Unfortunately the term “stevedores” came to mean to many people those who were physically or mentally unfit to be fighting men and they were looked upon as inferior to other soldiers. Sometimes this was true, but it is also true that there were thousands of stevedores who represented the best of the young manhood of America. In the beginning of the draft hundreds of Negro men who met all the physical qualifications could not meet the educational tests. Such men were usually transferred to stevedore organizations, and the rate of illiteracy in these ran from 35 to 75 per cent. Sometimes also those who because of physical unfitness were only partially able to serve their country when it needed them, nevertheless rendered some valuable service in American camps. Such a company was the 402nd Reserve Labor Battalion, stationed at Camp Hancock, Augusta, Ga. This was located fifteen miles from the camp in a wood, where it built roads and also kept in condition the range for the officers and men being trained for the battle fronts in France.
The question naturally arises how it happened that some of the best of the Negro youth were placed in the stevedore regiments. In the beginning there was great need for men to do the manual work connected with supplying with food and equipment two million soldiers in France. The Negro was regarded by many army officials as specially adapted to this work because of his previous training and his cheerful disposition; and for one reason or another some other officials deemed it advisable to withhold from him regular military training. Accordingly, in the fall of 1917, colored draftees and volunteers were sent to various assembling camps and formed into stevedore and labor units. Thousands from the Southern states, many of them students in the schools and colleges, rushed to the colors with the hope of entering combatant units, only to find, to their great disappointment, that they had been assigned to service regiments.
The work in the United States varied with the different camps. Sometimes it was the handling of supplies or ammunition. Then again it was grading, ditching, digging stumps, cleaning up new ground for building purposes, or draining camps. The men did every form of fatigue work and sometimes built roads along with civilians who received $3.50 or $4.00 a day. Those who remained in the United States did not, as a rule, experience as hard a life as their comrades in France. Living conditions in the cantonments were usually very good, even in the tent camps after the necessary improvements had been made. Sometimes it happened that the stevedore was neglected in the beginning, especially if he was placed in a camp apart from the other soldiers. Such was the case at Camp Hill, Newport News, in the winter of 1917-18. In the coldest weather experienced in this part of the country in a quarter of a century, the stevedores lived in tents without floors or stoves. Most of them could get only one blanket and some could not secure even that. Twenty to thirty occupied one tent 16 feet square. Often men reaching the camp in zero weather were compelled to stand around a fire outside all night or sleep under trees for partial shelter from the wind, rain, and snow. For four months no bathing facilities or changes of clothing were provided. Food was served outdoors and often froze before it could be eaten. After inspectors and other investigators constantly reported these conditions they were changed. Comfortable barracks and mess halls were built, a Y. M. C. A. building and a hostess house erected, and the name of the camp was changed from Hill to Alexander in honor of one of the three Negro lieutenants who had been graduated from West Point. Not only in this camp, but in every other where unsatisfactory conditions prevailed, improvements were gradually made until, at the end of the war, most of the stevedores in American camps were living in comfortable surroundings.
The stevedore units were commanded almost entirely by white commissioned officers, with white sergeants and colored corporals. In some engineer units all the non-commissioned officers were white, though in rare cases they were all colored. The work of the Negro stevedore in the American Expeditionary Force was considered of prime importance. He was among the first to sail for France, and among the very first was a group of one hundred men from New Orleans. They and those who followed them were to be found at the base ports of Brest, St. Nazaire, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Le Havre, and at such railheads as Tours, Liffol-le-Grand, Gierve, St. Sulpice, Chaumont, and other such centers. The largest of these ports was Brest, and here the men did more work than anywhere else. They handled all kinds of supplies at the docks, coaled ships, and helped to build piers and docks. They labored night and day, sometimes continuously for sixteen hours. Although they worked in the rain and snow, it was only after months had passed that they were provided with oil-skin suits and gum boots. One high officer said, “The men who worked on these docks have had the hardest job of any men in France, but their spirit has been fine.” In the “Race to Berlin” the Brest port won the championship, a company of the 310th Service Battalion winning the honor of having done more work than any similar outfit in France. As a reward it was sent back to the States earlier than would otherwise have been the case.
