by Phil Keith
Alan Seeger had originally come from a family of means, but his father’s import-export business stumbled in the 1890s and the family moved from a palatial home on Staten Island to a smaller house in New York City. Then an opportunity to improve their fortunes took the family to Mexico City for two years before Seeger went to Harvard. By temperament and conscience, he was a poet and a dreamer, but he also matured into a large man, with powerful energy and confidence. He was daring and had no great fears about the possibilities of perishing in combat. His most famous poem would, in fact, become “I Have a Rendezvous With Death,” written just before the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
Brothers Paul and Kiffin Rockwell, North Carolinians then living in Atlanta, Georgia, were in the advertising business and doing fairly well when the war began. Both men immediately felt the pull to France—and looked forward to what they hoped would be a great adventure. They quit their jobs, took a train to New York and then a liner bound for Le Havre. Kiffin had done short stints at the Virginia Military Institute and the US Naval Academy, but neither had stuck with him, and he then joined his brother at Washington and Lee University. The brothers had sent a letter requesting to join the Foreign Legion, but they did not wait for a reply before boarding the ship to Europe. Kiffin Rockwell was, quite possibly, the first American to fight with the French in the war.
Forty-five-year-old Jack Bowe was a veteran of the Spanish-American War and comfortably situated with a wife and four children in Minnesota. He had served as the mayor of the town of Canby. Bowe had very strong feelings about the contest: “[He] saw the coming struggle as one between France, ‘a people with an army,’ and Germany, ‘an army with a people.’”2
Victor Chapman was nicknamed the “Gentle Giant.” He was, indeed, a big man, and known throughout his all-too-short life as someone who cared deeply and was always willing to help others. He was extraordinarily wealthy, thanks to his father’s Wall Street millions, and although born in New York City was also a citizen of France. After graduating from Harvard in 1913 he moved to Paris to study architecture and to paint. As soon as the war broke out, he went to his father, who advised against enlisting, but Chapman did anyway.
Yale dropout William Thaw was also fabulously wealthy. His father, in fact, bought him his own airplane, to race with, in 1913. One of his first stunts was to take his new “flying boat” (a Curtiss Hydro) and fly under all four of the suspension bridges on the East River. A mustachioed ladies’ man and inveterate partygoer, he donated his plane to France as soon as the war started, and then enlisted in the Foreign Legion.
Bob Scanlon seems most like a tale out of the Eugene Bullard mold. Like Gene, Scanlon escaped as a young man from poverty and racism in the American South. Like Bullard, he wanted a place free from prejudice and the constant fear of violence and lynching. Like Bullard, he found his way across the Atlantic, fell easily into boxing, and worked his way onto cards in England and France. He felt a strong personal bond with his adopted country and, also like Bullard, when the signal for volunteers went out, he heeded the call to arms.
There were more: René Phelizot, originally from Chicago, was an internationally acclaimed African big game hunter; professional race car driver Bob Soubiron; Philippine-American War veteran Edward Morlae; Dennis Dowd, a Columbia grad, enlisted after being jilted by his girlfriend; taxi driver Bert Hall; jeweler Charles Trinkard; Ferdinand Capdevielle, fencing master; and Harvard grad Edward Mandell Stone, Class of 1908, who would attain a particular distinction among all his fellow Americans.
Organizing this ragtag contingent of Americans was Charles Sweeny, West Point Class of ’04, who held daily drills for these citizen-soldiers in the courtyard of the Palais Royale. Sweeny, who would go on to fight under five different flags in his lifetime, was said to have been the inspiration for Ernest Hemingway’s hero Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises.
The Americans were forced to wait until August 21, 1914, before being accepted into the French Foreign Legion. Some of them would go on to greater glories and several would share the trials and tribulations of the war with Gene Bullard. Most would not come out of the conflict unscathed—or alive.
