by Ann Bausum
U.S. flags hung patriotically over a firearms factory floor in Hartford, Connecticut, while women inspected parts for Colt .45 semiautomatic pistols, bound for the battlefields of France.
Hoover’s program wasn’t the only one that sought to influence Americans through appeals to patriotism. With President Wilson’s blessing, the federal government opened a propaganda office, known as the Committee on Public Information, or CPI, to generate public support for the war. This office, run by a former investigative reporter turned political operative named George Creel, produced promotional films about the war effort, created “war study” materials for public schools and universities, and crafted patriotic speeches that 75,000 volunteers delivered around the country as his army of so-called four-minute men (in a nod to the Revolutionary War heroes). One of the committee’s chief responsibilities was to foster a sense of public obligation to buy war bonds. These choices, too, were cast as the home-front way to help the soldiers assure “that liberty shall not perish from the earth.”
Thus, as is often the case during a war, patriotism and politics became interwoven on the home front in ways that were both commendable and concerning. Yes, compliance with the rationing helped the troops, and so did the purchasing of victory bonds. But what were citizens to make of the people who chose not to participate in these efforts? Should they be condemned or tolerated? What should be the limits of peer pressure during wartime?
The CPI campaign added to the tension by creating a negative backlash against the nation’s visible German-American population. Posters portrayed the war effort as a battle against an evil Kaiser (who was often personified in artwork as the devil) and a brutal army of barbarians, the so-called Huns (who were depicted as lurking, blood-smeared hulks). By extension, everything pro-American was good; everything German became bad.
Anyone, American or otherwise, who questioned the war effort—from politicians to pastors—could be targeted for criticism, or worse. In some cases, people were tarred and feathered, or even lynched. German-American immigrants and their descendants gained particular scrutiny in such a climate, and anti-German hate crimes soared. Citizens burned German-language books, communities banned the teaching of German (in fact, foreign-language education, German and otherwise, would never recover its former popularity or vigor in the country), and squads of self-appointed vigilantes scoured their towns for traitors. Restaurants scrubbed their menus of sauerkraut and hamburgers, replacing them with liberty cabbage and liberty steak. Bars stopped serving pretzels. German measles turned into liberty measles. The works of German composers were shunned. Towns, businesses, and families replaced their German-sounding names with true-blue American ones.
The U.S. courts became clogged with cases that tested whether citizens’ First Amendment rights of free speech should have prevented them from being jailed when they spoke out against the war. Eugene Debs, a founding member of the Socialist Party of America and a four-time presidential candidate, landed in prison after delivering a fiery antiwar speech in June 1918. He languished there until pardoned by Wilson’s successor, President Warren G. Harding, at the end of 1921. (His court challenge failed to win the support of the U.S. Supreme Court, but later on other comparable cases did, establishing the case law that eventually supported the broad scope of rights we’ve come to expect from the First Amendment.)
A subtext of battles raged across the home front in the wake of the war’s screaming cover of patriotism. Prohibition finally won passage in Congress, in part because the legislation penalized the largely German-American brewing industry. The nation’s open-door policy toward immigrants slammed shut in the aftermath of the war, and a wave of postwar deportations assured that outspoken government critics, such as labor and social activist Emma Goldman and other immigrant radicals, lost their influence on the nation’s soil. Labor leaders, socialists, communists, immigrants—anyone not toeing the with-us-or-against-us patriotic line—found themselves at risk of being silenced.
Advocates for women’s voting rights had already begun picketing in front of the White House before the United States joined the Great War; this photo captures factory workers as they hoist their colors in solidarity on February 18, 1917. After Woodrow Wilson’s April call to arms, the women’s continuing protests were condemned as unpatriotic.
Even woman suffragists, many of them members of the nation’s middle- and upper-class society, became caught up in the political crosshairs of the times. By the beginning of the First World War, the fight for universal voting rights for women had already weathered a number of schisms and disagreements in its nearly 70-year history. Another split occurred during the 1910s and intensified after the United States joined the Allied war effort.
