Although the individual soldier’s affidavit was largely used in the settlement of claims, still such a short-cut method of arriving at a judgment was permissible only when the official records were missing. The gradual concentration of records after the armistice, and sometimes the discovery of lost records as the disbanding Army cleared up its quarters, often brought to light papers that had been missing when the troops were discharged. Every claim submitted involved on the part of the Finance Service a search of the records. Since many of the records on which the claim depended were in the possession of the A. E. F. in France, it was impossible for a long time to do much in Washington with such claims. The A. E. F. records returned to the United States in the early autumn of 1919, but it was several months thereafter before they were properly sorted, filed, and made available for research. During the first fifteen months after the armistice, the claims submitted to the War Department by former enlisted men totaled 184,256. Of these, about 64,000 were paid in that period, 33,000 declined, and 6,400 transferred to some other branch of the Government for settlement--103,000 claims disposed of and 81,000 still in process of adjudication and settlement. CHAPTER VI PICKING UP AFTER THE ARMY Even in the United States, with its well-developed trunk-checking and baggage-transfer systems, the management of any considerable amount of personal luggage gives concern to the traveler. In a foreign land, travel with baggage is nothing less than an ordeal; and the man who can convoy a fleet of trunks over a foreign tour and bring them all back without loss to the home port, may safely regard himself as an expert globe-trotter. What, then, of the A. E. F.? It was on foreign soil, in a land where military traffic had almost altogether superseded civilian, and the troops had little benefit of the services which ordinarily look out for civilians. The soldiers, by the nature of things, could not give personal attention to their baggage. You might multiply the troubles of the individual traveler by the two million men of the A. E. F., and still fall short of even half of the baggage problem of that organization.