This is the fifith 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.
March 28, 1919 – Aubreville, Meuse
My darling wife:
I am thinking tonight of six months ago at this time. It seems a pretty long six months, and doubly so when I stop to think of all that has happened since the train took me away from you at Gas City. I suppose it is the thinking about all this today that has made me want to be back with you more than I have at any time since I left. I felt sometimes as if the next four months would be intolerably long. But soon something of intense interest will come up and help to shorten the time for me. Some days the time flies swiftly, other days it seems endless. But it made me happy when I wakened this morning and tho’t “Six months are gone; in four more I shall be home”. Of course I haven’t heard about the preaching job at your church yet, but I’m coming to count on it as tho’ it were mine. – It is late and I am tired. We’ve had a long business meeting tonight, so I’ve had to postpone till tomorrow evening the letter I had planned to write you on the semi-anniversary. Goodnight, and lots of “somefings” on your neck.
Isn’t that sweet. “Lots of “somefings” on your neck.” The early letters had lots of references to him to leavings “somefings” on her neck. The later ones not quite as often. I, of course, think of grandpa as the very frail 70 year old that I knew but here he is 26 and married just about a year before leaving his wife at home for almost 11 months. A very upright man he writes disapprovingly in some letters about some of the other boys immoral dalliances with the local French girls.
Part of his plans for return home involved him filling in preaching for two weeks at the Wauwatosa Congregational Church the Wade-Warren clans were members of. He had apparently done so on a previous occasion. He was not an ordained minister though apparently this was a career path he had considered but formally abandoned while in France. Most Quaker meetings (not all) do not have formal ministers. They consider all to be ministers to each other. It is interesting to me that the Congregational Church accepted him in this role. Later in life he was a founder of the 57th Street Meeting in Chicago and was the long-time clerk of the meeting which can be, and in his case was, an informal ministers position.
The next few paragraphs are clearly responses to two letters from her that he has just received along with some other talk about his homecoming and visiting with people, etc. It is interesting in its own way but mostly meaningless in this context without my going into a long explanation of the background. But there is a piece he writes were he describes the time involved in his eventual travel home.
Sat. 8:00 P.M. March 29
… I’m glad you like my plan of an early homecoming & preaching at Wauwatosa. But I don’t like to quit work for the mission before the end of June, so I’m afraid I can’t get to W. a full week ahead of August 3rd. The red tape in Paris takes five days, the journey to N.Y. twelve, and the trip to Fairmount via Philadelphia two = 19 days. Besides I want at least a week in England = 26 days, and if no boat sails July 12th, I’ll have either to quit work before June 30th or take the next boat later, which might be July 18th.
His plans for homecoming change every second or third letter from here on out. He had wanted to spend a vacation week or two in the south of France. Then he was given recommendations both for Germany and for England. He settled on a week in England. The Friends headquarters were and still are in Philadelphia so he needed to check in there on the way home and later adds the plan of a visit to Washington, D.C. before heading home to either Fairmount where his parents live or Wauwatosa where her’s live. In between they try and figure out how he can stop and see this relative and that relative. In the end I’m not sure any of that worked out and I think he went directly to her in Wauwatosa with her meeting him at the train station in Milwaukee.
Interestingly the Quakers wore a military style uniform of their own. As mentioned previously it became known amongst the French who came away with a great deal of respect for the Friends mission. He didn’t receive his uniform until after he had left however so she hadn’t seen him in it…
I’ll wear my uniform to Milwaukee, but please don’t ask me to wear it after that. After Uncle Wills and others have been used to U.S. Army officers’ fine uniforms, mine will look cheap and shabby to them.
Do I detect a smidgeon of pride not wanting to be shamed or found wanting there? We do have a photo of him in his uniform and it is quite nondescript.
“Uncle Wills” I think refers to William Nethercut who married Helen Warren one of the younger sisters of my grandmothers mother Clara Mabel [Warren] Wade. There were a few boys in the Nethercut family so they may have had a couple in the army. I met a very old Glenway Nethercut, son of William, in his 80’s during the few years I lived in Michigan. One of his daughters lived with her family in the town we moved to when we left Chicago. A random occurrence of family.
