Unnamed American World War I Soldiers

Character Key Number: 
2987
Display Name: 
Unnamed American World War I Soldiers
Sort Name: 
Unnamed American World War I Soldiers
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
No
Biography: 

The "first American Expeditionary Force" that Gavin Stevens refers to in "Knight's Gambit" are the more than one million U.S. troops who landed in France in 1917 and 1918 to join England and France in the fight against the Germany (256). Faulkner refers to this same large group again in The Town, but other than the Sartoris twins as aviators and the one soldier in the unit from Yoknapatawpha who was wounded in combat, they only appear as customers in Montgomery Ward Snopes' two brothels, and that only generically: "any time a soldier" wanted, for instance, "he could buy a ticket from Montgomery Ward and go around through the back door and get his-self entertained" (120).