In white armor; the life of Captain Arthur Ellis Hamm, 326th infantry, United States army

Front matter

WKite Armor

Class OvT Z.1 5

Book

Foreword

Captain Arthur Ellis Hamm was killed in action on the Lorraine front on September 14, 191 8, a few weeks after his twenty-sixth birthday. That is an age at which many life-histories are just beginning to be written, but, saith the Book of Wisdom, "Honorable old age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor is its measure given by number of years."

Captain Hamm's achievement in his short span of life was so remarkable, and his personality was so complete, that I am justified in publishing this sketch of his life and character.

He was an ideal American soldier — one of two million such perhaps — but by virtue of his dash and brilliancy and remarkable beauty he may well stand for the type of all that is best in the American, man or soldier. ' He was physical perfection, tall, slender, and of kingly bearing. His carriage was erect and easy, every muscle fit and supple for chivalrous service. His hair was chestnut brown with glints of gold, his eyebrows were black and drawn with a master sweep of the Great Painter's vi Foreword

brush, and his deep-set eyes were a peculiar shade of dark, warm gray. The strong lines in his cheeks deepened into dimples when he laughed, as he did a great deal. Altogether his was a figure of distinction and a face of powerful magnetism, a face in which fire and sweetness, gentleness and strength were blended.

Arthur Hamm typified the best of Americanism in that he was in every fiber a self-made man. The forces which made him were his own inner forces, that America simply gave him the opportunity to develop and wield. His personality was vivid, and has left in the hearts of those who knew him a rare vision of human grace and beauty. He seemed to them a shining ray of youth and sunlight struck aslant the world, lent to us for a brief space, too rare and lovely to endure. " Being made perfect, in a little while he fulfilled long years; for his soul was pleasing unto the Lord; therefore hasted he out of the midst of wickedness."

His marriage was the culmination of his life, and it has been impossible to write of him without regard to his great and tender love of wife and home. From the few letters I have selected to share, I could not altogether cut the personal note, without wholly losing Arthur. He himself mounted a high tower like the Muezzin of the

Foreword vii

Orient, and proclaimed his love for me to East, West, North, and South!

The influences of his early life I could only indicate, for Arthur came into my own life at the moment of complete manhood. I recall his saying to me one evening in Florida, during the first week of our friendship :

"If I were to tell you all the things I have done during the past ten years you would think me forty years old, which in truth I sometimes feel. And at that I am only on the threshold of my real career. "

' ' When did you do that ? " I had asked him. ' ' I thought you were going up the coast on a Clyde Line boat in 191 5. And how in the world did you ever have time to indulge in typhoid fever? "

I still do not see how he had time to crowd so many adventures into so short a space, and if I were to attempt to follow out in detail the lifestory that came to me bit by bit, it would take as many volumes as for a "Jean-Christophe. " He started at fourteen years of age on his life-quest, a quest which culminated ten years later in an ideal love, and was soon thereafter crowned with martyrdom. I have likened this time of spiritual growth and progression to that quest of Arthur's knights of old, adventure upon adventure leading toward viii Foreword

one definite and pure ideal, and I have chosen the quotations to head each chapter from the Idylls of the King, all but two which are from Tennyson's Sir Galahad. Those myths of the past are the symbol of all our human struggle onward, but Arthur's pilgrimage was remarkable because he never set himself a purpose that went unfulfilled, never knew defeat of soul, and moved steadily on and on to a splendid and heroic climax.

There are men who have fought and died in this war who met the call to patriotism and manhood with a sudden leap to greatness and have thereby found redemption. The night before my husband sailed for France he said: "Remember, that if I should die in action, it is after all, a pretty good way to square accounts with the world. "

But for Arthur Hamm there were no accounts to square.

Contents

L-

— Boyhood ....

II.-

Chapter I

"Some called him son of Launcelot, and some said Begotten by enchantment."

Arthur Ellis Hamm was born at Groveland, Massachusetts, on June 29, 1892. His parents were both of undiluted English descent, the mother's name, White, having first reached these shores on that commodious ship, the Mayflower. He was the English type of American, tall and slender and aristocratic, with a lean face and determined jaw. As a little boy he was already handsome and upstanding, generous and high spirited.

