Homer Anderson, of Pompano Beach, Florida, probably could have answered questions all day long, if only I’d had them. I’d heard that Mr. Anderson, who was 107 when we met in January of 2005, had served in the Balloon Corps, and I really, really wanted to meet someone who’d had something to do with aviation in that war. The United States Balloon Corps wasn’t exactly the Lafayette Escadrille, but they did make it aloft. Actually, the Balloon Corps is a quirky little footnote of the war: Balloons, typically filled with hydrogen, were used by both sides for observational purposes on the Western Front pretty much from the war’s start; you can see a lot more from a balloon, even one that’s only fifty or a hundred feet up, than you can from a trench. The problem was that balloons were essentially defenseless—the only thing an observer could do in the name of self-preservation was frantically attempt to lower the balloon quickly, or, failing that, jump—and they soon became a favorite target of enemy planes, not only because they were strategically important and easy to destroy, but because all that hydrogen burned rapidly and looked beautiful doing so. I imagine shooting one down must have been pretty satisfying for a pilot, and guilt-free, too, since most observers wore parachutes.
Homer Anderson—who was wearing a blue plaid shirt on the day I visited him—had grown up in Du Bois, Pennsylvania, in the central part of that state, and was interested in balloons and aeroplanes, so when he enlisted he asked for that kind of post; oddly, though, he wasn’t looking for any action. “To tell you the truth,” he told me, “I was more interested in questions and answers, in problems, than I was in carrying a rifle around.” So even though he had asked to serve in the Balloon Corps, he spent most of his time there doing office work, and only went up in a balloon a half-dozen times, by his recollection. And all of them were in Pennsylvania. And none of them were at all unusual. “We had certain areas that we went out in balloons,” he explained, “and more or less inspected the area that the different corps were parked in, and we just checked the area to see if there was any change or anything, anything moving in or out that wasn’t already scheduled. We knew what was scheduled. It was just more or less a review.” Nevertheless, he said, “it was thrilling for me.”
At least, that is, until the Army decided there was no future in balloon surveillance, due to the aforementioned issues, at which point they converted his unit to infantry.
They never made it to France.
While I never got to meet anyone who flew a plane Over There—or, for that matter, Over Here—I did get to meet some veterans who worked with trucks. Sure, trucks aren’t particularly dashing or romantic; I doubt anyone ever wore goggles and a long scarf while driving one. But those old rigs looked pretty cool, with their enormous square grilles and absence of headlights. And it’s a matter of fact that they were tremendously important in keeping the boys in the trenches well supplied, a task not devoid of danger, since they sometimes got quite close to the front, and almost always had to lumber long distances on roads that had been rough even before they’d sustained three years’ worth of shelling. Reuben Law worked on those trucks, trained soldiers to drive them, even drove them himself. Yet, as far as I’m concerned, that fact is actually among the less interesting things he told me when I visited him. And I love trucks.
It was July 1, 2004; Mr. Law was six weeks shy of his 106th birthday, living in the dry hills of Carson City, Nevada, with his son and daughter-in-law. Like almost every World War I veteran I interviewed, he looked much younger than he was, although to me he also looked distinctly old-timey; with his firm chin, perfectly trimmed brush mustache, steely gaze, and white hair combed back straight from his forehead, his countenance seemed like it had been lifted whole from another era, one that predated color photography. Then again, I guess it had. He wore a deep red cardigan sweater over a brown shirt, and khakis with banker’s cuffs and a crease so sharp it could have cut a crusty loaf of bread. His voice, clipped and gravelly, was the spearhead of a powerful dignity; there was no mistaking it. He was alone at home when I first got there, and seemed, at first, unsure of why anyone would want to interview him. He graciously answered my questions anyway.
