Aubreville (Meuse)
March 15, 1919
My darling wife:
It is 8:20 Saturday evening. I have just returned from an after supper walk with a fellow named Hepner, a Mennonite from Kansas. We went to Parois, the next ruined village east of here on the Verdun road. Most of the buildings are wholly shattered, but here and there is a house a couple of rooms in which are still in tact, and the owners of these are beginning to return. The church seems to be the least damaged building. It was hit only twice, once in the tower and again at the edge of the main roof midway toward the pulpit. We went in and to our astonishment found that the American army had turned it into a gymnasium with a basket ball floor and baskets! As is the custom here the village grave yard is just outside the church. It is very crowded.
As I began in a diary the other day, I am excerpting from letters my grandfather sent home from France during and immediately after World War I. He was a Quaker conscientious objector that, in lieu of military service, served in relief and reconstruction work with the newly formed (1917) American Friends Service Committee for approximately 10 months from just before the end of the war until the end of the following summer of 1919.
This particular letter spans several days from March 15-19, 1919. He has just arrived in Aubreville in the Verdun region an area of France that saw some of the worst of the war. He had previously served in Ornans near the Swiss border building temporary housing sections and now is in an area completely destroyed by the war putting those sections together into temporary housing for the returning French peasants. During his off days my grandfather would often take hikes through the countryside with some of the other men.
The American Friends Service Committee was primarily formed by Friends (Quakers) and was in fact originally brainstormed at a meeting of young Friends at Winona Lake, Indiana in 1915. In the only write-up I’ve found of this event my grandfather is named as one of the leading men.
"In 1915," wrote Horace Mather Lippincott, "Henry Cadbury, Vincent Nicholson and Garfield Cox were foremost among a few young Friends who called a Peace Conference in Indiana. This led to a National Peace Committee on which Friends of all groups worked side by side." The groups referred to were the Five Years Meeting, the Friends General Conference and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Arch Street).
Two years later…
It was this National Peace Committee which called the first meeting to consider the establishment of an emergency Quaker organization, inviting five persons from each of its three constituent groups to attend. On April 30, 1917 thirteen Friends met together in the Young Friends Association building, known in recent years as The Whittier, at the corner of 15th and Cherry Streets, Philadelphia. Henry Cadbury served as chairman for the day. In May the name American Friends Service Committee, familiarly known as the AFSC, was given to this emergency organization and on June 11th Rufus M. Jones was appointed its chairman.
While primarily a Friends organization the AFSC was created with the participation of all traditional “peace churches” in mind. This included the Mennonites (including the Amish), Brethren and Friends. But it was also open to all conscientious objectors whether religious or otherwise.
This morning the white captain of the negro troops came to where we were working and talked to us quite a while. Before the war he had been in business in South America, most recently in Ecuador, and had taken active part in some revolutionary movements. In this war he went into action Sept. 26th and stayed in till Nov. 4th. He and one of his lieutenants were the only unwounded officers left in his company. Out of 250 men more than 150 were killed or wounded. The captain has been in Portugal, Ireland, England, Wales, and France so far in the war, and now he’s hoping to get into Russia. He expects to remain in the American army for a year and then to swear allegiance to King George and get into the British. Yesterday an American soldier who fought here in Aubreville on last Sept. 26th described most vividly to me the events of that day.
I’m not sure whether to think this captain is a mercenary or what. He starts out a revolutionary but wants to get into Russia where the revolution is still being fought (he doesn’t say on what side). And he wants to swear allegiance to the English King so that he can join the British army. Presumably the American army will all be decommissioned soon.
The letter goes on a bit with all of it interesting but I’ll skip ahead…
We went up to the prison camp on the road just north of our shack. We talked to the guards and to a corporal in charge. The soldiers are sore because the government makes them give the prisoners the same food they get, and give them good medical care. The Americans want to treat the prisoners the way the French and British treat them. I asked them if it were not true that the German people were reciprocating by being good to the American soldiers in the army of occupation. They said yes, but that that was mere propaganda on the part of the Germans.
