The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-08-06
Col. JohnS. SeweUBack. Home After Good Work
Former Alabama Man Gives Interesting Account of Achievements of 17th Engineers and Tells of His Duties As Commander at St. Nazaire Rotter-
 dam and Antwerp Bases
DUTIES OF 17TH ENGINEERS

of ports and maybe save many millions
 of dollars in future.
 DUTIES OF 17TH ENGINEERS t The Seventeenth Engineers regiment was in base section No. 1 IS months and
 in that time did S2s. .000, GOO worth of con- struction work. At one time the regiment
 had charge of S5000 men at one time.
 The regiment, of course. wanted to get to the front, and General Pershing told me he would send them just as soon as the transfer could be made from the base section without interrupting it's work too
 much. Unfortunately that time never came.
 Our regiment landed at Liverpool, spent four days in England and landed at Le Havre August r, 1917. It was made up almost entirely of men east of the
 Mississippi and south of the Potomac. but there were something like two hun dred men from the Chicago section so
 that 1 believe you can call it the first blue-gray regiment ever organized.
 The regiment had charge of all the construction work in base section No. which included St Nazaire, Nantes and Les Stables d Olonne. St. Nazaire was the largest freight port and Nantes the third. This base section handled approxi-
 mately 40 per cent of all the supplies
 
 also had the largest base hospital of the A. E. F, at Savenay which was built by our regiment and our regimental surgeon became it's commanding officer
 We took with us in our regiment Dr. Walter F. Scott of Birmingham and he was transferred and put in charge of the
 urological work of the entire base section. He originated and put into effect the rules for handling venereal diseases with | 11 f1,o r.ttr he. ion, ha lowest percentage of venereal diseases ir the entire American army and his rue' were the basis for those which were ultimately adopted for the entire A. E. F
 There were nine of the railway regi- ments which originally went to France five of which were construction regiments. There was fine spirit among them s,' that men from the different regiments were loaned temporarily to the other units for emergency work. For instance bat talion of men from the Nineteenth en- gineers which came to us was at one time setting up and getting out 100 loco motives a week.
 CARE FOR GROVES q should like to say just a word about the attitude of the Belgians and French toward American graves. An incident will show the spirit. When in Antwerp I got instructions to see that every American grave in that Belgian base had flowers and an American flag on Decora ton day, When the officers went out over Belgium to see to it they came back and reported that the graves were already cared for and were beautifully cared for all the time. In every case Belgians living near the graves said they regarded it as a
 privilege to keep these graves perpetually. The same thing was true in the French territory
 "As I came home through formerly devastated Belgium I marveled at the beautiful crops I Saw. There were no homes. simply shacks and makeshifts sc l far as living quarters were concerned | But there were no makeshifts in the crops. I think it shows graphically the l spirit of the Belgians. When our base was established in Antwerp the money
 spent there was the first real money they i had seen since the war began and they | were all eager to work Some of tn; 1 best stevedores I ever saw worked for
 us for S. 40 an eight-hour day and any
 stevedore anywhere in the world at any
 time is worth that much money TherF l is no disposition to take advantage ot | the situation.
 Colonel Sewell became commander oi 1 base section No 1 August 1, 1918. went ] to Rotterdam in February and to Antwerp | in March. His plans after being discharg- l ed from the army are still indefinite.