Fifth Avenue. They looked the part of the fighting men they were.
At an exact angle over their right shoulders were their
long-bayonetted rifles. Around their waists were belts of
cartridges. On their heads were their 'tin hats,' the steel helmets
that saved many a life, as was attested by the dents and scars in
some of them. Their eyes were straight forward and their chins,
held high naturally, seemed higher than ever because of the leather
straps that circled them. The fighters wore spiral puttees and
their heavy hobbed hiking shoes, which caused a metallic clash as
they scraped over the asphalt.

"At the head of the line rode four platoons of mounted police,
twelve abreast, and then, afoot and alone, Col. Hayward, who
organized the 15th, drilled them when they had nothing but
broomsticks to drill with, fathered them and loved them, and turned
them into the fightingest military organization any man's army
could want.

"The French called them 'Hell Fighters.' The Germans after a few
mix-ups named them 'Blutlustige Schwartzmanner' (blood-thirsty black
men.) But Col. Bill, when he speaks of them uses the words 'those
scrapping babies of mine,' and they like that best of all.
Incidentally (when out of his hearing) they refer tenderly to him
as 'Old Bill, that fightin' white man.' So it's fifty-fifty.

"The Colonel had broken a leg in the war, so there were those who
looked for him to limp as he strode out to face the hedge of
spectators that must have numbered a quarter of a million. But nary
a limp. With his full six feet drawn up erectly and his strong face
smiling under his tin hat, he looked every bit the fighting man as
he marched up the centre of the avenue, hailed every few feet by
enthusiasts who knew him socially or in the law courts or in the
business of the Public Service Commission.

"'Didn't your leg hurt you, Bill?' his friends asked him later.

"'Sure it hurt me; he said, 'but I wasn't going to peg along on the
proudest day of my life!' Which this day was.

"Behind the Colonel marched his staff, Lieut. Col. W.A. Pickering,
Capt. Adjutant Robert Ferguson, Major E.A. Whittemore, Regimental
Sergt. Majors C.A. Connick and B.W. Cheeseman, Regimental Sergts.
L.S. Payne, H.W. Dickerson and W.W. Chisum, and Sergts. R.C. Craig,