the loss of the personal baggage of soldiers and expects to pay in cash the claims presented. Indeed, many claims for lost baggage which had accrued at A. E. F. headquarters were settled by the restoration of the baggage itself to its owners.
In handling baggage for the traveling expedition, the Baggage Service set up branches at all the important A. E. F. troop centers and at all the American embarkation ports in France. The function of the baggage men at the troop centers was to see to it that when units departed their baggage went forward with them, properly marked and routed. The Service took charge, not only of organization baggage, but of the baggage of individual soldiers as well. At the ports its branches acted as checking, storing, and forwarding agents. Brest was the largest of our embarkation ports in France, and at Brest the official baggage office was operated by five officers and one hundred enlisted men. The official “baggage room” at Brest was a whole huge warehouse located on one of the jetties. The military passengers awaiting embarkation at Brest usually numbered well over 100,000, and it took an immense storage space to contain all their baggage.
Officers of the baggage organization met all troop trains arriving in the Brest area. On these trains were thousands of officers and enlisted men traveling alone or in small groups as casuals. From these the military baggage agents secured their railroad baggage checks, together with cards on which the travelers wrote identifying descriptions of their baggage. Thereafter the individual traveler had no further baggage worries. The Baggage Service secured the pieces from the railroad stations, loaded them on trucks and took them to the central warehouse, and then made out index cards identifying them and showing their location in storage. These cards were made out in the owners’ names and filed alphabetically. Whenever a transport was preparing to sail, the embarkation authorities sent to the Baggage Service a copy of the passenger list. The baggage people checked over this list against the record cards, and were thus able easily to assemble the baggage belonging to the passengers to sail on that ship. The baggage was taken out to the transport on lighters, and the canceled identification cards were thereupon stamped with the name of the transport and the date of sailing and then filed away in the dead file. The baggage of organizations was handled in the same way, except that the troop units did not abandon the practice of sending their own baggage details along with their baggage to watch it. These detachments of soldiers remained with the baggage at all times, even when it was stored in the warehouse.
Photo by Signal Corps
COMMON GRAVE NEAR CIREY
(See [page 89].)
