Company B, 318th Infantry Regiment, National Army at Camp Lee, Virginia
World War I
2017 is the 100th anniversary of America’s entrance into World War I. Many of us know little about that time or that war but it was more than a turning point for our country. Before then, America’s military numbered about 135,000…total. We weren’t considered a force to contend with, military or otherwise. The Great War changed that. We expanded to millions of soldiers and became a world leader. Our presence in France changed the world’s perception of the U.S. but there were other significant effects of America going to war overseas.
Wealthy Americans took world tours and traveled to Europe but the majority of ‘soldier boys’ that fought in France had never left the country before. Many had never left their city borders. The impact on their lives can’t be overestimated. They experienced the horrors of war but they were also exposed to other cultures, languages, and architecture that existed centuries before our nation was born. The song “How You Gonna Keep Them Down on the Farm (after they’ve seen Paree)” was popular for a reason. It echoed sentiments of parents throughout rural America as their sons came home and were dissatisfied and restless. The war did that.
Our soldiers’ interaction with Europe influenced our nation’s health as well. Returning soldiers and others carried the Spanish Influenza home with them. According to the National Archives, more people died of the flu than were killed in the war. One example of the scope and randomness of the pandemic comes from Clyde Goode whose father served in an engineering company. Ralph Goode survived the war but returned home to discover that his mother died of the Spanish Influenza while he was en route from France. The epidemic was so prevalent that references to it even appeared in my great-grandfather’s journal. He described deaths of fellow streetcar men and the survival of a neighbor from the influenza during the war. Death was as near as next door and as distant as an ocean away.
Despite reluctance by veterans to describe battle conditions, details did emerge. Horrific battles with unbelievable carnage left survivors damaged in various ways. Men came home without limbs and with nightmares. One man told me his uncle came home with a wooden hand. Lives changed for those men and for the families who waited for their return.
The massive collection of World War I photographs and memorabilia in my family “stuff” inspired me to write about that time but not as a documentary or military history. It’s the story of one family whose son went off to France but that story was repeated all over America so I included other stories from other families. The story is universal and its time has come.
That’s why I wrote From Richmond to France. It combines letters and postcards from my great-uncle Leon Stilson while at Camp Lee, now Fort Lee, and France and photographs from the Stilson collection. It is set in World War I but it’s not what you’d expect. The stories I share are funny and a glimpse into the innocence of our world in 1917. Leon was introduced to gambling and dancing, to “smokers.” He wrote “This company had a smoker last Tuesday night. I don’t think the word applies very well. We had 5 or 6 wrestling matches and 4 or 5 boxing matches. After that was over and in between, bouts of plenty of music, a piano, banjo, violin, and singing. Then we went downstairs to the mess hall to eat all the ice cream and cake we wanted. Then the cigars and cigarettes were passed out and the men given permission to smoke in the mess hall which is against the rules at all other times. The lights were put out at eleven o’clock and everybody went to bed.”
He explains passes: “I did not ask to go this week as we have no uniforms as yet and my clothes are dirty. “ He also writes about what happens when young men are away from home and get that pass: “A private took a corporal home with him to Richmond last Saturday and the corporal went out of a house where they had went to visit and took the private’s automobile which he did not know how to drive and proceeded to go crazy on Broad Street and ended up by smashing the car up against a tobacco factory. Now he is in jail with a $50.00 fine unpaid.”
Richmond’s African-American soldiers went to war, too. Harry Stilson documented their departures and returns and probably knew many of them from his Jackson Ward streetcar route. One of them posed where the black troops had paraded on Leigh Street a day earlier. Their stories were found in surveys they completed and provide a graphic description of the anticipation of equality and the disappointment when service in the armed forces failed to award that equality.
From Richmond to France is also about Armistice, the aftermath of war, and the healing that came later. When a Gold Star Family made news last summer, many Americans were unfamiliar with the term but it was familiar to everyone in the Great War and afterwards. A unique piece of history included Gold Star Mother Pilgrimages. Congress authorized a program in which mothers and widows traveled to France to see their loved ones’ graves so Paris in 1932 is also part of the Richmond World War I story. Richmond In Sight shares that story in presentations and books as documented by the words and images of one family when their son went to war.
