Grinnell in World War I

Grinnell College alumni and students participated in various forms of service during this war, even before the United States officially joined it. We bring you their stories, many in their own words.

We begin with the story of James Norman Hall 1910, co-author of Mutiny on the Bounty, who had an unusual route to the fighting in World War I.

An American in Kitchener’s Army

James Norman Hall was riding a bicycle around Wales when the United Kingdom declared war on Germany Aug. 4, 1914.

A few days later, R.M. Cushman, a friend of Hall’s in Boston, wrote, “I don’t know whether to congratulate you or to commiserate with you for finding yourself in Europe in these troublous times. Whatever you do, keep your head and don’t enlist! Do you hear, Don’t enlist.”

Enlisting

Hall wrote back Aug. 19 from London: “By Jove, Cush, Fate works in a peculiar way. On last Monday night had I had your letter I doubt whether or not I should now be Jamie the Royal Fusilier. A hair would have turned the balance but there weren’t any hairs about just then. I remember I came home after a walk through miles of streets. I had been debating whether or not to join. There were some letters in the hall. I said to myself ‘There’s got to be one there from Cush!’ But there wasn’t. And the next morning at ten o’clock I promised on my oath that I would protect George V and the English nation in this time of peril.

“Now that the strain of weighing the pros and cons is over and I have shaken the dice I am as easy in my mind as can be. There are really very many reasons Cush why it will be good for me. I believe that a period of good strenuous military training will be invaluable whether or no I ever get to the front. And if I do go to the Continent and go through the supreme tests and come out with honor — which I am determined to do if I come out at all — that satisfaction of knowing that will be certainly a treasure. Please don’t think that I am carried away by the excitement of the moment. When I tell you that I came to London August 6th and did not enlist till the 17th altho the call was posted on every bulletin board in the city, you will know that I did not act hastily.”

Hall joined Lord Kitchener’s Volunteer Army — the First 100,000. He trained in England until May 1915.

Training to Be a Machine Gunner

In a letter to his mother, Hall described his training. “The business of learning the mechanism of the gun and how to operate it is all finished now, and during the past two weeks we have been doing operations in the field. Of all the villainous inventions for killing men ever invented, the machine gun is surely the most deadly and inhuman. Think of the execution which can be made with three or four of these innocent looking little weapons suddenly opening fire at the rate of 400 to 500 rounds per minute each! The wonder of it is that any men escape at all. It actually mows them down like grain. I was one of the target markers at the range last week when several companys [sic] of gunners were firing and thus had an opportunity to see the effect of machine gun fire at close range. You see the markers are down in the butts within ten yards of the targets, the bullets all going over their heads. To see and hear that rain of lead tearing up the earth so close at hand gives one rather a creepy feeling even tho he knows he is quite safe. It does make an awful row and the ricochets go whistling and moaning away over the hills with the most mournful sound imaginable. However I was very glad to have a go in the butts as marker for I now know just what to expect in case we are ever at the business end of the guns. My nerves are well steeled and as steady. Really I don’t think I shall ‘funk it’ as the English say …”

Strong Feelings About the War

Hall paid close attention to the political situation on both sides of the Atlantic, although the United States remained neutral. After the Germans sank the RMS Lusitania, a British ocean liner and merchant ship, on May 7, 1915, Hall wrote to his friend Cushman. “Recent developments have proven beyond doubt that this is America’s war as indeed it is that of all nations that believe in honor among nations and the right of weak and powerful alike to their own national existence. I am firmly convinced now that in order to maintain this right Germany must be decisively beaten and brought to the terms of the Allies. And I shall certainly do all the little in my power to help to bring this event to pass. …

“President Wilson’s speech at Philadelphia made a most unfavorable impression and no wonder. If he has been quoted correctly his ‘Too proud to fight’ speech should go down in history as grape juice statesmanship of this most insipid kind. Is it true that he said ‘there is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to fight to prove that it is right’? Such absurd idealism isn’t what we have the right to expect from our president and I don’t believe the American people would stand for much of it in a time like this. The text of the note to Germany is just what it ought to be though. If only we stand back of it and compel Germany to recognize our rights as neutrals we can at least retain our own self respect. But from all I can gather from the newspapers Wilson is being anything but firm. In England one is apt to get a distorted view of things though and I like to think that the president who has been so decidedly practical thus far will not become a futile idealist in a moment.”

Early Impressions of Trench Warfare

By June 1915, Hall was in France. He described trench warfare for his friend Cushman, intentionally recording his first impressions, “for it is certainly true that the stimulation which comes from unique experiences is always greatest at the very beginning.