On February 15, 1915, in trenches near the Aisne River, Private Edward Mandell Stone dutifully stood by his machine gun as the Germans bombarded the Legion positions. A general attack, Stone feared, would follow, and if so, he wanted to be ready. Suddenly, a shell splinter pierced his right lung and lodged inside his chest. He was evacuated and treated swiftly, but the doctors could not remove the lethal splinter. After twelve days of agony and tortured breathing, Stone finally expired. He was, by most accounts, the first American to die in the Great War.
On July 4, 1916, at Belloy-en-Santerre, Private Alan Seeger charged across the battlefield, shouting at the top of his lungs, urging his mates onward. The German machine guns erupted, spitting death. Forty of the forty-five men in Seeger’s unit were cut down, including Seeger, who crumpled to the earth stitched across his midsection by six bullets. He died at the bottom of a shell hole crying for both water and his mother. It was not a poet’s demise.
Paul Rockwell was severely wounded in 1916 and invalided out of the Foreign Legion. He became a correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, and enjoyed writing stories about all his former comrades, especially his brother.
Kiffin Rockwell was also wounded, at Verdun, in 1916, by a bullet through the leg. As he convalesced he formed the idea to go into aviation and did so, becoming one of the first Americans to qualify as a pilot flying for the French. On May 18, 1916, Kiffin became the first American pilot to score an aerial victory, shooting down a two-man observation plane over Alsace. He was immediately awarded the Medaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre. On September 23, 1916, above the Vosges River, Kiffin was flying a brand-new Nieuport 17 on its first mission, and he dove on a German Aviatik two-man observation plane. A French artillery captain, watching from the ground below, saw Rockwell fire a burst at the German, and saw the rear gunner in the Aviatik fire back. An explosive bullet tore through Rockwell’s chest, killing him instantly. The left wing of the Nieuport tore off during its spiral earthward. Rockwell became the second American pilot killed in the war.
The first American pilot to die had been Sergeant Victor Chapman on June 24, 1916, near Fort Duaumont, Verdun. Typical of Chapman, he was not even on an official patrol, but bringing a basket of oranges to a wounded comrade. He spotted an American patrol, grossly outnumbered by German Fokkers, below. He dove on the enemy to distract them. The Americans safely flew away, but Chapman, immediately surrounded, was shot to pieces. His plane plunged straight into the ground from ten thousand feet.
Jack Bowe would survive the war, but only after being wounded and gassed. He was lucky enough to be able to go back to his family in Minnesota, but he was broken in both health and spirit.
William Thaw climbed out of the trenches, too, and became a pilot, and probably the first American to fly a combat mission against the enemy. He eventually joined the US Army Air Service after the Americans entered the war in 1917, becoming an “ace,” with five confirmed kills. He was awarded two Distinguished Service Crosses and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Sadly, he died of pneumonia at age forty in 1934.
In February 1915, René Phelizot got into a brawl with a couple of veteran legionnaires over, of all things, a ration of coffee. During the fight he was smashed over the head with an empty wine bottle. After the fight was broken up, Phelizot went back on duty complaining of headaches. In truth, he had a fractured skull. Evacuated to a hospital near Fismes, he died shouting “Je suis Americain!” while clutching the tattered remnants of the US flag he had carried through the streets of Paris on his way to the Legion recruiting office.
Bob Scanlon would survive the war, but had been wounded too badly to resume his boxing career. He and Gene Bullard would ultimately have adventures together in not one but two world wars.
Far too many of these bra
ve Americans who volunteered with the French Foreign Legion did not survive the war, but among those who did, they formed a proud fraternity. One of the prime factors in naming the vast and powerful veterans group that became the American Legion was the debt of honor it owed to the French Foreign Legion. In many instances, later in life, when one man was “down,” the others lifted him up. Bullard would become both a recipient of largesse and benefactor to others of his Legion mates.
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1 The Central Powers in WWI were Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria.