In the previous letter he wrote about how the German POW’s being used for labor complained that the French starved them but the Americans fed them well.
March 18 (9:30P.M.)
I planned to begin writing right after supper, but I had to do some figuring and checking on five car loads of house sections that arrived here this morning from Ornans – cars I helped to load while there….
At some point a little later he gets promoted into a supervisory role at the “equipe.” It is interesting that in another letter his father-in-law complains that he, a college professor, is wasting his work doing the manual labor of this reconstruction work and ought to have paid someone else to take his place. In this same letter he, the father-in-law, goes on about the plight of the working man everywhere giving the appearance of being an armchair socialist. Sadly I only have this one letter of my great-grandfather so it is not enough to go on to get a real feel for his thought and character.
After that Raymond Jenkins, a neighbor of Dr. Hole, and now in France and at this equipe got to talking to me and we’ve been at it ever since. He has been here just a year and was at Jubecourt near here during the heavy fighting here last September… One thing he tells me I’ll mention now. Some of the boys who were in the offensive at St. Mihiel (which the American press proclaimed so boastfully) were later barracked at Jubecourt & he came to know them well. He said the boys tho’t the Am. Press reports a great joke, for the Germans evacuated before the American offensive started, and the Americans had a hard time to catch up in time to take any prisoners before the German all got out of the salient. Less than 100 Americans were killed in the entire operation, and the number of prisoners was probably a third of that reported.
So I briefly perused the internet for information on the battle of St Mihiel, Sep, 1918. Gen. Pershing claimed a great victory. MacArthur and Patton both participated and added it to their resumes. I didn’t dig long enough to come up with contemporary news reports but even current ones give vastly different claims on the number of captured and killed. Pershing reported that he “speeded up” the offensive because it was going so well. One report said the Germans knew our plans ahead of time, that a Swiss paper had published the date and time of bombardment and assault, and that the Germans staged an orderly withdrawal. Another report says the Germans were caught by complete surprise. Good to know our modern news corp is keeping up with a fine tradition.
But let’s move on…
Captain Isbell (the man referred to earlier in this letter) invited us to go with him on a hiking trip into the Argonne forest to what he thinks is the most torn up spot on the entire Hindenburg line. He was taking with him his two second lieutenants (the one first lieutenant didn’t go) and about ninety negro troops. A fellow named Tatum and I accepted his invitation. We reported at the barracks at 9 A.M. & started at 9:25. We marched “at ease” in front with the officers. By aid of his compass (the day was cloudy) and his memory of the territory he led us till noon through the forest before he found a road – the one he was looking for. We wandered several kilometers out of the way in the woods west of here. When we found the road we ate lunch beside it among some dugouts once occupied by the French reserves. – The fire in the cookstove has gone out and the fellows have gone to bed, my feet are growing icy cold so I must go to bed.
Wednesday morning, March 19th
It is clear this morning and eight below freezing. It is cold here every morning….
I left you at the dugouts of the French reservists. The forest through which we had come was very dense most of the way with underbrush, the bottoms were very muddy and the low hills steep, so that the walk had been tiresome….
The road we had reached at noon was an excellent highway through the heart of the forest… The road was elaborately camouflaged by burlap stretched above it and colored a mottled brown and green. The burlap was suspended on either side from a row of fir trees which lined the road. (The forest itself is hardwood – mostly beech and oak). To the right of the road stood a concrete turret bristling with guns which swept the road. In the tops of high trees we could see the platforms of lookouts. From this point forward the maze of zigzag trenches became more intricate, the wood was threaded with barbed wire entanglements, and trees appeared which had been shattered by shell fire. To our right lay a large cemetery in which were buried the French who had fallen during four years of the struggle along this sector – for the line in the Argonne Forest changed but a few yards between Sept. 1914 & Sept. 1918!