He was born in Northfield, Minnesota, on August 14, 1898. His father, Walter Tweedy Law, a Scottish immigrant, worked for the William Pearson Land Company, running trains up to Canada to sell wheat lands; he died of stomach cancer when his son, Reuben, was just starting high school. His mother, born Victoria Augusta Bowler, was the daughter of James Madison Bowler, a native of northern Maine who had moved to Minnesota in 1858. When the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, J. M. Bowler joined Company F of the 3rd Minnesota and was quickly made a corporal; by the time Victoria, his first child, was born—on September 16, 1863, to be specific—he had been commissioned a captain in the 3rd Minnesota, and then a Major in the 11th United States Colored Regiment. As a baby, Reuben Law’s mother “was taken into a Civil War camp by her father,” he told me. “A Civil War camp of colored troops. And some people thought it was awful for him to do that. But they took real good care of the baby while it was there. And the family has always been black-oriented, to do the same for a person that is black and a person that is white.” Pretty unusual for 1863, when much of the country still regarded black men and women as property.
“So your grandfather was a very progressive man,” I said.
“Very progressive,” he agreed. “I was grown up when he died, and I spent a lot of time with my grandfather.”
The world can get to know James Madison Bowler a bit through his and his wife’s many letters to each other, written during the Civil War and since published. He must have passed the epistolary gene on to his grandson, Reuben, who, while in the Army—at least during the nine months before he got shipped over to France—wrote several letters a day to various friends and family back in Minnesota. I know this because he also kept a diary, writing in it every single day, from:
12/19/1917: Visited Chicago Art Museum and walked the dirty city streets. Reported at First Illinois Armory at 1:00 p.m. Left for Florida by special train at 7:00 p.m. on Illinois Central R.R.
to:
11/11/1918: Le guerre finis. All flags & colors raised at noon; whistles blown, bells rung & rifles of all guards fired at 4:00 p.m. Men on crutches carried them on their shoulders.
And a bit beyond.
The diary is curt and businesslike but also a fascinating glimpse of his service, which can be said to have begun on June 6, 1917, when he was still in high school. “There was a soldier came to visit us at the school looking for recruits,” he explained to me. “And I was in a technical course, and he was kind of impressed with what I’d been doing in school . . . I enlisted there, when he was there, in the Army Reserve. And it was agreed, when I enlisted, that they wouldn’t—my graduation, my high school was coming up in a few months, in a month or two—that they wouldn’t call me to active duty before my graduation.” They actually called him up in December; he’d spent the interim working on a Ford assembly line in Minneapolis, making Model Ts. “I was putting boards together in the little trunk area in the back with screws,” he recalled. “It was good work at the time. I think they paid five dollars a day. Anyway, the other automobile companies that were at the time, said Ford would go broke paying that kind of money. And his answer was, if I don’t pay them that kind of money, they won’t have money to buy my cars.”
Reuben Law acquired his diary on December 18, 1917, when he boarded a train from Minneapolis and left for Chicago, and started writing in it the next day. As I said, he never missed a day. Some were more eventful than others. On December 21, he wrote:
In train all day. Took one hour hike at Albany, Georgia. Arrived at Jacksonville 8:30 p.m. Friday, took side track to camp and slept on Pullman that night. Had no supper. Wrote to: Hester, Marion & Deac.
On December 22:
Went into Camp [Joseph E.] Johnston at 8:30 a.m. and ate very light breakfast. Cleaned around barracks and loafed rest of day. Received 1 blanket, 1 comforter and 1 mattress
to be filled with hay. Sang at night with Chicago bunch who were gathered around the barracks. Camp fire accompanied by three string instruments. 300 more hungry men came from Fort Thomas, Kentucky. Wrote to: Edith M., & Mother.
And December 28:
Morning cold, but bright. Wrote to: Mother, Jim, & H. Street. Uniforms issued. Spent several hours trading uniforms in order to get a somewhat better fit.
Clothes issued: 1 O.D. [olive drab] coat; 1 O.D. trousers, 2 khaki trousers; 1 khaki coat; 1 pair shoes; 1 pair puttees; 2 shirts; 1 overcoat; 1 poncho; 1 overalls; 1 jacket; 1 hat; 2 suits summer and 2 suits winter underwear; 6 pair sox; 1 belt.
