here children rolled
hoops during the heat of the day and where convalescent French soldiers
sat and watched the children at play or perhaps discussed the war and
other things with the nurse-maids.

This was the first workshop in France of the American
commander-in-chief. Adjoining rooms to the left and right were occupied
by the General's staff and his aides. And it was in these rooms that
the overseas plans for the landing of the first American armed
contingent in France were formulated.

It is safe now to mention that St. Nazaire on the west coast of France
was the port at which our first armed forces disembarked. I was in Paris
when the information of their coming was whispered to a few chosen
correspondents who were to be privileged to witness this historical
landing.

This was the first time in the history of our nation that a large force
of armed Americans was to cross the seas to Europe. For five and a half
months prior to the date of their landing, the ruthless submarine policy
of the Imperial German Government had been in effect, and our troop
ships with those initial thousands of American soldiers represented the
first large Armada to dare the ocean crossing since Germany had
instituted her sub-sea blockade zone in February of that same year.

Thus it was that any conversation concerning the fact that our men were
on the seas and at the mercy of the U-boats was conducted with the
greatest of care behind closed doors. In spite of the efforts of the
French agents of contra espionage, Paris and all France, for that
matter, housed numerous spies. There were some anxious moments while
that first contingent was on the water.

Our little group of correspondents was informed that we should be
conducted by American officers to the port of landing, but the name of
that port was withheld from us. By appointment we met at a Paris
railroad station where we were provided with railroad tickets. We took
our places in compartments and rode for some ten or twelve hours,
arriving early the next morning at St. Nazaire.

This little village on the coast of Brittany was tucked away there in
the golden sands of the seashore. Its houses had walls of white stucco
and gabled roofs of red tile. In the small rolling hills behind it were
green orchards and fields of yellow wheat. The villagers, old women in
their starched white head-dresses and old men wearing faded blue smocks
and wooden shoes, were unmindful of the great event f