The Last Week of the Great War

Richmond-born soldiers, black and white, fight in the hilly, soggy fields of northeastern France. On the homefront, civilians confront not only the seemingly unending tallies of war dead and wounded carried by the morning papers but also the massive death toll from a worldwide influenza outbreak — often printed alongside the day’s syndicated comic strips. Efforts against spreading the illness close schools, theaters and churches.

Joining these grim headlines are stories about a pivotal congressional election, women struggling to get the vote and African-American opposition to the Jim Crow laws that are fueling the Great Migration out of the South.

Here, through personal letters, regimental records and newspaper archives, we reconstruct the week of Nov. 4, 1918, and find how eerily similar it was to today.

Monday, Nov. 4

‘I AM HEREWITH OFFERING MY SERVICE’

The two older sons of the Rev. Richard J. Bass, Urbane and Benjamin, are on the front line in France. His two youngest — Joseph, who works for the Pennsylvania Railroad in New Jersey, and Cardwell, still living at home in Jackson Ward — have registered for the draft.

A pastor with Mt. Tabor Baptist Church and an insurance salesman in the Ward, Richard lost his wife, Rosa, the mother of his six children — they also had two daughters — four years earlier.

Son Urbane attended Virginia Union University, and on Aug. 8, 1901, he was among 22 young men who formed the Astoria Beneficial Club to promote racial equality and education.

After his 1902 VUU graduation, Urbane trained at Leonard Medical School in Raleigh, N.C., and soon wed Maude Vass, the sister of a classmate. They returned to Richmond in 1906 but later moved to Fredericksburg, where Bass is the first black physician since Reconstruction. He makes house calls, and when surgery is necessary — because of the restrictions against black admission at white hospitals — he uses the kitchen tables of patients. His payment from clientele often includes food and services.

When the U.S. enters the war in 1917, Bass — age 38 — exceeds the customary military age. He is an accomplished small-town physician running a successful practice and is also part owner of the prosperous Commerce Street Pharmacy for blacks. He and Maude are the parents of four children.

Bass writes a letter to Secretary of War Newton Baker; explaining that due to “loyalty for my country and the desire to serve her in this critical period, I am herewith offering my service for the Army Medical Corps should there be need for a Negro physician for that branch of service.”

After completing segregated medical officer training in Iowa, he’s made first lieutenant in the Medical Reserve Corps 372nd Infantry Regiment, 93rd Division, one of 104 African-American doctors who volunteer. His brother Benjamin is sent for training at Maryland’s Camp Meade and assigned to the 367th Infantry Regiment, 92nd Division in June 1918 — a division overseen by many prejudiced white officers.

Urbane’s 372nd is one of the few all-black regiments that march into battle alongside French soldiers. The French 157th that his regiment joins has earned the nickname “The Red Hand” for their ferocity in battle. The French treat their African-American comrades with a fellowship not generally shown by their white countrymen, whether in war or at home.

On Oct. 4, 1918, out in the open behind a low hill near Beausejour, Bass tends to the wounded from a heavy German artillery barrage. A mortar shell slices into the hilltop, and the rocketing shrapnel slices through Bass’ legs from the thighs down. He instructs attendants on how best to treat him as they rush him to an ambulance.

Almost a month later, on Nov. 4, his name appears in the Richmond papers: “Colored Physician Killed in France.”

A widow at 32 with four children, his wife, Maude, eventually attempts suicide and is committed temporarily by her father to a Washington asylum before moving to North Carolina with her family.*

‘IT WILL NEVER BE PERFECTLY SAFE’

City Health Director Roy Flannagan, whose 20-year-old son is flying in the Army Air Corps, spent the past weekend in Charlottesville, where his brother, Capt. Lawrence Edward Flannagan, 54, is ailing with the flu, which he contracted at Georgia’s Camp Greenleaf.

That same weekend, two theater managers from Richmond storm up to Charlottesville to convince Flannagan to reopen their entertainment venues, closed by Flannagan’s order since Oct. 6.

