Many of Hall’s stories are rightly suspect, but his harrowing account of his weeks on a freight train crossing Russia is confirmed by a ship’s manifest. From Vladivostok he made his way to Japan, and in Yokohama boarded the Korea Maru, to start going on to San Francisco. The passenger list includes Bert Hall, aged forty.
Twenty-three
A Letter from Home, to a Young Man with a Secret
In every unit there is someone who receives a “Dear John” letter. In this case of unrequited love it was new Escadrille member of partially French descent, Edmond Charles Clinton Genet of Ossining, New York, the great-great-grandson of “Citizen” Edmond Charles Genêt, the French Republic’s first minister to the United States in 1793. That first Genêt had caused so much trouble with his radical political views on what American foreign policy should be that his government recalled him and strongly intimated that he would be guillotined. The American public was treated to the spectacle of an ambassador begging for asylum from President George Washington, who denounced him for his meddling, but allowed him to stay in the United States. Genêt later married the daughter of New York State’s Governor George Clinton, and never returned to France.
That firebrand’s descendant, Edmond, was small and sickly, eighteen in 1914, with a baby face, but he enlisted in the Foreign Legion and fought with determined bravery. In addition, he was a charming and ambitious youth who knew how to get things done. Apart from his emotional frustration about the girl back home, Edmond had a secret that could have landed him in trouble on both sides of the Atlantic: He was a deserter from the United States Navy.
Edmond kept an assortment of material that later appeared as a book titled An American for Lafayette. The largest portion consists of diary entries combined with letters back to the States, and observations on the war and his part in it. Many of his diary entries have an interesting rhythm to them, a reflection of the “hurry up and wait” reality of war, while others convey an energetic immediacy, a sense of something more than “you are there,” but rather, “you are right here beside me, living it with me.”
While still in the Foreign Legion in 1915, Edmond wrote a friend back in the States about a day he survived during the Second Battle of Champagne, in the northeast of France: “In an attack we made on Sept. 28th, out of our company of 250 there are not quite 60 left . . . that same night there were but thirty-two of us able to be collected from two companies (500 men) who were able to assist in carrying back behind the lines some of the badly wounded.”
Edmond showed a mature sense of the military situation. In February of 1916, fourteen months before the United States entered the war, he wrote this in his diary:
“Fair day. Maneuvers of Moroccan and Colonial Divisions from middle a.m. to late p.m. very interesting but tiring. These maneuvers are certainly very thorough and extensive. The U.S. Army doesn’t even dream of such and here the French runs them off even while she is hard at war. Will the U.S. ever be prepared for foreign troubles? It looks doubtful, very doubtful.”
In pilot training at the aviation school at Buc, outside of Paris, Edmond demonstrated his philosophical approach to the events of a day:
“Fair day, out practicing on machines in early a.m. Smashed propeller on one machine but learned a valuable lesson from the experience . . . [Later] Practice on machines. Went fairly well in p.m. I certainly have good control when at full speed. Took supper at café in Buc with fellows in evening. Pretty good meal.”
In a letter he wrote soon after that, Genet described this: “One American fellow made a Bleriot monoplane look like a match factory scrap heap this morning. He was lucky to come out of it unhurt. The same is liable to occur to any one of us. It’s so blamed easy to get kicked out of aviation . . . I don’t think much of being sent back to the Legion.”
Accidents occurred frequently. In one diary entry, Edmond said this: “Out for work [practice flight] in late p.m. and motor stopped dead while on my second flight. Managed to land without smashing up in a hay field. Mighty thankful for that.” The next day he wrote: “Went down to bring back machine I landed with last night. Had to wait four hours while mechanics repaired the motor. Then went up and motor went wrong. Smashed to the ground and broke the machine all to bits and landed in school hospital with a badly wrenched left hip and shoulder. Cleared of negligence [and] all the fellows came over to see me this afternoon.”