By New Year’s Eve, the temperature in Jacksonville—Florida—was down to 10 degrees. “Wish my skates were here,” he wrote. “Drilled. Had inspection!! Wrote to: Hester & Mother.”
January 1, 1918:
Cloudy, 15 degrees. New Years day; no frill and had no detail duties. Went to Jacksonville to do some errands for myself and the boys. Tried to look up Mr. C. E. Hillyer; got note at his office. Took pictures along the roadway while hiked to town.
January 2:
Cloudy, 23 degrees. Had a fine morning of drill which loosened up our colds a great deal. Had seven hours of drill today. They are livening things up now and working us harder. Received two very welcome letters from Lois today, the first mail since arrival at camp. Wrote to: Mother & Lois.
He lived in Block G and was assigned to the Motor Transport Corps. All in all, it seems to have been a relatively easy post: A typical day may have included an hour or two of drilling, and maybe some cleanup or patrol. There was a lot of time for visiting family friends in the area, touring around Jacksonville and St. Augustine, and, most of all—except for writing letters—hiking. Reuben Law did a lot of hiking in Florida, so much, in fact, that I wondered if perhaps that was the secret to his longevity. Until, that is, I came across his entry for February 10, 1918: “Six of us hired a Maxwell and drove them to St. Augustine . . . Drank from Fountain of Youth.” (Upon further reflection, it occurs to me that his mother, who lived to be 109, probably had something to do with it, too.)
The next day, he wrote: “Rifles were issued to company this afternoon. I now have Springfield 30-30 #739744.” He didn’t get much chance to train with it, though; the day after that, he was assigned to his truck, a two-ton Pierce-Arrow. His job, he told me, was “training soldiers to drive and drive at night without any lights, and drive by the feel of the edges of the road so that they’re on the road but not quite.” The trucks “were all Pierce-Arrows and Cadillacs,” and were so well made, he recalled, that “we could oftentimes leave the truck overnight and start it in the morning with that little tickler and it’d hit the right cylinder.” I have no idea what that means, in case you’re wondering.
After about nine months of that—during which time he probably trained hundreds of drivers—Reuben Law was sent to France. Eighty-six years later, he still didn’t quite know why. “I imagine they figured they’d trained as many [truck drivers] as they could use,” he speculated, but it seems the Army might not have known why they shipped Private First Class Law Over There, either, because when he arrived at Brest, he recalled, “they seemed to not know where to fit us. I went from a receiving company in France, to an electrical company.” But the electrical company didn’t have anything for him to do, so eventually they put him back in the Motor Transport Corps and sent him east, to the town of Allerey. On the way, he passed through Reims, the ancient city to which French kings had traveled for centuries to be crowned; the Germans had damaged or destroyed much of the city by the time he got to see it.
In Allerey, PFC Law was quickly promoted to sergeant and put in charge of the motor pool of Base Hospital 26, a large facility comprising three smaller hospitals. “We were sent there to take charge of transportation of all kinds: ambulances, staff cars, motorcycles—the works,” he explained. “We had a mobile repair shop that was moved right into a big garage, and we repaired any vehicles that came our way that needed repair—mostly motorcycles. And we gave the dispatch rider a motorcycle that had been repaired and we took his in for repair, ready for the next guy.” He was assigned a motorcycle, too—a British model that he didn’t much care for. One day, though, a Harley-Davidson came in for repair, and he snagged it.
