here. They receive the same substantial fare
the white soldier receives, and the white soldier travels from
point to point in the same box freight cars as afford means of
passage for colored soldiers. In short, when it comes to
maintenance and equipment, and consideration for the comfort of the
American soldier, to use a trite saying, 'the folks are as good as
the people.' There is absolutely no discrimination, and the
cheerfulness of those 1,000 boys whose freight cars became, in
imagination, Pullman palace cars, was the proof to me that the
colored boys in the ranks are getting a fifty-fifty break."

"Two more stories have come to me," continues Mr. Tyler, "to prove
that our colored soldiers preserve and radiate their humor even
where shells and shrapnel fly thickest. A colored soldier slightly
wounded in the Argonne fighting--and let me assure you there was
'some' fighting there--sat down beside the road to wait for a
chance to ride to the field hospital. A comrade hastening forward
to his place in the line, and anxious for the latest news of the
progressing battle, asked the wounded brother if he had been in the
fight; did he know all about it, and how were things going at the
front. 'I sure does know all about it,' the wounded man replied.
'Well, what's happened to them?' quickly asked the trooper on his
way to the front. 'Well, it was this way,' replied the wounded one,
'I was climbin' over some barbed wire tryin' to get to those d--n
Boches, and they shot me; that's what I know about it.'

"A company water cart was following the advancing troops when a
German shell burst in the ditch almost beside the cart. The horse
on the shell side was killed, and the driver was wounded in the
head. While the blood from his wound ran freely down his face, the
driver took one look at the wreckage, then started stumbling back
along the road. A white lieutenant who had seen it all stopped the
driver of the cart and said:

"The dressing station is--"

"Before he could finish his sentence, the wounded driver, with the
blood flowing in rivulets down his face, said: 'Dressing station
hell; I'm looking for another horse to hitch to that cart and take
the place of the one the shell put out of commission.'

"That was a bit of nerve, grim humor and evidenc