Two days after that came this: “Fine day. Got out of infirmery [sic] in early a.m. but was told to wait until tomorrow to start flying again . . . Dennis Dowd one of our number was instantly killed last evening in a fall with a Caudron biplane. Was an awful blow to us all. Interment Monday.” Dowd had been wounded in trench fighting before being accepted for aviation. While recuperating from that wound, he met a Parisian debutante, Paulette Parent de Saint-Glin; they became engaged and planned to marry after the war.
When Edmond finished pilot training and came to the Escadrille in January of 1917, Pilot Ned Parsons described his dramatic arrival at the frozen, muddy airfield at Cachy in the blood-soaked Somme Valley region of north-central France. On a day when “weather conditions were vile, and the ceiling was so low that even the ducks were walking,” all flying had been canceled. The pilots, including Bill Thaw and the attached French lieutenant de Laage, huddled “close to the little pot-bellied stove” and were suddenly “startled by the sound of a plane overhead, down so close to the barracks that the very walls vibrated.” The quickly reached consensus was that someone who should never have taken off in this snowstorm was badly lost.
“A few minutes later the door of the mess room burst open and on the wings of a great gust of snow-laden wind a short, muffled, fur-clad figure drifted into the room. Only the tip of a reddish, frostbitten nose and a pair of wide appealing blue eyes showed through the woolen wrappings . . .
“The chunky little figure was topped by a thatch of short-cropped blond hair above the round, innocent pink-cheeked face of an infant. He didn’t look a day over fourteen. His peach-bloom complexion showed no traces of ever having met a razor socially. He had a little snubby nose, and there was a constant expression of pleased surprise at the wonders of the world in the wide-set blue eyes. He saluted snappily and in a high-pitched, almost girlish voice announced that he had ferried up a new Nieuport [fighter] from Plessis-Belleville for the Escadrille.
“‘Fine work, Corporal,’ de Laage congratulated him, ‘but it seems to me that you were taking a long chance in this weather.’
“‘Oh, I just got so bored, Lieutenant, waiting at Plessis for my orders that when it looked as if the ceiling might lift I just came on.’”
Remembering this, Parsons said, “That was one of Genet’s most admirable characteristics, and he had many. He never let difficulties stand in his way. He just plowed through them to the best of his ability. He and Thaw shook hands with the cordiality of old friends, and de Laage suggested, since replacements were so badly needed and since his orders to join the Escadrille were probably in the works, that Genet simply stay instead of going back to Plessis-Belleville. The suggestion was eagerly adopted.”
Edmond Genet’s friendliness, unfailing courage, and skill in the air soon made him a favorite among his comrades. Despite his youth and relative inexperience as a combat flier, he was often chosen to be the leader of flights into particularly hazardous areas.
The first of young Edmond’s problems, though, was his obsession with a clergyman’s daughter named Gertrude Talmage, a nineteen-year-old student at Smith College who regarded him as being just a friend. His diary entries contained scores of passages such as this:
“Wrote long letter to adorable Gertrude in evening. What a wonderful loving wife she will make. Oh, God give her to me when I get back to the dear old U.S.A.! Surely ours is a love that will never break!”
Not knowing how to respond to his frequent ardent love letters—a situation complicated by her falling in love with a young Congr
egational minister from Vermont—Gertrude allowed him to think that his letters had been “lost in the mail.” Edmond finally learned the truth from a letter sent by his mother, passing on a letter to her from Gertrude’s aunt Mrs. Curry Barlow saying that Gertrude was engaged, and that Mrs. Barlow would also be writing to Edmond. He replied to his mother with these heartsick words: “The simple truth is unbearable; can you half-imagine what it means to me to have to realize that she has been receiving my letters all these months and has just permitted me to keep on and on without telling me directly and instantly of her engagement?”