Before the war, Flannagan served as assistant state health commissioner but received temporary leave to become Richmond’s chief health officer. Thus, the worst public health crisis ever experienced by the city is now his problem.

By Oct. 5, the flu had infected 2,000 Richmonders, and by month’s end, 570 deaths occurred due to the Spanish influenza.

During this month of death, Boy Scouts were volunteer stretcher carriers. Fifteen-year-old John "Jack" Williams II wrote about the suffering to his girlfriend, Maggie, in Baltimore:

“Mother and Father have just finished blowing me up for working all day yesterday [at John Marshall School] which the city has turned into an influenza hospital. Hereafter I don’t crave stretcher bearing. You see some awfully sad cases. ... Spanish ‘flu’ is no respecter of persons and people of all races, nationalities, and walks of life. My ambulance hauled nine people from one family.”

Returning to Richmond on Monday, Nov. 4, Flannagan is still considering an end to the ban on public gatherings. The tension between health concerns and the negative economic impact on the city increases the pressure on Flannagan and the city’s medical professionals to permit businesses to reopen.

Dr. Thomas Murrell, head of the Richmond Academy of Medicine and Surgery, however, chimes in with his own somber recommendation to the city’s Administrative Board. He advises against lifting the ban.

“Spanish ‘flu’ is no respecter of persons and people of all races, nationalities, and walks of life. My ambulance hauled nine people from one family.” —John “Jack” Williams, 15

On Monday afternoon, Flannagan testifies that conditions don’t warrant “any further penalizing of the public.” Administrative Board member Graham Hobson objects, citing 500 calls from those who want the ban sustained. He asserts that physicians he knows predict a “public calamity” if the ban ends.

Flannagan says that he expects at least 25 pneumonia deaths during the upcoming winter months, but that shouldn’t prevent the opening of schools, churches and theaters. "If this board waits until it is entirely safe to open up the city, my reply is that it will never be perfectly safe in the winter."

The board votes 2-1 for lifting the ban, with Hobson abstaining. Chairman Elben C. Folkes gavels the prohibition to its end effective immediately.

White patients recovering at John Marshall High School are sent home. African-American patients at Baker School are sent home the following day. Both schools are fumigated.

‘THE MONEY IS NOW AVAILABLE’

On this Monday, too, Richmond Planet publisher John Mitchell Jr. can publicly rejoice. A long-running dispute about the finances of a failed financial institution has come to benefit Mitchell’s own Mechanics Savings Bank.

Along with tallies of influenza deaths and war casualties and letters home from black Richmond soldiers, The Planet prints news about lynchings and racist violence. Today, Mitchell is able to publish rare good news.

Born enslaved, he is a vigorous proponent of black civil rights. In racially divided Richmond, he’s built a prosperous life in Jackson Ward, along with a national reputation.

Mitchell served terms on City Council during the 1890s, when, even as a minority Republican, he moved forward funding for black schools, opposed appropriations for dedicating the Robert E. Lee monument and, after a decade of inaction, moved the city to approve construction for Leigh Street Armory.

“Do not delay starting a savings account. Sickness is the unknown quantity and necessity is ever present.” —John Mitchell, Nov. 9, 1918

Mitchell couldn’t stop the relocation of a solid-waste incinerator to St. Paul Street, and his failure to prevent its operation and Jim Crow machinations forced him out of office.

When the civil rights activist, historian and journalist W.E.B. Du Bois visited Richmond in 1916 to speak at Virginia Union University, Mitchell showed him the sights, including a stop at St. John’s Episcopal Church. A white guide recited Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech. Following the presentation, Mitchell and Du Bois went to Henry’s pew and stood for some time in silence.

The chasm between rhetoric and reality, of history and the present, gaped in their quiet.

Mitchell, frustrated by the difficulty of garnering political results, had already turned his attention to business, owning a respected newspaper, Woodland Cemetery and the sometimes troubled Mechanics Savings Bank.

On this day, Nov. 4, some assistance comes to Mitchell’s bank through the financial misfortune of others. A long-running case involving mortgage deposits from the failed Savings Bank of the Grand Fountain United Order of True Reformers — run until 1897 by a Mitchell rival, the Rev. William Washington Browne — is settled.