The St. Nazaire base was the second largest port. Numerous camps were located outside the city, extending as far as fifteen kilometers. Twenty-eight miles of warehouses were constructed at Montois and filled with supplies of every description, while outside there were railroad engines, cars, and vast quantities of construction material. St. Nazaire was also a huge embarkation port. At times more than 50,000 colored soldiers were stationed in this vicinity. The long pier extending a mile out into the water was built almost exclusively by the 317th Engineers. The task was very dangerous, as the men had to work standing on slippery boards, but it was finally completed and stood as a memorial to the Negro soldiers. Camp Guthrie was built entirely by Negro men. They composed the personnel and ran the big troop kitchens, the delousing plants, the officers’ mess halls, and the infirmaries. Here, as at Brest, the hardest work on the docks was done exclusively by Negro soldiers. This included coaling ships and unloading supplies of all kinds, including railroad engines and tractors. During the “Race to Berlin” new port records for unloading ships were made weekly. The men sometimes “worked like mad men,” having received the impression that they were going home as soon as the armistice was signed. Badges were given to those who got the most work done, and the base port winning the week’s competition flew a flag for the next week. In addition to the work on the docks, the soldiers built and repaired roads, built railroads, warehouses, a round house, a water-filtering plant, and did general fatigue duty. In referring to what they accomplished a major said, “It has been no hero service, but has been hard, long, and faithful, and it is appreciated. These men have handled 30,000 tons of material in one day.” Another officer said, “Many colored soldiers are sleeping in the little graveyard on the hill because they broke their heartstrings in the ‘Race to Berlin.’”
Bordeaux was the third of the large ports. In the camps outside the city as many as fifty thousand soldiers were stationed at times. At St. Sulpice in the Bordeaux area the American army built and filled with provisions and munitions about one hundred warehouses. At two camps on the outskirts of the city, Anconia and Bassens, twenty thousand Negro soldiers were stationed for months, handling cargoes day and night. Many of them worked sixteen hours a day and rarely ever saw the camp in the daytime, as they went to and from work in the dark.
The work at the other base ports was similar, though on a smaller scale. Sometimes hundreds of miles of railroad track had to be laid or great steel warehouses erected. Gierve was outstanding as a center for such work, as it was the largest supply depot in France. Warehouses here covered an area seven miles long and three miles wide. There were always some Negro units stationed at this place, along with white units which did stevedore work. The two organizations which served at Gierve for the longest period were the 313th and 328th Negro labor battalions. At Liffol-le-Grand, near Chaumont, the headquarters of the commander-in-chief of the American Army, there was another large supply depot. Here the Negro engineers drained and cleared a swamp, laid miles of railroad track, and helped to build a large round house and several warehouses.
The stevedores were the great roadbuilders in France. Thousands also worked in the great forests, cutting wood, peeling trees, and laboring in the sawmills. In the Forestry Division at Jironde they made an average of peeling 35 trees a day per man, while the average of other engineers were only 15 trees. Nazareth Thaggard of the 323rd Service Battalion made the highest record of any man in the A. E. F. by cutting 30 steres of wood in one day. The task for his company was five steres. For this notable achievement he was given a twenty-day pass to travel over France and made a corporal in his organization. The 320th Engineers cut and carried wood for a mile and a half on their backs. The men in the 332nd Labor Battalion, stationed at Brion, cut six steres of wood as a daily task. They cut 1500 steres at Jerocho and 5400 at Comercy. The woodcutters lived in floorless tents often surrounded by mud. Many times the necessary clothing and boots could not be secured, and sometimes they were obliged to eat in the rain and snow. Dr. Hope, of whom we have spoken as at the head of Y. M. C. A. work for Negro soldiers in France, said in speaking of a visit to the woodcutters: “One night I went in a car fifteen miles out in a wood with a chaplain who came to a small French town to buy ‘smokes’ for the men. When we reached the camp it was dark. Lights were seen in the narrow streets and mud deeper than I had ever seen before. In the morning the men got up at 4.45. The sound they made walking through the mud was unlike any noise that I had ever heard. Even at that early hour some were joking, some singing.” The record of almost every organization cutting wood shows that the men endured great suffering, and the Negro’s sense of humor was a great asset to him. Said one private who served with the 323rd service battalion: “We have come in wet to the skin, with our boots half full of water. Some would go to a stove and get warm, some would sing, some play cards. Others would walk five miles for French bread and butter and eggs that they would cook in their mess-kits. Some would laugh and be happy, while others beside them would die.”
After peace was declared and the American army started home, there remained still much work to be done “over there.” The heroes who fell at Château-Thierry, Amiens, St. Mihiel, in Belleau Wood and the Argonne Forest deserved a suitable resting-place. The work of reburying the dead was done almost exclusively by the Negro stevedores. Daily convoys of trucks went as far as a hundred kilometers, and men searched the fields, forests, and shell holes for the dead, who were brought to the cemeteries and reinterred. This was the most ghastly and gruesome task in the A. E. F.; yet the way the Negroes worked may be judged from the fact that at Romagne, where the largest American cemetery is located, 1038 and 1050 soldiers were reburied in two successive days. The nature of the work required that much of it be done after midnight when most of the men were asleep. One could hear the sound of the hammer and the tread of feet, and the lonely minor chord of the Negroes’ song as they drove nails into the coffins. The electric lights all over the cemeteries at night showed these men moving about without the traditional fear attributed to them. Theirs was no enviable task, but no group of men ever displayed finer spirit in the performance of duty, and no soldiers more loyally served the republic.