In addition to his infatuation with Gertrude, Edmond’s other problem was that he had deserted from the United States Navy. Keeping that secret in France would lead him into a unique form of what could be called intelligence work. In 1913, at the age of seventeen, he had enlisted in the United States Navy in a program that he hoped would result in his being accepted at Annapolis and lead to a career as a naval officer. A year later, drawn to the war that was starting to consume Europe, he deserted from the battleship USS Georgia, which was in Boston’s Charlestown Navy Yard. By February of 1915 he had reached Paris and enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. During his time in the Escadrille, he felt guilty about his desertion, but determined, as he put it, “to throw away my life, if need be, in the war.” In letters back to the United States and in visits to Paris, he made efforts to regularize his situation, writing that if he were to be killed—a feeling he never escaped—“it would be much easier if I knew I was O.K. with my own loved country.”
In Paris, he became an occasional visitor to Alice Weeks’s house, where he became friends with Paul Rockwell. Among the letters in Genet’s An American for Lafayette there is one to Paul Rockwell in which he thanks Paul for his efforts to help him be accepted for pilot training. In another letter, written on July 21, 1916, he refers to Captain Frank Parker of the United States Army, a West Pointer who was the military attaché at the American Embassy in Paris. At that time the United States was nine months away from entering the war. A military attaché from a neutral country was in a delicate position, in this case not only needing to learn what intelligence he could about the prospective enemy, Germany, but also about France’s true military situation and potential. In particular, Parker needed to know more about the French Air Service.
Edmond told Rockwell that he needed “to see the Capt. very badly about a personal matter.” In a diary entry he revealed what that “personal matter” was:
“Confess[ed] to the Capt. of my desertion from the Navy. He promised to help me clear myself all he possibly can but advises I hold off action until I’ve finished my service here. Gave me lots of hope for getting squared later on account of my record here. God grant so.”
It became clear that an unspoken bargain had been reached. Edmond Genet, a pilot fully inside the French Army, would provide Captain Parker what information he could about that army’s aerial training and tactics. The day after writing about his conversation with Parker, Edmond wrote this in his diary: “Am going to assist Capt. Parker to collect information valuable to the U.S. Service, about aviation, etc.” Two weeks later he added this, writing at the flying school at Buc, on the outskirts of Paris:
“Went to Versailles and met Capt. Parker at 11 and brought him out, dined at Hotel Aviatic and showed him the whole school all p.m. Chief Pilot took us around was extremely nice & gave the Capt. a fine impression of me as a pilot.”
Nine days later Edmond wrote this, referring to the newly promoted Parker as “Major”:
“Worked at Major Parker’s office [in Paris] all a.m. Typing a report of the Buc school for him.” The next day he recorded that “Major Parker had Lieut. Brekere, Chief Pilot of Buc school in [to Paris] for luncheon.” The day after that, “Went to see Colonel Girod, Comdt. of Aviation with Major Parker in early a.m. and rec’d permission to go to [advanced training] school at Pau instead of Avord.” In another entry he defined his mission once more: “Getting all information possible about machines used in the war for future use. May be of help to U.S. Aviation Corps.”
For a youth who had recently turned nineteen—he was the youngest pilot in the Escadrille—Edmond demonstrated quite a talent for bringing influential people to his side. Among those who helped him realize his ambition to become a pilot was Dr. Gros, the Escadrille’s principal organizer and fund-raiser, who “said he knew of me and would do all possible for me.” Jarousse de Sillac, the diplomat who held a prominent post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, assured him of his support: Edmond said of two letters he received from de Sillac, “He may help me greatly to get into aviation.”
When he was accepted for pilot training, Edmond scarcely lacked for social acquaintances. “Miss Ann Morgan, daughter of J. Pierpont Morgan [Jr.] . . . motored out from their home in Versailles to see us all and asked Capt. to allow us all to come to lunch with them someday, possibly Saturday. They can give us a fine time so hope we can go.”
Serious as he was about flying, Edmond had other sides to his life. In early training at Buc, he wrote, using colloquial language of the day, “Started practice with our new baseball team in a.m. Created quite a sensation among the blamed Frenchmen.” In addition to baseball, Genet played soccer, describing it by its European name. “Played football a little bit in early a.m. Don’t care for the Association game the French always play. It’s slow and unscientific.”
