This is the nineth in a series of excerpts from letters that my grandfather, Garfield V. Cox, wrote home from France during his service with the American Friends Service Committee during and immediately following the end of World War I. For the first half of his time in France he was stationed in Ornans near the Swiss border. The first diary in this series is from the first letter he wrote after transferring to Aubreville near Verdun in the war zone. The second describes a hike he took along the battle lines in the Argonne Forest and the third is from a letter to his mother and father in which he recounts that same hike but also describes some of his work and the conditions he and his crew were working under. The fourth described his climb up Mt. D'or in which he gained a panoramic view of the Swiss Alps. The fifth discusses the travails of German POW's at the hands of the French. The sixth included discussions he had with a Quaker leader on the possibility of revolution in America and the beginning of a Mission planning conference he was attending. The seventh continued discussion of the conference and the problem of employing German POW labor. The eighth returns mostly to the subject of the work they are doing along with German opinions of a few capitalists being the cause of the war.
This post covers parts of three different letters dated April 14, 20 and 21, 1919. The April 14 letter contains a couple of brief but interesting items but is mostly mundane in nature and not worth a post of its own while the April 20 and 21 letters each cover half of a bicycle trip to Sedan and inside the Belgian border.
9:00 P.M.
14 April 1919
Dear little woman,
This is a wild night. The wind howls and rattles the window panes and beats the rain hard upon the roof. It is cold too for the middle of April. Seldom have I seen so much rain….
Most of the rest of this letter goes on about the bad weather and mundane things such as being able to take a bath and have a shave, what he was reading, ill-fitting boots and torn socks in deep mud, etc. There is however, a brief mention of one of their discussion meetings that I think worth noting given our own times…
We had a good meeting last night. The drift of our talk and tho’t was concerning the need of charity in judging our enemies – in our case meaning we should have charity for those whose views oppose ours sharply.
What a challenge! How much easier it is to engage in flame wars and to disparage the character of the opposition! The Quaker way is to work at seeing the inner light of God in everyone… everyone.
There is also talk of letters received and responses to items in them. Including this piece which must be a response to her asking him how he learned to fill his occasional role as cook...
I learned to cook merely by following recipes. It wasn’t so hard as I had imagined. I, too, tho’t of the fact that I was learning something that would be of little value to me at home.
I remember his daughter, my much loved and missed mother, making sure I knew how to cook because it was something that would be of great value to me once in my own home!
It is clear the months have added up. The letters start to contain small but consistent mentions of either how long it is since he’s been gone, ‘til he comes home, or simple things like ending a section with…
It seems as if it might be going to freeze hard tonight! I need you to keep me warm.
On upcoming Easter travel plans and the weather…
So if I don’t go to Belgium I’ll go to St. Mihiel or Rheims – unless the dove has not yet returned to the ark.
And a little more on the German POW laborers…
The prisoners who worked here last week said Saturday that the week had been the one bright spot of the whole war.
And an update on the politics of the Paris Peace Conference…
Wm. Allen White told Gerig the other day that nothing is going on at Paris now but wrangling & intrigue, and I’ve since heard that Wilson has threatened to withdraw from the conference and appeal to labor the world over if his principles are ridden down! It begins to look as if matters are growing tense. Even in America if we are saved from revolution it will be only by the guiding influence of our schools.
Indeed on April 7 President Wilson had threatened to leave the Paris Peace Conference over inflexibility on the part of Clemenceau and France. I’m not familiar enough with that piece of history to know about the “appeal to labor the world over.” However here is an interesting article dated April 14, 1919 in the New York Times regarding the views of William English Walling an American socialist who had just returned to America from Paris. The article discusses the complexities of the discussions between labor, socialists, bolsheviks, capitalists, etc regarding the proposed League of Nations. It states that Wilson did in some form appeal to European labor for support apparently in an attempt to pressure European leaders that were opposing him.
Can you imagine the New York Times today printing an article detailing the views of a leading American socialist on the issues of the day? Not a chance. This was just as the first “Red Scare” was beginning in America. Anti-communist hysteria and witch hunting have effectively killed any real opportunity for non-capitalist views to be seen or heard as part of the broader political discourse in America.
The letter goes on at length about sending money and potential travel plans before ending with this.
I’ve been hearing lately that Aubreville equipe is doing less per its numbers than any equipe in the area; the observers are ignoring the fact that half of our men are running a ware house & trucks, & unloading cars to supply their equipes as well as our own. It is disappointing to find that unkindly competitive spirit cropping out here in this work & producing unjust & blind criticism.
We take competitiveness for granted but Quaker living is cooperative in nature. When meeting discussions get heated a call is made for a time of silent reflection. Emphasis is on listening and understanding rather than competing. Decisions are not made by the majority but rather only once consensus is reached.
