The Long Way Home
An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War
David Laskin

Service and Sentiment

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Last Sunday I stumbled on a review in the New York Times Book Review of a new book about the First World War called The Remains of Company D by James Carl Nelson.  Reviewer Elizabeth D. Samet, an English professor at West Point and the author of Soldier’s Heart:  Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point, was not impressed, but to me the book sounded promising.  Nelson, a journalist fascinated by his grandfather’s service in the Great War, set out to reconstruct whatever he could about the battlefield experiences of the men in his grandfather’s unit, Company D, 28th Infantry Regiment, First Division (the same division, incidentally, in which my great uncle Hyman Cohen served; both Uncle Hyman and Nelson’s grandfather Pfc. John Nelson were wounded at Soissons in July, 1918 – in Hyman’s case it was exposure to mustard gas, which seared his lungs and left a permanent scar on his chin).  The Remains of Company D is clearly a labor of love and imagination – an endeavor to breathe vivid life into archives, old newspaper accounts, letters, regimental histories.

Samet found little to admire in Nelson’s book; but what struck me most in the review was the stinging slap she delivered in the closing paragraph:  “Nelson ultimately falls victim to the civilian’s temptation to sentimentalize someone else’s war – to imagine that mysterious ‘nightmares and knowledge’ must inevitably texture the veteran’s every moment.”  This hit a nerve.  The pain I felt for Nelson got me thinking about my own endeavor to write about “someone else’s war.” It seems to me that this “temptation to sentimentalize” arises, ultimately, from gratitude, from a sense of humility mixed with a little shame:  they served, I didn’t – at the very least I owe them respect.  If that respect verges into reverence, if it triggers the civilian writer to imagine a soldier’s private nightmares, well so be it.

Maybe the fundamental problem for civilians who write about war is that we don’t know the answer to the nagging question of how we would behave under fire.  We devote years of our lives to finding soldiers to write about, following in their footsteps, reading their diaries and letters, poring over their unit histories, seeking out and standing by their graves.  We squeeze our eyes shut and try to imagine what it was like for them – and inevitably, what it would have been like for us.  What would I have done the first time a shell whistled down in my vicinity or the first time I heard what one Doughboy described as the “queer zeep-zeep, like insects fleeing to the rear” of machine-gun fire?

The civilian writer stands at the graveside and wonders.  We can’t know.  We can’t not ask.  If asking leads us into the temptation to sentimentalize – well, maybe that’s an occupational hazard.  Better too much imagination devoted to the veteran’s “nightmares and knowledge” than too little.  We learned that lesson after Vietnam – at least we citizens did.  Some members of our government, including those who voted to send troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, have decidedly not learned that lesson.  Take Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn, commonly known as Senator No, who opposes passage of a bill to aid wounded veterans and their strained families unless the money to fund it be offset with immediate budget cuts.  “Now he is demanding balanced books for wounded vets?” fumed the editorial page of the New York Times on November 15.  “Sheer embarrassment should drive the senator into retreat as he trifles with veterans’ needs and burnishes his petty role as Dr. No.”

I agree with Elizabeth Samet that “sentimentalizing someone else’s war” is deplorable if it means getting misty over patriotic service while you vote to deprive veterans and their families of improved care.  But if it means finding out everything you can about when and why and how your grandfather was wounded in a wheat field in France 91 years ago and writing about it with reverence and love – then I’m all for it.

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Interviewing Private Pierro

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

Here in Seattle Veterans Day coincides with the height of the rainy season, which seems fitting given the wretched weather that the soldiers endured in France in the weeks leading up to the 1918 Armistice that Veterans Day commemorates.  “During the night, a cold penetrating rain began,” one soldier wrote of conditions on the first day of the Argonne offensive that ended the Great War.  “We couldn’t build any fires.  We had no overcoats, and had left our blanket rolls in the Bois de Sivry.  Some found overcoats and blankets left by the Boche, and rolled up in those.  The army slicker is as good as nothing, as far as heat goes, and as to turning water – well, we who wore them in the Argonne, knew what they were worth.  The moisture from one’s body collects on the inside of the coat, and as soon as the wind strikes you, you are cold for the rest of the day.”

Such was life in France in the fall of 1918.  The rain and wind outside my window seem blessedly benign by comparison.  But I really wasn’t intending to devote this blog to the weather but rather to the back story of one of the 12 immigrant soldiers featured in my book.  When I started researching in earnest in the summer of 2006, two foreign-born World War I veterans were still, miraculously, alive – 106-year-old Sam Goldberg and 110-year-old  Antonio Pierro.  Naturally, I wanted to meet both of them as soon as possible.

I don’t recall exactly how I tracked down Tony Pierro, but I do remember that a radio producer named Will Everett was extremely helpful in the process.  At the time, Will was taping interviews with the surviving World War I veterans for a radio program called The World War I Living History Project that he was putting together, and he had just spent a long, productive, if sometimes frustrating day taping an interview with Tony at the Pierro residence in Swampscott, Massachusetts.

