Letters from World War I: My Fellow Soldiers by Andrew Carroll
From the New York Times bestselling author of War Letters and Behind the Lines, My Fellow Soldiers draws on a rich trove newly uncovered letters and diaries from World War I. The following is the first chapter from the book.
In a black-and-white photograph taken at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, a grinning General John Pershing is standing next to General Francisco “Pancho” Villa and the future president of Mexico, General Álvaro Obregón. (On the far right is a young lieutenant named George S. Patton Jr.) Villa, the provisional governor of Chihuahua, had maintained cordial relations with the U.S. government. Within Mexico, he was seen as a Robin Hood–like figure, raiding the haciendas of wealthy businessmen and redistributing the money and land to destitute farmers, laborers, and widows.
The picture was snapped in 1914, on the twenty-sixth of August. On that very day, 5,360 miles away, German soldiers were systematically setting fire to the Belgian town of Louvain, a city famous for its architectural splendor, including the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, the oldest Catholic university in existence. The school’s world-renowned library held almost a quarter of a million priceless medieval, Gothic, and Renaissance manuscripts. When evening came, the sky was a swelling, rippling mix of smoke and fire. Everywhere, tiny bits of paper drifted down like black snowflakes, their edges aglow with bright red embers. To the horror of the townspeople, it was clear that countless rare books and manuscripts from the library were going up in flames. By morning, the building was a heap of smoldering ruins.
For weeks, British and French newspapers had been reporting on German atrocities in Belgium. The German government had asked the Belgians to let German troops march peacefully through their country to invade France, but Belgium’s King Albert, citing national honor, refused. In retribution, the Germans implemented a policy of Schrecklichkeit (“frightfulness” or “terror”) during their invasion, under which any perceived act of violence against even a single German soldier would result in brutal and widespread punishments. The point was to spread so much fear that the entire population would be deterred from offering any resistance whatsoever.
British and French newspapers reported that German troops were executing innocent civilians en masse; setting homes on fire and then shooting the residents as they ran out to escape the f lames; and turning tens of thousands of Belgians, many of whom were frail and elderly, into refugees who had to trek for miles to seek out a safe haven in another town or village. The articles became increasingly lurid. There were accounts of German soldiers raping nuns, chopping off the hands and feet of small children, and impaling infants on doorways with their bayonets. Many of these stories came from secondhand sources, and even those sympathetic to Belgium and its people questioned their veracity. But the demolition of an ancient library struck a particular chord around the world because the proof was evident for all to see; it seemed like an attack on civilization itself. “Remember Louvain!” was the first of many rallying cries for those who wanted the United States to enter the war.
Richard Harding Davis, a correspondent from the New York Tribune, was in Louvain during the invasion, and days later he wired back a detailed account of what he saw:
The Germans sentenced Louvain on Wednesday [August 26] to become a wilderness, and with the German system and love of thoroughness they left Louvain an empty, blackened shell. Great architects and artists, dead these six hundred years, made [the city] beautiful, and their handiwork belonged to the world. With torch and dynamite the Germans have turned these masterpieces into ashes. . . .
In each building, so German soldiers told me, they began at the first floor, and when that was burning steadily passed to the one next. There were no exceptions — whether it was a store, chapel or private residence it was destroyed. The occupants had been warned to go, and in each deserted shop or house the furniture was piled, the torch was stuck under it, and into the air went the savings of years, souvenirs of children, or parents, heirlooms that had passed from generation to generation. . . .
Outside the station in the public square the people of Louvain passed in an unending procession, women bareheaded, weeping, men carrying the children asleep on their shoulders, all hemmed in by the shadowy army of gray wolves. Once they were halted, and among them were marched a line of men. They well knew their fellow townsmen. These were on their way to be shot.
President Woodrow Wilson, as a former college president, was especially furious about what the Germans had done, but he refused to make a public statement about Louvain. When asked to comment about it, Wilson referred journalists back to his speech from barely a week earlier on his decision for the United States to remain neutral in the war. “America,” he had said, is “a nation that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself f it and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.”
Wilson’s stance was a matter of principle to some extent, but he also well knew that the vast majority of Americans were opposed to interceding in the war, and Wilson had a reelection campaign to win. The largest community of immigrants in the country were German Americans, who believed that their native land was being unfairly maligned, and the second largest were Irish Americans, many of whom were happy to see their longtime foes the British entangled in a major war. Combined, these two groups could ensure Wilson’s defeat. But Wilson had another consideration in mind: when the fighting was done, he — as a neutral player — could mediate the armistice and come out shining as an international peacemaker. And the prospect that the war would, in fact, be over soon looked increasingly likely.
