There were, during the short period of entertainment, several incidents which will long be noted in history, as when General Pershing visited the Tomb of Napoleon and when he took from its case the sword of the world conqueror and kissed it, and again when he placed a wreath on the grave of Lafayette.
Within a few days General Pershing had established the army headquarters in the Rue De Constantine and began the work preliminary to the campaign on the firing line.
Second only to the enthusiastic reception tendered General Pershing and his staff was that accorded the first United States Medical Unit, which reached London in June. The vanguard of the American army, composed of 26 surgeons and 60 nurses, in command of Major Harry L. Gilchrist, was received by King George and Queen Mary, the Prince of Wales and Princess Mary, at Buckingham Palace.
The reception to General Pershing and the Medical branch was, however, nothing as compared to the popular demonstration which marked the arrival of the first of the American armed forces on European shores to participate in war. The vanguard of the army reached France on June 27. No official announcement was ever made of the number of men in the first expeditionary force, but it is an incident of modern history that the United States made a record for the transportation of troops across the seas scarcely equalled by that of any other country.
ABSOLUTE SECRECY OBSERVED.
All America knew that troops were being sent to France, but no information had been given as to the time of departure or as to their destination. The world was, therefore, fairly electrified when the announcement was made that in defiance of the German submarines, thousands of seasoned regulars and marines, trained fighting men, with the tan of long service on the Mexican border, in Haiti, or Santo Domingo still on their faces, had arrived in France to fight beside the French, the British, the Belgians, the Russians, the Portuguese and the Italian troops on the Western front.
Despite the enormous difficulties of unpreparedness and the submarine dangers that faced them, the plans of the army and navy were carried through with clock-like precision.
When the order came to prepare immediately an expeditionary force to go to France, virtually all of the men who first crossed the seas were on the Mexican border. General Pershing himself was at his headquarters in San Antonio. There were no army transports available in the Atlantic. The vessels that carried the troops were scattered on their usual routes. Army reserve stores were still depleted from the border mobilization. Regiments were below war strength. That was the condition when President Wilson decided that the plea of the French high commission should be answered and a force of regulars sent at once to France.
At his word the War Department began to move. General Pershing was summoned quietly to Washington. His arrival created some speculation in the press, but at the request of Secretary Baker the newspapers generally refrained from discussion of this point.
There were a thousand other activities afoot in the department at the time. All the business of preparing for the military registration of 10,000,000 men, of providing quarters and instructors for nearly 50,000 prospective officers, for finding arms and equipment for millions of troops yet to be organized, of expanding the regular army to full war strength, of preparing and recruiting the National Guard for war was at hand.