Letters of a soldier

Front matter

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CQFXRICHT DEPOSm

Foreword

Our people have justifiable pride in the character of our army which fought in the World War. The character of that army was truly great, and worthy of the great cause in which it served. Its character, however, was great and noble only because of the high individual purpose and character of the men who composed it.

The mass of the people realize in a general way the worth of the men who made up the American Army ; but in the book "Letters of a Soldier" the public will have opportunity to appreciate in intimate manner the moral and military standards of a soldier of the 27th Division who was representative of the best in that army, and who gave up his life in the Battle of the La Selle River, France, October 17th, 1918.

The ''Letters of a Soldier" were written by First Lieutenant Kenneth Gow, of the Machine Gun Company, 107th Infantry, 27th Division, to members of his family. This officer in many respects was typical of that finest type of young manhood which for many years constituted the brains and heart of the New York National Guard Division. Lieutenant Gow served the period of the Mexican Border Service as a private, corporal and Sergeant in the 7th New York Infantry. His letters cover many interesting features of that service. Later, as a non-commissioned officer and commissioned officer of the same regiment in the World viii FOREWORD

War, he continued to write and send to members of his family letters descriptive of his experiences. Because these letters were written in intimate fashion to his family, without thought that they would ever be published, their interest and value are intensified.

The book is commended not only to the officers and men of the 27th Division, but to all who would view in intimate fashion the character and life of a very gallent soldier, who gave up that life in the service of his country.

JOHN F. O'RYAN

Major General, 27th Division, U.S.A.

Contents

LETTERS.

V\ E

I: Traveling by Troops Transport Train. — The Reception at Harrisburg. —

Introduction

By Capt. Kenneth Cunningham Wilson

To that great and terrible drama the chief scenes o£ which were enacted in France and Belgium in the years from 1914 to 19 1 8 there is a significant historic background, in the case of the nations which took part in it and of the millions of individuals whose greater or smaller

parts together made up the stupendous tout ensemble.

As to that background in its larger and broader aspects, greater pens than mine have already described it, or will in the future ; and in attempting to project the background of the individual soldier whose letters are printed in this volume, and whom I knew only as a comrade and friend on the Mexican Border, at Camp Wadsworth and in France, I am necessarily beholden to sources where this information could be best obtained.

The people of these United States of America have now become, and are still in the process of becoming, the most composite stock in the world. Many nations, tribes and kindreds, of different races, speaking different tongues, have contributed ingredients, both good and bad, to the contents of the great ''melting-pot." Our present civilization is the composite product of various capacities.

Capt. Kenneth C. Wilson xxii INTRODUCTION

inheritances and ideals. Human materials from the five continents and the seven seas have gone into the building of the nation, yet there is a potential unity and harmony in the result w^hich suggests the directing mind of a Master Builder, building on a sound and lasting foundation ; to wit, the great principles of the nation's fathers.

Bismarck defined a nation as a ''multitude of invisible spirits — the nation of yesterday and tomorrow." The World War came with sudden call and trial to the nations. The response given by our composite people demonstrated that we are a nation, all its citizens having the same ideals and sharing a common devotion to our country.

When we survey, even cursorily, the history of the building and development of this nation, we are arrested by the fact that men of Scottish birth and of Scottish blood have taken a great and leading part, especially in its beginnings. To mention but a few* of the outstanding men along the line of American history, amongst statesmen we find the names of Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton, John Witherspoon and Robert Livingston, the latter the ancestor of a distinguished line of statesmen ; in naval and military affairs, Paul Jones, Gens. Hugh Mercer and Arthur St. Clair ;t in law, James Wilson ; in education, James McCosh ; in commerce and industry, Robert Lenox, John Crerar and Andrew Carnegie ; in literature, Washington Irving and S. Weir Mitchell ; in exploration and natural history, John Muir ; in music, McDowell ; in sculpture, Frederick Mac- Monnies ; and in invention, Archibald Graham Bell.

* Vide "Scots and Scots Descendants in America."

t Gen. Arthur St. Clair was born in Thurso, Caithness, Scotland. He was one of Washington's generals, afterwards the first Governor of Ohio, then in a territory. He served with distinction in the War of Independence, and when the news was received of the signing of the Declaration of Independence he was at Ticonderoga. He ordered the Declaration read after divine service, and then said: "God save the free and independent States of America!" The people from whom Lt. Gow sprung were of the same county in Scotland.

