The negro troopers we encountered now, here in the copses, sometimes singly or oftener still in squads and details, were dissimilar physically as well as in certain temperamental respects to their fellows of the draft regiment we had seen a little while before. They were apt to be mulattoes or to have light-brown complexions instead of clear black; they were sophisticated and town wise in their bearing; their idioms differed from those others, and their accents too; for almost without exception they were city dwellers and many of them had been born North, whereas the negroes from Dixie were rural products drawn out of the heart of the Farther South. But for all of them might be said these things: They were soldiers who wore their uniforms with a smartened pride; who were jaunty and alert and prompt in their movements; and who expressed, as some did vocally in my hearing, and all did by their attitude, a sincere and heartfelt inclination to get a whack at the foe with the shortest possible delay. I am of the opinion personally--and I make the assertion with all the better grace, I think, seeing that I am a Southerner with all of the Southerner's inherited and acquired prejudices touching on the race question--that as a result of what our black soldiers are going to do in this war, a word that has been uttered billions of times in our country, sometimes in derision, sometimes in hate, sometimes in all kindliness--but which I am sure never fell on black ears but it left behind a sting for the heart--is going to have a new meaning for all of us, South and North too, and that hereafter n-i-g-g-e-r will merely be another way of spelling the word American.
However, that is getting in the moral of my tale before I am anywhere near its proper conclusion. The reader consenting, we'll go back to the place where we were just now, when we rode over the one-mule traffic line to the greeting that had been organised for us two miles away. By chance we had chosen a most auspicious moment for our arrival. For word had just been received touching on the honours which the French Government had been pleased to confer upon two members of the regiment, Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts, to wit, as follows: For each the War Cross and for each a special citation before the whole French Army, and in addition a golden palm, signifying extraordinary valour, across the red-and-green ribbon of Johnson's decoration. So it was shortly coming to pass that a negro, almost surely, would be the first private of the American Expeditionary Forces to get a golden palm along with his Croix de Guerre. It might be added, though the statement is quite superfluous in view of the attendant circumstances, that he earned it.