Arthur and his older brother were brought up and sent to church like true little descendants of the Puritans, in the town of Stoneham, whither Arthur was transported at the age of three. His father was a manufacturer of soap, and the family struggled with poverty and with despotic tyranny. The children adored their mother, championed her and protected her, but could find no ground for love or respect toward their father. When a very litte boy Arthur was obliged to assert his will against his father, and even — a soul-searing experience for a twelve-year-old child — to threaten his life.

He had thrown a stone one day, accidentally breaking a window. His father dragged him roughly to the barn, by no means for the first time on slight provocation, there stripped the boy to the waist, and brought a horsewhip down across his shoulders. Arthur's brain reeled. He slipped like an eel from his father's grasp, flung himself upon his rifle, which hung upon two nails on the wall of the barn, levelled it steadily, and cried: "Put up that whip! Now go out of here ahead of me, and quick too!" When he replaced the rifle and dressed himself, Arthur was white and shaking, the tears running down his cheeks, but he had won a victory. Courage and justice had met brute force and conquered. He was thereafter the ruling spirit in his home. To multiply instances of his unhappy boyhood would only be distressing. But from such surroundings and out of such conditions many a great American

ARTHUR ELLIS HAMM— AGE 6 has come. The American boy has the immeasurable advantage over the boys of other races and countries — in that he can make his life anything he pleases, if only he has the inheritance of good blood and sturdy character.

No little boy, in whatever environment, can be altogether unhappy, and Arthur was active and joyous by temperament. He was a favorite in school, where he showed all the qualities of a born leader, and both in Sunday school and day school he struggled against the opprobrium of being a "teacher's pet." "I hated Sunday school like the dickens," he said, "and yet I took a concealed joy in being arrayed in my Sunday suit, and in kid gloves that hung off the fingers. I was glorified in the sight of all grown-ups, and humiliated in the sight of my equals. I could hold my own on week-days by a fair exchange of lickings, but on Sundays I was at a terrible disadvantage."

He was a splendid marksman, and loved his rifle, but in the ordinary sense of the word, he was not a "sportsman." An experience that he had as a boy of thirteen cured him of all desire to aim at living targets. It is one of the few incidents of his boyhood that Arthur told me about in detail.

"I had a new rifle," he said. "Had only shot the thing off a few times at a target in the field back of our house, and this was my first trip with it to the woods. Right off I saw a little chickadee, cutest thing ever, singing so hard that all the feathers of its throat were ruffled out like a tiny feather boa. It must have been singing to its mate. Without one thought of what I was doing, I raised my rifle and fired. It was some shot, too, for the little chap's head was clean severed from his body. I threw myself down on the grass and cried and cried. It cured me of any love of 'sport,' for the only protection that a woods creature has against you is its fear, and a frightened rabbit or squirrel is a piteous thing. Its heart beats like the mischief, and you have either to shoot it in the back or when it is running away from you. I'd as soon shoot a man facing me with a gun in his hand as eat my dinner, but as it happens, I haven't had to do that yet."

Arthur could not bear to see suffering, much less to inflict it, but his was not the sensitivity that turns away from painful things. He was quick to run to the help and relief of pain. His sympathy was of the sort that asks: "What can I do?" And to "do" something was Arthur's instinct in any situation. He was gentle, sensitive, and a dreamer, both in boyhood and in manhood, but he always set about to make his dreams come true, and his initiative carried him to the solution of many a tough proposition. "Aggressive" men called him, a fighter, a dynamic force, and a leader of men, and yet he kept those qualities that we do not always associate with strong and masterful men, sympathy and consideration for all men, and a deep, unchanging tenderness.

In his fifteenth year came the tragedy and turning point of Arthur's life. "The bottom fell out of everything." His sweet and beautiful mother died, a woman still in her thirties, of rare and exquisite nature, whose love alone had made home tolerable. It was a tremendous moral crisis for Arthur, and the one great grief of his life. The warring elements within him might easily have been harmful to his growth, but Arthur took his mother's image to his heart, and made of it a symbol and a constructive force. In her name he decided to give the happiness she had missed to some other woman, and from out the dissensions and misery of his own boyhood's home, he built up an ideal of how things ought to be. From that moment forward, Arthur directed and ordered his life with spiritual Love held steadily before him as its end and aim, and though in the course of his pilgrimage he came to know every phase of good and evil, every side of life, he moved ever "in white armor." His naturally sunny temper rose soaring above grief, laughed at obstacles that would have discouraged a weaker boy, and to himself he never admitted the possibility of defeat.