INTRODUCTION xxiii

Two of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. John Witherspoon and Judge James Wilson, were of Scottish birth. In Washington's Continental Army there were thirty-two generals of either Scottish birth or ancestry. Twelve of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were of Scottish origin. Fifty-three generals in the Civil War, North and South, were of this same race and blood, as were 50,000 men in the Northern Army. According to the late Whitelaw Reid, twelve of our twenty-six Presidents were of Scottish descent.

Theodore Roosevelt writes in his "Winning of the West" :

''Full credit has been awarded the Roundhead and the Cavalier; nor have we been altogether blind to the deeds of the Hollander and the Huguenot; but it is doubtful if we have wholly realized the importance of the part played by that stern and virile people whose preachers taught the creed of Knox and Calvin. These representatives of the Covenanters were in the West almost what the Puritans were in the Northeast and more than the CavaHers were in the South. They formed the kernel of the distinctively and intensely American stock who were the pioneers of our people in their march westward."

So in this superb edifice, our nation, whose foundations are laid deep and strong in civil and religious liberty and the rights of man, whose spires and pinnacles soar ever upward in aspirations and ideals, we must recognize that, deep and firm in its structure, is a stone, a block of granite, inscribed "SCOTLAND."

Bringing with them a heritage of freedom from their long struggle for civil and religious liberty, still remembering with reverence and affection the glens and the seabeaches of Auld Scotia where their ancestors fought and worshipped while resisting religious tyranny; and bringing xxiv INTRODUCTION

also a more intimate knowledge of American history and American institutions than any other immigrants, the Scotch have made citizens one hundred per cent. American.

Scotland, although little amongst the nations, her name long since almost ceasing to be mentioned in world poHtics, has exerted, as the late Dr. Hamilton W. Mabie writes, an influence on the world out of all proportion to the numbers of her people. If men of Scottish birth and blood have thus impressed themselves on the world, it need not be imputed to any inherent superiority of race. If those whom Roosevelt calls "that stern and virile people whose preachers taught the creed of Knox and Calvin" have accomplished any creditable and lasting w^ork in the world, it must be ascribed to that stern schooling in character which their religious education has supplied. Burns would not have been the national poet of Scotland had he not had the insight to recognize this. In his ''Cotter's Saturday Night" he portrays one of those humble yet potent schools of character, where the emphasis is placed on the moral and the spiritual, and he writes :

"From scenes like these Auld Scotia's grandeurs rise ; This makes her loved at home, revered abroad."

Let not the reader contemn these references to race and origin. Perhaps some of us Americans are somewhat vainglorious in affecting that our people have always been Americans — that what went before does not matter. But whether our particular strain is derived from Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Germany, Italy, etc., we have race characteristics of habit, character and modes of thought which are inherent in our mental make-up. It is well to forget Old World political legacies, but it is not well to forget our spiritual heritages.

INTRODUCTION xxv

The writer of these letters, Kenneth Gow, was of purely Scottish blood. His immediate ancestors belonged to the County of Caithness, the northeastern corner of Scotland, on the North Sea. Scandinavian blood through Mowats and Gunns and other descendants of the old Vikings, Celtic blood through MacGregors and MacKays, flowed in his veins. Surely the old clan loyalty lived again in him. When President Wilson sounded his trumpet call for preparedness in 1 91 6, Kenneth Gow was quick to respond, and enlisted in the militia. His letters show that foremost in his make-up was loyalty — loyalty to his family, to his friends, to his comrades, to his officers, to his regimental company, to his regiment, to his division, and above all to his country and its cause.

In one of his letters he writes of being thankful for his heritage. He understood this in its broadest sense; that it was not only that heritage which he derived from his ancestry, but also the heritage derived from his American birth and nurture, his American education, and the spiritual heritage derived from those who helped to form his moral and religious concepts, the names of some of whom appear in the portion of this volume entitled ''Tributes."

