| OCR Text |
Show WASHINGTON, Sept. 17.-Wash- irigton made holiday today to welcome home General Pershing and the first division. Every government department and commercial house was closed. Hours before the parade up Pennsylvania avenue was ready to start every street was pouring its thousands to line the sidewalks and fill the reviewing stands. Brilliant sunlight, tempered with a tang of autumn in the air, greeted the capital when it turned out to pay full tribute to the veterans. Along the coverging streets leading to the starting point, impromptu parades were held as the spick-and-span columns of the division began to gather. Along the route by which the infantry came, batteries of rolling kitchens, smoking and bubbling with noonday meals for the troops in preparation, stood parked against, the sidewalks while admirers viewed the busy cooks. A satisfying barrage of pleasant odors filled the street. At the reviewing stand before the White House, where Vice-President Marshall stood to honor the fighting men, high government officials and members of the diplomatic corps were moving early to their seats.' General Pershing, en route to his office before the parade, was stopped again and again, although the army limousine in which he rode, denied the crowds full sight of him. Trotting to his place on horseback, with his staff clattering behind him like a cavalry troop, everybody recognized him -and his hand was at salute most of the way in response to the cheers and shouted greetings. Pershing Leads Men. WASHINGTON, Sept. 17.-Amid a roar of welcome General Pershing led the First division of the American expeditionary forces up Pennsylvania avenue today to receive the nation's i homage. It was the last grand review of the wartime armies, the Victory parade, the last chance for the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children jammed along the route to voice appreciation of the valor and daring of lhat army, and they made the most o it. The procession reached its climax as the man who captained all the fighting forces of the nation in the great struggle passed through the Victory arch toward the reviewing stand where Vice President Marshall stood, representing President Wilson, to receive the general's salute. Behind him the picked thousands of the composite regiment, "Pershing's Own," formed a wall of bronzed faces as they swung into line. From the general himself to the last man of the tank battalion that brought up the rear of the column, this perfected fighting machine, a shock division of the American army,,in the war, was groonrvl to army perfection. WASHINGTON, Sept. 17.-Over historic Pennsylvania avenue, the American way of Victory marked out more : tlian fifty years ago by the returning blue-clad legions of the Army of the Potomac, the First division, American expeditionary force, marched today.- It was Washington's first great tparade of th3 war and it was conceived and carried out as the nation's tribute not alone to the veteran fighting men who marched, but to the whole great army of the mation created to make certain the utter- defeat of German dreams of world conquest. Marching in mass formation and equip-, ped with all the guns, gas throwers ana countless other death-dealing devices ot front line service, the First divisjiaii, fresh home from France, moved along the broad avenue, a living tide of sun (Continued On Page 5) |