“Our first line trenches here are distant from the German lines from 70 to 350 yards,” Hall wrote. “At the point where I was, they were about 340 yards apart. We marched up to them at night, of course, winding in and out of what appears, in the darkness, to be a hopeless labyrinth of earth works. You go on and on but no matter how far you go, the trenches go farther, and there are little cross streets and alleys, scores of them leading out in every direction, and leading nowhere in particular. You have probably seen bits of earth all perforated with angle-worm passages. Bisected horizontally, so that the upper portion of the maze would be left open to the sky, the remaining tortuous tangle of earth-worm burrowings would give you an idea of my idea of the trenches as we went stumbling on and on in the dark. I marveled at the skill of our guide who went confidently forward with scarcely a pause, to our particular sector of trench. All along the way, we had fleeting glimpses of dug-outs lighted by candles, the doorways carefully concealed with curtains of old sacking; and here and there, in comfortable little nooks and corners, groups of Tommies were cooking supper over little charcoal stoves, made of old iron buckets and biscuit tins. We passed forlorn ruins of houses, the roofs torn off, the walls standing out so desolately against the sky. And at last we arrived at our trench.

“We were on duty with the men of an old line regiment, men who have been through the fighting since the outbreak of war. This was most fortunate and I can assure you we made the most of our opportunity in getting information. It is in the regular army that one finds the real Tommy Atkins, and those fellows were true to type, to the last twist in the s of the Atkins. [Note: Tommy Atkins was popular slang at that time for the common British soldier.] A mighty fine lot of men they were, not in the least boastful about their experiences and ready to give us the benefit of theirs. Really, I believe that I learned more in 24 hours of the actual business of fighting in this war, and of what we may expect in the weeks ahead of us, than in all the months of training. One’s conception of war and of trench warfare in particular, is altered very radically after a few hours’ chat with men who have been thru it. Newspaper accounts are misleading, doubtless because, thus far, the newspaper correspondents have not been given an opportunity for getting first-hand information.”

Trenches at Night

“It is a memorable sight to see this desolate part of the world at night, under the flares sent up from the trenches. The Germans send up these flares continuously through the night. All along the lines you can see the rockets go up giving out a bright, bluish green light when they burst, which lights up all the no-man’s land between the trenches. And then, suddenly, they fade and go out, and the shadows rush back over the lighted area like the very wind of darkness. The effect is so weird. I wish Joseph Pennell could spend a few nights in the trenches. He is one of the few artists who could depict this sort of ‘night life’ for the world, which will never see it, will never know, how beautiful it is, and how desolate. But could he do it I wonder? By Jove! I don’t think so! There’s something about these battlefields that can’t be described, not though all the arts were united in the attempt. I’m not sure though, that it isn’t one’s own reaction, one’s own feelings, as he sees all this, against the dark background which is his own realization of the tremendous sadness, the awful futility of war.

“During the early part of the night the German artillery was searching the woods back of our lines, presumably, for any supply columns which might be coming up. The shells went whistling over our heads, bursting with a dull boom far away to the rear. It’s hard to give you an idea of the sound of a traveling shell. If you are not far from the battery, you first hear — after the explosion from the gun, of course, — a sort of a mournful ‘whing-g-g’ as it starts on its journey and then a noise like that of a flame of fire, flapping in the wind. It’s very easy to follow it by the sound all the way.”

Aircraft Under Fire

“I don’t believe there could be a more picturesque sight than that of aircraft under shellfire. There isn’t a day that passes when we don’t witness shelling of this sort. As I write these words, a group of the men are standing at the window of our attic, watching the shrapnel bursting around a Taube which is doing a bit of sightseeing back of our lines. Yesterday in the trenches, there were six machines up at once. First, appeared a German and soon our batteries were after him, then up came the English machines and we could hear the dull boom, boom, boom, boom of the German guns, and in a few moments every machine was dipping and soaring through the little puffs of white smoke. We counted 71 bursts, sometimes two or three at once, fired at one English machine alone, and yet he sailed calmly on and was lost to view far back of the German lines. In that one little aerial bombardment, hundreds of shells were fired, and, so far as we could see, not one machine was hit. It’s a tremendously interesting sight.

“This part of the front is not particularly active now. During our spell in the trenches, sniping went on continually day and night, with an occasional burst of rapid fire from the machine guns. Practically all the bullets buried themselves in the parapets or ricocheted harmlessly off over our heads. Some of the waggish ‘Fritzs’ opposite our lines have a dummy which waves his arms and jiggles his legs. They put this up over the parapet of their trench occasionally, for Tommy to shoot at, signaling up the hits or misses with a flag, after the system which is used on the English ranges, and which they have learned from us. There are targets of a similar nature on our side of the lines. But for all these diversions, the chief business of war isn’t forgotten, and alas for the unwary chap who exposes himself in the target practice. In fact, that is really what the targets are for. They hope to discover the spot from which the shots are coming. And when they spot it, you can be sure that both field glasses and rifles are kept trained upon it, waiting patiently for the first sign of a movement from that quarter. A too confident chap of another battalion in the trench next to us was killed last night … shot thru the eye, and another on our right met with the same fate.”