It is not intimated that, amongst the many hundreds of thousands of young American soldiers in the A. E. F., Kenneth Gow stands out as unique or unusual in character or patriotic devotion. He himself would be the first to deprecate and disclaim any such extravagant estimate. His story, experience and sentiments but serve to illustrate the spirit which actuated and inspired many thousands of others who, with equal devotion and the same exaltation of soul, laid all they were or hoped to be on the altar of their country, many paying, as he did, the last tribute of devotion. And these young men were derived from everv nation and race in Europe, and of some even in Asia, as the roster of xxvi INTRODUCTION

the A. E. F. shows, proving to the world that the United States of America contains a people, one in mind and in ideals — the nation of yesterday, today and tomorrow. It is well to remind ourselves here, too, that all the patriotism and self-sacrifice were not confined to the southwestern side of the Hindenburg Line. That so many of the best and bravest of all the nations should have been marshalled, trained to the acme of physical and mental efficiency, and then hurled against each other in mutual destruction, surely brands war, whoever is held responsible, as the supreme crime of all the ages.

It is said of Kenneth Gow that at the — to him — supreme moment of his military career, when, through his own ability and the fortunes of war, the moment arrived when he was given command of his company, to put to the ultimate test his military ability and the long training he had been given, it was a pitiful fate to meet death rather than success and continued life. But, despite this, and despite of our knowledge of the dirt, toil, cruelties and horrors of war, our age-old inheritance from hundreds of generations of warring ancestors leads us to look upon this soldier's death in the spirit of ancient Rome :

"To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late ; And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds.

For the ashes of his fathers And the temples of his Gods ?"

Some of those who were very close to the men in France have, like Father Hoey, testified to the spirit of exaltation that buoyed up many of the soldiers of the A. E. F. They were fortified through all the fatigue, danger and suf-

INTRODUCTION xxvii

fering by the feeling that it was well worth while — that the world would be freer, better and happier for all their sacrifice and toil. Many, like Lieut. Gow, died in this belief, happy in that their ideals were unshattered, with the conviction that they were fighting and suffering in a cause which, in his words, was "worth a dozen lives." These dead did not come back home to disillusionment, to find men living on the same low plane, to meet indifference and even neglect and seeming forgetfulness on the part of their own countrymen. They did not live to see the nations of the earth, selfish and self-seeking, under darker clouds than overshadowed the world in 1917-18, or to see that country for whose ideals they fought and died threatening to forsake those ideals and to stand solely for itself and by itself. We may ask : ''Have these dead died in vain ?" but they sleep in peace, secure from the sorrows, doubts and fears which so sorely beset the living.

"No vision of the morrow's strife The warriors' dream alarms, No braying horn, or screaming fife At dawn shall call to arms.

"On Fame's eternal camping-ground Their silent tents are spread ; And Glory guards, with solemn round, The bivouac of the dead."

To the reader of these letters who did not know Kenneth Gow% they give an insight into the thoughts and emotions of one of those fine characters which made up the great United States Army. To me, and to his many devoted comrades of the old Machine Gun Co. and the 107th Infantry, they bring back memories of that stirring period of our xxviii INTRODUCTION

lives devoted to the service of the United States, tinged with the regret that this cherished friend is no longer with us. My acquaintance with Kenneth Gow began when he joined the Machine Gun Detachment of the old 7th Infantry, N. G. N. Y., of which I was a newly-appointed non-commissioned officer, before we were called into service on the Mexican Border; drawn to him, as were all his comrades, by his charming personality, his absolute faithfulness and loyalty to the Service and his friends. Through all my service with him I cherished his companionship and the inspiration his high ideals and sense of duty brought to me. In no profession or walk of life do men rely on one another as in the military service ; and we all felt that Lieut. Kenneth Gow could be relied upon absolutely to marshal every one of his fine qualities to the execution of any duty with which he was charged, from the smallest routine task to the command of his Company in battle. It is our sorrow that in this faithful performance he met a soldier's death, at the head of the Company which looked to him with confidence as its fearless, accomplished, and beloved leader.

Amongst Lieut. Gow's ancient Highland ancestors, when some beloved clansman was laid in his last bed beneath the heather, a monument of stones, called a cairn, was erected, from every friend a stone. In like fashion do I add one stone to the cairn of my friend and comrade, Kenneth Gow.