In the Le Mans area, which before the armistice was used as a classification camp from which soldiers were sent as replacements to units in the field, the first Jewish work was started by Sergeant Charles S. Rivitz of Army Post Office 762 through the aid and assistance of his commanding officer, Lieutenant Willing of Cleveland. Lieutenant (later Captain) Willing, though a non-Jew, had taken a deep interest in the Jewish men in his unit while still in camp in the States and continued this interest to France. With the approval of Gen. Glenn, in command of the area, Rivitz was detailed to the Jewish Welfare Board under the supervision of the senior chaplain of the area and Capt. Willing. Sergeant Rivitz was not a social worker at all, but had one source of strength which made his good will effective. He was a soldier, had attained his sergeancy through force of personality; he knew what the soldiers wanted and insisted on giving it to them. He rented a chateau as a club house largely on his own responsibility, and the Jewish Welfare Board soon found that both the structure and his method of conducting it were excellent. His chief assistant was Corporal George Rooby, who after his discharge from the service volunteered for the first unit of the Joint Distribution Committee in Poland, and continued serving Jewry there. In fighting units also the Jewish officers and enlisted men were early active in welfare work. Two officers occur to me whose work I saw personally; undoubtedly there were many others with the same sort of interest. Captain Leon Schwartz of the 123rd Infantry, 31st Division, was active from the outset in his own division and the Le Mans area. Later, during the time when the army was trying every means to keep up the morale of the troops, and the temporary organization of "Comrades in Service" was being pushed through the G. H. Q. Chaplains' Office, Captain Schwartz was assigned to this work as the Jewish representative, and addressed hundreds of gatherings of soldiers, together with the Catholic and Protestant spokesmen for morale and comradeship. In the 26th Division, the "Yankee Division," Captain Bernard I. Gorfinkle of the Judge Advocate's office was one of the first and most effective Jewish workers in France. Captain Gorfinkle organized an overseas branch of the New England Y. M. H. A., deriving his first funds from the Young Men's Hebrew Associations of New England. Later, when the Jewish Welfare Board arrived, he joined forces with its Paris office for the benefit of his men. Mr. Goldhaar tells how surprised he was after the battle of Chateau Thierry to be highly complimented for the work of the J. W. B. in marking the Jewish graves. Of course, at that time no such work had yet been undertaken. On investigation he found that the graves of Jews of the 26th Division who fell in action had been marked with a crude Magen David by their comrades under the initiative of Captain Gorfinkle.