Headquarters of the Service of Supply was at Tours.  It was the great assembling and distributing point.  At that point and at the base ports of Brest, Bordeaux, St. Nazaire and La Pallice most of the Negro Service of Supply organizations were located.  The French railroads and the specially constructed American lines ran from the base ports and centered at Tours.

This great industrial army was under strict military regulations.  Every man was a soldier, wore the uniform and was under commissioned and non-commissioned officers the same as any combatant branch of the service.

The Negro Service of Supply men acquired a great reputation in the various activities to which they were assigned, especially for efficiency and celerity in unloading ships and handling the vast cargoes of materials and supplies of every sort at the base ports.  They were a marvel to the French and astonished not a few of the officers of our own army.  They sang and joked at their work.  The military authorities had bands to entertain them and stimulate them to greater efforts when some particularly urgent task was to be done.  Contests and friendly rivalries were also introduced to speed up the work.

The contests were grouped under the general heading of “A Race to Berlin” and were conducted principally among the stevedores.  Prizes, decorations and banners were offered as an incentive to effort in the contests.  The name, however, was more productive of results than anything else.  The men felt that it really was a race to Berlin and that they were the runners up of the boys at the front.

Ceremonies accompanying the awards were quite elaborate and impressive.  The victors were feasted and serenaded.  Many a stevedore is wearing a medal won in one of these conquests of which he is as proud, and justly so, as though it were a Croix de Guerre or a Distinguished Service Cross.  Many a unit is as proud of its banner as though it were won in battle.

Thousands of Service of Supply men remained with the American Army of Occupation after the war; that is, they occupied the same relative position as during hostilities—­behind the lines.  The Army of Occupation required food and supplies, and the duty of getting them into Germany devolved largely upon the American Negro.

Large numbers of them were stationed at Toul, Verdun, Epernay, St. Mihiel, Fismes and the Argonne, where millions of dollars worth of stores of all kinds were salvaged and guarded by them.  So many were left behind and so important was their work, that the Negro Y.M.C.A. sent fifteen additional canteen workers to France weeks after the signing of the armistice, as the stay of the Service of Supply men was to be indefinitely prolonged.

The Rev. D.L.  Ferguson, of Louisville, Ky., who for more than a year was stationed at St. Nazaire as a Y.M.C.A. worker, and became a great favorite with the men, says that during the war they took great pride in their companies, their camps, and all that belonged to the army; that because their work was always emphasized by the officers as being essential to the boys in the trenches, the term “stevedore” became one of dignity as representing part of a great American Army.