"He said to give 'em hell," said another.
Fourth, and last, of the great Frenchmen, and greatest, from the soldier point of view, was Marshal Joffre, Marne hero, who came and spent a night and a day at camp.
It was mid-October when he came, and weeks of driving rain had preceded him. In spite of their gloom over the weather, the doughboys were eagerly anticipating the visit of Joffre, and they were wondering if the man of many battles would think them worth standing in the rain to watch.
A detachment of French buglers—buglers whom the Americans could never sufficiently admire or imitate, because they could twirl the bugles between beats and take up their blasts with neither pitch nor time lost—waited outside the quarters where the marshal was to spend the night. Half an hour before his motor came up the sun broke through the drizzle.
"He brings it with him," said a doughboy.
Marshal Joffre was accompanied by General Pershing, the Pershing personal staff and Joffre's aide, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Fabry, who was with the French Mission in America. There were ovations in all the French villages through which they passed, and there were uproarious cheers when the party reached the American officers who were to be addressed by Marshal Joffre. In his short speech he said that America had come to help deliver humanity from the yoke of German insolence, and added: "Let us be united. Victory surely will be ours."
Later, after picked men had shown Joffre what they could do with grenades and bayonets, the marshal made a short speech to them, telling them of how his visit to America had cheered and strengthened him, and how even greater was the stimulation he had had from seeing the Americans train in France.
In a statement to the Associated Press he said: "I have been highly gratified by what I have seen to-day. I am confident that when the time comes for American troops to go into the trenches and meet the enemy they will give the same excellent account of themselves in action as they did to-day in practice."
Northcliffe came in December, with Colonel House and members of the House Mission. He wrote a long impression of his visit for the English at home, in which he said that the finest sight he saw was the American rifle practice, in which the United States troops did exceptionally well. Then he praised them for their mastery of the British type of trench mortar, for their accuracy with grenades and, most significant of all, for their able handling of themselves after the bombs were thrown, so that they should have a maximum of safety in battle. The doughboys had finally learned their hardest lesson.
Sir Walter Roper Lawrence, who was coming to America on a special war mission, went to camp in early December to see how the doughboys fared, so that he might report on them at home.