As a result, a new group of suffragists emerged under the leadership of a young firebrand named Alice Paul. Her organization, the National Woman’s Party, appealed to a growing strain of militancy among frustrated activists. Early in 1917, these women became the first group in history to stage nonviolent protests in front of the White House. After the U.S. declaration of war, when other suffragists put down their banners to support the war effort, members of the National Women’s Party persisted with their protests, even when its activists were labeled as unpatriotic, attacked by vigilante citizens, arrested, and imprisoned.
After the President pardoned jailed protesters in late 1917, the militant suffragists suspended their acts of civil disobedience, hopeful that their cause would at last advance. But legislation stalled once again, and they renewed their protests by picketing in Lafayette Square, across from the White House, starting on August 6, 1918. Although widely criticized at the time, their efforts during and after the war contributed to the ultimate ratification, in 1920, of the 19th Amendment, granting American women a universal right to vote.
Such political and social turmoil was probably not among the daily concerns in the Conroy household. There were children to tend, bills to pay, and jobs to do. Maybe the women at home shouldered extra war-time responsibilities, such as knitting socks for soldiers. Plus, of course, there were all those rationed meals to plan. Had the family eaten its wheatless meal of the day? Could corn oil really take the place of animal shortening? Was this a meatless day or just one that called for no pork?
Perhaps the elder Conroy sisters, while they worked around the house, voiced worries about their brother overseas, and surely they shared laughs over any Stubby stories that he sent home. Maybe their days, too, were brightened by the role this one dog was playing in their own family during what was otherwise a time of war.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOLLIES AND FIREWORKS
WHEN ROBERT CONROY RETURNED FROM HIS AUGUST furlough, he—and presumably Stubby, too—saluted a new commander, Col. Hiram I. Bearss. “Machine Gun” Parker had been moved out of the 102nd Infantry during a shuffling of officers and been sent to command a regiment in a different division. Stubby apparently passed his salute test with “Hiking Hiram” (whose signature hiking accoutrement was the box of cigars he tucked under his arm), and by early September the mascot and Conroy were heading toward their next assignment.
The Yankee Division, fighting as part of an all-American force, was tasked with wresting from the Germans a 200-square-mile area south of Verdun that they had held since 1914. To affect the greatest chance of surprise, the U.S. troops mobilized under cover of darkness and on foot. Drizzling September rains, signaling the change of seasons, accompanied YD doughboys as they advanced toward their positions over the course of about ten days. Some of the men feasted on wild blackberries as they hiked (“My! But they tasted good.”), but woe be to the soldier who splurged on cherries (“I never want to see a cherry again.”). Even the camp cooks caught harvest fever, turning local apples into apple fritters, for example.
By September 12, 1918, when the attack began, Conroy and Stubby were part of a force of more than a half million U.S. soldiers, bolstered along the front by more than 100,000 French troops. The campaign in what was known as the
St. Mihiel salient turned quickly into a rout. Within four days the Allies had swept the designated area of its German occupiers and liberated the city of St. Mihiel, although, truthfully, it helped that the Germans had already begun withdrawing from the region.
The campaign began with the usual nighttime barrage of artillery fire, accompanied by the seemingly ever present French rain. Soldiers advanced through daylight fog and continuing rain, moving so rapidly that once again they outpaced their rolling kitchens and lost their chance for a cooked supper. In some cases, artillery units, too, fell out of sync with the advancing infantrymen. In others, the Americans were able to overrun fortifications still immobilized by recent artillery fire. Conroy would have been kept busy as an observer during the drive, traversing the hilly terrain as he scouted the path of the German retreat.
When the French troops began to lag in their advances, General Pershing asked the Yankee Division to help close the resulting gap. Conroy’s 102nd Regiment earned the assignment of marching into the night—having already advanced all day—in order to meet up with a partner force from the First Division at the French town of Vigneulles. The Germans had set so many storehouses and villages on fire during their retreat that the Americans could see a dozen or more blazes across the horizon as they raced toward their objective. The Yankees beat the Big Red One to Vigneulles, arriving at 2:30 in the morning, just in time to capture a retreating German supply train. The men worked hours more to secure the rest of the city.
