The A. E. F.’s Baggage Service, besides finding and caring for lost baggage, was charged with the important duty of acting as the baggage agent for the returning expedition. There was no counterpart to such an organization before the armistice. Had there been, the Expeditionary Forces would have had practically no baggage problem at all, so far as the loss of baggage _en route_ was concerned; for, on the way home, thanks to the new Service, the troops lost scarcely any baggage. Here, then, was another new military organization called into existence by our experience in the World War; one which proved its usefulness and thereby won a place for itself in any plans for large military operations in the future. The Baggage Service saved its own cost over and over again, for the Government itself is often responsible for the loss of the personal baggage of soldiers and expects to pay in cash the claims presented. Indeed, many claims for lost baggage which had accrued at A. E. F. headquarters were settled by the restoration of the baggage itself to its owners. In handling baggage for the traveling expedition, the Baggage Service set up branches at all the important A. E. F. troop centers and at all the American embarkation ports in France. The function of the baggage men at the troop centers was to see to it that when units departed their baggage went forward with them, properly marked and routed. The Service took charge, not only of organization baggage, but of the baggage of individual soldiers as well. At the ports its branches acted as checking, storing, and forwarding agents. Brest was the largest of our embarkation ports in France, and at Brest the official baggage office was operated by five officers and one hundred enlisted men. The official “baggage room” at Brest was a whole huge warehouse located on one of the jetties. The military passengers awaiting embarkation at Brest usually numbered well over 100,000, and it took an immense storage space to contain all their baggage.