My Uncle Josh, 347th Machine Gun Battalion, 91st Division, out of Camp Lewis, religiously wrote in his tiny camp diary. He brought it from Salt Lake City, a freebie from a cleaners.  He wrote about rain, a lot.  I am not surprised as Pacific Northwest rain had to be impressive to a high-desert native. He wrote about training, learning French, drills, shooting awards, football games, Secretary McAdoo's visit, and his clerical work at the hospital. ​Intriguing were the non-entries of March 1918. He was in the hospital as a patient for sixteen plus days. After returning to his barracks for more rest, fellow soldiers brought him food and checked up on him.  He only felt like reading and writing letters. In a letter home he asked his mother to verify that he had already had mumps as a child. Mumps? Influenza? He never wrote about the diagnosis. However, it does appear that Camp Lewis did have an early exposure to some strain of flu. 

"On April 15, however, it was reported that at the army’s Camp Lewis south of Tacoma (now part of Joint Base Lewis-McChord), pneumonia has slightly increased during the week, most of the cases follow influenza, which was at its maximum two weeks ago.” (“Civilian Workers Fast Being Eliminated ...”).  The 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’ Pandemic in Washington. 

Another online article discusses the flu at Camp Lewis called "Now Part of JBLM, Was at the Center of the Beginning of the Lethal Disease in Washington State", HistoryLink.org, Nov 8, 2017. According to it, the flu of March 1918 was just a normal flu, with soldiers recovering quickly.  But Josh was sick for weeks. It is still a mystery if he had the Spanish flu, mumps, scarlet fever, more than one health problem, or something else. We only know that he was very weak after the prolonged hospital stay.

The U.S. Army website relates the effects of the Spanish flu worldwide and throughout the American Expeditionary Force. Here is the link for those wishing to read more about the influenza worldwide plague of 1918.  Speaking of plagues and pandemics, "The Plague," considering the smaller world population, was still a much greater pandemic than the Spanish Flu...but tell that to someone who lost a family member or who suffered through it and survived. Americans lost over 45,000 soldiers to the Spanish flu. My university campus turned over large classroom halls to house sick soldiers.

And here we are today, battling another influenza with deaths already mounting at the beginning of the flu season.

​I have to share a photograph from Alex Vdy of France. He and reenactor friends are honoring the American Doughboys, and yes, even playing a little baseball. He writes his permission, "Yes of course !! Its my friends and me, in north of France (fort de seclin), the last week, we have members of YMCA and infantry regiment." His photograph is from 21 October 2018.  

​Many of you may not realize that across Europe there are individuals and organizations that religiously research, analyze battle sites, reenact, adopt American soldiers and their graves, and write about World War I and World War II. Right now, in the meuse.argonne.com Facebook group, a discussion is buzzing about a dog tag found in a home garden in Gercourt.  Everyone is trying their hand at identifying the private of the 47th to whom it belongs:  Louis Co_e_. of the 47th Infantry. I have a feeling that the mystery will be solved by this tenacious group.

Honoring the Doughboys and the GIs is truly a passion born of gratitude for what the United States committed to for our allies during the two world conflicts in Europe. When my sister and I visited Bayeux and the beaches of Normandy, many told us that the French will never, never forget.   Merci!

You can read more about Fort de Seclin in this Wikipedia article.

A reenactment of the Battle of Somme is shared by BBC.

Baseball and World War I 
September 27, 2018 by Wendi Maloney

***From the Library of Congress World War I Blog***

This is a guest post by Naomi Coquillon, an education specialist in the Interpretive Programs Office. The post ties together themes from two major concurrent exhibitions on display at the Library: Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I and Baseball Americana.

​When the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917, baseball had been known as the “national pastime” for 60 years and was on the cusp of a golden era. Wrigley Stadium was about to celebrate its third birthday. The Red Sox had just begun a sixth season in Fenway Park. Babe Ruth was almost three years into his storied career. And the massive national effort to raise an army and mobilize public support for the war touched nearly every aspect of American society – including the sport of baseball.

Major League Baseball players and teams supported the war effort by conducting demonstration trainings, opening stadiums for war-related charity events and participating in Liberty Loan bond drives – Christy Mathewson, pitcher for the New York Giants then manager for the Cincinnati Reds, helped sell more than $100,000 in bonds in a single day.

For American forces overseas, baseball was a means of boosting morale. The American military created 77 baseball diamonds in France, and on any given day some 200 games were played throughout the country. “The soldiers like to play ball. … You can’t get enough baseballs to go around here,” the Harrisburg (Pa.) Telegraph reported in August 1918.