Wealthy Americans took world tours and traveled to Europe but the majority of ‘soldier boys’ that fought in France had never left the country before. Many had never left their city borders. The impact on their lives can’t be overestimated. They experienced the horrors of war but they were also exposed to other cultures, languages, and architecture that existed centuries before our nation was born. The song “How You Gonna Keep Them Down on the Farm (after they’ve seen Paree)” was popular for a reason. It echoed sentiments of parents throughout rural America as their sons came home and were dissatisfied and restless. The war did that.
Our soldiers’ interaction with Europe influenced our nation’s health as well. Returning soldiers and others carried the Spanish Influenza home with them. According to the National Archives, more people died of the flu than were killed in the war. One example of the scope and randomness of the pandemic comes from Clyde Goode whose father served in an engineering company. Ralph Goode survived the war but returned home to discover that his mother died of the Spanish Influenza while he was en route from France. The epidemic was so prevalent that references to it even appeared in my great-grandfather’s journal. He described deaths of fellow streetcar men and the survival of a neighbor from the influenza during the war. Death was as near as next door and as distant as an ocean away.
Despite reluctance by veterans to describe battle conditions, details did emerge. Horrific battles with unbelievable carnage left survivors damaged in various ways. Men came home without limbs and with nightmares. One man told me his uncle came home with a wooden hand. Lives changed for those men and for the families who waited for their return.
The massive collection of World War I photographs and memorabilia in my family “stuff” inspired me to write about that time but not as a documentary or military history. It’s the story of one family whose son went off to France but that story was repeated all over America so I included other stories from other families. The story is universal and its time has come.
That’s why I wrote From Richmond to France. It combines letters and postcards from my great-uncle Leon Stilson while at Camp Lee, now Fort Lee, and France and photographs from the Stilson collection. It is set in World War I but it’s not what you’d expect. The stories I share are funny and a glimpse into the innocence of our world in 1917. Leon was introduced to gambling and dancing, to “smokers.” He wrote “This company had a smoker last Tuesday night. I don’t think the word applies very well. We had 5 or 6 wrestling matches and 4 or 5 boxing matches. After that was over and in between, bouts of plenty of music, a piano, banjo, violin, and singing. Then we went downstairs to the mess hall to eat all the ice cream and cake we wanted. Then the cigars and cigarettes were passed out and the men given permission to smoke in the mess hall which is against the rules at all other times. The lights were put out at eleven o’clock and everybody went to bed.”
He explains passes: “I did not ask to go this week as we have no uniforms as yet and my clothes are dirty. “ He also writes about what happens when young men are away from home and get that pass: “A private took a corporal home with him to Richmond last Saturday and the corporal went out of a house where they had went to visit and took the private’s automobile which he did not know how to drive and proceeded to go crazy on Broad Street and ended up by smashing the car up against a tobacco factory. Now he is in jail with a $50.00 fine unpaid.”
Richmond’s African-American soldiers went to war, too. Harry Stilson documented their departures and returns and probably knew many of them from his Jackson Ward streetcar route. One of them posed where the black troops had paraded on Leigh Street a day earlier. Their stories were found in surveys they completed and provide a graphic description of the anticipation of equality and the disappointment when service in the armed forces failed to award that equality.
From Richmond to France is also about Armistice, the aftermath of war, and the healing that came later. When a Gold Star Family made news last summer, many Americans were unfamiliar with the term but it was familiar to everyone in the Great War and afterwards. A unique piece of history included Gold Star Mother Pilgrimages. Congress authorized a program in which mothers and widows traveled to France to see their loved ones’ graves so Paris in 1932 is also part of the Richmond World War I story. Richmond In Sight shares that story in presentations and books as documented by the words and images of one family when their son went to war.
