by Ann Bausum
Casualties mounted during the Allies’ aggressive pursuit of the retreating Germans. For example, staff members at the American Red Cross Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just outside Paris, scrambled to accommodate the waves of wounded soldiers arriving from the summer offensive. After they ran out of beds, orderlies lined the corridors with patients resting on stretchers. Eventually more beds were found, but the men remained housed in hallways because there weren’t enough wards to accommodate them all.
Newspapers back home reprinted the government’s casualty lists, tallying them under headlines such as this accounting published August 8, 1918, in the Hartford Courant: “1,014 Casualties in Latest Lists—Total Shows 150 Killed in Action and 457 Wounded Severely … Few Connecticut Names.” One can imagine the families and friends who scanned each new list, always grateful when none of the names was familiar.
After the war, Conroy’s home state published a three-volume accounting of every resident of Connecticut who had served in the military and the medical corps. The books contain endless pages of names, 20 or so to a page, arranged by hometown and annotated with basic biographical data—place of birth, age at enlistment, details of service, etc. Stars are sprinkled throughout the volumes to mark the service members who died. Sometimes there are no stars displayed on a two-page spread. These are the good pages because that means everyone who went into the service came out alive.
Those entries marked with stars bear a grim code to signify how someone died. KIA, killed in action. DW, died of wounds. DD, died of disease. Occasionally the whiff of a story accompanies a listing. “Died of accidental drowning Aug 4/17,” meaning August 4, 1917. “Died of suicide, gunshot wound, Jan 14/18.” “Was on board the U.S.S. Leimster when the vessel was torpedoed and sunk Oct 10/18.” Some service members died in action maddeningly close to the end of combat.
Illnesses such as tuberculosis, meningitis, influenza, and pneumonia claimed countless lives, as shown in the directories. Many men died in hospitals long after the war ended, perhaps from their wounds or from the residual effects of poisonous gas. Most entries for the deceased include a concluding fact or two, perhaps the location of someone’s grave at an American military cemetery in France or an indication of who received notification of the death. Often a mother’s name and address is given, or else a father’s. Sometimes the person notified was a sister, an aunt, or simply just “a friend.”
“The old company has changed a lot now,” observed a sergeant from the 101st Infantry during the summer of 1918. “A lot of old faces are missing and new ones take their places and soon the original company will be only a fond memory of the past.” He concluded, “They are going one by one.”
Soldiers witnessed unspeakably horrid deaths: compatriots blown apart by artillery fire, drained of life force while bleeding to death, or strangled by the suffocating effects of poisonous gas. Conroy inevitably lost friends in battle, and he would have witnessed an almost daily dose of carnage during the summer campaigns. Stubby’s survival, like that proverbial cat, as Conroy later wrote, must have given him comfort, and even hope, that the pair of them would come through the war alive, somehow.
Even in death, there was little dignity. Bodies lay exposed for hours—or days—before they could be buried. The summer sun magnified the smell of death as soldiers coped with the grisly triage of combat: first tend the living, then the dead. Enemy fire just added to the challenges, as did the disposal of the enormous corpses of horses killed in combat. “Well, ma,” one soldier wrote home, “if we kick off we are surely going to heaven because we are now doing our hitch in hell.” Another, after fighting and then being tasked with burying the dead, observed, “First we are soldiers, then undertakers.”
Given such alternatives, becoming a prisoner of war might not have seemed so bad. That summer the Germans surrendered in droves. Some gave up willingly—even prematurely—such as the eight men who surrendered to a startled Army Signal Corps photographer after they mistook his tripod and hand-cranking film camera for some sort of weapon. Raised arms and a call of “Kamerad” served as the standard signal of German surrender, but such appeals aroused suspicion at best (after doughboys learned the hard way that such appeals were sometimes tricks) and vengeance at worst. German machine-gunners, in particular, were lucky to ever be taken alive.
The fast-moving Allies literally scooped up prisoners of war by the hundreds. Although Conroy had not learned German, as a member of the intelligence unit of his company he no doubt helped to question the captured soldiers as a way to gain additional information about their troop movements. Stubby aided the processing of new prisoners of war by helping to keep them in orderly formations as they marched through camp, and “woe to the German who would step a foot out of line.” He acquired such a dislike of Germans—identifying them, reportedly, through a combination of smell and the recognition of their foreign uniforms and speech—that eventually “it was found necessary to tie him up when batches of prisoners were being brought back [from the front], for fear that trouserless Germans would reach the prison pens.”
Replacement troops—many of them newly arrived and under-trained—stepped up to fill the vacancies created within the ranks of the YD and other American outfits. The new soldiers hailed from all regions of the United States, and they added their own accents and backgrounds to the corps. The division’s nickname may have seemed like an odd fit for service members born and bred south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but these men bonded with their Yankee brothers over a shared patriotic spirit. A Louisiana-born physician in the division observed, “If a German gets out alive, it won’t be the fault of these boys.”