Even to me he could scarcely speak of that mother, whose face, as he grew to manhood, was transformed into one like hers but younger, that he called his "Dream-Girl." Once he laid his head against my shoulder and said softly: "Beth, I loved my mother. ' ' And when I asked him a little about her, he could only say: "She was like you. She was beautiful, like you."

Arthur's future relations with his father were very slight. Arthur sent him pecuniary aid from time to time, and felt an unhappy responsibility toward him, which was in no way reciprocated. The father practically deserted his children, and when at last some years ago he dropped completely out of sight, it was a relief to everyone concerned.

After his mother's death Arthur at once left home, and a wealthy family invited him to visit them, and very soon made him an offer of adoption. Their son was Arthur's schoolmate, and these friends offered to send the motherless boy to school with their own son, and later to Harvard, with equal rights of sonship. Arthur loved luxury always, and whenever he had the opportunity was exceedingly hard on towels, the weekly wash and the hot water supply. He was living at the A's in a suite of luxurious rooms. He did not hesitate an instant in his decision.

''No," he said. "I must live my own life and win my own education — those are the only terms on which I can hold to my independence and self-respect." And so he left his greatly disappointed friends, and began his independent life as he ended it, in the uniform of a United States Infantry soldier. He was first mascot, then chief bugler with the Massachusetts National Guard, laying there the foundation of the military fitness which made him later one of the most fearless and brilliant officers in the American Expeditionary Force to France. The soldiers called him, "The Candy Kid," and they formed a special sort of protectorate over him that he never forgot. ' ' The kindness of those rough men," he said, "and their care of me was one of the most touching experiences I ever had. Drinking and swearing and worse stopped when I was present, yet I saw enough of it to give me a permanent distaste for that sort of thing. I believe I would have been soundly thrashed if any of them had caught me saying 'damn,' and that was mildness itself to them."

Arthur's shooting soon brought him prominence and popularity, and his championships no less than his grit made him a favorite with his regiment. The medals he won are many and impressive, and to the winning of one of them we owed our longest and happiest vacation from army life. Why? Because of a broken nose for the mending of which we were granted three weeks' leave of absence last winter.

Arthur was never fat but once in his life, and that was when he gave an exhibition drill in the "everwarm safety suit" which I foisted upon him on the eve of his sailing, — an article thereafter known as "the damn bathing-suit," and which you will meet in several of his letters. I imagine that his shoulder bones might have been quite sharp when he was sixteen, at least they proved so on this occasion, for the back-kick of his rifle finally lacerated his flesh and began to pain him intolerably. He was shooting prone upon the ground, and finding his sleeve actually bloodsoaked, he attempted to bank a mound of earth to take the force of the repeated blows. But his precaution was inadequate, and the butt of his rifle crashed back upon his own poor little nose. He finished the match and won it too.

Arthur's pluck was always of the most cheerful variety — he was not a Stoic, one felt no "grim determination " about him. He never indulged in heroics. In fact he had the dread of physical pain or disability natural to perfect bodily health. He was also "afraid of the dark, " or so he told me. No shrinking influenced his conduct, however, and if ever he was hurt he made a joke of it. It was difficult to induce him to rest, and to remain in bed he had to be literally unable to lift his head. Still with the National Guard, he got up from an attack of grip one day, contrary to the orders of an exasperated doctor, and hiked with his company forty miles, one of a bare dozen to stick to the finish. Of course he went back to bed again, but was perfectly happy and satisfied.

Altogether Arthur remained three years a boy soldier, studying and reading in his leisure hours, for he had by no means given up the idea of school, and was gradually evolving a plan of his own which he called "practical education."

A college education and professional life were his dominant ambition, but of the nature of the latter he was undecided. "How can I decide," he thought, "until I know the world better, io In White Armor

and find out the thing I like best and am most fitted to do?" He felt that the average boy just out of college had the most important part of his education still before him, and that in acquiring it he lost the relation between life and the reading he had done in his University. "A boy who has been sent to school and college as a matter of routine, has not had time nor opportunity to get acquainted with realities, ' ' he argued. ' ' How can he relate his reading and study with experience, and know how to reject or affirm what he reads? Half the value of his college course is lost through immaturity and inexperience. He forms his judgments from books or from his professors, and often the wonderful opportunity is wasted because it has come to the boy too easily, has been accepted grudgingly, and at times is thrown utterly away in the sowing of futile 'wild oats'."