I have learned over years of research and writing that some people jealously guard everything they know about a subject, while others share freely, even with perfect strangers.  Will was one of the latter.  When I called to pick his brain, he told me that the best way to set up an interview with Tony was to contact his nephew Rick, he advised me to use a loud clear voice in asking questions, and he warned me that I shouldn’t expect too many combat stories – after all the guy was 110.  Will added that my best chance of getting Tony to talk freely was to bring a pretty young girl along to the interview.

This last bit of advice amused me – 110 and still an eye for the ladies! – but Will was insistent so I pressed my oldest daughter Emily, who fits the bill nicely, into service.  I can’t say that Tony opened up much – he seemed to be dwelling peacefully deep inside himself and far back in the past.  But, with Emily sitting beside him and intercepting the occasional shy courtly smile, Tony talked some about the snakes in his family’s vineyard back in Forenza in the south of Italy, the dangers of dodging exploding shells in combat, and a French girl named Magdalena he had loved nine decades ago.  When we got up to leave, Tony took Emily’s 21-year-old hand in his 110-year-old hand, leaned over and kissed it.

I listened to Will’s documentary on Veterans Day, 2006 and was blown away.  Walter Cronkite hosts the program, and Will’s interviews with the dozen centenarian veterans are absorbing, surprising, and moving beyond words.

It never occurred to me when I set out to write The Long Way Home that I would be able to interview two veterans who had served when Woodrow Wilson was commander in chief.  It saddened me that both men died before my book was finished, Sam Goldberg on December 10, 2006, and Tony Pierro on February 8, 2007.  In fact, of the 12 men Will interviewed for his documentary, only one is still alive:  Frank Buckles of Charles Town, West Virginia, is the last of the last.  Even wonderful old Walter Cronkite passed away this past July.

If you’d like to hear the voices of these veterans and share in their memories, I urge you to get hold of a copy of Will Everett’s brilliant program.  I’d like to end this blog by again thanking Will and Rick Pierro for their help.  And I want to acknowledge Tony Pierro and the 4.3 million other Americans, half a million of them foreign-born, who served in the Great War that ended 91 years ago.

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Honoring an Omitted Soldier

Friday, October 16th, 2009

One nice thing about of being a writer – aside from never having to dress up for work – is that people seem genuinely interested in the details of how you ply your trade.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked where my ideas come from, how I do my research, where I find the stories I tell.  Since there’s nothing more enjoyable than talking about yourself (hence the popularity of blogging?), I’m always happy to oblige.

In this second attempt to summon an echo from the vasty depths of the blogosphere, I’m going to talk about how I came by a story that I didn’t tell in my book.  Early on in my research, I was having trouble finding Polish-Americans who had served in the war.  Italians and Jews practically came knocking on my door, but no Poles.  I contacted Stephen L. Harris, the author of three terrific books about heroic NY National Guard units in World War I, and he gave me an invaluable tip:  Harris suggested that I place short articles in the Polish-American press explaining the nature of my project and soliciting stories from readers.

I submitted a piece to The Polish Weekly and soon received a letter from a woman named Mary Sidick who lives in Canton, Michigan.  Ms. Sidick told me that her father Lawrence Bartus had emigrated from Poland to Michigan and fought in the war not with the United States Army but with Haller’s Army.  A bit of research revealed that this outfit, also known as the Polish Army in France, was an independent  military organization made up largely of Polish immigrants.  Though Haller’s Army fought alongside the Allies, its ultimate mission was to free Poland from Russian, Prussian, and Austrian control and secure Poland’s reunification as a single country.

Ms. Sidick wrote me that her father had been working as a baker when, on August 31, 1918, he enlisted in the Polish Army in France in order to avenge the death of his brother John, who had died in action earlier in the war.  “He fought in France,” Ms. Sidick said of her father, “was wounded in the legs, was waist deep in water in the trenches and prayed to God that he never have a son to experience the terrors of war.”

When I pressed her for more information, I received a second letter with this vivid, moving passage:

[My father] came to the States from the Carpathian Mountains in Poland, loved being outdoors, liked to tell stories, play cards, horseshoes and was very likeable.  When his parents died when he was little, he and his brothers [John and Martin] would cry themselves to sleep because of hunger.…My father suffered from trench feet all his life and the smell was very bad.  He also had to give up his prior job as a baker, because of lung problems due to being gassed.  When my brother was born, my dad cried.

My dad never passed up the Salvation Army kettle without a donation. He said when he got off the train in France it was cold and raining and he was handed a hot cup of coffee by the Salvation Army.  I continue the tradition in his memory.  Every Memorial Day my dad flew both the American and Polish flags on our front porch.  He was very proud to be a soldier.  We would go to the cemetery and pay tribute to the dead, and dad would have tears in his eyes when taps were played.