Having pushed through Belgium over the previous four weeks, 1.5 million German soldiers under General Helmuth von Moltke swept into France from the north through Belgium and by early September 1914 were thirty miles from Paris, putting the city well within range of Germany’s massive siege guns. The French government f led to Bordeaux, and an invasion of the capital seemed imminent. General Moltke was confident that a resounding victory was all but guaranteed, fulfilling Kaiser Wilhelm II’s promise to his troops that they would triumphantly return home in autumn, before “the leaves fall from trees.”
Although the French forces were outnumbered, Marshal Joseph Joffre, their commander, was able to reassemble one million French and British troops and strike the enemy from three different directions, blunting the German juggernaut at the Marne River. Short of transportation and manpower, the French Army recruited taxi drivers to help bring men and supplies to the front. (The taxi drivers actually kept their meters running throughout the offensive and were later reimbursed, collectively, more than seventy thousand francs.)
When General Moltke realized that his troops would have to retreat, after having come so close to success, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was relieved of his command. Joffre, by contrast, remained the epitome of calm. Every afternoon he enjoyed a leisurely lunch and took a nap.
Paris was saved for the time being, but the Germans still occupied all of Belgium and hundreds of square miles of French territory. Both sides dug in, creating an elaborate network of trenches along a front that soon zigzagged for roughly 440 miles from the Swiss border to the North Sea. Any celebration by the Allied forces was tempered by the fact that an estimated eighty-one thousand French and British soldiers had been killed in what would be called the Battle of the Marne. German losses were approximately the same.
Americans had nothing with which to even compare such a staggering loss of life. At Gettysburg, a total of seven thousand Union and Confederate soldiers were killed, and that was the deadliest battle of the Civil War. In Fort Bliss, Texas, the El Paso Morning Times was one of the main sources of international news, and General John Pershing was devouring everything he could read about the German invasion of Belgium and France. At first, censorship prevented many of the details from being reported. On August 27, 1914, the very morning that Pershing’s picture appeared on the front page of the paper, the two largest headlines were: warm welcome for villa and obregon in el paso and closed veil drawn over progress of war.
That “closed veil” started to lift the next day. On August 28, the entire upper quarter of the El Paso Morning Times featured a graphic picture, stretching from margin to margin, that showed Belgian casualties being treated by doctors and nurses. Underneath was the headline: conflict of millions appears to at last be in progress in Europe. Pershing had wanted to be there from day one. Between August and October 1909, Pershing had traveled with his family as a tourist throughout Russia and Europe, and he was fascinated by the region. Pershing recalled of his trip to Berlin:
As I particularly wished to see something of the German army, I at once got in touch with Colonel John Wisser, our military attaché. He took me the following day to call at the [German] War Off ice, where I found, as expected, every sign of smartness and eff iciency. Through this visit I arranged to see an artillery regiment and barracks at Potsdam. The Colonel showed me the preparation they had made for quick transformation of the regiment’s civilian reserves into fully-equipped soldiers ready to take their places in the ranks. I had never seen such perfect preparation. . . .
The discipline of the German people was evident at every turn. All things seemed to be done in military fashion. The army, so to speak, was the nation. This was especially noticeable to one who had just come from Russia. There the army seemed a thing apart from the people; here it was a model which they were proud to emulate.
Pershing also had a memorable stay in France:
While there I went to Metz and with a guide and maps went over the battlefield where the Germans captured Marshal Bazaine and his army in 1871. The visit was especially interesting to me not only as a soldier but because I remembered how as a ten-year-old boy I had eagerly read the dispatches about the Franco-Prussian War as they appeared in the St. Louis Globe- Democrat. It was the first great war that I was old enough to read about at the time it was being waged. The sight of the battlefield brought back to mind how the wiseacres of Laclede, my old hometown, used to gather in front of father’s store and Dick Mitchell’s drugstore next door and, whittling in Missouri fashion, hold forth on the strategy of the campaign — comparing the French and German generals to Grant and Lee.
In August 1914, senior U.S. commanders floated the idea of sending generals to Europe solely to evaluate and report on the situation. Pershing appealed directly to Major General William Wotherspoon, the Army’s chief of staff, to be picked. “I am among the younger general officers and the special personal benefits that I should derive should make my services that much more valuable to the government,” the fifty-four-year-old Pershing pointed out. He reminded Wotherspoon that he had been a military observer during Japan’s war with Russia ten years earlier, but he had not, as of yet, “had any opportunity to visit European maneuvers or see anything of their armies.” Wotherspoon replied that, with the possible exception of Great Britain, none of the warring nations wanted observers from other countries, and he assured Pershing that if the governments changed their policy, Pershing’s name would be considered.
Pershing soon found himself restless and lonely in Texas. His wife, Helen Frances “Frankie” Warren, and their four children — nine-year- old Helen, seven-year-old Anne, six-year-old Warren, and three-year- old Mary Margaret — were all still living at the Presidio, the military base in San Francisco. They had never been separated for so long.
