[WORLD WAR I]. Panoramic photograph of Company "H," 815th Pioneer Infantry Regiment.

Panoramic photograph of Company H in the 815th Pioneer Infantry Regiment with the location marked as "NEWPORT NEWS" over a crossed out "WEST VA." Photographers mark reads "No 3003 / EWING, INC., Photographers / Baton Rouge, La." 9 3/8 by 43 1/2 in. (sight), framed to 46 1/2 by 12 1/2 in.

Photograph is arranged with the officers positioned at the left and the enlisted men arranged in three rows spread over the remainder of the image. The photograph is mounted in a wood frame with no numbers visible on the subjects or a personnel list present.

Formed as an all-black unit with white officers, the 815th Pioneer Infantry Regiment formed in 1918, and sent to France for overseas service in the autumn of that year, shortly before the armistice. As a result, their wartime service was brief, but the unit's work did not end with the conclusion of hostilities. In the months following the end of World War I, pioneer infantry regiments like the 815th received the grim task of clearing the battlefields of barbed wire, munitions, and the dead. By June of 1919, the unit was disbanded, and its personnel discharged back into civilian life.

Though the US Army attempted to funnel African American soldiers into support roles, members of the Pioneer Infantry units did see combat. Their example would inspire not only the generation that mobilized to fight in World War II, but provided African Americans with an opportunity to experience life in unsegregated nations, thereby laying the foundation for the modern Civil Rights movement.