For the rest of July, the Yankee Division pressed on with other Allied forces, turning each upcoming wheat field, patch of woodland, or occasional village into the next objective. By the time the fighting ended, with a general routing of the Germans from their recent territorial gains, Stubby, Conroy, and the soldiers of the 26th had advanced through 11 miles of hostile territory. They were parted from more than 750 comrades in the assault, and almost 4,200 received wounds. Overall, the Americans lost nearly 50,000 men in the second battle of the Marne. The campaign had been costly, but it confirmed that Germany was losing its gamble in the race against the mobilization of U.S. troops. Transport ships kept disgorging thousands of fresh American doughboys on the shores of France, and the German army was on the defensive.
U.S. Army engineers used boats and boards to construct their first pontoon bridge across the Marne during the summer offensive against the Germans, east of Paris. This temporary span, which went into use on July 20, 1918, replaced the damaged structure shown in the background of the photo.
Stubby earned an unexpected reward following the conclusion of the summer fighting: a uniform. His handmade jacket came courtesy of the female residents of Château-Thierry, one of the cities liberated in the recent campaign, as a thank you for his skill and hard work. According to a story passed down by Conroy through his family, Stubby earned the garment because he had detected an impending gas bombardment of the town. By sounding his doggy alarm, he had protected not just his fellow doughboys but the citizens of Château-Thierry, too. Such a feat would help explain why the jacket came into being.
Whether a few women or as many as a hundred of them contributed to the garment’s creation is another matter of debate. It seems likely that the coat itself was fashioned by one or at most a few women only, but scores could well have had a hand in its decoration. The tan chamois-leather garment was sized to snap shut under the dog’s belly and button under his neck. Braided cord spelled out his name and military outfit on one side, and official U.S. military patches over the dog’s shoulders attested to his service in the Yankee Division.
The jacket’s pièce de résistance was an embroidered emblem that decorated the center of the garment. This piece of silk thread-work could easily have been passed among many women, as can be the custom for stitchery that is worn into battle (the idea being that multiple hands imbu
e a sort of collective protection to the wearer of the creation). The resulting design, later appliquéd to the jacket, depicted a wreath of colorful flags, one for each of the Allied nations.
Apparently no French woman rushed to make clothes for Fanny, a newer mascot in the 102nd Infantry, but her owner did. Edward Simpson, a cook for Company K, had purchased the goat while stationed in the Toul sector. Fanny, aka “the Kaiser’s goat,” had kept pace with the kitchen during the advancing summer campaign. Her diet was, naturally, voracious and varied. She reportedly ate everything from cigarette butts to chocolate cookies.
As the war progressed, other mascots materialized, too. There was Rags, a shaggy mutt discovered by an American soldier on the streets of Paris after first being mistaken for his fabric namesake; his rescuer brought him back to the First Division and put him to work delivering messages. There was Belle, the setter, who was separated from her Marine owner until they coincidentally ended up at the same field hospital. And among other examples, there was Philly, who shared Stubby’s story of having been smuggled as a stray to France; she served as mascot for the U.S. 315th Infantry Regiment that originated, naturally, in Philadelphia.
In August, with fighting winding down around the Marne, the weary Yankee Division doughboys left the war zone behind at last. There were no trick trains this time, and, for Conroy and Stubby anyway, Paris became a satisfying place to visit instead of just a mirage on a distant skyline. The pair shared ten days there during Conroy’s furlough from combat duty.
The one story that survives from this visit takes on the feel of a tall tale. “On duty or on vacation Stubby was always ready to perform some act of kindness or deed of heroism,” explained a Washington Post reporter in a 1925 summary of the mascot’s life. The newspaper recounts how Conroy and his small uniformed companion caught the attention of a pair of sisters in Paris near the Arc de Triomphe. The girls, who had been intent on crossing the street until they saw Stubby, stopped on the sidewalk to pet him. The dog loved the attention and nudged the younger sibling for further petting, causing the girls to delay their departure even longer. The story continued: “Not more than a minute had passed after the child approached Stubby when a runaway cab horse plunged madly up the street, directly in the path of what, but for Stubby, would have been the route chosen by his petite friend.”
No one gave the dog a medal, but he gained yet another set of fans. The Yankee Division was helping to retake the lost territory of France, and Stubby, along for the adventure, was winning the hearts of soldier and civilian alike all along the way.
PART TWO
WAR AND PEACE
Fresnes-en-Woëvre, one of the communities caught up in the St. Mihiel campaign of September 1918, became a city in name only as a result of combat during the Great War.
August 6, 1918
The women appear single file, dressed all in white. Colors frame the steamy summer scene. The green leaves of overhanging trees. The red, white, and blue of the American flag borne by the first marcher. The purple, white, and gold banners of the figures who follow. These women, too, are off to do battle, off to do battle with the President of the United States. And all of Congress, if necessary.
Off to do battle armed with courage and cloth.
And words.
“How long must women wait for liberty?”
Letters stitched on fabric portray the battle cry. Panel after panel, hoisted aloft by silent sentinels, pass in review.
Onward the women march, 100 strong, until they reach their battlefield, the public space of Lafayette Square. An elevated base for the park’s namesake statue becomes the high ground for their attack. The women’s adversary lies in sight, across Pennsylvania Avenue, at home in the White House.
