After peace was declared and the American army started home, there remained still much work to be done “over there.” The heroes who fell at Château-Thierry, Amiens, St. Mihiel, in Belleau Wood and the Argonne Forest deserved a suitable resting-place. The work of reburying the dead was done almost exclusively by the Negro stevedores. Daily convoys of trucks went as far as a hundred kilometers, and men searched the fields, forests, and shell holes for the dead, who were brought to the cemeteries and reinterred. This was the most ghastly and gruesome task in the A. E. F.; yet the way the Negroes worked may be judged from the fact that at Romagne, where the largest American cemetery is located, 1038 and 1050 soldiers were reburied in two successive days. The nature of the work required that much of it be done after midnight when most of the men were asleep. One could hear the sound of the hammer and the tread of feet, and the lonely minor chord of the Negroes’ song as they drove nails into the coffins. The electric lights all over the cemeteries at night showed these men moving about without the traditional fear attributed to them. Theirs was no enviable task, but no group of men ever displayed finer spirit in the performance of duty, and no soldiers more loyally served the republic. * * * * * With all of their good service, however, the stevedore organizations were not popular with the Negro soldiers. One reason for this was the lack of opportunity in them for promotion. One incident will illustrate the situation. A colonel who was organizing one of these regiments out of recently drafted men, in an attempt to stir up enthusiasm, said, “Men, we are going overseas in two weeks. We are going to see the country and have some fun. You’ll probably never hear a gun fired.” There was no applause, and the colonel seemed not to realize that the lack of it was due to the fact that the men not only wanted to hear guns fired but wanted to fire some themselves. Continuing, he said, “This is the first opportunity Negroes ever had to serve as engineers. It is all an experiment. It’s up to you men to make good.” After concluding his remarks he asked if there were any questions. “Sir, Colonel, what about promotions?” asked one man. This turn rather surprised the officer, but he recovered and said, “The officers will be white.” A moment later he added, “The non-commissioned officers will also be white.” Then he paused, and the soldier repeated the question. The colonel then said, “There will be twenty-five first class privates, who will carry rifles, and you know they get three dollars a month more pay. You know cooks are needed. A lot of men will want that job, but it takes a ---- good man to be a cook.” The silence which greeted this remark indicated great disappointment on the part of the men. Seeing this, the colonel tried to hold out some hope by saying that some non-commissioned officers would be made in France