Eyewitnesses to the Great War This page intentionally left blank Eyewitnesses to the Great War American Writers, Reporters, Volunteers and Soldiers in France, 1914–1918 ED KLEKOWSKI and LIBBY KLEKOWSKI McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Klekowski, Edward J. Eyewitnesses to the Great War : American writers, reporters, volunteers and soldiers in France, ¡914–¡918 / Ed Klekowski and Libby Klekowski. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-6348-0 softcover : acid free paper ¡. World War, 1914–1918—Personal narratives, American. 2. World War, 1914–1918—France. 3. World War, 1914– 1918—Participation, American. 4. Americans—France— Biography. 5. Idealism, American—France—History—20th century. 6. Adventure and adventurers—France—Biography. 7. Authors, American—France—Biography. 8. Foreign correspondents—France—Biography. 9. Volunteers— France— Biography. 10. Soldiers—France—Biography. I. Klekowski, Libby, 1941– II. Title. D640.A2K57 2012 940.4'8173—dc23 2012010086 BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE © 2012 Ed Klekowski and Libby Klekowski. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Front cover: top—Edmond Genet in the cockpit of a Nieuport 17 (Thénault, Story [see Bibliography]; bottom—American volunteers in the Foreign Legion on July 4, 1915, in Paris. Edmond Genet is seated at center. Seated at right is William Dugan. Victor Chapman is standing behind Genet (Genet, War Letters [see Bibliography]). Manufactured in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 6¡¡, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com To Amanda, Ulrich, Alexandra and Philip, our companions in exploring what remains of the Western Front This page intentionally left blank Table of Contents Preface 1 Introduction 5 1. Edith and Henry 9 2. Along the Moselle in a Model T 25 3. Verdun Madness 41 4. Motoring Along the Meuse 56 5. Crossing the River, Too Late 68 6. Other Verdun Ambulance Corps 82 7. Americans in the Foreign Legion 95 8. Rendezvous with Death 110 9. Lafayette’s Flyers 121 10. Writers and Reporters 137 11. Lafayette, We Are Here! 155 12. Gott Mit Uns 172 13. The Fog of Battle 187 14. Attack, Attrition, Pursuit 200 15. Armistice, Peace, War 215 Chapter Notes 227 Bibliography 243 Index 249 vii This page intentionally left blank Preface Eyewitnesses to the Great War explores the forgotten history of the United States’ first war on European soil. The book views the events of 1914 to 1918 through the eyes of Americans who were there, telling the story of the famous and the not-so-famous who played a part in the Great War. The book had its genesis several years ago on a cold dreary winter day in the small French city of Verdun. A slight rain was falling as we walked through the city center looking for a place to stay. One hotel was open; its lobby was warm and dry and it had rooms available—after all, who visits Verdun in the winter? We booked a room. The hotel was the Hostellerie du Coq Hardi, a charming pre–First World War establishment restored after the 1916 German bombardment of Verdun. We learned later that “Le Coq” had hosted a very famous American guest during the war, the novelist Edith Whar- ton. She was there in February 1915, also on a cold dreary winter day, and it was on Coq Hardi letterhead that she wrote her friend Henry James about what she had witnessed of the fighting nearby. Our view of the Meuse River and the grandiose Cercle Militaire (military club) on the opposite bank mir- rored what she had seen nearly a century before. This linkage between place and personality made history more alive, more accessible, and that revelation proved to be the “road to Damascus” for us, a journey that led to libraries, museum archives and used book shops. We entered the generally forgotten world of American memoirists of the Great War, men and women who were “over there” from the war’s beginning in 1914, even before America formally entered the conflict in 1917. Understanding what the memoir writers were describing and experienc- ing turned out not to be so straightforward. They often wrote of obscure places, French villages that even today are difficult to find, and they described happenings that loomed large in their own lives at the time but were often overshadowed as the war went on. Over the next few years, we spent consid- erable time in France researching material and battlefields for two documen- 1 2PREFACE taries about the war we had agreed to produce for public television.