Officers designated for service with the Eighty-sixth Division, which was to be formed at Camp Grant, Illinois, were ordered to report for duty August, 28th, 1917. I so reported and was assigned to the Three Hundred and Forty-first Infantry. Being a captain I was selected to command “G” Company. I received my quota of the first drafted men to arrive, on the second of September. They continued to arrive and in a few weeks I had two hundred and ninety-two men in addition to my five training camp lieutenants. The new organization had just gone into effect. Arms and equipment arrived slowly. There was more or less confusion; no one was right sure what to do and a company commander had a real job on his hands. Day and night I labored--drilled, studied, taught, did paper work, and then after three months or a little over, just when I was beginning to pride myself, like all the other captains, on having the best company in the regiment, and when we were all seeing visions of entraining for France, they began transferring our men--thirty or forty from a company at a time--to other divisions, and our hearts sank. I tried to get transferred myself, for like many others, I wanted to soldier in France, not at Camp Grant. Company commanders were not being transferred to other camps, but just before Christmas I was ordered to report to the One Hundred and Eighty-third Brigade, a part of which was attached at Camp Grant. I was then assigned to the Three Hundred and Sixty-fifth Infantry, a regiment of that Brigade and of the Ninety-second Division (colored). I felt sure that the Ninety-second Division, since it was the only complete colored division, and there was not much danger of its men being transferred, would go to France long before the Eighty-sixth--and it did. For a time I was with the supply company. Then I was transferred to the headquarters company, a rather uncertain and complicated organization in those days, with an authorized strength of seven officers and three hundred and fifteen men. I remained with that company until after our arrival in France. In the infantry regiments of the Ninety-second Division the lieutenants and captains were colored with the exception of the regimental staff captains and the captains of the headquarters and supply companies. The majors commanding the battalions and the lieutenant-colonel and the colonel were old regular army white officers.