Stubby, according to subsequent news reports, “was with the first troops to cross the front lines in the St. Mihiel drive, and was on hand to see the haul of prisoners made at Vigneulles and the surrounding towns.” The pursuit of the Germans, which had begun on September 12, continued through the next day. Barbed wire was ever present, creating one more obstacle in the chase, but the capture of prisoners was surprisingly easy. Some were literally rousted from their beds. Many seemed delighted to be caught.
All that rain and mud had slowed down the Germans, too, and the Americans frequently overtook not just men but abandoned armaments and supplies. Soldiers turned up stores of personal luxuries, as well, from cigarettes and cigars to beer and cognac. “The Boche are a long ways from starved, by the looks of the kitchen,” one Yankee Division man wrote home. The final haul was impressive: at least 100 artillery guns, hundreds of machine guns and trench mortar launchers, storehouses of ammunition, warehouses of supplies; all that, and 16,000 prisoners of war, too. The trade-off in losses was more favorable than usual: 7,000 American casualties overall, including 109 YD fatalities and fewer than 400 wounded.
General Pershing and his staff were ecstatic. The A.E.F.’s nightly field dispatch—an official snapshot of military highlights released to the news media and American public—swelled in length from its usual clipped sentence or two into full paragraphs of praise. The September 14 communiqué gushed: “The dash and vigor of our troops and of the Valiant French divisions which fought shoulder to shoulder with them is shown by the fact that the forces attacking on both faces of the salient effected a junction and secured the results desired within 27 hours.” The residents of St. Mihiel offered an even better form of praise; they gave hugs and kisses to the liberating troops. Perhaps Stubby earned a particularly savory bone, or at least some grateful petting.
The American soldiers had little opportunity to savor their victory, however. Pershing had committed them for service in a larger Allied effort, the Meuse-Argonne campaign, a massive operation designed to secure Germany’s unconditional surrender. Unfortunately this front was 60 miles away from St. Mihiel. Pershing had tapped a young colonel named George C. Marshall to coordinate the massive transfer of men and matériel from St. Mihiel and other sites to the final front.
Historian Edward G. Lengel details Marshall’s execution of this colossal exercise in his commanding history of the Meuse-Argonne campaign, To Conquer Hell. Lengel observes: “It was the biggest logistical undertaking in the history of the U.S. Army, before or since. In two weeks, 600,000 men, 4,000 guns, 90,000 horses, and almost a million tons of supplies” had to traverse the gap between the fronts. Oh, and for added kicks, the transfer was supposed to happen secretly, if possible at night. The French climate contributed almost constant rain to the undertaking. Pershing gave Marshall the assignment fewer than three weeks before the offensive’s eventual start date: September 26. Marshall met the challenge.
French rains turned unpaved roads into mud-filled obstacle courses for U.S. military convoys when they headed toward the Meuse-Argonne front in the fall of 1918.
The Yankee Division drew an assignment due north of the recently liberated Vigneulles. Conroy and Stubby moved into position with their comrades, tasked with leading a pair of diversionary raids on two German-held towns east of Verdun, Marchéville and Riaville. These attacks, scheduled to coincide with the early morning start of the true offensive, were designed to confuse the Germans and force them to hold troops in this defensive area that might otherwise be rushed as reinforcements against the broader assault. It was a sound plan, but its execution met with as many obstacles as were encountered during the opening hours and days of the larger Meuse-Argonne campaign itself. Objectives that were supposed to be easy to reach proved deadly to attain, and the associated hopes for staying on schedule and gaining momentum through surprise proved elusive.
