The Last of the Doughboys

by RICHARD RUBIN

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  Acknowledgments

  This book would not exist without the generous assistance of a great many people who contributed to its development and progress over the past ten years. First and foremost on that list are all the veterans and others I interviewed, men and women between the ages of 101 and 113 who graciously invited me into their homes and offered me as much of their time as I wanted. Frankly, if I were 107 years old and some guy I knew nothing about wanted to come talk to me about things I did eighty-five years ago, I’m afraid I might be too aware of just how few were my remaining hours to readily offer up some of them for such a purpose. Yet if any of these people felt that way, I never perceived even a hint of it. I am honored to have made their acquaintance, and grateful that they chose to share their stories with me.

  Their children and grandchildren, and friends and neighbors and caregivers, were every bit as gracious, and often expended a lot of effort on my behalf: furnishing introductions, making arrangements, sitting through interviews in order to make the interviewee (and the interviewer) more comfortable, suggesting lines of inquiry, prodding memories, and taking the time to scan old photos, letters, and documents and send them to me. I could not have done it without them.

  I would not have found a great many of these veterans without the help of a few individuals. Even after I discovered the French List online, I was having a difficult time tracking down people on it: Although the list noted their city or town of residence, there were no street addresses provided, and few of them were listed in the phone book; most, I would eventually discover, were living with a relative or in a residential facility. Frustrated and discouraged, I phoned the French embassy in Washington and was fortunate enough to be put in touch with an adjutant there named Nam Do Cao, who expressed a strong desire that “everyone who fought for liberty in that war should be recognized.” Although he was to be transferred back to Paris in a few weeks, he undertook to photocopy, on his own time, every single American application for the Legion d’Honneur going back to 1998, some 550 documents, each of which contained a full name, a recent address, a date and place of birth, and other information that proved invaluable in my search. (He also refused to accept any recompense whatsoever for the copying and mailing costs involved; this at a time when many Americans were cursing the French, serving Freedom Fries, etc.) Not long thereafter, I made the acquaintance of Ellen Lovell and Peter Bartis at the Library of Congress. Both were then working on the library’s fine Veterans History Project, and offered me very useful guidance on both finding and interviewing veterans; Peter has continued to be a source of wisdom ever since. Eventually, two men at the Department of Veterans Affairs, John Buck and Chris Scheer, also lent their efforts to the search—in Chris’s case, for several years.

  Having secured all those interviews, I could not have done much with them were it not for the help of ten student interns, history majors who cheerfully undertook the tedious yet essential task of transcribing and indexing seemingly endless hours of video, and also helped with research: William Schlavis, Dana Love, Jacob Croke, Mara Ravitz, Dean Zingmond, Mary Pilon, Matthew Murphy, Jessica Rofe, and Jordan Benge at New York University; and Patrick Kelley at Fordham University. Jake Croke and Dana Love continued their efforts on behalf of the project even after their internships ended, and Bill Schlavis is still helping me with it today, years later. They all have my gratitude, as do Jackie Biello and Mona Huegel for administering the internships at NYU.

  I had cause, on many occasions, to seek out those who knew much more about something than I did; all proved exceedingly generous with their time and expertise, including Major Jason P. Clark, Colonel James T. Seidule, and Colonel Lance Betros at the United States Military Academy; General James F. Amos, Major Joseph Plenzler, and historian Annette Amerman of the United States Marine Corps; Dr. Thomas T. Perls of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University; Dr. L. Stephen Coles of the Gerontology Research Group at UCLA; Jane Naisbitt at the Canadian War Museum; professors Robert F. Engs, Geoffrey R. Stone, Nancy Gentile Ford, Christopher Capozzola, Gerald Early, Lawrence Moe, and Maurine Greenwald; Gene Smith, Susan Ziegler, Tim Bingaman, Joni Kesler, Julian Beale, Jim Fuglie, Thomas Fleming, Joan Larson, Jeff Lowdermilk, Joe Pomainville, David Laskin, and Randal Gaulke; Tim Nosal at the American Battle Monuments Commission; Jonathan Casey at the
National World War I Museum; and the wonderful staff at the National Archives. Thanks also to Marjorie Silver, JaeMi Pennington, and Stacy Andersen at the New England Centenarian Study for their help.

  I am grateful to Karl Schonberg and Val Lehr at St. Lawrence University for helping me get to France, and to the following people for helping me get the most out of it once I was there: Joseph P. Rivers and Dominique Didiot at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial; Jeffrey Aarnio at the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial; David Atkinson at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial; Bobby Bell at the St.-Mihiel American Cemetery and Memorial; and Jean-Paul DeVries, Gilles Lagin, Georges Bailly, Patrick Simons, Stan Bissinger, and that nice woman at the museum in Belleau, whose name I never caught. Thanks, too, to Mike Conley at the American Battle Monuments Commission.

  Although I would have had a much larger pool to work with had I started my search for World War I veterans a decade before I did, that search—and the accompanying research—would doubtless have been a great deal more difficult back then, as it would have been undertaken without the benefit of the Internet, and all the search engines and other tools it offers. Scarcely a day passed when I did not consult the vast database of census records, military records, newspaper clippings, and ephemera at Ancestry.com. I am grateful to Mike Ward and Heather Erickson for facilitating my access to that indispensible resource.

  More of this book was written at the Patten Free Library than anywhere else; they provide a beautiful and quiet space in which to work, not to mention free WiFi, electricity, heat, and an excellent interlibrary loan network. And the staff is always cheerful, even when it’s three minutes to lights out and you haven’t yet begun to shut down your laptop. The same is true of the Curtis Memorial Library, where I spent many hours working when PFL was closed. I also availed myself, on many occasions, of the facilities of the New York Public Library, the Skidompha Public Library, the Lithgow Public Library, the Maine State Library, the Owen D. Young Library at St. Lawrence University, and, on quite a few late nights, the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library at Bowdoin College.

  I have been the beneficiary of kindnesses, great and small, from friends, acquaintances, and erstwhile strangers, people who read through a troublesome passage or chapter (or, in some cases, the entire manuscript), listened while I worked out a passage or an argument or a notion aloud, shared their own perspective on matters historical or literary or both, drove with me for hours (and even, in some cases, days) to visit veterans, gave me guidance, loaned me equipment, offered me a place to sleep and a home-cooked meal when I was tired and far from home, or otherwise supported a very long and involved venture in some way. For any or many of these I am grateful to Shelby Foote, Sheldon Hackney, Leslie Epstein, Stephanie Wagner, Steve Theodore, Kellie Maske, Julieta Cristal, Colby Smith, Rebecca Weinstein, Julia Addison, Peter Bailey, Svetlana Yanina, Adam Fox, S.E. Brown, Michael Greenwald, Meg Guroff, Rick Klugman, Jo-Ann and Jeff Smith, and Will Vandenburgh. Special thanks to Joy Maske for an extraordinary and unsolicited act of beneficence, and to The Babe, for whose grace even special thanks are not enough.