On to the next letter…
April 20, 1919
Dear little wife:
I wish you could see me now. I’m sitting in the writing room of the Y.M.C.A. in Sedan.
Sedan sits near the border of France and Belgium and has played a major role in several wars. April 20 was Easter Sunday that year. He goes on a bit about postcards and photographs he is sending her and describes a relaxing scene with hot chocolate and singing.
But now I’ll go back and take up the thread of events where I left them…
That evening after support Philip Bailey and I went to Grange to get Orders de Movement to help us in getting to Sedan… Philip and I wheeled back and got to bed just before midnight. The full moon rose while we were on our way from Clermont to Aubreville. To the east of us beneath the road lay the broad rolling valley of the Aire River, and we stood quite a while drinking in the beauty of the scene.
“Wheels” by the way are bicycles just as “cars” are train cars. He did a great deal of his travelling by “wheel.”
Friday I had a hard day pitching tiles from the ground to the tile layers on the roof.
Seems to me that pitching roof tiles one at a time from the ground to the roof would be highly inefficient and difficult. More about this below.
Oh yes! Thursday evening I was made happy by two more letters from you, one from father & mother, and one from Eva. I’ll refer in detail to your letters sometime when I have them at hand. Also one of the Germans bro’t me a letter from Carl Krause which I prize very highly and shall keep as well as answer. That is a kind of souvenir I value more than helmets or guns or swords.
Sadly, the letter from Carl Krause, one of the German POW laborers mentioned in a previous letter and post here, did not survive long enough to come down to me.
Saturday morning I was up to see the sun rise, and I had a rare treat. Two suns came up one just above the other. I had heard of that phenomena and that it was caused by light refraction due to peculiar atmospheric conditions and I’m happy to have seen it.
I’ve not heard of this before. I used to watch the sun rise over Lake Michigan growing up in Chicago. A second sun would often rise there as well but that was a bit off to the south where you could see the brighter glow from the steel mills when the blast furnace doors opened.
I waked Philip and we mounted our wheels after an early breakfast. We had planned to push to Verdun & there catch a train for Sedan, but we suddenly decided that the morning was so glorious that we wanted to keep to our wheels. So instead of going to Verdun we turned northeast through the Faret de Hesse to Avocourt, Malancourt, Montfaucon, Romagne, Bantheville, Buzaney, Sommhaute, le Besace, & Raucourt and reached Sedan at 10:00 o’clock last night. We had covered 80 kilometers most of which had been hilly, and a third of which had been so torn up by shell fire and blown away by dynamite that we had to walk & push and sometimes half carry our wheels….
The Hindenburg line ran between Avocourt & Malancourt and nothing is left of the former but a few pieces of wall shoulder high, the old turbine wheel at the mill, and the stone basin where the French dames used to do their washing. And, would you believe it!, we couldn’t even decide where Malancourt had stood!
Some parts of the ink are heavier and thicker here. I can’t tell if he was writing emphatically or if he simply had a pen that was feeding ink inconsistently. But that last sentence stands out as does the earlier phrase “away by dynamite.” Also, I think that should be "Forest" de Hesse.
And of the forest a strip three miles wide was a mass of wreckage. All along the way were American & German graves & bleaching bones lay everywhere. Mountfacon is beyond the forest and on a hill. The battle there was one of movement & brief, but very little of it remains. The next 10 kilometers northwest of Montfaucon is open country over which the Americans drove the retreating Germans. And here & there in bleak fields were little clusters of American graves.
Apparently the lights were going out so he had to close the letter of April 20.
With all your wandering
husband’s love,
Garfield
I located a web site from someone that appears to have thoroughly researched the American offensive through this area in September 1918. This in honor of their Great Uncle Pvt. Giovanni Angelillo who lost his life there.
My grandfather continues in his next letter…
21 April 1919
My darling wife:
It is 8:30 P.M. and I’m back at Aubreville and have had supper. But it is hard to write, because all the boys are sitting about excitedly telling of their easter adventures and most of the stories are very interesting.
He had mail from her awaiting his return to Aubreville and goes on a bit responding to things she wrote including this:
I’m sorry I can’t talk with you about the Victory Loan. Since the war is over and the money is to be used from now on largely for the expenses of demobilization I feel that the reason for opposing the purchase of thrift stamps is largely passed, and I shall quite approve if I learn that you have bought some. I’m anxious to know how you come out.
Victory Loans (pdf) were a post-war war bond for $4.5 billion (praised by bankers and wall street! as the pdf article proclaims he says wryly).
The letter goes on a bit more with brief responses to her letters, talk of him engaging in a discussion in which he makes many suggestions how to better organize the work at his equipe, and who at home wants him to keep or discard his moustache upon his return, along with other odds and ends.