Stubby’s historical record is full of contradicting “facts,” and the circumstances surrounding one of his most lauded achievements are among the most muddled. The event clearly took place, and September 26 seems the most likely date for it to have occurred, the same day the 102nd set out to capture Marchéville. Thus it seems, even as the Americans continued to reel in German prisoners of war, Stubby managed to capture one all on his own. Whether the man was lost or conducting surveillance, whether he was hiding in shrubbery or discovered in the open, must be left to the reader’s imagination. All scenarios have been suggested.
Whatever the setup, what came next seems beyond dispute. Stubby approached the hapless man and gave no credence to the usual German plea of “Kamerad.” Any German doggy speech that the man may have mustered went unheeded as well. Out of ideas, the soldier turned and fled. This strategy, too, proved ineffective. Stubby bounded after him and showed himself to be by far the faster of the two. One story suggests that the dog chased his captive toward his friends on the American lines. Others counter that he lunged at the fleeing man and knocked him flat, the dog’s jaws clamped on the seat of the soldier’s pants (and presumably a healthy chunk of his flesh). Humans, already alerted by Stubby’s barked alarms, arrived to complete the apprehension.
Details aside, the accomplishment earned the mascot more than praise and admiration. Some say it won the dog official rank in the U.S. military—hence his eventual nickname, Sergeant Stubby. However, there is no supporting documentation for such a claim, and his designation as a sergeant appears to be more a recent folk legend than an established fact from his lifetime. Without a doubt, though, the capture netted Stubby one of the war’s most treasured icons of battlefront booty: a German Iron Cross. The dog’s captive had received the award for previous military service. Informal rules of engagement awarded such spoils to the captor, and thus Stubby by rights deserved the decoration. Conroy dutifully added the medal to his friend’s jacket, eventually positioning it playfully so that it hung disrespectfully beneath the dog’s stub of a tail.
The ambitious Meuse-Argonne campaign, which had begun with lofty expectations in late September, devolved quickly into murky, bloody mayhem. Objectives that should have been reached in hours took weeks to achieve. Unreliable and primitive means of communication left commanders and soldiers alike out of touch and out of sync. Thousands of men were thrown needlessly into the paths of invincible machine-gun fire. Some replacement troops were so poorly trained that they had to ask, just prior to battle, how to attach their ammunition clips to their guns or what they needed to do to “fix” (as in, affix) what looked like an unbro
ken bayonet. These newcomers entered the fray unprepared in ways that elevated the risks for all the soldiers around them.
As the campaign dragged on, first for days and then for weeks, fighters lost track of when they’d last bathed or shaved. Soldiers became too tired to fight, too scared to fight, too discouraged to fight. Meals might or might not show up on schedule. Tens of thousands of men began straggling, falling behind as their units advanced, losing the motivation to keep up. Meanwhile, rain continued and the temperatures began to fall, giving the summer uniform–clad soldiers two more reasons to be miserable.
Did Conroy’s spirits lag along with the other men? How many friends had he lost by this point in the war? Did he advance apprehensively through the forward ground he was tasked with surveying? Or had he settled into a mental zone where he lived each day as just another day, each moment still alive as the moment that mattered most? Maybe Conroy followed the example of his best friend, a being who, when he anticipated anything beyond the moment, simply looked forward to the creature comforts of food, sleep, and companionship. “The dog may have been what got him through the war,” Conroy’s grandson would later say. Maybe Stubby didn’t just keep Conroy company while they hiked across France. Maybe he helped him see beyond the horror and uncertainty of combat to the beauty of just being alive. It would have helped.
During the fall of 1918, soldiers experienced terrifying scenes of combat and death during the Meuse-Argonne campaign. Witness two companies of the 312th Infantry Regiment, advancing toward an objective under the cover of fog, until they were caught in machine-gun crossfire because the fog lifted; those who survived the bullets had to feign death until nightfall before they could safely retreat. Witness Brig. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who led a reconnaissance mission where he alone survived an unexpected artillery barrage. Witness the artillery batteries that were singled out for sniping missions—firing on obscured German batteries in an effort to provoke return fire that would reveal their locations, and then scrambling to clear themselves and their equipment from the area before the arrival of the invited counter-shelling.