[Photo Album]: American Expeditionary Force WWI

France, 1917. Softcover. Very Good. Oblong quarto. Measuring 12½" x 10". Black leather photo album. A collection of 244 sepia toned or black and white gelatin silver photographs measuring between 2½" x 3½" and 3½" x 6", some with captions. A good only photo album with detached pages, but with very good or better photographs affixed to stiff black paper.

An album containing photos of a dock taken around 1915 as well as photos taken by a seaman in World War I. The early photographs show a group of men working on a large ship, both docked and at sea, including images of passing ships, men at the ship's wheel, and one of an unnamed lighthouse. After a break in the album, the second half shows service with either the Marines or Navy during World War I as part of the 1st A.E.F. force to arrive in France on the USS *Seattle* in 1917. They were docked at Port St. Nazaire in France, seen here, and were the first American troops to arrive in France.

According to historian, Fred Baldwin, "The USA had joined the war, fighting alongside the Allies, and chose Saint-Nazaire as one of their most important entry harbors to France and Western European battlefields. Between 1917 and 1919, almost 198,000 troops and a daily average of 4,000 tons of material transited through Saint-Nazaire." These pictures show the first U.S. troops marching through St. Nazaire, local women working for the war effort, and a photograph captioned "U.S. aeroplane." Depicted are French troops (here dubbed "Frenchies") as well as French children. A few pages show German prisoners with captions like, "glad to talk to we Americans," "well fed and happy," and "glad to be in France," which suggests the lives of POWs in France was preferable to life in the trenches. There are uncaptioned photos of European towns and local people as well as sailors posed in uniform in front of stately homes and in town squares. One photo shows a group of U.S. Marines engaged in Fourth of July activities on board ship in 1917. The last few pages show the men leaving port with at-sea photographs of the crew, a large group of uniformed soldiers presumably waiting to be offloaded for a mission, and passing ships including an unidentified medical vessel.

An extensive depiction of an American seaman's duty during World War I.