This theory he held to with the tenacity of faith in his judgment that was always justified for his own case. "I would not recommend it to anyone else," he said once, "and as it worked out I got to college much later than I intended, and am making a late start in life. Discouragements began to come just as I wanted to enter. Everyone said, ' Oh you will never get to college ! Why don't you give it up and settle down?' But

Boyhood n

I did get there, and you can't possibly imagine what it means to me. It renewed my faith in myself, and makes me feel that the future holds no difficulty that I cannot conquer."

However dangerous Arthur's theory of education might prove for the average boy, it had worked marvels in his instance. At twenty-four he had the bearing and poise of a much older man. His mind was well-informed and analytic, and his judgment was mature. He was thoughtful, witty, and of a most charming and natural manner. His chivalrous attention to women, especially if they were of my mother's age, never failed to win their hearts. It was native knightliness in him, for in his wandering and adventurous life he had not come very much in contact with women. He had never been attracted to any young woman in his life, for he believed passionately in ideal love, and waited for it to come to him with wistful longing. His own unhappy home-life had inspired Arthur with the great desire to make some woman supremely happy. This ambition he realized as completely as every other.

Arthur spoke in one letter of having led a selfish life. It was only selfish in so far as anything we may do for the sake of our own growth is selfish. He had no responsibility toward any human being but himself, and that one he fully met. He went from adventure to adventure, valuing the work at hand only as it led onward to his larger goal, but always doing it "in the best form possible," — a happy pilgrim, his soul developing, accepting the good and rejecting the unclean and unworthy with unwavering certainty, and arriving at last at what he himself termed "the pinnacle of manhood."

Following is an extract from the letter referring to that "selfish life," written in Jacksonville just before we announced our engagement. In it also he expresses some of the ideals which ran like interwoven golden threads, guiding him along his way.

April, 19 1 7.

Y. M. C A. f Jacksonville, Fla.

Beth dear:

I received your letter just as I was leaving for Jacksonville. I don't know how to answer it, — I only know that I am very happy. . . .

When I look at my position in the world I shudder, and my heart shrinks. Do you realize what a selfish life I have lived, thinking only of what I hoped to be? Everything has been for self, for experience and education, first practical education, and last that coveted college training which has been my goal. And why have I led this life, knowing the selfishness of it, you might ask? After years and years of meeting innumerable people, I have had in mind an ideal formed from the qualities I have liked in different persons, and sometime I knew that I should meet that ideal, and that recognition would be immediate. I knew that I would want to give the woman I loved a great deal, and for that I must be equipped. After all, there is one thing in life and only one that is worth while, and that is union with the person whom you love. Everything else leads toward that end, the ultimate happiness, and toward that happiness we all are or should be striving. My life has been clean and it is mine to offer. I shall be able to care for the girl I love, and although I want you to know the exact truth about my present situation, you must also believe that I have sufficient ability to take care of the future.

My first year in college is nearly completed, and while I haven't accomplished all I desired to, I have a good insight into what it means, and it will avail me all I hoped for future years. There are many things I am equipped to do, but I have always wanted to be a professional man, a lawyer, and toward that end I have driven, and am driving. My practical knowledge of business

H In White Armor

and the world will, in that profession, when augmented by the necessary academic training, possess wonderful value.

It worries me, Beth, to think of allowing so much valuable time to slip by now that I have found you, and I am lost as to what is the best course. I feel that it might be to go to New York, locate in a law office, and do my best to study and practice at one and the same time. Our lives should be lived together, and the space of time between now and when I shall be fully established is too great to lose. Beth, with you to work for, nothing can keep me back.

The war situation is still vague. I was talking with General Foster, former Adjutant-General of Florida, and he advises me to wait until I am called for. Personally I dislike that attitude. I want to get into it, and want everyone else to feel the same way so that we can get it over and settle down to the normal again. If everybody waits, I see no chance of terminating the whole miserable affair for years to come. I should like to go to the college training camp, but that is out of the question I fear.

I am trying to look at the practical side of life, and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that only happiness will be ours. If you were to ask how, on so short acquaintance, we can be sure that this is real love, I can only answer that the slightest thought of going through life without you at my side, — well, I cannot describe it, it is so vague, impossible and wrong. My heart seems to take much for granted, but in so doing it is full of content. The voice of the heart is right and should be heeded, Dear. It is simply the recognition of pure truth

Chapter II

"And none in so young youth was ever made a knight Till Galahad."