Browne’s successors mismanaged the bank until Oct. 16, 1910, when the State Corporation Commission shut it down. The bank is credited as the country’s first owned by African-Americans, and its failure wipes out the savings of families, churches and fraternal organizations throughout Virginia and nearby states.

True Reformers’ mortgage holdings were held up in legal limbo until today, when Richmond Law and Equity Court Judge Beverly T. Crump decrees a dividend of 25 percent to the bank’s depositors and designates Mitchell's Mechanics Savings Bank the recipient of True Reformers’ deposit accounts and accrued interest to the total of $72,285.45.

The Planet states, with barely  restrained enthusiasm, “The money is now available and will be payable as soon as the preliminaries are arranged.”

Tuesday, Nov. 5

ELECTION DAY

On this Election Day, rumors are rife that the Germans are close to signing an armistice. The conferees meeting at Versailles agree that Germany should pay heavy reparations to nations that have been wrecked by the war. Whether Kaiser Wilhelm II will remain on the throne depends on the hour of the day one asks. Socialists and Bolsheviks are fighting in German streets.

In Richmond, Col. C.R. Kelley, the secretary of the Virginia State Council of Defense, doesn’t much care for conscientious objectors — draftees who declare that religious stipulations forbid them from carrying a weapon into battle. Kelley needs to make some use of them, so with the flu ravaging the farm families of rural Virginia, more than 200 of the objectors are working as temporary field hands.

U.S. Congressional elections are held today, too, and mostly white and well-to-do male Richmonders go to the polls for the exercise of their franchise, though there is little choice in the matter. The 10 incumbent House of Representatives seats are seemingly safe in Democratic hands with little opposition.

Wednesday, Nov. 6

A CALL TO VIRGINIA

In early November, letters from the Virginia Equal Suffrage League's Executive Secretary Edith Clark Cowles ask for help from National American Woman Suffrage Association president Carrie Chapman Catt, the inheritor of Susan B. Anthony’s mantle as a champion of women’s civil rights.

For Cowles’ request, Catt knows a likely candidate, one whose work at the Washington, D.C., offices impressed everyone. Mary Elizabeth Pidgeon “is a Virginia girl, her home I believe is in Wadesville,” Catt writes, noting that Pidgeon "has been most satisfactory in every way,” even taking the struggle to distant South Dakota.

Pidgeon’s beliefs are borne of faith — in her case, the pacifist and socially responsible tenets of the Religious Society of Friends — and a liberal arts education, a 1913 degree in English from Swarthmore College, where she connected to the suffrage movement. After a few years teaching, she fully commits as a roving suffrage field secretary working in New York and then in South Dakota. The work is wearying and its rewards far from guaranteed.

Lila Valentine, ESL’s president, fires off a telegram to Catt exuberantly accepting the offer of Pidgeon’s assistance in the field.

Valentine thinks that Pidgeon is better used in her home district, because while there are good workers in that section, they cannot devote themselves full-time to the movement, and they need direction.

South Dakota grants women the vote on Nov. 5 — due in part to the efforts of Pidgeon and her colleagues, while Louisiana dismisses suffrage.

On Nov. 6, Pidgeon receives and accepts her marching orders: Head home and rally for suffrage. (In Virginia, the suffrage question doesn’t make it to the 1918 ballot.) Meanwhile, Cowles attempts to find accommodations for Pidgeon and receives a letter from E. Virginia Smith of the new Hotel Jack in Winchester.

Smith is glad to know that Frederick County is receiving outside help, of “which it is sadly in need.” She explains, however, that the small hotel is filled almost every night, and the rates probably exceed the League’s budget. “I want you to know, that if I had myself alone to consult I would, in the interest of equal suffrage, give Miss Pidgeon a rate less than our regular ones.”

She signs off with fervent hopes for the advancement of suffrage and in a postscript asks if the $5 she sent to the ESL is received; though it’s a small amount, it’s what she can spare.