Ready, aim, fire.
A few words of demand. The vote, we want to vote. Maybe a dozen words spoken, but then they stop. One soldier down as a police officer hauls her from her stony platform.
Arrested.
The next soldier fires. She, too, is fighting for her right to vote. Not even a sentence lands, and then she is gone. Arrest silences her voice, too.
And the next. And the next.
Three, four, ten, forty-one, -two, -three. All are pulled aside and thrust into police wagons. Forty-five, -six, -seven. Silenced even as their banners flutter outside the windows of their captors’ vans.
And then number forty-eight, the leader, just standing there, observing the scene, falls in the battle. Alice Faul. Arrested.
Fight over, supporters grow silent as their comrades head to court. And then to jail. And hunger strikes. Again. Fight over, but not abandoned.
The women will do battle another day. They, too, will fight until victory is won. Until women can vote equally with men.
President Wilson had said: “The world must be made safe for democracy.”
All well and good for the world. But what about at home?
What about democracy here?
CHAPTER SIX
THE HOME FRONT
WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTIONS OF FURLOUGHS, booze, and loyal dogs, nothing served as a better antidote to weariness with war than thoughts of home. Soldiers clung to cherished photos. They mailed home letters filled with war-inspired revelations: “I appreciate luxuries, food, and home,” an artilleryman wrote his family from the front. “I’ve learned what Liberty is, and to appreciate it,” he acknowledged. They penned heartfelt doggerel for loved ones, such as these lines composed by a young recruit from Middleton, Connecticut:
And while gazing at the barb-wire for a sulking Boche or two,
The thought of home and mother once again comes back to you.
You can see her dear, sweet, smiling face while at your post you stand.
She seems to give you grit to save that grimy bloodstained land.
As with too many other correspondents, both the affectionate son and the artilleryman later died in combat.
Any letters exchanged between Robert Conroy and his family are lost to history, although the siblings must have corresponded given their close-knit relationships. Everything Conroy wrote would have been reviewed by military censors, and he would have known not to comment on his missions or his location. Stubby would have made an easy topic to share, and the family back in New Britain, Connecticut, probably gained an increasing sense of the dog’s importance to the man. With Stubby at his side, Conroy must have seemed ready to handle whatever the conflict threw at them.
His siblings, meanwhile, were contributing to the war effort in their own ways. Conroy’s oldest sister, Margaret, had married soon after the European battles began. She and her husband, Frank, shared a home with Margaret’s three younger sisters. The extended family had vacated their childhood dwelling and moved to a more modest house across town on Church Street. Margaret’s husband commuted to work in nearby Hartford while she stayed home with their young daughter and, before long, a baby boy.
Margaret’s sister Alice, who had become blind due to a childhood illness, stayed home with her, while their younger siblings took wartime jobs. Helen worked in the bookkeeping department of a local manufacturing company that was famous for inventing the first stovetop coffee percolator, among other household innovations. During the war her employer manufactured products that supported the military cause. About this time Helen’s twin, Gertrude, became a secretary for the local Red Cross office. Conroy’s younger brother, Hugh, had enlisted in the military, too; he served stateside with the U.S. Army medical department, the sector that evaluated and cared for soldiers before or after their combat service, as well as overseas.
The extended-family household on Church Street may well have been one of the more than 13 million that displayed a pledge card as participants in the voluntary rationing of key household resources during the war. The U.S. government instituted the program in an effort to divert American goods to the battlefront. The conserved food was also used to combat hunger among the war-ravaged citizens of European Allies.
The government
launched an extensive public relations campaign to encourage compliance with its goals. The publicity effort pitched the rationing program as a way to “Help your boy at the front.” Posters appeared that proclaimed “Food will win the war.” The government encouraged families to reduce their consumption of beef, pork, wheat, sugar, and fat. “Save the wheat for the fighters,” proclaimed one sign. “Eat more cornmeal, rye flour, oatmeal, and barley.”
The campaign relied on fostering a climate of habitual self-denial through peer pressure and appeals to patriotism. Thus families were urged to honor “meatless Mondays” and “wheatless Wednesdays.” There were porkless days and calls to conserve on other staples. At its peak in early 1918, the suggested restrictions mushroomed into a dizzying schedule of demands: “Hereafter Mondays and Wednesdays will be observed as ‘wheatless days,’ and there will also be one wheatless meal each day. There will be one meatless day (Tuesday) and one meatless meal each day, and in addition, two porkless days (Tuesdays and Saturdays).”
Herbert Hoover, a future U.S. President, was tapped to head the program for President Wilson. Hoover exhorted Americans to stop eating whole wheat bread and switch to “victory bread,” a baked good whose preparation evolved over a period of weeks until its wheat flour had been diluted to no more than 80 percent of the grain content. Women’s organizations staged patriotic demonstrations for how to cook within the suggested rationing guidelines, and an army of volunteers, mostly housewives, distributed pledge cards across the nation to encourage compliance. A relentless publicity campaign assured that the goals of conservation seldom strayed far from the public’s mind: “Eat less, and let us be thankful that we have enough to share with those who fight for freedom,” advised one campaign poster.