2 David Hanna, Rendezvous with Death (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2016), 42.
5
DEATH IN THE TRENCHES
After his initial training following his October 9 enlistment, Bullard was not assigned to join the first cadre (Class of ’14) of American volunteers but to the 3rd Marching Regiment, bivouacked at the Tourelles Barracks on Avenue Gambetta in Paris.1 He described the experience there as five weeks of hell. The coarsely woven white fatigues issued to all trainees were rough on the skin and quickly became heavy when soaked with sweat—as all the men were, every day. The nouvelles (“new men” as opposed to the veterans, called anciens) were up before dawn, when they were required to clean up and do their calisthenics. There was no breakfast, just a cup of strong coffee. Work details and more physical exercises lasted until 10:00 a.m., then they were given a hearty breakfast of bread, cheese, fruit, vegetables—and a cup of wine.
Long forced marches with heavy knapsacks dominated the initial regimen, followed by issuance of their personal rifles, target practice, first aid, pitching of tents, and crawling under live machine-gun fire. Last but not least was the ominous digging of trenches. The recruits practiced maniacal charges across grounds strewn with obstacles and barbed wire after which they bayoneted hay-filled dummies meant to mimic their German opponents.
Halfway through the regiment’s training, Bullard’s sergeant pulled him aside and informed him that he had been picked to be one of the unit’s machine gunners. The sergeant had been impressed with Bullard’s stamina and his excellent physical conditioning. As a “reward,” he would get the heavy machine gun to lug around assisted by two teammates, Janus and Mike. One would carry the hefty ammunition belts and the second man would help set up the gun and be the runner, going after replacement ammo when needed.
The staggering losses already being racked up in a war barely four months old accelerated the training of the 3rd Marching Regiment. Their instruction period (which was minimal, at best, by Foreign Legion standards) ended when orders came down to move out to the front by November 28. With “La Marseillaise” blaring, Bullard’s regiment marched smartly from the Tourelles Barracks to the cheers of the locals, and headed directly for the front being established along the Somme River. It took over two weeks of slogging in wet and windy weather, but Bullard and his companions finally arrived in the vicinity of Frise on December 15.
The 3rd was part of the Moroccan Division, and as soon as they arrived, Bullard’s company was shoved pell-mell into the trenches. It was an unholy shock. The neat, dry, sandy, well-carved, zigzagging cuts of the training grounds were nothing like what greeted Bullard and his confreres. They stumbled into a cesspool of swirling mud, filth, garbage, rats, and the macabre sight of bloody bits of uniform cloth clinging to human bones sticking out of the walls of the trenches. If that wasn’t bad enough, the stench was overpowering: a combination of urine, feces, and the odor of rotting meat.
The tableau of horror had barely sunk in when screaming German shells caused every soldier to dive into the stinking morass and burrow into any crevice that could be found. Within moments of their arrival, the new men were covered with the same mud, garbage, and stink as the men they were replacing. Nineteen-year-old Eugene Bullard, recently a carefree young man-about-town in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, had arrived at Hell’s front door.
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Bullard and the 3rd Marching Regiment first groped with the horrors of war at Frise, then were transferred successively to Dampierre, Harquest-en-Santarre, and Notre Dame de Lorette, all positions along the Somme River. Their movements took up the period from December 1914 to April 1915. The great and notorious Battle of the Somme, which would hungrily devour over a million men as casualties, was still two years away, but the combat Bullard experienced at this early point in the war was chilling enough.
He told the tale, as one of these early battles was about to commence, of a new lieutenant who joined the company directly from St. Cyr.2 He was the very epitome of the “beaux sabreur”: his uniform was clean and pressed, his boots polished, his sword shiny and sharp. He carried a whistle on a chain around his neck and when Le Capitaine directed, he took his men boldly over the top of the trench and charged the German lines a half mile away, across no-man’s-land. When the charge failed, as most did, the brave lieutenant, incredibly, was still alive and he fell back, with the surviving members of his platoon, to the safety of their trench. He had led twenty men out; only eleven returned. It had taken him less than fifteen minutes to lose half his command. He sank into a stinking, muddy hole and wept.
