Two Colored women with the American Expeditionary Forces — A Closer Reading

A Structure of Shared Authorship

The book's organization is unusual: two authors each claim distinct chapters, marked by typographic symbols in the table of contents. This is not a co-written narrative smoothed into a single voice, but a deliberate alternation that preserves individual perspective. Hunton's chapters (marked with a dagger) and Johnson's (marked with an asterisk) cover overlapping periods and places, yet each brings different emphases. For instance, Johnson writes on "Relationships with the French" and "Education," while Hunton covers "The Call and the Answer" and "Reburying the Dead." This structure allows the reader to compare how two women in the same theater of war frame their experiences—one perhaps more focused on institutional work, the other on interpersonal encounters. The alternation also mirrors the movement between camps and duties, as the authors were often assigned to different locations.

Recurring Images of Prejudice and Challenge

A striking pattern in the excerpts is the repeated confrontation with racial prejudice, even in France. The authors describe being "tremendously shocked" to find that "prejudice could follow us for three thousand miles across the Atlantic." This image of prejudice as a persistent, traveling force recurs: it appears in the initial assignment difficulties—Johnson was sent back from Brest because the area was "not keen to the advantage of a colored canteen worker"—and in the later sense of a "challenge to a heroic sacrifice." The text does not dwell on abstract ideals but on concrete incidents: a group of men secretaries ordered home, a camp where a woman made ice cream and "let them open their hearts to her." These small, vivid details ground the larger theme of systemic bias in everyday interactions.

Movement Between Camps and the Geography of Service

The narrative is built around physical movement: from the United States to France, then between camps in the St. Nazaire area, and later to Paris and the advanced sector. The authors trace a geography of service that is also a geography of opportunity. St. Nazaire is described as "the pioneer section for colored work," where the first Y hut for colored men was built. The text names specific individuals—Franklin O. Nichols, Rev. Leroy Ferguson, John C. Wright, William Stevenson—and the huts they directed. This catalog of names and places gives the account a documentary quality, as if the authors are creating a record of who was where and when. The movement is not random; it reflects the logistical challenges of wartime welfare work and the slow, uneven expansion of opportunities for African American personnel.

The Canteen as a Site of Witness and Care

The canteen emerges as a central setting, a place where the authors' work is both practical and symbolic. At Y hut 5, Camp One, Hunton served under John C. Wright, visiting other camps; Johnson was placed at Camp Lusitania. The canteen is where soldiers could find "ice cream and other 'goodies'" and, more importantly, a sympathetic ear. The authors emphasize that their service required "the sympathetic co-operation of her hut secretary," highlighting the interpersonal dynamics that made the work possible. The canteen is not just a backdrop but a stage for the authors' observations of soldier morale, racial tensions, and the small acts of humanity that sustained men in a "veritable wilderness of hardships." This focus on the canteen gives the book a grounded, day-to-day texture.

Readers should attend to the way the book shifts between the two authors' voices, noting how each frames similar events. The text is best approached as a collaborative document that preserves individual perspective rather than merging into a single narrative. The recurring attention to place—St. Nazaire, Brest, Paris—and to the names of fellow workers suggests that the authors were consciously building a record for future readers, one that would testify to both the achievements and the obstacles faced by African American women in the war effort.

I keep thinking about those two women over there in France—how they carried tea and kind words to soldiers who barely saw them as equals. It reminds me, subtly, of the larger machinery of that war, the political weight they were stepping around. The quiet patience in their account lingers. So does this other book, America and the World War — Reading Companion, which sits nearby on my shelf, a sterner, colder echo of the same vast conflict.