July 3rd, 2026 (Continued): There was one passage about how the divisions were determined:
<When the time arrived for making a permanent division of the Company into four platoons and their into squads it was obvious that considerable competition was violent as to which officer would be able to obtain his platoon the greatest number of the best men in the Company and some fair plan had to be developed so that the platoons would be fairly equal to one another. First Lieutenant Theriault was assigned to command the First Platoon and First Lieutenant Donnelly the Fourth, Second Lieutenant Caspary the Second and Second Lieutenant Stevens the Third. First Lieutenant Lamb was the Company Executive Officer and Captain Thomas S. Smith was the Commanding Officer of the Company.
<Lieutenant Donnelly suggested a plan which was promptly approved by Captain Smith as being the fairest one presented and then was approved by all the Officers. It was as follows. The Officers would rotate in selecting Sergeants, then Corporals and then Privates. The first selection would be made by Theriault as the Senior Lieutenant, the second by Donnelly as next in seniority, followed by Caspary and then Stevens. By virtue of this process Lieutenant Donnelly got most of the boys from Ontonagon.
<The Company started its training program with setting-up exercises, and it was not long before the replacements were hitting the ball but it was a waste of valuable time and in the future it should be pointed out to all that physical training of the American youth should be made compulsory. It was no reflection on the men themselves that their condition was poor, as many had to start working for a living at an early age and never had an opportunity in life to play or take part in sports to build themselves up physically. Many of those first replacements later on became our heroes, and figured largely in the honor medals won. The spirit of the training camps probably will never be equalled again. Everyone seemed anxious to make themselves perfect in the art of war, go across and get the job finished.
<The officers decided to fit themselves for the most important of the specialties so that in the Company there would always be one of them who understood that particular subject perfectly. These courses averaged a month or better. Captain Smith specialised in Gas; Lieut. Theriault in Topography; Lieutenant Donnelly in Grenades; Lieutenant Caspary in Automatic Weapons; Lieutenant Stevens in Bayonet Work and Lieutenant Lamb in Intelligence.
<Among the enlisted men the following is a partial list of those who became specialists in the Division and Regimental Schools.
<Bayonet: Carkeek, Kroll, Obenhoff, Michelcic, Colenso, Chiminatti and Chofsky.
<Machine Guns: Shotney, Kroll, Blair, Loranger, Salminen, Guy Aubry and Kalicz.
<Bombing: Hebert, Delbridge, Born, Martin Messner and Dunn.
<Musketry: Opal, Cornish, Heault, Montgomery, Kohko, Robson, Ingram, Dobbek, Bilger and Dickens.
<Wire Entanglements: Taylor, Fred Messner, Kosecek, Learned and Alfred.
<Signalling: Scype and Pelkey
<Gas: McCurdy.
I found this interesting passage about Chinese workers being shitty in chapter 5:
<It must not be imagined that our men did all the work. Indeed not twice the number could have done so much. We had been there perhaps a week when there arrived some five or six thousand Chinese coolies, in their bare feet, blue quilt-like costumes, shaved pates, they were funny creatures indeed. They were all piled into an immense warehouse, where bunks were set and one end of which was used as a kitchen. Lt. Courtaux of the Armée Française and six sous-officers, or non-commissioned officers, were in charge of these coolies. The Lieutenant was a man of perhaps forty years of age who had spent much of his life in Indo-China for the French government and was thoroughly capable of handling his charges, as were also his assistants. They soon organized them into large groups each of which was supervised by a French N.C.O. and a Chinaman who dressed in civilian clothes and spoke French. These groups were in turn subdivided into smaller sections, over which presided one of our men, detailed for the purpose and identified by a flag bearer, who carried a stick with a piece of cheese cloth flying from the end, on which was painted a Chinese character. This group was further subdivided into squads with more doughboys in charge.
<It was indeed a curious sight to see this gang of coolies form in the morning for work after their mess. The large group of perhaps one thousand was a part of the six thousand located in the entire camp but in different sections of the Camp. The standard bearers would take their positions and the coolies would untangle themselves and group around their respective flags after which they would further group themselves into squads and each squad into sets of fours, because it seemed that it took four coolies to do anything, one refusing to work alone and always requiring three helpers. Four coolies would lift a plank that one American would ordinarily handle alone, and the same four would unload a box car or load one, but always the four worked together and no attempt was made to break them up because then they were worse than useless.
<Naturally there were many amusing things happening daily. The coolie was the most curious person. His off hours were spent in rambling all over the place, prying into every possible nook and corner until he became such a nuisance that it was necessary to keep guards on duty all the time to keep him in line. To make him live up to the sanitary regulations was the hardest task. Latrines were constructed as close as possible to their barracks in which they lived but no matter how close they were, they were always too far away from John Chinaman, and the sentries, especially those on night duty had a difficult task until an unfortunate occurrence awakened the coolies to a realization that they must do as they were told.
<This happened one night when a coolie who had tried to evade the sentry drew a knife and made as if to attack him, and the coolie was promptly bayonetted. A court martial exonerated the sentry and the incident had a salutary effect. Sundays were the hardest days to keep the coolies in Camp. They did not work and evaded the sentries easily getting into the little town, invading the shops buying all sorts of knick-knacks and were very hard to corral and bring back to Camp, which was the duty of the patrols of Military Police. One of the things the coolies would give most anything for was hard-tack and the officers were hard put to keep the reserve rations of the enlisted men complete at all times.
<Thus were five weeks spent at Gievres. The first part of the period the men were quite content to work. The situation was novel, but they felt they would do anything that would bring them to the final goal—facing the Bosche. Yet as the weeks went by with no apparent move in sight the men became a little restless. Some few took to wandering away from their jobs and seeking refreshments during the afternoons, which were now beginning to become warmer. The refreshments always consisted of something to eat as well as something to drink---what doughboy was ever at a loss for capacity when it came to eating---usually an omelette of innumerable eggs, cream, cheese, war bread and beaucoup vin rouge. As a consequence men were often in a hilarious, irresponsible mood, though very, very infrequently were any ever troublesome.
<During the last few weeks at Gievres nothing of great importance transpired. The men continued work in the Engineer Depot in supervisory capacities directing the Chinese coolies and doing good work in the construction of the railroad sidings. The officers had little or nothing to do except read the communiques that came in with news of the German offensive in progress on the Flanders front and wondering how much longer it would be before they could get into action. About the 15th of March word was received that recommendations were to be made of non-commissioned officers for the Army Candidate School. Eight applications were given to the Company officers, being from Sgt. John Theriault, Kroll, L. Aubry, Corp. Thors, Sgt. Wilkins, Dickens and Pimstein. Probably the hardest task was to grade the various applicants. This was done through the rating system then in vogue in the army. Each of the five officers graded each candidate individually. The results were then averaged and Serg. John Theriault, Corporal Thors and Serg. Dickens were selected in the order named to represent the Company; however one had to be dropped because the Battalion quota would not permit three men going from the Company, so that on March 28th., Sgt. Theriault and Corp. Thors left the Company to report to the Army Candidate School at Langres.
[POST SPLIT IN MULTIPLE PARTS DUE TO CHARACTER LIMIT]
I'm thinking of checking out a protest tomorrow haha But it's kind of scary because leftists and Chinese people are committing knife attacks these days
That's why I really want to live there later. As for my uncle, I just hope everything goes well for him. He might actually run for president in the next election! 