* These visits allowed us to search out places described in the old memoirs and to visit the sites to try to see them as they were during the war years. Fortunately many of the places are still very rural and not smothered by modern devel- opment, so it was often possible literally to walk in the steps of the Americans who were there before us. By placing the memoirs in the context of the land- scape where the events they describe occurred, the Americans of 1914 to 1918 spoke to us with a clearer voice. We learned much of the information recorded in the memoirs was essentially the forgotten history of American participation in the war. Eyewitnesses to the Great War is our effort to bring that history back to light. As we traveled through France in the footsteps of the Americans who were active in the First World War, we experienced firsthand the hospitality and generosity of the following people: Jean Paul De Vries and Brigitte De Vries at the Romagne ’14-’18 Museum; Joseph P. Rivers, Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, Romagne; Jean-Marie Picquart and Michel Jacquot in Pont-à-Mousson; Isabelle Remy, archivist, the Verdun Memorial Museum; Madame Bergeret, Château des Tilleuls, Stenay, for opening her home to us and sharing her photographs of the war; Marian Howard and David Howard for touring us around Stenay and arranging for our visit to the Château des Tilleuls; Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels and Ulrich von Koppenfels for their generous hospitality in Liny-devant-Dun and for Ulrich’s willingness to translate French and German documents and for reading the entire man- uscript. In the United States, we owe special thanks to the University of Massa- chusetts Amherst Du Bois Library staff, especially those librarians of the 1920s who assembled a remarkable collection of World War I memoirs and books. Of the current librarians, we are especially grateful to Melinda McIntosh, ref- erence librarian, for her untiring pursuit of the esoteric subjects we asked her to research. We would also like to thank the interlibrary loan staff for their help in borrowing materials from other libraries and Rob Cox, head of special collections. Our thanks also to the people who were willing to share their family papers with us: the Meryman family, especially Charlotte Meryman; the Gar- land family; Doris Holden and Priscilla L. Pike; Sue Alward for photographs; and Barbe La Pierre for photographs. Thanks also to Brigadier General Len *Model T’s to War, American Ambulances on the Western Front, 1914–1918. WGBY, Springfield, Massachusetts; Yanks Fight the Kaiser: A National Guard Division in WW I. WGBY, Springfield, Massachusetts. Preface 3 Kondratiuk, head of the Massachusetts National Guard Museum; Al Shane for rifle specifics; Meg Clark for artwork; the American Field Service, New York, especially Nicole Milano and Eleanora Golobic, archivists; the Bienecke Collection, Yale University; Tevis Kimball and Kate Boyle, Special Collections, Jones Library, Amherst, MA; Amherst College Special Collections; the Library of Congress; and the U.S. National Archives. We acknowledge the Watkins/Loomis Agency, New York City, for per- mission to quote excerpts from Edith Wharton’s letters; the Curtis Brown Agency, London, for permission to quote Winston Churchill; and Michael Hoffman, translator, and the Penguin Group (USA, UK) for permission to quote an excerpt from Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel. Finally, we would like to thank the Biology Department of the University of Massachusetts Amherst for providing post-retirement office space to EK and especially Charlene Coleman, Steve Brewer and Thomas Carpenter for their assistance. This page intentionally left blank Introduction The English call it the “Great War”; in French, it is “la Grand Guerre.” For Americans the First World War is neither great nor grand, just forgot- ten.1 The path to war began with the assassination of a Hapsburg archduke and his wife on June 28, 1914, by Serbian nationalists in the Balkan city of Sarajevo. This event should have been of no consequence, except of course to the murdered couple, since Hapsburg royalty seemed always to be dying prematurely of some misfortune. Brand Whitlock, the U.S. minister to Bel- gium in 1914, remembered learning of the nonevent from his house-servant. “Excellence, le prince héritier d’Autriche a été assassiné à Sarajevo!”* Who, and where? By whom? And why? I had never heard of Sarajevo; I had not the least idea where it was in this world, if it was in this world.... And the Crown Prince of Austria was to me a most immaterial person—a kind of wraith wandering there in those nether regions to which have gone so many of the House of Hapsburg which seems to have suffered in itself as much evil as it caused others to suffer in this world. I confess that it seemed a rather unwarranted intrusion that morning.2 Minister Whitlock as well as other American and European officials may have been nonplussed by the murders, but that was not so for the Austro- Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef.