Tag: World War One

Over There

Peter LarsenLeave a comment

By July 4, 1917 the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) had 16,440 troops in France; just over half a division. The French people were ecstatic to see Americans after nearly three years of war. But Major General John Pershing knew his fight was to grow an American army in France.

General Pershing’s first challenge was transportation. As he was preparing his headquarters in France during the summer of 1917, over one million men were entering the armed forces at home. That summer Pershing and his staff requested that Washington send 30 infantry divisions to Europe by 1919. These infantry divisions, plus artillery forces and other services, would form a freestanding American army. It would fight alongside the French and the British Empire forces on the Western Front.

This plan did not sit well with the French and especially the British. At the time they were fighting in trenches along a 700-kilometer (nearly 450 mile) front against an emboldened enemy. Millions of enemy troops were fighting on the Eastern Front against Russia, but this war was changing in the Central Powers’ favor. Russia’s severe losses in the war had caused Czar Nicholas’ abdication in February 1917. Although the war In the East dragged on through 1917, Germany and Austria-Hungary could now give the West more of their attention.

General Pershing inspecting U.S. troops at Chaumont, France 1917
General Pershing inspecting U.S. troops at Chaumont, France 1917

The Allies test Pershing

As the enemy was gaining momentum in 1917, the Allies were having a bad year. A massive French offensive in the spring had gone so badly that hundreds of units in the French army simply refused to go over the top of their trenches anymore. In addition, British and Empire forces experienced horrific losses during their own hundred-day battle in northwest France and Belgium near Ypres. Similarly, Central Powers armies pushed the Italian front back sixty miles in the fall.

The Allies (French and British Empires; Woodrow Wilson called America an “associated power”, not an allied one) were desperate for men. Their losses included the loss of confidence in their political and military leaders. French and British people were growing tired of war. The grim sacrifice of so many young men for so little gain brought them close to despair. The western Allies had the weapons and experienced leadership, but they were running out of men.

America had men. One million men were in training stateside in 1917. Potentially many more could be drafted. As a result, France and Britain were interested. Could the United States merely send the men, and let the Allies equip and command them? The French suggested that American units could be interspersed with French in a bi-national Army under French control. There would be no need for American generals, just field troops.

The British plan was even more outrageous. Since there was no language barrier, new American recruits should just don British uniforms as soon as they crossed the Atlantic. Then they could join the fight as an Anglo-American Army led by British officers. This would lead to the quickest victory in the West, they believed, at a time when defeat was a real possibility.

Among the first Americans to go overseas were Hospital staff
Among the first Americans to go overseas were Hospital staff

Walking the tightrope

Pershing was having none of it. American soldiers were not going to wear British uniforms or join French regiments. The U.S. Army was going to fight in France as an army and not as a client in the Great War. The pressure on him was great, however Pershing did not give up. He envisioned an American army victorious in an American sector of the Western Front. In any case, Pershing shared this view with his superiors in Washington all the way to the White House.

But as a small “a” ally, Pershing knew he needed the other two to reach this goal. Great Britain had the ships he would need to help get soldiers across the Atlantic. Similarly, the Allies had weapons and equipment these soldiers would need in France. They also had experienced soldiers needed to train untested Americans how to fight a complicated machine age war in Europe.

So some compromises were made. Transporting American infantrymen became the priority for Allied shipping, often to the detriment of artillerymen, artillery and war materials from the States. American units would first go into the front line in quieter sectors under French command until they were experienced in combat operations. But the tension of American manpower in the European war never really went away.

Preparing for the day

In the summer of 1917 and after, General Pershing put together an Army command that shared his vision and his urgency. His most important creation was likely his logistics command, called Services of Supply. Thousands of soldiers and engineers created an infrastructure to receive, transport, arm and feed this new American army. They enlarged four Atlantic harbors in France, adding 82 berths for incoming ships. One thousand miles of standard gauge railroads were built to move their cargoes. One hundred thousand miles of wires were strung for use by the AEF in France.

In the United States, staging areas were built near the ports of New York City, Hoboken, New Jersey and Newport News, Virginia. America prepared to send men and materiél on an international fleet. In fact, some sailed on ships seized from the enemy. When they got there, training camps were built where soldiers learned to fight together in ever larger formations. Their teachers were veteran French and British soldiers, who had seen it all. By the late fall of 1917, Pershing had most of four infantry divisions in France, 78,000 men. They were willing to go into action, but time would tell if they were ready.

U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 5 in Dannes-Camiers, France
U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 5 in Dannes-Camiers, France

Base Hospital No. 5

The Army Medical Corps was the first to be ready. During the Border war with Mexico, the Medical Corps and the American Red Cross organized a number of mobile hospital units that would move toward the front lines when activated. These units were organized around teaching hospitals and medical schools. In addition, many of the medical and nursing staff were already coworkers in civilian life.

Army Medical Corps units were mobilized and embarked for Europe in early May, 1917. The first unit arrived on May 18 and by mid-June, six U.S. Army hospital units were operating in France. On July 14, 1917 Lieutenant Louis J. Genella, a physician in the Medical Corps, was the first in American uniform to be wounded in action when his hospital unit was shelled southwest of Arras. Beatrice M. MacDonald of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps was badly injured when the Germans shelled her forward triage unit at Dozinghem, near Proven, Belgium on August 17, 1917. (See Nurse Beatrice MacDonald’s Distinguished Service Cross citation here)

Base Hospital No. 5 was organized in February 1916 in Boston at Harvard Medical School. Doctors, nurses and a core hospital staff were already training from that time. When war was declared with Germany a full unit, about company strength, was recruited and trained.

Base Hospital 5 was one of six evacuation hospital units requested for immediate service with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). These units worked in tents and temporary buildings near the front lines as a first stop for wounded and ill soldiers. For example, they had X-Ray buildings and operating rooms, triage offices and nursing wards. They were the first line in a care system that could get the badly wounded Tommy into a hospital in England within twenty-four hours.

Into the war

The men and women of Base Hospital No. 5 left Boston on May 7, 1917. By May 11, they were on the British steamer Saxonia making way from New York to Falmouth, England. As the first Americans in uniform to land, they received a tumultuous greeting in England. After that, they quickly transited through England and crossed the Channel to France. Base Hospital No. 5 was greeted to even wilder acclaim in Boulogne on Memorial Day, 1917.

The unit was first embedded next to a British Hospital unit, General Hospital No. 11, in Dannes-Camiers. Camiers was on the coastal plain near the Pas-des-Calais. Soon Base Hospital No. 5 had taken over staffing the hospital. They were prepared to care for five hundred patients. However, the hospital was sometimes filled to 2,000 patients during the Ypres offensive that summer.

On September 4, 1917 Base Hospital No. 5 was attacked by a German bomber. Privates Oscar Tugo, Rudolph Rubino, Jr., Leslie Woods and Lieutenant William Fitzsimmons were killed. Lieutenant Rae Whidden later died of his injuries. They were the first in American uniform to die in France in World War I.

During the attack four members of the hospital staff were seriously injured, as well as twenty-two patients. You can read more about Base Hospital No. 5 here

Camp Bowie

Peter LarsenLeave a comment

In the first weeks of America’s involvement in World War I, the Army decided it needed to raise a force of at least one million men. While that number was soon found to be much too small, the effort to recruit, house and train so many men turned out to be one of the war’s great achievements.

In May 1917 the Army planned to raise seventeen divisions of draftees and eighteen divisions from an enlarged Army National Guard. Therefore, thirty-five new camps for these divisions needed to be built from scratch. In addition other camps for Artillery, Coastal Defense, Quartermaster Corps, Engineers, Transport, Signal Corps and an Infantry School needed to be built in the same time frame.

The schedule itself was punishing: Soldiers would appear on the doorstep of their new camps beginning on September 5, 1917. If all the camp sites were selected, contractors found, money and materials freed up, it still would have been an organizational miracle to see all these small cities built in three months.

But in most cases the Army had to do it in a month and a half.

Mess Halls at Camp Bowie, Fort Worth

Camp Bowie

Nineteen National Guard training camps were to be built. Moreover, the Army decided to create tent cities for the Guard. The idea was, since the camps were to train one division and then close, resources would be diverted into the more permanent camps. Most of the nineteen National Guard camps were built in the Southern or the Western department of the Army’s command.

This meant that the relevant Departmental commander would choose where each small city of over 40,000 inhabitants would be built. A number of Texas cities as well as McAlester, Oklahoma were in the running for camps. Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce President Ben E. Keith and L. J. Wortham, President and Editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram led the charge for Cowtown.

Keith and Mayor W. D. Davis made the case for Fort Worth at Southern Department Headquarters in San Antonio in May. Consequently, a delegation led by a Brigadier General made the trip to tour proposed sites. They were most impressed with the Arlington Heights district just west of downtown. Fort Worth was selected as the site for the Texas and Oklahoma National Guard camp on June 11th. It was to be named after Col. Jim Bowie, hero of the Alamo.

Men of the 111th Engineer Regiment at Camp Bowie
Men of the 111th Engineer Regiment at Camp Bowie

Rush to construction

It was now Fort Worth’s turn to make good on its promises. Roads, utilities and a rail spur to camp were built by the city. Land, nearly 1,500 acres of it, was purchased by or donated to the city for Camp Bowie (Uncle Sam got the land free of charge). In addition, buildings had to be relocated or demolished, water and sewer lines dug, cattle moved.

Most of all, building materials had to be found. With so many construction projects underway, the government had to organize these resources. The War Department created a Cantonment Division which would organize base construction during the war. It was a massive organization, with over 16,000 enlisted soldiers nationwide. Ultimately, over 200,000 tradesmen and laborers would work on at least one site owned by the Cantonment Division during the war.

The Dallas construction firm of J. W. Thompson was contracted to build Camp Bowie. The contractor was chosen for his ability to take on such a project as well as his ability to get credit; short term costs were steep. The Army managed the payroll of all laborers as well as reimbursing the cost of materials.

Soldiers just arrived at Camp Bowie, Fort Worth.

Building Camp Bowie

On July 18, 1917 officers from the Cantonment Division reported in Fort Worth for duty and the contract with the builder was signed. Construction on Camp Bowie was about to begin. On July 23 the Quartermaster’s Office was established and on July 25 the timekeeper’s office was built.

3,500 craftsmen and laborers joined to build a city that would house over 41,000 soldiers. They built roads, strung electric wire and put up hundreds of buildings. Most of the soldiers would sleep in tents, but there were bathhouses, mess halls, laundry shacks and 300 kitchens.

A spur of the Texas & Pacific Railroad went by the Quartermaster’s. In addition, there were stables and barns for horses of Texas’ 1st Cavalry Regiment, who would make their home in Camp Bowie. The Northern Texas Traction Company spent $125,000 (in 1917 dollars) to extend the Fort Worth Streetcar line through camp, adding or improving twelve stops.

Forty miles of roads were built in the hot summer sun. Water tanks were built and pipes were laid. In addition, refrigeration units for food were installed. By August 21, 900 wooden buildings were constructed. A telephone exchange was built. Moreover, a stockade was built near the Military Police barracks.

Will it ever be done?

On September 6th, Amarillo’s Company A, 7th Texas Infantry had arrived in Fort Worth on the same train as  Company B of Clarendon and Company C of Childress. By September 11, 1917 all of the Seventh Texas infantry Regiment was at Camp Bowie. The Seventh Texas was one of many Infantry, Artillery, Cavalry, Engineer, Ambulance, Transportation and Signal units gathered at Camp Bowie. Most of the Texas and Oklahoma National Guard would form the 36th Infantry Division.

Camp Bowie was far from finished. For example, water pipes and electrical wires had just been introduced to the camp. The hospital, which would include 300 buildings, was only begun on August 27. The rifle range had just been started. No hurry; rifles had not yet arrived at Camp Bowie. In addition, the artillery range was still in the planning stage.

Like most cities, Camp Bowie was constantly changing in size and appearance. The staff of the Cantonment Division left in November 1917. After that, Engineers in the 36th Division declared the camp substantially finished on December 2nd, with the Camp Hospital still under construction. By July 1918, Camp Bowie had grown to 3,000 buildings and had cost the Army $3.4 million in 1917 dollars.

“A country which never was wholly theirs”

Peter LarsenLeave a comment

It was the middle of the afternoon on Thursday, August 23, 1917 in Houston’s San Felipe neighborhood. The district was south of downtown Houston and home to many of the city’s 30,000 black residents. Through waves of heat Captain Haig Shekerjian of the U.S. 24th Infantry drove into San Felipe from Camp Logan, about three miles away. The car stopped at the local police station, and Captain Shekerjian walked in.

It was 102 degrees.

Shekerjian, the first Armenian-American to graduate from West Point, was in San Felipe to find two soldiers from the 24th Infantry, one of whom he believed was shot. Corporal Charles Baltimore was there in the police station badly beaten, but alive. Corporal Baltimore was a Military Policeman who himself had come to look after the welfare of a fellow African American soldier, Alonzo Edwards. Edwards was arrested by two Houston mounted police officers when he appeared to question their rough handling of a black woman the two white officers were trying to arrest.

The officers, Lee Sparks and Rufus Daniels, instead beat Private Edwards with their firearms and transported him to the station. Officers Daniels and especially Sparks had a reputation for brutality in a police department that had only two black officers. Houston’s African Americans were twenty percent of the population of a city on the edge. Just over a month before, in East St. Louis, white rioters burned several city blocks leaving six thousand African Americans homeless. In the violence, hundreds were injured and dozens of African Americans were shot or lynched. Nine white and an unknown number of black people died in the violence in East St. Louis on July 2-3, 1917.

All of this and more was on Captain Shekerjian’s mind when he entered the police station.

Camp Logan, near Houston, in 1917
Camp Logan in 1917

Buffalo Soldiers

The 24th U.S. Infantry was created in 1869 as a regiment of black soldiers led by white officers. At the time there were two black infantry and two black cavalry regiments. The Native Americans they were sent to guard and sometimes fight called them “Buffalo Soldiers”. Most of the Buffalo Soldiers were born in the south and, although the Army was segregated, many found life easier on post in the west and southwest.

The 24th Infantry battled Native American war parties on the western Plains and guarded remote army outposts as well as the U.S.-Mexico border. In 1898 the 24th Infantry was in Cuba, where they took the Spanish fortress of El Caney and stormed up San Juan Hill. The 24th also served three tours of duty in the Philippines between 1899 and 1915.

In 1916, the 24th was once again in the southwest during the Border crisis with Mexico; joining Brigadier General John Pershing’s expedition into Mexico on March 28. By the time they had returned the following February, the 24th had accumulated a record of resilience and professionalism. This did not keep white communities from chafing at the idea of being protected by black soldiers. Yet the 24th Infantry won the respect and friendship of nearby Salt Lake City when they were stationed at Fort Douglas, Utah from 1896-1899.

U.S. Army Soldiers in Houston, 1917
U.S. Army Soldiers in Houston, 1917

The crucible of Houston

However the same treatment did not greet the 24th in Houston in 1917. On July 28, the 645 men of Third Battalion moved into their quarters about a mile from Camp Logan. The massive camp was one of the nineteen training camps now under construction for National Guard divisions. Most of the camps were in the Southern or Western departments and all of them were a boon to local economies. Thousands of craftsmen, laborers, wholesalers and businessmen swarmed over each site in a rush to get the camps built. And they had to be guarded.

That Camp Logan was guarded by armed men who happened to be black was considered an affront in segregated Houston. Neighborhoods and facilities were segregated by race. White workers at Camp Logan did not hide their disrespect for them. Black Military Police were not allowed to carry firearms in Houston. Only sentries at the camp gates were given rifles. The soldiers had to ride in the back of streetcars behind a screen that read “Colored Only”. Sentries at Camp Logan were not allowed to drink from the same water cans as the white workers they were guarding.

Outrage

Beyond the epithets and the humiliations, there was also violence. The violence reached a critical point less than a month after the soldiers arrived in Houston. On August 23, after Private Alonzo Edwards was taken into custody, Corporal Charles Baltimore asked to see him. He was a Military Policeman and a leader in Third Battalion’s Company I. Houston Officer Lee Sparks struck Baltimore with his pistol and then started firing. Baltimore fled, but was soon captured by Sparks and Daniels and brought to the same police station as Private Edwards.

Captain Shekerjian managed to get the two released. He also notified Houston’s Chief of Police of the disturbance, leading to Sparks’ suspension. But the damage had been done. Once word of the arrests made it back to camp, the soldiers were incensed. Initially they had heard that Corporal Baltimore had been killed. They also believed that, as in East St. Louis earlier, carloads of armed white men were headed their way.

Members of the 24th Infantry Regiment in Houston, 1917
Members of the 24th Infantry Regiment in Houston, 1917

Mutiny

Although their white officers tried to prevent them, men scrambled for rifles and ammunition. At this point, soldiers were concerned for their safety. Some of them left camp for the woods nearby. Shots were fired in every direction, mortally wounding one soldier. The firing went on for as much as half an hour. By then the mood in the chaotic camp changed from panic to desperation. Sergeant Vida Henry, a 19 year veteran of the 24th, formed a column of men and left camp for Houston. Up to 150 men, mostly from Company I, were with him.

No one knows what Sergeant Henry was trying to accomplish with over one hundred angry armed men. As they moved toward the city, shots rang out from the column. Residents on their front porches seeking relief from the heat fled into their homes. A teenage boy was shot dead; his brother badly wounded. Police officers and armed civilians fired back, but were shot or driven away by the force.

If there was a purpose to this armed incursion, it was primarily for revenge against the police. There were a number of street battles that night as the column advanced over two miles from camp. They never did find Officer Lee Sparks. Officer Rufus Daniels and three other Houston policemen lay dead. Three other officers were shot, one of whom died in hospital.

Disaster

As the column neared downtown Houston, a car filled with uniformed men approached them.  Believing this to be more police, the mutineers opened fire. But four of the men in the car were in Army uniform. Captain J.W. Mattes of the 2nd Illinois Field Artillery and a police officer were dead. Two of the mutineers were also dead, one shot mistakenly in the night by his own.

The column started to disintegrate as the severity of their actions became more clear. Men began to slip away back to camp. Sergeant Henry told the men he wasn’t going: He shook their hands, gave his pocket watch to a private, and walked off toward the railroad track. His body was found the next morning.

Account of the event in the Houston Chronicle

Retribution

Third Battalion was sent back to its old post in Columbus, New Mexico within a day after the mutiny. Finding the mutineers in a battalion of 645 was hardly precise. 118 soldiers were arrested and charged with murder and mutiny. Sixty-three men were tried in San Antonio in November 1917. Fifty-eight were found guilty. Of these, thirteen were sentenced to die.

Before dawn on December 11, without informing the public or receiving approval from the Wilson administration, the thirteen were hanged near San Antonio. Among the condemned was Charles Baltimore.

Outcry

Meanwhile the public outcry after the rush to judgement by the Army reverberated in the African American community and elsewhere. “They have gone to their death.” W.E.B. DuBois wrote, “Thirteen strong, young men; soldiers who fought for a country which never was wholly theirs; men born to suffer ridicule, injustice, and, at last, death itself.”

In the wake of the executions and outcry, the War Department decreed in December and January that the Judge Advocate General had the power to review death sentences in the military. Therefore no executions could take place before review from Washington.

Nevertheless, fifty-five other soldiers in the 24th went to trial. Sixteen were condemned to hang. President Wilson, bowing to pressure from across the nation, commuted the death sentences of ten soldiers. Five men were hung on September 29, 1918. The last man was hanged on October 6th.

The unit that took over duties from the 24th Infantry was part of the National Guard, the 8th Illinois Infantry. An African American regiment, the 8th Illinois openly defied the segregationist rules on streetcars and everywhere else until the War Department reassigned them to another state. The 8th Illinois later formed the nucleus of the 370th Infantry Regiment and served with distinction in France as part of the 93rd Infantry Division.

A summary of the Houston Mutiny and Riot of 1917 can be found here.

The Boys of Company A

Peter LarsenLeave a comment

The Seventh Texas Infantry Regiment was a unit of volunteers in the National Guard. It was mustered into state service in early July, 1917. By the end of July the Seventh Texas was fully recruited and ready to begin basic training. The problem was that their training camp, Camp Bowie in Fort Worth, hadn’t been built yet.

Company A

Company A of the Seventh Texas, Captain Thomas D. Barton commanding, was located in Amarillo.  In August 1917 Amarillo was a city on its way to a population of 15,000. It was a rail transportation center served by the Santa Fe Railroad, the Fort Worth & Denver City Railroad and the Rock Island Line. Live cattle, and meat from Amarillo’s packing industry were sent north to Kansas City, St. Louis and Chicago on the rails.

The men of Company A were gathered from Amarillo and the surrounding counties in the Texas panhandle. They worked on ranches, farms and railroads. Some of them were skilled workers at factories and railroad workshops. Others were clerical workers from the city. A few were fresh out of school.

Company A gathered frequently in Amarillo during July to practice military drill. They had no uniforms or weapons. There were three officers. Moreover they had no barracks, and attendance at drill was not yet mandatory. Building an American army in 1917 was a matter of hurry up and wait. Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, Camp Bowie was being built at a furious pace by 3,500 laborers and builders. The recruits of Company A would have to start their training at home.

In fact, all fifteen companies of the Seventh Texas trained at home during July-August of 1917. They stayed at fairgrounds, schools, warehouses, garages and homes. Amarillo’s Company A had a slightly better deal. The Lowrey-Phillips School north of the city was a military high school for boys when it closed after spring term in 1917. Newly vacant, Captain Barton and Company A moved right in. They renamed it Camp Bloor after the Seventh Texas’ commanding officer, Col. Alfred Bloor.

Life in Camp

Once in camp, life for the boys of Company A became more disciplined. Morning drill came before breakfast. The company became used to running and long marches. For example, one day in August, Captain Barton led the men to Canyon, Texas, nineteen miles south, for lunch. When they were not busy at drill, the men attended lectures on “sanitation, personal hygiene and military courtesy”.

The Amarillo community got into the act. Amarilloans and people in the surrounding communities sent books, sports equipment and toiletries to Camp Bloor. In addition, local homes sponsored soldiers after church services for Sunday afternoon dinner that summer of 1917.

In other communities across the Texas panhandle local companies were part of town square dances and baseball games. Every community pitched in to support their local soldiers. In early August the Seventh Texas Infantry was drafted into Federal service along with the rest of the Texas National Guard. They were surely fighting for Uncle Sam now and, for the first time, getting paid.

Coming together

Close to the end of their stay in Amarillo, Captain Barton marched the men of Company A down Polk Street where they stopped in front of the theater for inspection. After that, the whole company went to the movies for free. Soon thousands of men from towns and small cities across Texas would make their way to Camp Bowie to be formed as a larger unit. However during that summer, local companies had to make do with the unit they had. Historian George Ball observed about that summer:

“Indeed, for the Seventh Texas, the brief period in August 1917 while they waited to move was really the only time the regiment was what it was recruited to be: a Texas National Guard unit filled with Texas soldiers and commanded by Texas officers, all of whom were from the same or nearby communities.”

You can read about Company I, Seventh Texas Infantry, during a similar stay in Abilene here.

Trouble at Spears’ Bluff

Peter LarsenLeave a comment

In 1915 half of all Americans lived in rural areas. When World War I broke out in 1914, the United States was in recession. The war in Europe eventually boosted the American economy, but the life of a farmer was a tough one for a lot of reasons. This was at a time when over 30% of American workers were in agriculture. Today, it is less than one percent.

1915

1915 was a fateful year for many in northwest Texas and in Oklahoma. As in other places in the American South and West, poverty on the farm was a fact of life. In Oklahoma as in Texas, over half the farmers worked land they didn’t own. What they earned from selling crops was quickly eaten away by the owner’s share; by rent and by debt. Tenant farmers were kept on the farm by revolving debt at rates that started at around ten percent and could go as high as 100% for some loans.

The war in Europe closed overseas markets and sent prices down, especially for cotton. Land prices also fell, resulting in foreclosures and higher rents. Tenant farmers learned to beware the landowner, the lender and the buyer in town and to stay in their good graces.

In 1915, the solution for many in these dire straits was radical socialism. The most radical organization, International Workers of the World, did not admit farmers as they were nominally self-employed. Consequently, that year the Working Class Union came to Oklahoma. The WCU was like the IWW in many respects, and they admitted farmers. It was active in western Louisiana, Arkansas and east Texas, but the lion’s share of its membership lived in southeast Oklahoma.

The WCU

The Working Class Union, like the FLPA in Texas, functioned as a mutual aid society for tenant farmers. Activist lawyers in the union brought farmers relief from illegally high bank rates and saved some from eviction.  But the WCU also advocated for abolishing “rent, interest and profit-taking” and members were not above using some muscle to get their point across.

Draft Resisters under guard in Oklahoma, August, 1917

Participation in the WCU dropped in Oklahoma from a reported 20,000 members after cotton prices rebounded in 1916. However interest in the union grew as it became clear there would be war with Germany in 1917. Activity increased in all the radical groups, and membership in the Working Class Union apparently doubled in the months leading up to August 1917.

The sentiment among many in rural Oklahoma, and in many parts of rural America, was anti-war. Part of this was motivated by the ideology of a “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight”. Part of it was a lack of interest in war and absence of malice against Germans. Above all, many were motivated by fear of an overseas war that was claiming millions of lives each year.

August 1917

What happened next has been a subject of debate for a century. Young men who registered for the draft were ordered to report for their physical beginning on July 20, 1917. However, men who hoped to dodge the draft (“slackers” was the contemporary term) were congregating in groups in rural areas; and they had help. Radical socialists, including members of the Working Class Union, harbored draft dodgers and those who had a change of heart since registration day.

WCU organizers had circulated through southeastern Oklahoma, calling for resistance to the draft and to the war. Now they were making the case that the time had come for resistance by force. On August 2nd, when the Seminole county sheriff and his deputies rode into the country to arrest draft dodgers, they were fired upon. One deputy was wounded.

Bands of armed radicals gathered in four counties in southeastern Oklahoma that day. A number of them met at the farm of John Spears, who’d raised the red flag of revolution on his farm in Sasakwa in Seminole county. The crowd at Spears’ Bluff and others nearby spread out that night, burning railroad bridges, climbing poles and cutting wires.

In the moment, these rioting bands of farmers, mechanics and laborers believed they could do more. They had heard rumors of a more general uprising. To hear it told after the fact, these radicals resolved to march on Washington D.C. to stop the draft and end the war.

Reaction

In the meantime, news of the violence had mobilized posses who turned out in force. There were confrontations; gunfire was exchanged. But the rebellion broke and most men put down their arms instead of firing on their neighbors. Others fled in small groups. Four men were shot dead. About four hundred fifty were arrested in the chaos. Meanwhile, local Native Americans had just celebrated their New Year, the Ceremony of the Green Corn. The incident now had a name.

Whether the Green Corn Rebellion was resistance to the draft or the aborted overthrow of the United States government is still debated. The fact is that it was the bloodiest antiwar riot of the era, but not the only one. 184 of the rioters were brought to trial and one hundred fifty received prison sentences. The Working Class Union, and other Socialist organizations not involved in the incident, were forced to close up shop (more on the Green Corn Rebellion here).

The Fighting 36th

Peter LarsenLeave a comment

In the Great War the United States Army was actually two armies. The Regular Army represented the permanent U.S. Army. In the 48 states, the largest part of it was the Coastal Artillery Corps. Another large part of the Regular Army was the Cavalry. Many of the seventeen U. S. Cavalry regiments were used to protect the border with Mexico.

The Regular Army also had infantrymen. Through the first half of 1916, there were thirty-one infantry regiments. A regiment at that time had about 1,550 men. The thirty-one regiments served in the four military departments in the United States plus overseas in Hawaii, the Philippines, China, Puerto Rico and the Panama Canal Zone.  Likewise in January 1917, the United States purchased St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix in the Virgin Islands and had to defend those as well.

The National Defense Act of 1916 added seven more infantry regiments to the Regular Army. When war with Germany was declared in April 1917 the U.S. Army had about 213,000 men in active service. This included 66,594 National Guardsmen on the border with Mexico. That month twenty-seven more infantry regiments were planned for the Regular Army, bringing the number to sixty-five.

A New Kind of War

When it fought, the U.S. Army was fighting insurgents who operated in smaller numbers. A unit the size of the divisions manning the trenches of Europe had not been known in the U.S. military since the Civil War. When it studied the problem beginning in April 1917, the Army concluded that it would also need infantry divisions over there. Lots of them.

Soldiers at bayonet practice at Camp Bowie, Fort Worth.

This is when the U.S. Army became two armies. The Regular Army was a professional army made of volunteers. Joining them would be a National Army of draftees. Men who had registered for the draft in the spring began to be inducted into service during the summer of 1917. These men would form a new but temporary citizen army whose job was to defeat Germany and then go home.

This new National Army would add seventeen new divisions. They would come from all parts of the United States. The seventeen divisions each began with a distinctive part of the country as its home base. For example one division, the 90th (National Army), drew its men from Texas and Oklahoma.

The National Guard

Somewhere in between the Regular Army and the National Army was the National Guard. Eighteen new Guard divisions were also created at the same time as the National Army. Guardsmen were not professional soldiers, as they enlisted for the duration of the war with Germany. However they were volunteers; and some of them had previous experience in the military. Many of the Guardsmen had been in Federal service guarding the border with Mexico, but most were brand new recruits. Moreover, the vast majority of these were young and single.

Company Street Scene, 144th Infantry at Camp Bowie, Fort Worth.

News of a Texas National Guard division had been circulating since early April 1917. By June, the Texas Adjutant General was ordered by Washington to recruit to war strength three existing and four new infantry regiments. In July President Woodrow Wilson signed an order drafting all of the National Guard into Federal service for the duration of the war. That order would take effect on August 5, 1917. The eighteen new National Guard divisions would be numbered, instead of named after their home states.

Consequently, the Texas National Guard became the 36th Infantry Division on August 5, 1917.

Camp Bowie

Seventeen new National Army and eighteen new National Guard divisions would need thirty-five new training camps. The camps for the National Guard divisions were nearly all located in the Southern and Western departments of the Army. The idea was that these locations would have a milder winter to allow for faster training. Locating the training camps was in the power of the commander of the relevant department.

Warehouses - Field Headquarters at Camp Bowie, Fort Worth.

Realizing the potential for development that a military city could provide, Fort Worth Mayor W.D. Davis and some leading men in the city wrote a proposal for the Army. Fort Worth was an important rail transportation hub in 1917 with a population of about 95,000. Fort Worth was also in the beef business with stockyards and massive meat packing facilities. Horses and mules were also transported from Fort Worth to the world. For example, France and Britain were customers. The climate had already brought the Royal Flying Corps to settle in Fort Worth to train pilots.

Through the ministrations of the city government, business leaders, and a little southern charm, Fort Worth made the case for hosting a major training facility. Each training camp would be a small city in its own right; over 40,000 inhabitants all on the payroll of Uncle Sam. As a result, Fort Worth’s proposal was convincing. The city’s Arlington Heights neighborhood was selected as one of thirty-five new training camps for the Army on June 11th, 1917. The facility was named after Col. Jim Bowie, Texas pioneer and hero of The Alamo.

(More about Camp Bowie can be found here)

Down to the Wire

Peter LarsenLeave a comment

The effort to fill the ranks of the National Guard in Texas was in full swing by July 1917.  Recruiting had begun in earnest by early June. Texas had to raise four new infantry regiments and other units such as artillery, medical and engineers from across the Lone Star State. In addition, Texas already had three infantry regiments plus many other units to maintain at full enlistment. It was a tall order for Texas. The National Guard would need twelve thousand new volunteers.

By the end of June, 1917, they had less than three thousand.

The Navy, Marines and the regular Army had been recruiting aggressively since before war was declared in April. And Texans had responded. News of the local National Guard units was made public just as men were preparing to register for a national draft on June 5th. Since then there had been rallies and parades and speeches. Recruiting offices opened in cities and large towns across the state. Prospective commanders were working overtime to persuade men to “avoid the draft” by enlisting in the Texas National Guard.

Company E, 7th Texas Infantry, Vernon, Texas – Summer, 1917

Northwest Texas

In northwest Texas and the Panhandle, there were fifteen recruiting offices for a new unit, the Seventh Texas Infantry regiment. The response to the recruiting drive had been very positive in some cities, but there was concern in Abilene, Decatur, Gainesville and Fort Worth.

Something had to be done. The governor announced that the week of July 4th would be Texas Enlistment Week and exhorted patriotic organizations and community leaders to, once again, make the case for serving in a Texas outfit with neighbors.

Members of the Adjutant General’s staff in Austin were getting nervous. Washington had decided to cap the number of National Guardsmen soon in anticipation of a nationwide draft. Drafting a new army to fight in Europe was less disruptive of the kind of greater war effort that Washington was planning. If Texas was going to have a distinct force to fight in the Great War, now was its chance.

As the drawing of America’s first draft numbers since the Civil War approached, the National Guard got a reprieve: states would be able to recruit their National Guard units until at least early August. For some recruiters, it would go right down to the wire.

By early August, 1917, 14,057 men had been added to the Texas National Guard.

Amarillo

Otho K. Farrell had been busy. Since moving back to Amarillo from Waynoka, Oklahoma in the fall of 1914 he had been going to school in his spare time at Draughon’s Business College. The rest of his time went to the Santa Fe Railroad. Now that Otho was learning stenography, bookkeeping and typing in school, he was also moving up at the Amarillo headquarters. By 1917 Otho was a stenographer in the Superintendent’s Office.

It’s hard to know what O.K. Farrell thought of the war in Europe. He was still keeping in touch with his sister’s classmate back home, Gladys Loper. And by the summer of ’17 he had been in Amarillo for two and a half years. Otho did not seem to be an adventurer or a crusader. So one can imagine his parents’ surprise when he wrote to them in Waynoka with news that he had enlisted in the Texas National Guard and was going to be a soldier.

O.K. Farrell was still twenty years old. He wasn’t yet old enough to register for the draft.

Otho in 1916

July 1917

Early on July 9th, 1917, San Francisco Bay was rocked when a barge loaded with four million pounds of gunpowder exploded at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. The explosion was so large a concussion wave knocked people down miles away. Six people were killed. The similarity of the disaster to the Black Tom explosion in New York Harbor just a year before caused many to speculate about a ring of saboteurs.

(Learn more about the Mare Island explosion here.)

“Lafayette, we are here!”

Peter Larsen3 Comments

On June 13th, 1917, the cross-channel ferry entered the harbor of Boulonge-sur-Mer from England. On shore a young boy waved his arms, shouting “Vive l’Amérique” toward the incoming steamer. Though it was June, the tall, sturdily-erect man at the rail of the ship raised a gloved hand and waved to the boy, returning his greeting. The welcomes had just begun. Major General John J. Pershing was in France.

General “Black Jack” Pershing had been given command of American forces in Europe on May 10th. He had led men in combat in Cuba, the Philippines and Mexico; one of a few Americans of flag rank to do so. He was in France to build an American army that would match the French and British armies in size and professionalism, if not in experience.  With him on the steamer were his military staff of about 40 officers, some civilian employees of the federal government, about one hundred enlisted soldiers and his adjutant, Captain George S. Patton.

The first American wave into France totaled about 190 men.

General Pershing disembarks in Boulogne on 13 June 1917
General Pershing disembarks in Boulogne on 13 June 1917

(Read more about General Pershing’s arrival here)

Dark days for France

The welcome of the French was out of proportion to the size of the American advance guard. France had been in the war for nearly three years and had been bled white by the costly offensives and attrition of the Great War. French line units were deeply demoralized by the spring of 1917 and some of them had mutinied. Dozens of mutineers had been court-martialed and shot. The Americans’ arrival at this crucial time restored the spirits of all France.

Pershing’s small staff had their work cut out for them. The American Expeditionary Forces, as they were now known, planned to bring an army of one million men across the Atlantic to fight. To accomplish this, they would have to build infrastructure: docks, roads and railroads. Incoming soldiers would need training camps, supply depots and field hospitals. They needed tons of food, fuel and clothing. As this was the early Twentieth Century, they would need horses and fodder to feed them. And weapons; no one at AEF Headquarters was sure what weapons the American Doughboy was going to use in combat.

The key to this and all other problems lay in transport. The United States had limited transatlantic shipping capacity and too many men, animals and materiél stateside. French and British generals were insistent that America send troops, but Napoléon’s rule that an army marches on its stomach had to be followed.

The vast Atlantic

Bringing the American military in force to Europe in time to defeat Germany would require the Allies had mastery of the seas. They didn’t. German submarines had resumed unrestricted attacks around the British Isles in February 1917. Britain was fearful that losses on land and sea may end the war in Germany’s favor before the United States could fully enter it.

In the early evening of April 24th, six U.S. Navy destroyers cleared Boston harbor steaming east. Their mission would become clear only when they were fifty miles east of Provincetown. Once out to sea, the orders read that they were to cross the Atlantic and make contact with a British warship outside Queenstown, Ireland. The U.S. Navy was going to war.

The six ships of Destroyer Division Eight arrived in Ireland on May 4th, 1917. Their home base was Queenstown (now Cobh), on the south coast. They began patrolling the Western Approaches of the British Isles almost immediately and were joined by another six American destroyers on May 17.

Antisubmarine patrol from Queenstown was not glamorous. The coastline was unfamiliar; filled with dangerous rocks and ledges. The weather was notoriously bad year round. German submarines were laying mines and stalking ships. American destroyermen had to learn how to track submarines from the men of the Royal Navy, who’d been at it for over two years.

Return of the Mayflower - May 4, 1917 by Bernard Gribble

The Return of the Mayflower, 4th May, 1917 by Bernard Emmanuel Finnigan Gribble

A debt repaid

Slowly, the number of American soldiers in France grew. By the end of June, about half of the U.S. First Division, the Big Red One, had landed in St. Nazaire. There was also a battalion of U.S. Marines. American soldiers and marines were enthusiastically greeted everywhere they went.

Pershing knew they were not yet ready for action. They would need to train for the relentless trench warfare of the Western Front. Also, they would need to train with new and unfamiliar weapons and tactics. Most of all, more men were needed in France.

July 4th, 1917 saw a parade in Paris. For five miles through the old city the 2nd Battalion of the 16th U.S. Infantry Regiment marched until they reached the gravesite of Marie-Joseph Paul Roch Yves Gilbert du Motier, the sixth Marquis de Lafayette. With General John Pershing at the head, the Americans saluted their Revolutionary War comrade. A voice called out “Nous voilà, Lafayette!”

16th Infantry Regiment marches in Paris on July 4, 1917
16th Infantry Regiment marches in Paris on July 4, 1917

The Wreck in Texas, part 2

Peter LarsenLeave a comment

On May 17, 1917, T.A. Hickey made his way to the Post Office in Brandenburg, a tiny settlement about halfway between Fort Worth and Lubbock, Texas. Hickey, a radical socialist, was editor of the Socialist Party of Texas’ official newspaper, The Rebel. He had sixty pages to send to the paper, which was published in Hallettsville in southeast Texas. Each edition of The Rebel carried the slogan, “The great appear great to us only because we are on our knees. Let us arise.”

As Hickey approached the Post Office in Brandenburg (now called Old Glory), he was approached by four men who motioned toward a waiting car. According to Hickey, leading them was a Texas Ranger named John Montgomery, distinguishable by his one arm. Montgomery took Hickey’s writings and told him to “climb in”. He asked Montgomery to show a warrant but was told a warrant wasn’t needed. As Hickey would later put it: “Under the persuasion of the guns I got into the automobile and was conveyed at the rate of thirty-two miles an hour to Anson.”

Labor organizer

Thomas A. Hickey was born in Dublin, Ireland. In 1892 he emigrated to the United States, aged twenty-three. He stayed Brooklyn and joined the Knights of Labor, leading a strike there. Ten years later finds Hickey organizing lumberjacks in the Pacific Northwest. After that, he moved to Arizona where he was an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners. He was also the editor of The Globe (Arizona) Miner.

Socialist Party Mass Meeting

By the time Hickey made his way to Texas in 1905, he had been personal secretary to Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs and was a party organizer. He was also co-founder of what eventually became the I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World).

Editor of The Rebel, Socialist Party Weekly

Hickey had organized industrial workers, lumberjacks and miners. In Texas he took up the plight of the farmer. Texas farmers were increasingly farming land they didn’t own. By 1910, over half (53.3%) were tenant farmers working for absentee landowners. Tenants usually were kept on the farm by debt to the owner. In their desperate situation, Hickey’s message was music to their ears.

By 1911 Hickey edited The Rebel, the Socialist Party weekly. His rhetorical flair on the page was matched with fire in his stump speeches for the cause. The Rebel boasted a circulation of 40,000 at its height. Its success briefly fostered other socialist papers in Texas.

No topic was taboo to Hickey. He took on everything from Texas landowners to the Romanovs of Russia. He criticized President Wilson as the nation moved closer to war with Germany. As a socialist, Hickey viewed the European war as a conspiracy of plutocrats. He viewed the draft, in America and in his native Ireland, as another form of alienated labor. Likewise, he called on politicians and industrialists to pick up a rifle and serve first. Hickey reported on the annual meeting of the Farmers’ and Laborers’ Protective Association in nearby Cisco just before his arrest.

Saturday, June 2, 1917 edition of The Rebel

Following his arrest, Hickey was driven 37 miles to Anson, Texas where he was placed in custody of the Jones County sheriff. After an hour and a half, he was driven to nearby Abilene, where he was placed in Federal custody.  When he secured legal counsel, Hickey was released on $1,000 bail nearly three days after his arrest. Hickey left with a summons to appear before a federal grand jury in Abilene on October 1, 1917. He never got back his documents.

Espionage Act

In Washington, Congress had been working since early 1916 on a law to counter espionage and other activities against the war by foreign agents in America. A year later, the Espionage Act was ready for President Wilson’s signature. In addition, the Espionage Act made it a crime to distribute in print items deemed by the United States to be false or detrimental to the war effort.

Just before the Espionage Act was to take effect, Postmaster of the United States Albert S. Burleson denied distribution of The Rebel through the mail. This effectively killed the paper. Reasons for censorship were not given, but The Rebel consistently encouraged its readers not to buy War Bonds and reported on efforts to resist the draft. The Rebel was the first publication suppressed under the Espionage Act of 1917. More would follow.

Thomas A. Hickey would keep his date with the federal grand jury in Abilene and, according to him, seven more grand jury appearances. He was never prosecuted. Apparently his involvement with the farmers’ rights group Renter’s Union was confused by the authorities with the FLPA. The Rebel never reappeared (you can read more about T.A. Hickey here).

The Espionage Act of 1917 is still very much in effect.

Be a “went” instead of a “sent”

Peter LarsenLeave a comment

The effort to build a national army of volunteers and draftees was the mission of the War Department, but it was not the only one. This army had to be housed, fed, trained and equipped. It also had to be led by officers. Plans for creating this new army were underway even before war was declared in April 1917. From the start, enlarging the National Guard, and bringing it into federal service, was part of the plan. And the plan included the Texas National Guard.

Texas’ National Guard was about to triple in size. Three infantry regiments, a squadron (battalion) of cavalry, along with other units already served Texas along the Mexican border in 1916-1917. Four more infantry regiments would now be recruited, plus artillery, signal, engineer, supply and medical units. As a result, Texas was about to have a force of a size not seen since the Confederacy.

Recruiting the Guard

Recruiting this force along with the Army, Navy and Marines was going to be a monumental task. The federal draft, for which eligible men registered beginning June 5th, was about to draw its first names in July. By that time, nearly one million Texans had registered. Draftees who passed their physical would normally be inducted into the Army.

Northwest Texas and the Panhandle was the home of one of the new infantry regiments, the Seventh Texas. The part of Texas that was home to the Seventh can be seen below, roughly in sections 2 and 3 on the map. It included Amarillo, Lubbock, Abilene, Fort Worth, Wichita Falls and the surrounding areas.

Texas Highway Map circa 1917.

Like the other three new regiments, the Seventh had to recruit fifteen companies of 150 enlisted men each. The job of recruiting was given to the prospective commanders of the fifteen companies. The companies would each draw from one of the larger county seats in this area of Texas. Most commanders recruited in their hometowns. Because of this, they would have to use their connections, their wits, and not a little of their own money to reach one hundred and fifty men.

Advantages to volunteers

Getting men to volunteer for the Texas National Guard, while the branches of the federal Armed Services were also recruiting required organization, persuasion and skill. Also recruiters were not permitted to disparage the other services. Recruiters couldn’t hide the fact that Guardsmen probably would fight overseas. Even so, men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five could consider the advantages of volunteering for the Guard.

First of all, the pay in the Guard was the same as in the Army: $30 a month for privates when serving overseas. Just as persuasive was the fact that Guardsmen shared a place and a sense of community. A Cleburne newspaper editorial exhorted young men to “soldier with the boys you know”. And the leaders they knew: officers were also local businessmen, lawyers and educators.

Another advantage was the support a company would get from its home community. Each of the communities that was home to a National Guard unit drew great pride from the example of their fighting men. In addition, the men of the Seventh would have to rely on their hospitality in the early days.

Draft Poster for National Guard

Spreading the word in north Texas

Texas National Guard officers were busy recruiting for the Seventh Infantry soon after registration opened for the draft. Captain Thomas Barton had opened a recruiting office in Amarillo by June 16th, telling a reporter, “we will go and return as an Amarillo Company”. Other offices opened in Childress, Cleburne, Gainesville, Denton, Wichita Falls, Decatur, Abilene, Lubbock, Vernon, Crowell, Quanah, Clarendon and two offices in Fort Worth.

Local newspapers, Chambers of Commerce and mayors helped the cause. Another parade was held in Amarillo. Denton had a recruiting rally, as did Gainesville, Cleburne and Vernon. In late June, three thousand reportedly attended a rally in Abilene. Decatur’s rally lasted three days.

Recruiting officers and civic leaders were working under pressure. Draftees would be called up for their physicals beginning on July 20th. Initially they believed that recruitment for the National Guard would stop on that date. To them it was a matter of pride for local men, with local officers, to represent Texas in the World War. Consequently, Judge J.M. Wagstaff exhorted the three thousand gathered in Abilene in June, “If you haven’t enlisted, why? Are you less patriotic than the men of 1861? Why can’t the boys of Abilene and Taylor county serve their country?”