I believe in my last letter I left us at Romagne some ten kilometers northwest of Montfaucon. Several hundred American soldiers are tenting out in the fields north of Romagne and two hundred men are at work finding the graves of the Americans killed in the Argonne and moving the bones to a central cemetery at Romagne. This is to contain the remains of 25,000 American soldiers fallen in battle, and is to be one of three such American burial places in France. Before re-enterment the parents in America are consulted, and if they prefer it, the remains are to be shipped home.
This past Saturday April 10, various family members and I went with my sister, niece and nephew to visit the grave site of their husband and father in Saratoga National Cemetery. He was a Vietnam Veteran who came home to protest that war. His birthday was April 7. Line after line of identical headstones. It is not Arlington but it is still very impressive to see. My father remarked how the uniformness of military headstones makes it that much more impressive. We all remarked how the cemetery has grown considerably since 2005. Largely due to World War II veterans dying. My father remarked about seeing the World War I cemeteries in France and how so many families were not able to do what we were doing as their fallen were unable to be returned to America the way they are today.
There is also a depressingly large and growing section at Saratoga National devoted to young men and women from Iraq and Afghanistan.
My last trip there was in 2005 for his funeral. I’ll give the military credit for one thing. They know how to do funerals well.
In a ruin filled yard at Romagne Philip and I ate our lunch and mended a puncture in his bicycle tire. Then we pushed on to Bantheville where we got a drink at a camp of Am. negro soldiers. At Remonville there were civilians. A lady washing clothes at the public washing place pointed to good drinking water & when we started washing our hands she lent us soap….
Interesting remark about “… there were civilians.” I believe he is largely describing areas that were behind German lines for most of the war. No opportunity for civilians to be evacuated.
From Buzancy we pushed westward to Harricourt where we turned north into the face of a strong wind. We had already walked several kilometers over shell torn roads & steep ascents and soon we were on bad roads again. Shell fire & heavy cameons…
Cameons? Carneons? I can only imagine “cannons” but this is a very rare occasion in his letters that I simply can’t make out a word. What he wrote was cameons.
Note: Suggested by Jay C in the comments:
"Probably a misspelling of the French "camions" - a heavy cart or heavy motor truck."
Shell fire & heavy cameons had worked up a red clay mire. Sometimes we had even to carry our wheels – this between Harricourt and Raucourt. At one point we passed through the Forest of Dieulez. In the heart of it we found a great German railhead which the army upon retreating had blown up, and a sawmill which they had burned.
We lost our way once by turning up the wrong road, but it took us through a valley of unusual beauty and to a pretty little town called Vaux-en-Dieulez where a lady gave us a drink, so we didn’t regret the experience. – I must go to bed. Goodnight & “somefings”.
Sometimes his spellings of town names don’t match exactly what I find on modern maps. I suspect that z ought to be a t for Vaux-en-Dieulet. While the map shows some green there is today no place marked as the Forest of Dieulez or –let.
He continues the letter…
Here it is Thursday evening the 24th and my last Sunday’s letter to father & mother isn’t begun, and my letter to you isn’t far along. Last night I was very tired, and in the evening Libby led our meeting discussing the topic “The Eternal Life & How to Live It.” I was anticipating with interest what he might say, but when the time came I was so sleepy that I was in misery. Clyde Caldwell came over & I visited with him a few minutes. While getting ready for bed Philip Bailey, Raymond Jenkins, Libby and I continued the discussion of the question of personal immortality. Libby says it is merely the “characteristic narrowness of youthful tho’t” that makes me doubt immortality. I didn’t get any help from him.
It is very interesting to get these little insights into his thought and doubts. It makes me regret even more however not having been an adult when I knew him in his old age to be able to ask, “So now that you are 70 what conclusions have you reached about this question?”
A little further on he writes…
Tatum has come in with sugar, chocolate, candy, olives, and jam from the army commissary & is selling these to the boys. I bought 10 pounds of sugar – enuf to run me till I take up eating with my wife again….
Some of the boys have gone to Grange to hear a lecture on Syria by a Mennonite Bishop who has just been there helping the reconstruction unit of his church to get started among the Armenians.
Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire until it was broken up as a consequence of World War I. The legacy of which the world continues to suffer through today. The Armenian Genocide was still going on at the time as it began during World War I and continued afterwards in Turkish controlled areas.
This bishop & another Mennonite dignitary are inspecting our work. They were at Aubreville today and seemed vastly entertained by my tile pitching. (I stand on the ground and pitch tiles 10 by 15 inches in size to the tile layer on the roof). Said bishop is to be our guest here tomorrow evening.
I can’t imagine catching them was all that fun either. He doesn’t say what material they were made of. I have a picture of him as an old man in suit and tie throwing a football in which he clearly has no clue how to hold or throw one. I wonder if the same held true for his tile pitching.
