The Y. M. C. A. and Other Welfare Organizations
IT was our privilege to go overseas as welfare worker under the auspices of the Y. M. C. A., and from the time we entered active duty until we finished our work at Camp Pontanezen, we can conscientiously say that we had the greatest opportunity for service that we have ever known; service that was constructive, and prolific with wonderful and satisfying results.
The contact with a hundred thousand men, many of whom it was our privilege to help in a hundred different ways; men who were groping and discouraged; others who were crying loudly for help, that they might acquire just the rudiments of an education, and so establish connection with the anxious hearts whom they had left behind; and still others who had a depth of understanding and a breadth of vision that was at once a help and an inspiration.
It was a wonderful spirit that prompted the Y. M. C. A. to offer its vast facilities to this service; to cheer and encourage; to administer to the spiritual and physical needs; and to establish a connecting link between the soldier and the home; that home which ever kept for him a beckoning candle in the window, and a fire that was ever aglow.
And no less wonderful was the spirit of the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Knights of Columbus, the Jewish Welfare Board, and the Y. W. C. A.
For the privilege of serving in this capacity we shall ever be grateful, and not only for the privilege of service, but for the privilege of contact with a wonderful and soulful people; for the privilege of seeing their beautiful gardens, their fertile fields, their snowcapped mountains and winding rivers; for the privilege of gathering inspiration from their wealth of architectural beauty, their wonderful art galleries and cultural centers; and for the privilege of serving in even the smallest way to help in the preservation of the treasures of this wonderful civilization, for the generations of the future.
But to help to mar the beauty and joy of this service was ever-present war, with its awful toll of death and suffering; and then the service of the colored welfare workers was more or less clouded at all times with that biting and stinging thing which is ever shadowing us in our own country, and which marked our pathway through all our joyous privilege of giving the best that was within us of labor and devotion.
Upon our arrival in Paris we met Mr. Matthew Bullock and his staff of four secretaries, including the first colored woman, who had been ordered home as persona non grata to the army; this was done on recommendation of army officials in Bordeaux, who had brought from our southland their full measure of sectional prejudice.
This incident resulted in the detention of many secretaries, both men and women, from sailing for quite a period of time, and no more women came for nearly ten months, thus leaving three colored women to spread their influence as best they could among 150,000 men.
An incident, in some respects similar, occurred in connection with the work in the city of Brest. During the days when it became the greatest embarkation port in France, at times there were as many as forty thousand men of color, at Camp Pontanezen, waiting for transportation home, and up until about the 18th of June, 1919, there was only one colored Y man there and no women. This, too, at a time when Paris had as many as forty colored men and women, who had returned from their posts of duty, and were willing and anxious for reassignment. This spectacle would no doubt have continued until the close of the work, had not the writers remained in Paris for a period of ten days, requesting continuously that they be permitted to go to Brest. They were finally admitted through the intercession of Mr. W. S. Wallace, who had become the head of the personnel department. When they arrived they were told by the secretary at the head of the woman’s work for that region, that she had tried repeatedly to get colored women, but for some reason the Paris office had refused to send them. But the Paris office had said each time, upon being questioned with regard to the matter, that the office at Brest did not desire colored women secretaries. This misunderstanding came about, no doubt, when, one year previous, the first colored woman sent there had been returned to Paris. With the necessary tact and investigation on the part of the proper authorities, the matter could no doubt have been very easily adjusted, when the original men in authority at Brest had been replaced by others who were more reasonable, and who had more sympathy for the colored men; in that case we would not have been confronted with the spectacle of numbers of colored workers idle in Paris for a period of from four to six weeks, just one night’s ride from thousands of colored soldiers, who were necessarily centered at the great home-going port. Had they been there they could have been of wonderful service, at a time when waiting was a task that tried men’s souls.
Commendable things were accomplished, however, through the limited number of colored secretaries, the sum total of whom finally became seventy-eight men and nineteen women, the rank and file of whom were splendid, giving excellent service in whatever portion of the A. E. F. to which they happened to be assigned.
Among those who gave especially valiant service were Mr. Matthew Bullock, of Boston, Mass., who served with the 369th Infantry; Mr. H. O. Cook, of Kansas City, Mo., who served with the 371st; and Mr. E. T. Banks, of Dayton, Ohio, who served with the 368th. All of these men were cited for bravery as a result of their services with the combatant troops. Mr. Banks went over the top with his men in the Vienne, La Chateau sector, of the Argonne Forest. Mr. Cook gave gallant service in the Champagne offensive, working tirelessly until he was gassed; while Mr. Bullock could be seen at all times making his way under tremendous shell fire that he might reach his men with necessary supplies; all of these men won high praise for their services in giving first aid to the wounded.
While there is very little exception to the rule that the colored soldiers were generally and wonderfully helped by the colored secretaries, and while the official heads of the Y. M. C. A. at Paris were in every way considerate and courteous to its colored constituency, still there is no doubt that the attitude of many of the white secretaries in the field was to be deplored. They came from all parts of the United States, North, South, East and West, and brought their native prejudices with them. Our soldiers often told us of signs on Y. M. C. A. huts which read, “No Negroes Allowed”; and sometimes other signs would designate the hours when colored men could be served; we remember seeing such instructions written in crayon on a bulletin board at one of the huts at Camp I, St. Nazaire; signs prohibiting the entrance of colored men were frequently seen during the beginning of the work in that section; but always, when the matter was brought to the attention of Mr. W. S. Wallace, the regional secretary, he would immediately see that they were removed.