“We arrived in Paris, where I was kept for several weeks at
headquarters. One night I returned home in Paris and informed Bill
that I had been assigned to the First Division and ordered up to the
front. Bill was delighted and ready to put off at once, and, although
it seemed impossible to me, it never feazed him.
“It never occurred to Bill that he was a civilian in France, with no
military connection whatever, and that it would be impossible for a
civilian to accompany me to the front. In this dilemma I placed the
situation before Colonel Malin Craig. He is a general now, and it made
a strong appeal to him. He wanted to make Bill a captain of military
police, but Bill would have none of that. He wanted to get to the
front, and to the front we started.
“Together we arrived within seven miles of the front line before Bill
was finally held up. He had come 7,000 miles on his own responsibility,
without one line of authority from any one, and was now actually at the
front and in the face of the enemy, and was still a civilian. And it
was there in the Toul sector that Bill enlisted and became officially
what he had been at heart and in fact for many weeks—one of the
American Expeditionary Force.
“From then on Bill and I were together without danger of being
separated by army regulations. He became my orderly and remained so
throughout. The only time we were separated was when Bill was in the
hospital recovering from shell-wounds. We came back together and
Bill went with me to Hot Springs, Ark., where we both took baths. We
separated at Fort Worth, Bill going on to Ajo by another route, while I
came on to Bisbee.”
And that is the story of Bill Davidson, whose devotion to his chief is
unlimited. It causes him to “do the impossible” and to override all of
the regulations of the War Department. It is a story in the telling of
which Colonel Greenway takes the greatest pride and in which a spirit
of affection is dominant.
Bill quit his job to go to war with Jack Greenway, and he did.
The original Selective Service Law of May 18, 1917, with its
subsequent amendments, mobilized the man-power of the United States,
between the ages of 18 and 45 inclusive. Under the original and later
acts, approximately 23,709,000 men were registered and slightly over
2,800,000 were inducted into the military service.