At this point he had to head off to work for the day.
Returning to the battlefield, bits of guns, tanks, smashed autos and railway cars, gas masks and helmets strewed the ground… At a turn in the shell torn road we came upon the allied front line trenches which vivisected the crest of a low hill, and there we looked out upon “no man’s land”, a gently sloping valley with a higher ridge rising beyond, a ridge held by the Germans for four years. I cannot describe to you the desolation lying between these two front lines, for there is nothing to compare it to. Where four years ago was a dense forest was no longer a single stick standing. The soil that had been level was churned, re-churned and churned again. And, to make the impression more terrible, over all lay tangled masses of barbed wire wound about spiked iron frameworks. When we reached the German line we found little trace of it. In its place was a long ridge blown open by a series of great craters from 75 to 180 ft. across and from forty to seventy five feet deep. When the Germans found they must retreat last Sept. they mined the ridge and blew it up from the rear as it was charged by the Franco-American forces. From this point on north to the edge of the forest the woods are only partly shattered. Every few rods are groups of American, French, or German graves. Upon the grave is placed the helmet, and at its head a cross from which hung the metal identification tag of the fallen one. The American boys were mostly from Ind. and Ill. so far as I examined. At one place we came upon some German graves freshly opened (apparently by souvenir hunters whom I’ll wager were Americans). The uniforms had been robbed of buttons and iron crosses, the helmets were gone and the stinking skeletons lay upon the ground. Leonard is so anxious for a German war souvenir, I had a mind to bleach one of these skulls to bring to him!
Leonard was my grandfathers young nephew and there are a few mentions of my grandfathers struggle with the idea of bringing home a war souvenir for him. In regard to the American graves, my grandfather was from Indiana and my grandmother from Wisconsin. Prior to his heading off to France they lived in Indiana.
From that point they started to try and find their way back to Aubreville. My grandfather had injured his knee in a previous hike and it was giving him trouble so he hitched a ride back.
I caught the Red Cross truck three kilometers this side of Varennes just after passing through what used to be a town, but which is marked now by only a few fragments of stone wall. To the left (east) of this town rises the American “Dead Man’s Hill” on top of which used to be the village of Vauquois. But this hill has been battered for four years. In 1916 after the French failed in several bloody assaults to take it from the Germans, they dug a tunnel a mile long up to it, mined it, and blew the top off of it. They then charged and held half of it. The Germans held the other half. And so from that day till Sept. 1918 both sides faced each other on this hill which had been mined and countermined time and time again. I hope to go there on my next trip….
He writes a bit more and then concludes the letter…
Miss Kelsay of the relief equipe at Varennes told Libby that rats frequently awakened her at night by running across her face!
One of the boys is starting this moment for Grange-le-Comte, so if you’ll pardon errors and the abruptness of this conclusion of an incomplete letter I’ll give it to him to mail. I always fear that if I don’t get my letters off to you regularly you’ll be worrying yourself sick for fear something has happened to me.
Garfield
There were women Friends working in relief and reconstruction work as well. Hospitals, sewing, sorting through clothes sent from America, cooking and caring for the male Friends doing the construction work, etc. You get a feel for the conditions they worked under. In earlier letters my grandfather remarked about the lack of heating in the buildings they lived and worked in. At Ornans he and the fellows he roomed with had rigged up a stove and pipe in their room. This attracted others to use their room as a community room which bothered him regularly as he tried to write. The stove pipe also resulted in smoke wafting into the room of those on the floor above them. These men then blocked the pipe causing smoke to back up into their room and a battle of sorts was on! He also had many remarks about lack of cleanliness in their kitchens and amongst the French cooks. Similarly their only available bath was a common one many miles away that they got to use once a week, etc. There are also more descriptions of battlefields like these. All of them stark and ghastly. I even left out a little of that in my selections from this letter. It is clear to me that in his zeal as a pacifist he did not want to spare himself (or her) from seeing and experiencing the true results of war.