“Then they took all our American ordnance away and gave us bolos,
which are knives modeled after those used by the Cubans. I was glad
afterward, although I think my boys would have done better with razors.
When we were leaving France I was told that the regiment would be
presented with three thousand razors by the French. When we received
the gift we found they were safety-razors. The regiment was insulted.
“From March, 1918, until the following January we were with the Fourth
French Army, under General Gouraud. On July 15 I wrote Governor Whitman
that the German Army was licked. They were at maximum strength and we
at minimum, but ten American divisions were arriving monthly.
“My boys had a sublime faith that they would win. The idea of defeat
never entered their heads. No private or officer had any doubt about
our ability to break through. One day I found a number of the men
buying German money that had been taken from the dead. I asked why they
wanted it, and they answered, ‘We’ll be needin’ this here money soon.’
In five months they were spending it in the Rhine towns and talking
Harlem German with a Yiddish accent. They were the advance guard of the
Allied armies. The French gave them the honor of carrying the Stars and
Stripes to the Rhine. And I was the first man to scoop water from the
river. Can you beat that for Allied generosity?
“The boys all had a keen sense of humor. When we docked at Hoboken
they were eager to get ashore. One of them said to me: ‘Colonel, the
Generals is goin’ over the gangplank and the rats is goin’ over the
hawsers. We hope you’ll tell us when it’s time for the regiment to go
ashore!’
“I remember one little negro on the other side who was carrying shells
from an ammunition-dump to a train. He was so loaded down with 3-inch
shells that he was sunk ankle-deep in the mud. He said to his officer,
‘How you got my name on dat sheet?’
“‘Your name is Simpson,’ replied the officer.
“‘Yas, sir, dass right; only I thought maybe you had “Sampson” by
mistake.’”
He jested about them freely, did Colonel Hayward, but the jests were of
a kind to betray the intense pride he felt in the soldierly character
and spirited daring of the men under him. The Hun learned to regard
with wholesome fear a charge of Hayward’s “bellhops and waiters,” as he
styled them.
At the beginning of the war there were only 750 officers, 393 nurses,
and 3,619 enlisted men belonging to the Medical Department of the
American Army. In November, 1918, the corresponding figures were
39,363 officers, 21,344 nurses, and 245,652 enlisted men.
In the 19 months elapsing from the declaration of the war to the
signing of the armistice the American Army created an embarkation
service which succeeded in shipping overseas 2,075,834 men, and
5,153,000 tons of cargo.
During the whole period of active hostilities the American Army lost
at sea only 200,000 deadweight tons of transports. Of this total,
142,000 tons were sunk by torpedoes. No American transport was lost on
its eastward voyage.