The training camp was their first destination and was to be their home for months.
Correspondents in France wrote of Negro soldiers being among the first expeditionary force to set foot upon the soil of the battle torn Republic.

This force arrived there in June, 1917, and was composed of marines and infantry from the Regular army.

Floyd Gibbons, the intrepid representative of the Chicago Tribune, speaking of the first Negro contingents in his remarkable book entitled, "And They Thought We Wouldn't Fight", said: "There was to be seen on the streets of St.Nazaire that day some representative black Americans, who had also landed in that historical first contingent.

There was a strange thing about these Negroes.

It will be remembered that in the early stages of our participation in the war it had been found that there was hardly sufficient khaki cloth to provide uniforms for all of our soldiers.
That had been the case with these American negro soldiers.
"But somewhere down in Washington, somehow or other, someone resurrected an old, large heavy iron key and this, inserted into an ancient rusty lock, had opened some long forgotten door in one of the Government arsenals.