St. Nazaire came to life more quickly that morning than ever before in its history. The Mayor of the town was one of the busiest figures on the street. In high hat and full dress attire, he hurried about trying to assemble the village orchestra of octogenarian fiddlers and flute players to play a welcome for the new arrivals. The townspeople neglected their _cafe au lait_ to rush down to the quay to look at the new ships. The waters of the harbour sparkled in the early morning sunlight. The dawn had been grey and misty, but now nature seemed to smile. The strange ships from the other side of the world were grey in hulk but now there were signs of life and colour aboard each one of them. Beyond the troop ships lay the first United States warships, units of that remarkable fighting organisation which in the year that was to immediately follow that very day were to escort safely across three thousand miles of submarine-infested water more than a million and a half American soldiers. The appearance of these first warships of ours was novel to the French townspeople. Our ships had peculiar looking masts, masts which the townspeople compared to the baskets which the French peasants carry on their backs when they harvest the lettuce. Out further from the shore were our low-lying torpedo destroyers, pointed toward the menace of the outer deep. Busy puffing tugs were warping the first troop ship toward the quay-side. Some twenty or thirty American sailors and soldiers, who had been previously landed by launch to assist in the disembarkation, were handling the lines on the dock. When but twenty feet from the quay-side, the successive decks of the first troop ship took on the appearance of mud-coloured layers from the khaki uniforms of the stiff standing ranks of our men. A military band on the forward deck was playing the national anthems of France and America and every hand was being held at the salute. As the final bars of the "Star Spangled Banner" crashed out and every saluting hand came snappily down, one American soldier on an upper deck leaned over the rail and shouted to a comrade on the shore his part of the first exchange of greetings between our fighting men upon this historic occasion. Holding one hand to his lips, he seriously enquired: "Say, do they let the enlisted men in the saloons here?" [Illustration: THE FIRST AMERICAN FOOT ON FRENCH SOIL] [Illustration: THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF FRANCE] Another soldier standing near the stern rail had a different and more serious interrogation to make. He appeared rather blase about it as he leaned over the rail and, directing his voice toward a soldier on the dock, casually demanded: "Say, where the Hell is all this trouble, anyhow?"