On the home front, shipyards and steel manufacturers hired professional baseball players to do industrial work and recruited them to play on company baseball teams. Workers in shipyards, steel mills and munitions factories were exempt from the draft; among the major leaguers who joined these teams were “Shoeless” Joe Jackson of the Chicago White Sox and Charles “Jeff” Tesreau, pitcher for the New York Giants. Although these games were reportedly well attended, the players were often derided as “slackers” and accused of taking these positions to avoid military service.
In May 1918, the Selective Service Division issued the “work or fight” rule, which stated that by July 1, all men of draft age not involved in “useful” work could be brought before a draft board and compelled to participate in war work or military service. The regulation came to include such service professions as elevator operators and doormen as well as those involved in games and sports.

According to historian Jim Leeke, author of “From the Dugouts to the Trenches: Baseball During the Great War,” approximately 38 percent of active Major League players went on to serve, and eight current or former players were either killed in action or died of illness during the war. Among them was former Philadelphia and Cincinnati third baseman Eddie Grant, who perished during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, during which he led troops on a search for the famous Lost Battalion.
Branch Rickey.

Future Hall-of-Famers Christy Mathewson and Ty Cobb served in the Chemical Warfare Service of the U.S. Army under Branch Rickey, the former manager of the St. Louis Browns who would go on to his greatest fame as general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Mathewson suffered exposure to gas during a training exercise that left his lungs permanently weakened; he died of tuberculosis in 1925. George Sisler, who would also be inducted into the Hall of Fame, trained for the Chemical Warfare Service but did not serve abroad.

Baseball players who served overseas made their way home during the winter of 1918–19, and Major League Baseball began a shortened season the following April. Fans and players alike looked forward to the sport’s return; as the New York Times reported in January 1919, “Baseball stands in high favor among the soldiers. Since the armistice was signed they have talked about nothing else but the game. They are all anxious to get back home to see a good ball game.”

If you plan to be in Washington, D.C., this fall, consider stopping by our Echoes of the Great War exhibition in person to learn more about the story of baseball during World War I. And visit our Baseball Americana exhibition, too, located in an adjacent gallery on the same floor of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building.

BEFORE the information on the videos, I wish to honor the death of Joshua Henry Bates, my uncle, the inspiration for this blog.  He served in the 91st Division, the Wild West Division out of Camp Lewis.  He shipped off for England, then France in July 1918. His 347th Machine Gun Battalion saw deadly action in the St Mihiel Campaign. Then they marched on to the Meuse-Argonne.Their mission was to hold the gains by the AEF. That probably sounds "easy" but they were constantly barraged and nagged by deadly German fire. On October 3, 1918 they received a relief order dismissing them from the front line by the 32rd.  

"On October 3 we were relieved by the machine gunners of the 32nd Division, and moved back after dark to a position on the northwest edge of the Bois de Very. We were looking forward to a period of rest and of recuperation from the dysentery which had become very prevalent in the ranks, but we were instead detached from the 91st Division and placed under the control of the First Amy Corps. With some disgust, because of our weekend condition, we saw the other brigade of our division go back to a rest area, while we went forward again on the night of October 7, to the front line in the sector to the west of that formerly occupied." (Calkins)

Uncle Joshua did not move on with the rest of the Battalion. As recorded in the battalion records:

"Private Bates was just going into a dugout to report having called in a part of a company D platoon that he had been ordered to bring, preparatory to its going back [the relief order]. Suddenly a pair of bracket shells came. Private Bates was struck by a fragment high up in the chest and died practically instantly.  All he said was, "Oh". This happened in the southeast corner of the Bois de Baloney....  Private Bates was buried where he fell....  'Private Bates was an exceptionally conscientious and cheerful soldier, --a high class man,' said Captain Thomas. He was the last man killed before the 346th machine gun battalion was relieved for the first time." (Dyment, p. 17)

His death was early on the 4 October 1918, two days ago. The AEF recognized 26,277 killed and 95,786 wounded in the Meuse-Argonne.


World War I Centennial Videos:

This series available on YouTube is well worth watching.  There are to be seven videos created by the United States Army Center of Military History for the Centennial. The main title is "The Great War."  Not all were published on YouTube when I wrote this posting.
 Into the Fight
Building an Army
Peace Without Victory

They are concise military perspective videos that are quite frank, especially about the foibles surrounding the reasons for the war (assassination of a leader in a country of lesser power) and the sloppy settlement which ushered in usurpers like Adolph Hitler. Even Peter Jackson, in The Lord of the Rings documentaries, mentioned the futility of The Great War.  We already know that Tolkien based much of his great novel on his experience in Somme and the mechanization of society and the weapons of war. Only the "wild" antics of the Americans jarred the stalemate of mutual destruction.

​World War I Songs (from Ardee Music on YouTube) this is a playlist with many songs of the era.  I was surprised at how many I knew.  What is your favorite?
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