On the Florida University recommendation slip for the Officers' Training School I find the following items.

Educational Qualifications: One year special student, law and academic, University of Florida. His professors state that he is an earnest student far in advance of his class in academic work.

Military Experience: Three years, 6th Massachusetts. Has experience as rifle instructor, target range, etc.

I wonder how Arthur managed to bring down his "business experience" to three items! He went back and forth many times from Florida to New York between his eighteenth and twentyfifth year. He called the Jacksonville Y. M. C. A. "home" during those long years of brave and happy adventuring. Once in order to get back south, and "for the fun of the thing" he ran a dining-car on the Southern Railroad for a fewdays. It was one of the times of his life for young Arthur, and I can well imagine him, handsome, debonair, and aristocratic, in this curious position. He refused to wear a uniform, and smilingly refused tips. The passengers engaged him in conversation, and he received many offers of business advancement. One day he took the order of a man who looked him over and then said gruffly: "Young man, what are you doing here?" — "Running this dining-car," said Arthur meekly. "Well don't do it any more! Are you interested in the Railroad?" — "Why no, not particularly," said Arthur, "except to give tiptop service on this car." — "Well if you ever should become interested," was the curt reply, "call at the address on this card, and I will make your advancement my personal concern." The gentleman leaving then abruptly, Arthur remained staring at the card of the President of the Southern Railroad.

Curiously enough, when Arthur saw me off at Jacksonville for New York, in the spring of 191 7, he caught sight in the diner of one of the negroes who had been a waiter under his orders. Without my knowledge, and after he had left the slowly moving train, he jumped on again and said: "Reed, look after those ladies in drawing-room A. One of them is the future Mrs. Hamm." (An assertion to which I had not yet fully subscribed!) We surely were looked after, and Reed said to me confidentially: "Mistah Hamm am one ob de mos' well considahed young gemmen ob de souf. He got mo' friends dan ah kin tell you 'bout, an* he ain' got an enemy, — no ma'm, not one."

Florida put its mark upon Arthur's speech and manner. One was a curious mingling of soft southern drawl and the Boston A, and the other was typical of "old southern chivalry." Up and down the Florida coast he went in a little Ford "skeeter, " all too often held up for speeding, and on one occasion landing its driver in the home of Florida Crackers. "Stuck for fair she war," he told me, referring to his car, "in one of those palmetto swamps. It was too late to get help to drag her out until morning, so I footed it to the nearest shanty, afraid every minute that I might step on a snake or a 'gator. The hut was certainly terribly dirty, and all the family were eating out of one common bowl, — a nauseous mixture of some sort. But they were very kind and let me sleep on the floor and asked me to share their supper." — "But you couldn't, could you?" I asked, knowing Arthur to be hyper-fastidious. "Why yes, I did. Naturally I didn't like it, but they were so nice to me that I could not possibly hurt their feelings." I am confused as to the chronology of the events of these crowded years, and Arthur was to have written it all out for me sometime. But "sometime" never came, and so I feel this must needs be a disconnected chapter. Time enough he had, poor boy, to indulge in typhoid or malarial fever once a year. Never sparing himself physical strain, he laid himself open to the dangers of the climate, and he was too high-strung and nervous to submit gracefully to these illnesses. The most serious attack that he had was while he was acting as private secretary to the President of the Clyde Steamship Line. He practically ran away from the hospital at Jacksonville, and went to Palatka, sending to Massachusetts for his brother to join him. The two boys shared the expenses of a little farm, and for a month or so thoroughly enjoyed bathing, fishing, and shooting. Arthur was then about twenty-one years old, and he had his eyes turned longingly and definitely toward that "coveted college training." He had read widely, his mind was clear and brilliant, he was ready and eager, but financial troubles held him back. Money saved was called upon for various uses. With their consent the father had used up the boys' inheritance from their mother. Not only that but he had made further demands upon Arthur's resources, and the boy at this time was carrying a heavy load of responsibility, and a heavy heart. In short all of his savings melted away, and there is a characteristic entry in his hand in a little book kept by the brothers together. It reads as follows :

"Arthur and Loring on the corner of Jack and Franklin Streets; Total assets, Loring, $1.95. Arthur, $1 .65. But we are out for a killing ! "