Feeling the Effects of War

By mid-July, Hall was feeling the changes in himself, which he described to Cushman. “I’ve wanted very much to give you a really vivid picture of this strange life, and to tell you as well how the experiences which are met with daily and nightly, react upon one — or, rather, react upon me; for I can’t speak for other men, naturally. But each time I’ve tried to set the thing down on paper I have found it impossible. How can I expect to make this picture real to you when, for all the fact that I read all the newspaper accounts and numberless personal narratives of soldiers — I found, upon coming out that I hadn’t in the least visualized it during all the months that I was in England? And you are in America far from the daily contact with all that kept us in England in close touch [with] the battlefields of Belgium and France.

“I believe, Cush, that such a tremendous experience as this must make all thinking men who are taking part in it silent upon it for all time to come. It works such changes in one as are not to be spoken of. It’s impossible to say ‘this is how I felt,’ or ‘I thought’ such and such things ‘under the circumstances.’ Actually, I don’t know precisely what I think and feel now. Doubtless in time, when all of this is past and one goes over events, his mind will begin to function along normal lines again. But plunged as we now are far beyond our depth in events which have changed so profoundly the current of our lives, it is small wonder that we flounder about scarcely knowing what we do.

“Of course the average, unimaginative Tommy doesn’t think very much about it. He takes to this kind of a life, just as he would take to any other kind. He quibbles when the rations are curtailed, or when he has to spend a long night on sentry … in a cold drizzling rain. But give him plenty of food and decent weather and everything is alright. Altho I find many points of contact with the men, and get on first rate with all of them, I don’t find the sort of companionship that I need and I can tell you, it’s pretty tough sometimes. I’ve had nearly a year of it now and occasionally the loneliness is awful. I shouldn’t be one half so lonely if I were tramping the mountains by myself, a hundred miles away from civilization. …”

Thoughts on German Soldiers

“I don’t believe that I shall ever be able, in the future, to think of a German as a man with the same thoughts and feelings and impulses as my own. At any rate it will require a good long time to get back to my old opinions of them. I shall want to look at them thru a periscope from behind cover and I shall feel uneasy without my rifle close at hand. It’s very odd though, how curious one becomes as to what sort of men there are behind that long-running line of sandbags just over there 100 or 200 or 300 yards. Thus far I’ve seen not a sign of Germans altho there are thousands in our neighborhood. The nearest I’ve come to it is seeing the ends of their shovels as they have been working behind their entrenchments. This morning when I was off duty I was searching along their lines with a pair of field glasses for some signs of life. Finally I saw little piles of earth being thrown upward over their parapet. Evidently there was only one man working there and he was very leisurely about it. So just for sport, I got my rifle, put five rounds in my magazine, and took some pot shots at the sand bags just above his head. One of the other fellows observed the effect of my fire thru the glasses. Occasionally the solitary digger would wave his spade in the air to let us know that he was aware of our activity. But he was well under cover and went on digging. Then some of the sentries began having a go at him. Evidently the place got rather too warm for him for he soon stopped work. During the daytime this sort of thing goes on more or less all of the time. But at night firing is quite brisk all of the time, particularly so just at dawn. Thousands of rounds are fired back and forth all along the line and the bullets go singing over — a most vicious little song they sing, too — or bury themselves with a resounding thud in the sand bags.”

Accustomed to the Sounds of War

“Such strange nights and days these are, Cush, one very much like all the rest. We have become so used to the sound of guns both large and small that we pay very little attention to them, unless we have a near shave from a bullet or a burst of shrapnel over our sector of trench. We quite frequently receive a morning spate of shrapnel fire from our friends over the way; but it doesn’t last long usually. But while they cover over our own part of the trench it’s not very pleasant, I can assure you. Such dawns as I have seen! Glorious some of them are with the east flaming with crimsons and purples. Now and then during a momentary lull in the firing I have heard the birds singing — you know how wonderfully they sing in the very early mornings. I never hear them without a feeling of amazement, incredulousness almost. Out here it seems strange to one that there should be birds’ songs anywhere.

“I suppose that our experiences of actual modern warfare as yet, are nothing to what lies in store for us in the immediate future. If the newspaper reports are true the Germans are preparing to make a last tremendous effort to break thru Calais. And when it comes we shall have something to go through. They will never break our line, of that I am convinced. But whether or no we shall ever be able to push them back out of Belgium and France is another question. All these months of fighting and of strengthening positions lend to the belief that the war along the western frontier will end with the opposing armies about where they are now. It is my belief that the chief factor in determining the outcome will be the economic one. And there can be little doubt that Germany and Austria will be economically ruined first. I wonder how long it will take? The end seems to be far distant still. But there is a happy time coming for some of us, soon or late. …”

Hall was discharged from the British Expeditionary Force Dec. 1, 1915, and returned to the United States to write Kitchener’s Mob: The Adventures of an American in the British Army. Hungry for more adventure, he enlisted on Oct. 16, 1916, in the Lafayette Escadrille, the American volunteer squadron of the French Air Service. He transferred to the U.S. Air Service in early 1918, and in May that year he was shot down by the Germans and taken prisoner. He met Charles Nordhoff, his future Mutiny on the Bounty co-author, in Paris after the armistice. Both were commissioned to write a Lafayette Escadrille history, called The Lafayette Flying Corps, which was published in 1920.