Great crowds of enthusiastic people from streets, walls, windows and housetops greeted the American General when the train that was bringing him entered the Gare du Nord at Paris. Cordons of "blue devils" were on the platforms of the station and dense lines of troops patrolled the streets and guarded adjacent blocks as the party was escorted to the Place de la Concorde, where General Pershing was to make his temporary headquarters at the Hotel de Crillon.
Bands were playing the Star Spangled Banner and the Marseillaise, the flag of the United States was waving in thousands of hands and displayed from almost every building, while a steady shout like the roar of the ocean, "Vive l'Amerique!" greeted the party as the automobiles in which they were riding advanced along the densely packed streets. It is said that General Pershing was "visibly affected" by the ovation into which his welcome had been turned. What a contrast it all was to the life and work in the jungles of the Philippines where the young officer had perhaps feared he had been left and forgotten. And yet it was the faithful, persistent, honest work done for the little brown Moro people which helped to make the present occasion possible.
In the evening of that day (June 13th) American Ambassador Sharp gave a dinner in honor of the coming of General Pershing. At this dinner the chief officers of the French army and navy were present. Indeed in the brief time before General Pershing was to assume his active duties it almost seemed as if the desire of the French Government and the French people to do honor to the American commander would test his powers of endurance to the uttermost. There were several events, however, that stand out in the foreground of those remarkable days.
CHAPTER XIII
At the Tomb of Napoleon
One of these notable events was the visit of General Pershing to the Hotel des Invalides in which is the tomb of the most brilliant soldier of all history—Napoleon Bonaparte. General Galterre and General Niox, the latter in charge of the famous monument, received the American General and his staff when they arrived at the marvelous building.
An interesting incident that was reported as having occurred directly after the entrance of the party was the spontaneous action of General Pershing, when his party met some of the aged veterans of the former wars of the French. Impulsively stopping when he was saluted by a bent and aged soldier who had seen service in the Crimean War, General Pershing shook the old soldier by his hand as he said, "It is a great honor for a young soldier like myself to press the hand of an old soldier like yourself who has seen such glorious service." This natural and impulsive action by the American is said to have deeply touched not only the Crimean veteran, but also all who saw it and even more those who later heard of it, for the simple act was soon a topic of conversation among the already deeply enthused people of Paris.
The American soldiers were conducted first to the great rotunda where one can stand, and, looking down, see the tomb of Napoleon resting in eloquent silence in the sarcophagus beneath. But the Commander of the American Expeditionary forces was to have a still more distinctive honor—he was to be taken into the crypt itself. How much of an honor the French consider this may be judged from the fact that in addition to the crowned heads of Europe that had been admitted there, Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt is the only other American previously taken to this spot. It was also a part of the directions which Napoleon himself had left that only a Marshal of France was to remain uncovered in the presence of the Little Corporal of Corsica.