The Training Camp—The Black Devils—They Died That Our Republic May Live—The Last Soldiers To Cease Fighting—Taking The Bit Between Their Teeth—The Hindenburg Line Could Not Stop Them—They Cross the Ailette Canal—Desperate Deeds of Daring—One Man Routs a Machine Gun Crew—The Band Played On—Summary of Deeds of The Illinois Eighth.
At the beautiful city of Rockford, Illinois, was located Camp Grant where thousands of Negro recruits gathered from cities and factories, farms and plantations of our country, were given the needed intensive training to fit them to sustain the glorious traditions of the American soldiers. We take pride in all our soldiers—never once did they retreat but carried Old Glory ever onward until the armistice of November 11, 1918.
"THE BLACK DEVILS"
The old Illinois 8th Regiment was one of these colored units which henceforth will be referred to whenever the heroic deeds of this war are mentioned. The Prussian guards gave them a name which tells us of the respect and fear they inspired. They were "The Black Devils." The guards were seasoned veterans who had participated in the fiercest fighting of the war, yet these Negro heroes of the West did not falter before them. They were brigaded with the choicest troops of France and fought by their side through the final stages of the war. By them they were given a name indicative of the respect and confidence, their soldierly bearing and actions inspired. To the French they were the "Partridges," the proudest game bird of Europe, and when the decimated ranks of the regiment paraded before cheering thousands on their return, there marched in their ranks, twenty-two men wearing the American Distinguished Service Cross while sixty-eight others were decorated with the French "Croix de Guerre."
THEY DIED THAT OUR REPUBLIC MIGHT LIVE
The regiment went to France with approximately 2,500 men from Chicago and Illinois; they came back with 1,260. Those figures convey an eloquent story of suffering and death. Nearly a hundred were killed in battle. They were sleeping on the shell scarred fields of France. Many others are enrolled in the great army of maimed heroes, who however, are facing the future with calm courage, though many of them are deprived of arms or limbs, or possess bodies cruelly disfigured by shot and shell, with physical health wrecked as a result of hardship in trenches, or deadly gas inhaled.
THE LAST SOLDIERS TO CEASE FIGHTING
The old 8th probably made the last capture of the war. The morning of November 11, they were with their French comrades in Belgium. The objective given them to attain that day was not arduous and so, having achieved the same, the boys simply kept on going. The French division commander sent a messenger to the Colonel in command to cease firing at 11 A.M., but by the time the messenger caught up with the rushing troops it was ten minutes after the Huns had ceased firing on the Western front, and those colored boys were just putting the finishing touches on one of the neatest captures of the war—a German army train of fifty wagons.
TAKING THE BIT BETWEEN THEIR TEETH
Their commander had one criticism to make which, however, will not be a mark against the old 8th: "My greatest difficulty was in keeping my boys from going on after they had obtained their objective," he complains. The boys had formed the habit of "getting there" so strongly that inertia kept them going. Discipline in this respect seems to have been lacking among the American soldiers generally. We heard this same complaint at Chateau Thierry, at St. Mihiel and in the Argonne. These doughboys, like all genuine Americans, evidently believed it good policy while getting, to get enough.