He told a lot of stories about France, many of which I had heard before in some form or other—of roaming around the countryside looking for supplies, bargaining with farmers for eggs (“the French aristocracy are kind of stiff-necked people, but the peasants are real down-to-earth people and friendly”), celebrating the armistice (“we joined the hubbub in town, and every girl that came by gave you a kiss”). He admired the French, was impressed by what he’d seen Over There; by the time he’d arrived, he told me, France was “a worn-out nation, a worn-out people. They’d been at it so long and there was so much I’ll go over and kill you, you come back and kill me, and you kept repeating that over and over until eventually both are likely to lose.” He said he thought the two nations had forged a bond during that war; “By and large, I think we’ve had a pretty decent relationship with France,” he offered, then added: “Up until just recently, [when] they’ve disagreed with our activities in Iraq.” Two more years would pass before the congressional commissary would stop serving Freedom Fries.
In the months following the armistice, the French and Americans gradually broke down that huge hospital in Allerey and its motor pool, until one day, Reuben Law was the only soul still there. “I was the last man scrubbing,” he recalled. “And there was an engineer that had charge of the electrical generating system for the camp and he said, ‘I’m gonna leave that on and when you’re through and leave here, pull this switch and that’s the only thing you have to do.’” The last one to leave, he turned out the lights. Eventually he made his way to the coast and sailed back home, a journey that must have inspired in him some ambivalence—not only because of his fondness for the French, but because the trip to France, the previous fall, had very nearly killed him.
It wasn’t seasickness, either, or the U-boat that forced the convoy to separate into two columns shortly after it set sail. He had boarded the HMS Corona in New York on September 29, 1918, and sailed off the next day. “Left the harbor this afternoon,” reads his diary entry for September 30, 1918. “Lots of sea.” Two days later, though: “Sick as the devil this morning.”
“I remember they assigned me to duty at a doorway that goes to the lower deck,” he told me, “and an officer came along and I failed to salute. And he checked me out, and I made some vague remark that didn’t make any sense to him. And he knew right away that I had the flu and he hospitalized me.” Hence his entry for October 3, 1918: “Was taken to the hospital this morning with Spanish Influenza.”
Spanish influenza: the great flu pandemic of 1918. It started at Fort Riley, Kansas, in March of 1918, or so it is believed. Unlike other strains of the virus, the 1918 flu preyed mostly upon hearty adults. In eighteen months, it killed off 3 percent of the world’s population, around fifty million people; some estimates double that figure. It was so terrifying that just about every country engaged in the war, Allies and Entente alike, censored news of the disease’s spread. The Spanish, though—they were neutral—shared their own news of the flu, including that it had nearly killed their king, Alfonso XIII. They were rewarded for their openness by having the disease—one of the deadliest pandemics in all of history—named for them.
The flu spread quickly, tearing through the Corona in just a couple of days. “They converted the big, fancy dining room of the ship to a hospital,” Reuben Law explained. “And so we slept, we stayed on tables. They put two tables together and there’d be two of us, and I, my head was next to the feet of the guy next to me . . . We had little pads, but they didn’t amount to much. I was awfully sick.” Conditions in that makeshift infirmary didn’t help, either. “I remember the brother of a sergeant that was in our unit was behind me,” he said. “And his feet would come to my h
ead. And he kept kicking me in the head. He was just out of it, you know. He couldn’t help it, he was just trying to survive. And he finally died.” Fortunately for Reuben Law, his bunkmate’s replacement “was more gentle with my head.”
Things got grim pretty quickly on a ship that wasn’t designed to handle a deadly epidemic. “They started putting the bodies along the outside deck,” he explained, “but it got to be too many and they reverted to burying them at sea.” By the time they arrived at Brest on October 13, ninety-one men on the Corona had died. Reuben Law was not among them, although he was still so sick that, as he told me, he had to sleep with “a sergeant on either side of me to keep me warm at night.” Even so, he—and everyone else onboard—had to help unload the ship. With their reduced numbers, it took four days.
And through all of it—the delirium, the fever and kicks to the head, sleeping between two sergeants, unloading the ship, and everything that followed—Reuben Law never once failed to write a daily entry in his journal:
10/4/1918: Sick.
10/5/1918: Sick.
10/6/1918: Got my mind streightened [sic] out this afternoon. Had been delerious [sic] for four days.
The Last of the Doughboys Page 25