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Commended (104th Infantry) in letter from headquarters, 18th French Division, October 17, 1918.

Commended in letter from headquarters, 17th French Army Corps, October 24, 1918.

Commended in letter from headquarters, 2d French Colonial Corps, November 14, 1918.

GEN. EDWARDS AND THE Y. D.

Maj. Gen. Clarence R. Edwards and the Yankee Division will ever remain in intimate and loving association. This fighting gen­eral of the regular army organized the Division and took it overseas. He conducted the training which moulded it into a combat division of the highest class. He commanded it at Chemin-des-Dames, at Toul, at Chateau-Thierry and the Second Battle of the Marne, at St. Mihiel, and on the Meuse and at Verdun, until the final fort­night which preceded the Armistice. He was more than a friend, he was a father to his boys, and they knew him as such and as a leader of rare military skill. His going was a great grief to them. Although he was relieved of the command, among the men of the Y. D. he will always be 'Our General.'

Gen. Edwards was succeeded on October 25 by Brig. Gen. F. E. Bamford, who in turn, on November 19, was relieved by Maj. Gen. Harry C. Hale.

THE FIRST N. G. DIVISION IN FRANCE

The 26th was the first National Guard division, and, in fact, the first full division to arrive in France. Of fighting men it was preceded only by a part of the 1st Division of regulars. Its men are numbered in the first 50,000 of the American Expeditionary Forces. No other American division has seen so long and contin­uous service on the front. When the armistice was signed and the guns ceased to roar, the Y. D. had had nine months of incessant fighting, interrupted only by passage from front to front, always in its travels, as it happened, under the most adverse of weather conditions. Back and forth across northern France the regiments were shunted, always promised rest but never getting it, for no campaign could begin without them. Fully 1200 miles did the Yankees travel in France, before the Armistice was signed, always on grim business, never on pleasure bent.

The Division was the first to take over a sector at the front, as a division. They fought at Chemin-des-Dames, at Toul, at the Sec­ond Battle of the Marne, where they delivered the blow that sent the Hun reeling back from the salient, the apex of which was Chateau-Thierry; they fought at St. Mihiel, where they were given

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