Bullard, too, was shaken by the carnage. As the battles continued to rage around them, the survivors hunkered down, puking in the mud or smoking quietly, filth-covered and unrecognizable. One of his early platoon mates, a Frenchman sheltering ten feet away, was hit squarely by a 77mm shell. In the blink of an eye, the man was completely obliterated. There was nothing left except bits of cloth fluttering down to the ground on a cloud of pink mist. It was as if the man had never existed; and, for his family and friends, he was gone without a trace.
The firing from the Germans was once so intense that Bullard dove into a shell crater. His body slammed into three other soldiers seeking shelter. One of them, George, was the youngest man in the regiment, only seventeen. He had lied about his age and gotten away with it.
George tapped Bullard on the shoulder and shouted above the din, “Sparrow! My friend, my stomach hurts.”
Bullard twisted in the muck to see where his friend might have been wounded. George was holding his arm across his midsection. Bullard pried the arm away. George had no midsection: there was only a gaping, seeping hole where his guts should have been.
“Am I going to die, Sparrow?” an ashen-faced George said, pleading for an answer.
“No, you are going to be just fine,” Bullard lied. “We’ll get you back to the aid station. Just hold on until the shelling stops.”
Thus reassured, George smiled and murmured, “Bless you, Sparrow. You are such a good friend.” George’s head slowly fell onto Bullard’s shoulder and his teenaged fellow Legionnaire was gone.
Under this kind of stress men did strange things. After yet another unsuccessful charge and retreat, a Turkish volunteer named Nedim leaped back atop the parapet and started shouting curses at the Germans, wildly shaking his fist at them. A Portuguese private by the name of Vesconsoledose shouted at Nedim to get down. Nedim raged on as German snipers tried to pick him off. Vesconsoledose jumped up and grabbed Nedim by the collar. As he did so, a Mauser slug slammed into the right side of his head, splitting his skull in half. The Portuguese slid to the bottom of the trench, dragging Nedim with him in a death grip. The Turk tore Vesconsoledose’s hand from his collar, got up, and walked away muttering.
Almost every French charge toward the Germans was followed by a response from the Boche. The sergeant would shout for the men to get ready. Sure enough, they would come. This was the signal for Bullard and his machine-gun team to swing into action. When the French charged, the machine gun was too much weight to lug across the battlefield, so Bullard carried only his carbine. When the Germans repaid the favor, he and his crew retrieved their machine gun and set it up on the rim of their trench. Bullard aimed and fired, Janus fed the belts into the gun, and Mike ran back and forth, securing new ammunition. The Hot
chkiss chattered in bursts, as Bullard had been taught, so as not to overheat the gun. The Germans fell in clumps. He could see the blood squirting from their bodies as he mowed them down.
The dance of death became the routine played out day after day, as each side sought some small advantage. The trenches writhed forward and back, like giant snakes, wriggling across a mud-caked landscape, but neither side gained any significant ground. It soon became clear to the Poilus who were doing the dying that their generals were idiots and that the war was all about who would have the last man standing. It also became clear that this “grand adventure” was not going to be over by Christmas.
But, on Christmas Day 1914, something very strange did occur. Amidst all the carnage, the spontaneous singing of Christmas carols broke out on both sides of “no-man’s-land.” Before anyone really understood what was happening, small white flags fluttered above miles and miles of trenches. Cautiously at first, then by the thousands, then by tens of thousands, men on both sides crawled out of their holes to greet one another. Some even exchanged small gifts, cigars, cigarettes, candy, and chocolate. Men who had been ripping each other apart the previous day were warmly shaking hands. A strange peace settled across the war-torn lines. Bodies of friends and foes alike were finally treated with respect and many who had been dead for days or weeks were laid to rest respectfully at last.
The strange cease-fire became known as the “Great Christmas Truce of 1914.” The generals on both sides were appalled and forbade this sort of fraternizing from ever happening again—and it didn’t. There were scattered burial parties and brief cease-fires at Christmas in 1915, but nothing like the widespread goodwill gesture of 1914. By 1916, the animosity on both sides and the utter brutality of the war had quashed any holiday humanitarian initiatives for good.