In the first draft of The Long Way Home, I included a brief history of Haller’s Army as well as this letter – but, alas, the entire Haller’s Army section, including Lawrence Bartus’s story, got deleted when my editor asked me to make substantial cuts to the manuscript.  Mary Sidick phoned me recently to inquire about the progress of my book, and it pained me terribly to confess that her father’s story did not make it into the final version. I hope this blog is some compensation.

This, I now see, is one virtue of blogging:  it’s never too late to include another story – or to honor the contribution and the memory of a humble baker who went to war for two countries he loved.  If you have ancestors, Polish or otherwise, who served in the First World War, I urge you to hit the “Submit Your Story” button to the right.

If you’d like to learn more about what Lawrence Bartus experienced in France, take a look at the Haller’s Army Website and the book Haller’s Polish Army in France by Paul S. Valasek .

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Welcome to Our Community

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Welcome to my website and my very first blog – not just the first on this site but anywhere. Yes, I’ve been writing books, articles, letters, emails, and such for decades – but my blogging life is literally seconds old. In fact, to get in the spirit of it, I’m writing this (or at least the first draft) in the picturesquely grungy Ugly Mug coffee shop in Seattle’s University District, cheek by jowl with my fellow readers, writers, and no doubt bloggers. Loud distracting music, interesting distracting youth, windows too smudged and small to offer more than a sliver of the scudding clouds I usually gaze at while searching for le mot juste. Strange. So please bear with me as I struggle to slip comfortably into this unfamiliar genre.

As you’ve noticed if you’re reading this, I’m calling this section of my web site “community.” The reason is fairly straightforward: I’m hoping to make this a place where people who feel a connection to the stories and issues in my book can “meet,” visit, comment, express opinions, share pride or grief or memories, and above all tell their own stories. You’ll note the “Submit Your Story” button at the right. If you’re so inspired, click there and add your own blog entry. Perhaps you have an ancestor who served in the First World War? Maybe you’re an immigrant or from a recent immigrant family and you feel moved to talk about your own experiences or compare yourself to the Ellis Island generation featured in my book? If you are on active service in the Armed Forces, if you’re a Great War buff, if you want to discuss your heritage, if you have a story related to the military, immigration, assimilation, this is your chance. I’ll be reading and posting your stories as they come in. And once I post them here, others will have a chance to comment. That’s the idea anyway.

So far, as I sit here in the Ugly Mug unintentionally eavesdropping on a loud conversation behind me, I’m a community of one. So this blogging thing feels very much like talking to myself in the mirror. Nonetheless, I can dream. And my dream is a community of many who have a stake in the issues raised by my book.

To that end, I’d like to toss out a few thoughts inspired by a recent essay in the New York Times Book Review. Writing in the August 16, 2009 issue, Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson compares the experiences of the current waves of mostly Asian and Latino immigrants to the those of the immigrant generation I write about in The Long Way Home, still, but just barely, the largest group of immigrants in US history. Patterson notes that “Until recently, the conventional wisdom among social scientists was that the adjustment of recent immigrants to America would be fundamentally different from that of the European immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been claimed that they are from different ‘races’ and are entering a harsher postindustrial American with fewer opportunities for mobility, and also that the ease of communication and travel to their homelands discourages assimilation.”

But in fact, Patterson points out, today’s immigrants are assimilating even faster than the Ellis Island generation of immigrants. Children of today’s immigrants nearly all speak English as their first language and consider themselves “as American in their attitudes and behavior as their native counterparts.” The one group that has not joined this great leap into assimilation is black Americans, whether native born or immigrant, who continue to live in “hyper-segregated” communities and in far deeper poverty than any other group. Race, not ethnicity, turns out to be the one stubborn lump in the melting pot that will not, cannot break down.

But race, Patterson suggests in what struck me as the most thought-provoking part of the essay, is a far more fluid category than we suppose – especially the race of new arrivals. He puts it so eloquently that I’ll simply quote: “The assumption that the current wave should find adjustment harder because they come from different ‘races’ rests on a hopeless misconception. At the time of their arrival, Jews, Italians and other Eastern and Southern Europeans – and even the Catholic Irish – were viewed by native whites as belonging to very different (and inferior) races. In fact, they did not assimilate because they were white; they become ‘white’ because they assimilated.”

This brilliant insight puts me in mind of a story I tell in the book about Rocco Pierro, an immigrant from the far south of Italy, who was invited to meet the aging father of a white native-born co-worker. The old guy looked Rocco up and down with a wide, surprised gaze and finally murmured, “What do you know? I thought all Italians were black.” The Pierro family still talks about it.

Patterson is right. When Rocco’s son Tony, who came over from Italy as a teenager, was drafted in 1917 and shipped out to France with the All American Division a few months later, he became “white” in a hurry. Nothing accelerates or intensifies assimilation faster than war. As Tennessee marksman and Great War hero Alvin York wrote of the Italian, Polish, Jewish and Greek immigrants he served with in the All American Division, “They were my buddies. I jes learned to love them.”

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