I learned today that Ito Van Gieson, with whom I crossed the Atlantic, has, through a friend in Paris, been appointed to go to Warsaw, Russia via Berlin with a Red Cross troop supply train. My! if I hadn’t set your heart & mine on being home by Aug. 1st I’d try for such a job myself. One would have to make the trip on his vacation time, and it takes from three to four weeks, so it seems useless for me to try to “pull” for it, but it would be a great experience.
Quaker relief work did go on into Russia after the revolution, into Germany and other eastern regions.
It was almost dark when we reached Raucourt, but the road became suddenly good & we wanted to get on to Sedan. As we passed thru the former we were cheered by the look of prosperity about. The Germans had destroyed nothing but a factory in their retreat. We heard the music of a piano coming from one of the buildings, a thing which reminded us that civilization had not utterly perished.
He then describes a bit more about their arrival, sleeping arrangements, meeting an Indiana man that had mutual acquaintances, and breakfast the next morning.
And now I am about to recount the story of my “fall”! The latter informed us that we couldn’t get by the French guard at Givonne this side the border if we didn’t give him a cigarette, and he gave us cigarettes with which to tip the guards. Sure enuf! When we got to Givonne two guards stepped out & we stopped & showed them our workers permits for France, but they began shaking their heads, so we held out the cigarettes, they smiled, nodded & said “passer, Monsiour”, and we passed!
Ah, sin! They name is bribery!
We were delighted with Sedan & the country beyond it. At the edge of town were suburban homes with tier upon tier of terraced gardens & fields rising in the background. I had never seen such neat, intensive cultivation. We had to walk & push our “bikes” most of the first ten kilometers up a steep hill, & against a strong wind. Along the roadside was the wreckage of war, cast aside by the Germans in their pell-mell scramble for home after the armistice. In several places were standing the walls of buildings burned during the fighting of 1914.
From there they head into Belgium.
The border is 12 kilometers from Sedan & the six kilometers from there to Bouillon was over a good, easy road & through a marvelously charming country. On the French side of the line the forest of the Ardennes is a jungle; on the Belgian side the forest lands are marvels of scientific forestry.
His father was an Orchard grower so he grew up tending fruit trees. The earliest writings I have of my grandfathers are a couple of published pieces while still a teenager (1909) on the deforestation and proposed reforestation of Indiana.
The Belgian pastures were green, brooks threaded them in all directions, & herds of cattle watched by herdsmen were grazing on the slopes. The roads were lined by great trees. Bouillon is situated in a valley with high, heavily forested slopes rising on all sides. The town is neat & clean, bearing close inspection better than many small French towns. Overlooking the town rises a picturesque, ancient castle with moss & ivy covered walls. The town is in the loop of the Semoy River. We ate lunch there and started back to Sedan. On the way I picked up a German helmet & intended to carry it back for Leonard, but I had seen so much desolation & so many rotting human bones that the whole thing was too horrible & I threw the helmet into the river & resolved to try to help Leonard to feel why I did it. Am I wrong?
No Grandpa, you weren’t wrong.
You may recall from earlier letters his troubled thoughts over his 14 year old nephews desire for a German helmet as a war souvenir. He would have been wrong to bring Leonard the skull he had considered in one of those earlier letters but was not wrong to discard the helmet and instead endeavor to explain the fallacy of glorification of war to an impressionable teenage boy who was undoubtedly hearing nothing but war propaganda at home.
We got back to Sedan about 3:30 P.M. Philip turned to writing, but I looked over the town & then rode west to Donchery to see the Castle, Belle View, where Napoleon III stayed in 1870 & also the house where he & Bismarck signed the armistice.
Emperor Napoleon III was captured in the Battle of Sedan, Sept. 1870, in the Franco-Prussian war. This would have been 49 years before his writing this letter at age 26. Fresh history for him. Forty-nine years prior to when I was 26 was 1938 so for me the equivalent of the end of the Great Depression and the beginnings of World War II.
Monday morning we took the train for Verdun after finding that the city of Sedan was not permitted to spare us any bread. The train follows the left bank of the Meuse all the way, through a region that has seen terrific fighting. On the day the Armistice was signed the Franco-American forces were in Mouzon with artillery ready to shell Sedan. All the bridges from Verdun to Sedan are blown up, & so is all the double track railroad. One track hastily relaid is the one we came back over, & it is in such condition that the schedule is 6 hours! We saw French artillery on the march & I took a picture of some big guns. Our train stopped between Ft. Dououmont & Mort d’homme but both were too far away to see details. To the north of Verdun the desolation is most depressing. We had only a few minutes to change trains at Verdun (at 3:45 P.M.), and got back here at 5 P.M.
We learned that three of the boys had slipped through to Metz while we were getting into Belgium (both are “forbidden fruit” you know!).