March 30th Sunday morning 9:30
It is colder today. The ground is frozen and it is snowing steadily. I believe it was last Tuesday that I mailed my last letter to you. That was an unusually interesting day. Afternoon I went on a truck to Neuvilly to help load and haul back a French army barrack to put up in South Aubreville where the equipe Clyde Caldwell belongs to is going to live. Tuesday night I began a letter to Ernests which I finished Friday morning before work. Wednesday was more interesting still. We were overloaded with work so Libby went to a French prison camp near Neuvilly to ask for four German prisoners to help us. Before he got back, however, a train of crushed stone had come in for the prisoners of the American camp to unload, and their guards asked us to let their prisoners unload our cars to get them out of the way quickly, so we accepted their aid (35 of them). So when Libby got the four prisoners here he turned them over to me. So they helped five of us who were hauling house sections from the station yards & distributing them to their various sites throughout the town. Little by little German words came back to me and I got on with these men nicely. They were half starved but eager, intelligent, and most capable workers (so far as their strength permitted). They noticed immediately with surprise how well the Am. prisoners looked & how industriously they were working under the Am. guards. They were happy, of course, to be with us unguarded. It is surprising that the French should permit it. They ate dinner with us, smiling happily as the food went down. In the evening Libby accompanied them back to camp. When they parted, the oldest of the Germans said solemnly in German, “Today has been as if in heaven.” Then they asked Libby what we were; what we believed; he told them briefly, adding that if permitted to work in Germany we’d be glad to help there, too. One replied, “Ich glaube das wohl.”
Which google tells me translates to “I think the most.” In telling this same story in a latter letter to his parents he translates it as “I believe it sincerely.”
Clyde Caldwell was apparently a Quaker friend from back home in Indiana. “Ernests” is a reference to his sisters husband Ernest Pearson and their family grouping. It is interesting in all these letters that it is common to refer to a particular family grouping by the husbands name with a plural S attached.
There is more talk of bad weather and hard work and then this…
Friday night I overheard the conversation of seven soldier neighbors as they walked down the road. One of them made a remark about us C.O.’s in a sarcastic tone. Another replied, “We haven’t much room to talk; they are doing a good work, and we aren’t doing anything.” Am. Soldiers hereabouts are reaping a harvest of souvenirs by digging up German dead to get their belt buckles, iron crosses, and helmets. The Am. soldiers guarding the prisoners here don’t like it that they are ordered to feed and clothe the prisoners well; they say if our people had suffered German invasion we’d have sense enuf them to treat Germans as the French treat them. The French feed them less per day than we eat for breakfast. Our fellows are severe in some instances; a Yale man was telling Libby that while at Brest he saw two prisoners killed by being struck down by American guards. At the French prison camp just east of here they have been burying Germans every day lately, and I am told that in Germany many civilians are starving every day, so Germany is being paid back for her invasion of France.
He then returns to describing the climb up Mt. D’or which I detailed in my last diary. He states that he is confused where he left off which shows as he repeats much of what he has already told. Though he adds in a hand drawn map:
I’ve reviewed the terrain map through google and his hand drawing is amazingly accurate especially given that he is drawing it month later.
As we’ve arrived at March 30th in his letter to my grandmother I’ll mix in a little of the letter he wrote the same day to his parents.
Aubreville, Meuse,
March 30, 1919
Dear father & mother:
It is four o’clock Sunday afternoon. I’m sitting with the rest of the fellows about a newly acquired second hand stove which is smoking vigorously and for half an hour soot has been falling so thick that as often as every fourth breath I have to blow chunks of it off of this sheet. It was blacking my clothes so badly that I finally put on a pair of coveralls and a rain hat to protect my hair & my uniform. If it keeps up much longer I’m going to an unheated – yes I have beat a retreat to another room; it became insufferable there.
There are several little block spots dotted around the first page of this letter. A little further along…
Last Monday forenoon I spent unloading house sections & windows from cars sent from Ornans. Afternoon we began work on a house for a man & wife. They have come two times to see us about it. They were here Monday (from somewhere) with their lunch, and watched with eager, happy faces the erection of their future home. They were anxious to help us, too, in every way they could.
Then he tells of going to Neuvilly for the French army barracks for South Aubreville. He goes on to tell the tale of the German POW’s. A little bit he says differently in this letter…
These men looked starved & weren’t strong, but they seemed happy to be free from a guard and they worked intelligently and eagerly… At noon we took them to our shack with us and gave them a big dinner. Their faces were a constant smile all the while that the food was going down.
In telling of the American soldiers gathering souvenirs from grave digging he adds…
If Leonard could see some of the things I’ve seen here, I don’t think he’d be so anxious for a German helmet as a souvenir. A skull (which I could pick up most anywhere) would be more appropriate!
As mentioned in a previous diary, Leonard Pearson was his sister’s son, born Jan. 1905, he would be an eager 14 year old full of whatever anti-“Hun” propaganda he was being fed. A member of “Ernests” mentioned above.
He then goes on to recount some of the travel plans and to say that one of the boys had walked to Grange-le-Comte in order to procure writing paper and stamps for everyone as they were out but had come back empty handed. So he warns that his next letter may be awhile.