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Updated: June 16, 2025
Announcing my determination to see the boxes off, I accompanied by my maid walked down to the depot just before train-time. There was only one rickety old passenger-car attached to the train. This, as well as a long succession of box-and cattle-cars, were crowded with troops, reinforcements to Atlanta.
Besides the first-class and second-class coaches, most trains carry box-cars, very much like cattle-cars and without seats of any kind, for third-class passengers. And I don't recall having seen one yet that wasn't chock full of Chinamen, happy as a similar group of Americans would be in new automobiles.
Early the next morning the 106th was bundled into cattle-cars and started off among the first. The car that contained Jean's squad was particularly crowded, so much so that Loubet declared there was not even room in it to sneeze.
It was seven days later, and many things had been done, when with our working beasts and few other possessions lurching before us in a couple of cattle-cars, we went clattering through the Rockies at the tail of a big freight train.
Their destination proved to be Brest, which they reached at midnight of the next day, after travelling in cattle-cars for about thirty hours. They were transferred at once to a hulk lying in the harbor, clean shirts and water to wash with were given them, which seemed positive luxuries. Their treatment was not bad; they had hammocks to sleep in, and permission to smoke on deck every other day.
It was alleged that all males between the ages of 17 and 30 were being sent in cattle-cars to Germany. Cardinal Mercier of Belgium protested in the name of humanity, the men being ruthlessly torn from their families, and said the Belgians were being reduced to a state of slavery.
A thousand emaciated forms, tottering, reeling, hobbling on canes and crutches, wending their way to the cars, not to luxurious cushioned seats, but to hard, jolting cattle-cars, for a long ride of hundreds of miles before reaching the sea-coast. But hope inspired them. They were breathing fresh air, and were gazing on smiling fields, waving with grain. They were on their way home.
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