Brief references show the camaraderie: “Out at café with the Bunch all evening and had fine time singing and forgetting old cares.” Another reference to off-duty evenings contained this: “Had supper in village east of school [Buc] with fellows & all went to Hotel Aviatic afterwards where we played the piano and had some drinks and champagne. Not enough to harm anyone.” In addition to that, Edmond carried on a prolific correspondence with twenty or more relatives and friends in the United States, several of whom sent him packages containing clothes, nonperishable food, and books. He also became a favorite of many Americans of different ages living in Paris.
In the Escadrille, dogfights came quickly. On February 15, 1917, Edmond made this diary entry:
“Superb day. Out along our lines from 8:30 to 10:30 this morning with [Ronald] Hoskier and Parsons and we all had several hot, close combats with two German planes over Roye. Had a fight with each of them in turn being attacked by one as I was driving the other down to earth. Had to leave off chasing the first to turn and attack the second which I forced to quit and dive for safety at 400 metres over Roye and several batteries of anti-aircraft guns which quickly opened up a furious fire at me. I think I killed the gunner of the second . . . Aerial combats certainly are exciting and soon over. They try one’s nerves to the limit but there is very little if any time to think of danger to one’s self.”
Edmond’s eloquence and compassion came to the fore when he learned that Kiffin Rockwell, flying in a different area, had been killed while attacking a two-seater German Albatros. He wrote this letter to Kiffin’s brother Paul, who was at Alice Weeks’s house in Paris.
“My dear Paul,
“My heart took a mighty big drop for you this afternoon when I read in the paper of Kiffin’s death at the front and my very deepest sympathy goes out to you in this untimely loss. If you can console yourself at all console yourself in the fact that your brother’s end came while he was heroically defending this big cause, for which we all are willing to give our lives, in the face of the enemy. I earnestly hope that as glorious a fate awaits us as Kiffin found . . .
“My sympathy goes out, too, to Mrs. Weeks for I know this sad loss only intensifies her own past sorrow. Please extend to her my deepest regards.
“Try to brighten up, dear Paul. Your brother has found a glorious end—a soldier’s death and, ’tho it has come far too soon and unexpected, such a death should tend to soften the hardness of the personal loss and bereavement. May you find it so.
“Always faithfully yours—
Six weeks after writing his condolence letter to Paul Rockwell, Edmond made this diary entry:
“This is my 20th birthday. Wish it was my 18th. The years are flying too fast. Much too fast.” Despite his youthful energy, Edmund occasionally wrote about having stomach trouble, and noted that flying thousands of feet up in an open cockpit resulted on one occasion in his returning from a mission “with ice all around my nose and mouth.” During that harsh winter of 1917, one evening he made the diary entry, “Fine day but so cold that I have had to melt the ink in my fountain pen in order to write this.”
Edmond found himself directly involved in the next Escadrille death. James McConnell, whose book Flying for France had just been published to favorable reviews in the United States, had experienced a return of severe rheumatism caused by an earlier back injury suffered in a crash landing. Captain Thenault had ordered him back to the hospital for further treatment, but after some days there McConnell left, against doctor’s orders, and returned to the Escadrille.
On Monday, March 19, 1917, Edmond took off on a three-plane patrol to protect French observation planes that were scouting above the little town of Ham in the Somme Valley. The Escadrille pilots were Ned Parsons, Edmond, and McConnell, who was not supposed to be back on duty. Parsons experienced motor trouble soon after takeoff, and had to return to base. Edmond described what happened then.
“‘Mac’ and I kept on—he leading . . . North of Ham I discovered two German machines much higher than we coming towards us to attack. One was much nearer than the other and began to come towards ‘Mac.’ I immediately started up towards it and met it at 2200 metres—leaving Mac to take care of the [lower] end.
First to Fly Page 15