The Marine Corps, which is
under control of the Navy Department, was quite used to such things.
Through all the years when trouble had occurred in our island
possessions, in the West Indies, Central America, or where not, it was
the marines who received orders to start out and settle things. As a
consequence, orders to go to France were merely in the line of the
customary day's work.
Thus the only ceremony characterizing the departure of Colonel Charles
A. Doyen and his men from the navy-yard at Philadelphia, was a brief
speech by Major-General George Barnett, commandant of the corps, to the
officers of the field and staff of the overseas outfit, and to the
company officers. No colors were unfurled. No reporters or press
photographers were present. The regimental bandsmen went to war with
their instruments cased and rifles over their shoulders. On the
navy-yard parade-ground a sailor baseball nine from one of the
battleships was at practice. The marines slipped away so quietly that
the ball-players did not know until afterward that they had missed
seeing the departure of 2,700 men bound for the battle-front.
At 2.30 o'clock that afternoon the baseball-players had the
parade-ground to themselves, and no one was in sight on the street in
front of the home of the post commander of marines but a small boy in
rompers, playing with a fox-terrier. A few seconds later the head of a
column of soldiers of the sea, clad in khaki, and in heavy marching
order, swung into that brick-paved street.
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