Frankie was the daughter of the powerful Wyoming senator Francis Warren, chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. Warren was seventy-one years of age, and the oldest living veteran of the Civil War in the U.S. Senate. As a nineteen-year-old Union soldier, he had charged into a volley of shot and shell to disable a Confederate cannon during the siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana, and sustained a head wound so severe that he was left for dead in a ditch. Surrounded by corpses, Warren was almost buried alive until an observant doctor noticed that he was breathing faintly and got him to a hospital. For his actions at Port Hudson, Warren was awarded the Medal of Honor.
General Pershing had originally been stationed at the Presidio in January 1913 to command the Army’s 8th Brigade, but he and his men were moved to Fort Bliss, Texas, in April to help protect the border from Mexican bandits, who were crossing over and stealing horses, cows, and other livestock. As much as he missed his family, Pershing wanted them to stay in San Francisco for the time being, where they would be safe: Mexico was in the throes of a violent revolution. Pershing would later blame himself for not bringing them to Fort Bliss earlier.
On the morning of August 27, 1915, a reporter named Norman Walker from the Associated Press called General Pershing’s headquarters to confirm a story coming over the wires about a house f ire at the Presidio that had broken out on August 26, just before midnight.
Certain that the voice at the other end was Lieutenant James Collins, General Pershing’s military aide, the reporter asked somewhat matter-of-factly if he could get a quote from Pershing’s off ice about the incident.
There was a pause, and then the voice demanded, “What fire? What has happened!?”
Suddenly Walker realized that it wasn’t Pershing’s aide he was speaking to, but General Pershing himself.
Caught off guard, Walker stumbled through the report as the general listened: Mrs. Pershing, thirty-five, and their three daughters were all killed when a f ire swept through their house at the Presidio a few hours past midnight. Only six-year-old Warren survived.
“Oh, God! My God!” Pershing cried. “Read that again!” Walker repeated the story.
“My God! My God!” Pershing kept saying, traumatized by the news. After Walker expressed his sympathies, Pershing was silent for a moment, and then asked, “Who is this? Who am I speaking to?” Walker told him, and Pershing said, before hanging up, “Thank you, Walker. It was very considerate of you to phone.”
As word of the tragedy spread, sympathetic messages came in from around the world. One was by former president Teddy Roosevelt, who wrote: “Am inexpressibly shocked and grieved pray accept my deepe [sic] and heart felt sympathy.”
Another telegram read: “With enormous sorrow I heard that your estimable family had the misfortune to perish in a house fire and for this unfortunate accident permit me to send my sincerest condolences. Yours faithfully.” The sender was Pancho Villa.
One thought consumed Pershing as he began the agonizing two-day journey by train to California: Had his wife and daughters slowly burned to death, or did they die instantly?
Pershing’s first visit was to the funeral home, where he saw the four coffins — three tiny ones next to a longer one — and collapsed in grief. After composing himself, he went to the Presidio and immediately began asking eyewitnesses what had happened. By then it was determined that a spark from a burning piece of coal had leaped out of the fireplace and onto the newly lacquered, and highly flammable, floor, which set off the blaze.
Guests of the Pershings had made it out safely, and when soldiers on base rushed to the frantic scene and saw a small family huddled outside the home, they assumed it was Mrs. Pershing and her children. Once they realized it was not, they charged into the burning house and were able to drag out Warren, who was barely conscious. By the time they found the three girls and their mother, all four had died from smoke inhalation.
“Not even their hair was singed,” an off icer told Pershing. “They went quietly in their sleep.” His friends would later say that this fact, along with Warren’s survival, was all that kept Pershing from going mad with grief.
Frankie and the three girls would be buried in the Warren family plot in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where Frankie was born and raised, the place that Senator Warren considered his true home. The senator had gone to the Presidio as well, and although also devastated, he realized his son-in-law was barely functional and unable to handle all the heartbreaking little details that had to be arranged. The local undertaker had to be notified to begin preparing for the funeral. Hearses were needed. And pallbearers had to be found. Senator Warren decided on using twelve; just two each for the three girls, since their coffins were so much lighter, and the rest for Frankie.
Six-year-old Warren had no idea what was going on, and Pershing and the rest of the family believed it was best, at least for the time being, not to tell him the truth. It would simply be too overwhelming. Pershing told him that his sisters and mothers were off vacationing for the next several months. Warren would go to Texas with his father.
When Pershing returned to Fort Bliss there was a short letter waiting for him. “The world is so clean this morning,” it began. “There is the sound of meadow larks everywhere. And God be thanked for the sunshine and blue sky! Do you think there can be many people in the world as happy as we are? I would like to live to be a thousand years old if I could spend all of that time with you.” Frankie Pershing had written it to her husband just before her death.
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