GEORGE C. SCHUTTE, WIA

On this Wednesday, the public schools reopen; except for the emergency flu wards of John Marshall High School and the black Baker Street School. They’re undergoing extensive cleaning in order to resume classes.

Following the previous day’s Congressional election, in something of a shock, Republicans now control the House of Representatives by 16 votes. In the Senate, Republicans edge out a two-seat majority, with a net gain of six seats. The victory raises the possibility of Republican-led investigations into government departmental finances.

In the Nov. 6 Richmond Times-Dispatch, First Sgt. George C. Schutte is mentioned as WIA, wounded in action,  and Emma Rattie, one of his six siblings, receives word from the War Department of her brother’s injuries.

At dawn on Nov. 3, 1918, Schutte was in pursuit of fleeing Germans through a boot-sucking swamp with his comrades in Company I, 318th Infantry Regiment, 80th “Blue Ridge” Division, so named because all of the men were from Virginia, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania.

The Allied command calls this the Meuse-Argonne Front. The 80th was rushing forward — this was no longer the dreadful trench warfare.

Schutte, less than 17 months earlier, had been a patrolman with the Richmond police, living at 404 Cowardin Ave. with his sister and her husband. After training for nearly a year at Camp Lee, a large new military center outside Petersburg, he left for France in May 1918.

Since September, he had come close to death. During one engagement, a shell that exploded near Schutte flung up enough earth to give him a temporary burial.

Schutte's division, exhausted after a “long hike over fearfully congested, very muddy and badly shelled roads, went into bivouac in the pouring rain of an unusually dark night, about 11 p.m., just east of Sivry-lez-Buzancy.”

The 318th set up its command post in the village, alongside three other units, while the Germans, in a desultory and annoying fashion, shelled the town.

About 45 officers convened for a conference in a large stable to study maps and go through orders for the resumption of attack in the morning.

A German shell crashed through the roof.

During one engagement, a shell that exploded near Schutte flung up enough earth to give him a temporary burial.

The explosion killed and maimed about 20 officers, including  Company I’s commander, 1st Lt. James A. Turner, who suffers wounds, refuses evacuation and undergoes first aid.

The rain continued, making the roads worse, but zealous transport crews brought up hot breakfasts to bolster those about to fight.

An advance, hampered by a deep swamp just south of the Buzancy-Bar road and under constant German shelling, began before sunrise

Amid this miserable business, another shell landed, killing the already injured Lt. Turner and wounding Schutte, who takes the brunt of the explosion on his right side, his arm and face.

Capt. Charles C. Griffin, 318th Infantry and Company I’s commander, writes to Schutte’s friend, Nellie Elizabeth Seay, at 512 N. 28th St., and shares that Schutte only remained conscious about 30 minutes before dying that day.

“He was one of America’s brave soldiers and every inch a man,” Griffin writes, “and both as First Sergeant and comrade, he was loved and respected by every member of the company.”

Thursday, Nov. 7

‘EXTRA! EXTRA!’

Worldwide celebrations are ignited by U.S. officers’ misinterpretation of a message from the Germans asking for a cease-fire to allow for the safe passage of its delegation across battle lines to discuss terms.

The confusion is repeated in cablegrams sent by the military to Washington, D.C., and New York City, there confirmed — through a chain of error — by the United Press Agency, and transmitted during lunchtime via a stockbroker’s ticker machine to the 10th floor of the American National Bank Building, 1001 E. Main St., home of the Businessmen’s Club of Richmond

When the news is announced, the room bursts into cheering. At the piano, a player plunks out “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” bringing members to their feet. This patriotism turns religious with the next selection, “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow.” First Baptist Senior Pastor George W. McDaniel offers thanks for peace.

The word spreads to every club, hotel and restaurant. Telephone lines buzz, church bells peal and sirens scream. At one downtown eatery, a young man shoves a chair into the middle of the room and announces that the war is over. Utensils clatter against plates. The audience jumps up, applauding as though he’d performed an aria. They sing and laugh and cry, some all at the same time. Within the hour, newsboys on street corners are shouting, “Extra! Extra!”

The Associated Press, however, isn’t confirming the story.

At 2:15 p.m., an official announcement from Secretary of State Robert Lansing comes down to news organizations: There is no armistice.

City Health Director Roy Flannagan is in Charlottesville, making funeral arrangements for his brother Lawrence., who died of the influenza on Tuesday, Nov. 5.

Friday, Nov. 8

PEACE REFUSED

Kaiser Wilhelm II refuses to relinquish his throne as German emperor and the King of Prussia, even as his nation totters on the edge of chaos.

The war continues. The draft isn’t ceasing.

At Camp Lee in Petersburg, three enlisted men, Franklin Stewart Berry of Radiant, Virginia; Joseph R. Demport of Philadelphia; and William Thomas of Washington, D.C., receive 10-year sentences from Judge Julian W. Mack. Their charge is refusing to obey the orders of Capt. Jesse Smith because of their religious convictions — they claim to be conscientious objectors. Mack, who serves on the War Department’s Board of Inquiry on Conscientious Objectors, didn’t hear persuasive enough evidence to convince him that their insubordination was warranted. They are to serve their terms at Fort Leavenworth.

Saturday, Nov. 9

‘UNNECESSARY ROUGHNESS’

Vainglorious Kaiser Wilhelm II is done. Conferring with him at army headquarters in Spa, Germany, his generals explain to the emperor that he’s lost the support of the military. Wilhelm cedes supreme command of the armed forces to Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and makes preparations for the royal household’s departure to the Netherlands.

“Who are you gentlemen?” asks French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, rising from his map-strewn desk in his headquarters in the Forest of Compiegne, an hour outside of Paris. The five men entering are the German delegates who’ve come to end the war.

Meanwhile, back in Richmond, the first college football game of a season that for the most part vanished in the flu epidemic is played at Boulevard Field between Randolph-Macon and Richmond College. The contest see-saws through four 12-minute periods and ends without a score. Still, Richmond’s quarterback breaks off a couple of long runs, helping to make the game “one of the best seen on Boulevard Field for several seasons,” says the Times-Dispatch. Early in the third quarter, Randolph-Macon’s fullback and Richmond’s center are ordered off the field for “unnecessary roughness.”

Sunday, Nov. 10

MINOR DISASTERS

Early this evening, J.D. Pickles, the chauffeur for J.H. Franklin of Rio Vista Lane, loses control of his automobile and sends the vehicle smashing through the storefront window of Horace Wright Clothing at First and Broad streets. The impact destroys the showcase. The crash cracks Franklin’s windshield. Pickles isn’t injured.

An apartment building catches on fire this same night. Residents of the Shenandoah Apartments, at Allen and Grace streets, gather their valuables and bolt when flames erupt from the roof. Winds blow the blaze so high that it at first appears that the entire building may go.

The emergency soon passes after the source is found: wooden benches, situated for the view, were ignited by sparks from a chimney. There is little lasting damage.

Monday, Nov. 11

’90-DAY’ WONDERS

Lt. Leroy Hutzler of Richmond is marching down a French road with the 319th Infantry Regiment of the 80th “Blue Ridge” Division. They’ve been ordered back from the front line.

Hutzler is a dapper, bespectacled and mustachioed “90-day wonder” officer who on May 18, along with hundreds of other men, had boarded an Italian freighter, the Duca d’Abruzzi, for two weeks of zigging and zagging across the Atlantic Ocean to St. Nazaire.

Born on the Fourth of July, Hutzler was one of two officers in his 821-man regiment.

“I wanted a little excitement and I got it,” Hutzler recalled.

His most violent experiences occurred during the 42-day Meuse-Argonne offensive. Sloshing through damp, flooded trenches, he saw the bodies of soldiers of all nationalities rotting in no man’s land between the lines; came upon a German helmet as a souvenir only to find half a skull lodged inside it; had a horse shot out from under him, the tumble smashing his glasses and requiring him to hold a splinter of lens like a monocle to collect his scattered gear.

This morning, he and other officers are called to the side of the road by their commanding colonel. “The next time you stop to rest your men,” the colonel says, “tell them the war will be over at 11 o’clock.”

Richmond goes mad for what the paper describes as the “the greatest day in the history of the world.” The announcement of peace comes with a clamor: The shrieks of factory whistles and clanging bells at 4 a.m.

The weather is mild and dry. People hungry for a mass celebration rush into Broad Street to demonstrate a “delirium of joy.” An improvised parade featuring floats adorned with flags and hastily thrown bunting threads its way up and down Broad. The John Marshall High School cadets march in close order.

In Capitol Square, the gate around the George Washington equestrian statue is opened, and revelers crowd the steps to cheer. A more organized parade forms by around 3 p.m. at Laurel and Broad, with the full military band from Camp Lee led by Lt. Carle E. Baker. A platoon of mounted police lead off, and the city’s leadership marches. Old Glory flings out in the breeze, and the colors of England and France make a glad riot of color in the November sunlight.

After making their way to the Capitol grounds and the Washington statue, the marchers head west and wind up at the Lee Monument. There, on its steps, the crowd joins to lustily sing “Dixie.” Then they return to Laurel and Broad, where the merry makers disperse.

One man’s probable enjoyment of this day of days is likely muted, as he’s summoned to appear at Richmond Police Court in the basement of the towered City Hall. The court does not suspend its activities due to the armistice, though the docket is a light one. The case before the irrepressible and perhaps irrational Justice John C. Crutchfield is a matter of moving too fast. Hearse driver Junius Williams stands accused. Crutchfield exclaims, “When the dead begin to exceed the speed limit, I think that there is the time to put a check on the living.” He fines Williams $5.

The private Chamberlayne School also reopens this day, without 15-year-old John “Jack” Williams II, who — against his parents’ wishes — had volunteered with his Boy Scout troop to transport flu patients from their homes to the emergency hospital at John Marshall High School.

Jack contracted the virus, on or around Oct. 11, 1918. Five days later, at 3 p.m. on Oct. 16, 1918, he died at his parents’ West Franklin Street home and was buried at Hollywood Cemetery.

The school’s headmaster shares: “Separated from us for a little while he may be, but gone from us he can never be. Living now in the presence of his Lord and King, he is also living and will live in our memories; and though dead he yet speaks.”

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Susan Winiecki contributed to this report. *Book resource: Buckley, Joann H; and Fisher, W. Douglas. “African American Doctors of World War I.” Jefferson: McFarland & Company. pp. 28-30.

Two Richmond WWI Memorials

On Nov. 11, the construction fences are coming down at the Carillon, which memorializes Virginians who died during World War I, for a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of that war’s end, beginning at 11 a.m. with the playing of the tower’s bells.

Clay Mountcastle, director of the Virginia War Memorial, which is co-organizing the day, says that the annual Commonwealth’s Veterans Day observance will be conducted at Dogwood Dell. “Upon completion of the ceremony, we will invite everyone to move up to the Carillon to see some World War I information, art and artifacts, as well as get to know the newly renovated memorial.”

The 240-foot Renaissance Revival structure was completed in 1932 amid the Great Depression, after years of planning and, this being Richmond, attendant controversy and architectural dust-ups. Economic hardships eliminated some Carillon details, such as a reflecting pool — though the hollow dug for it remains.

Some 15,000 people attended the Carillon’s opening on Oct. 15, 1932, amid military pageantry, valedictories and honors. The building’s last major renovation was in 1982.

Dena Potter, director of communications for the Department of General Services, explains that the Carillon renovations are a phased procedure. After the Nov. 11 anniversary event, dubbed the Armistice Festival, repairs will continue, including work on the carillon device itself. “That’ll require specialists,” she says.

Just a few blocks away, near the Byrd Park tennis courts, stands a flagpole with plaques around its base bearing the names of more than 275 Richmonders killed during the nation’s 1917-1918 involvement in the Great War.

The bronze tablets, installed in 1926, reflect segregationist policy. Of those memorialized, 27 of the names are grouped under the description “Colored.” During the 1990s, the racial division on the plaques was brought to the attention of City Council, which ultimately did nothing.  —HK