Read On Hallowed Ground Online
Authors: Robert M Poole
On Hallowed Ground (20 page)
As the shadows lengthened, John B. McCarthy, a Washingtonian who had been attending a funeral at Arlington, heard the commotion and wandered over to the Fort Myer parade grounds for
a look. He gazed up to see Orville Wright, sitting stiffly and wearing a tartan cap, at the controls of a plane swooping over
the field in lazy circles. The plane’s only passenger, Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge of the Army Signal Corps, sat beside Wright,
waved to friends on the ground, and chattered over the propeller’s drone.
53
“The emotions aroused as one watched the craft sailing about so lightly and easily cannot be described,” McCarthy recalled.
He watched the skies eagerly, as did a crowd of military brass keen on the reconnaissance potential of the new flying machines.
The army had pledged twenty-five thousand dollars to anyone who could meet its specifications for the first warplane: It had
to fly at a speed of forty miles an hour, cover a distance of one hundred twenty-five miles, carry a pilot and observer safely,
and be portable enough to fit on a mule-drawn wagon. Lured by the hope of a government contract, the Wright brothers delivered
the first prototype in September 1908. Orville brought the flying machine to Fort Myer for a series of demonstration flights,
while his brother Wilbur performed related experiments for prospective customers in France.
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The Fort Myer trials were going well. By the time Orville took Selfridge aloft, the inventor had already made a dozen runs
over the base, breaking all previous records for sustained flight by staying airborne for more than an hour. This impressed
a curious public, as well as military observers such as Lieutenant Selfridge. At age twenty-six, Selfridge was already a pioneering
aviator who had flown dirigibles and experimental planes in the months before the Fort Myer trials. Assigned by his service
to join Orville for the September 17 flight, Selfridge enthusiastically clambered aboard, throwing off his coat and hat and
settling in for the adventure. “He looked as eager as a schoolboy for the test to begin,” the
New York Times
reported.
55
It was Orville’s thirteenth flight in the Fort Myer series, a number that proved to be unlucky as well as historic. On the
plane’s fourth pass over the parade grounds, a propeller blade cracked, the aircraft faltered, and it plunged headlong into
the ground. The crowd watched in horror, first gasping, then going dead quiet. With their clothes in tatters and covered with
blood, Wright and Selfridge lay in the wreckage, pinned down by twisted wires and shattered framework. Women shrieked, men
rushed to help, and cavalry troops galloped across the field to hold back a whirling, panicked crowd. A burly Army officer—the
one who assigned Selfridge to the flight that day—fainted with a thump.
56
In the wreckage of his plane, Wright retained consciousness. Beside him, Selfridge lay perfectly still, crushed under the
aircraft engine. Picked from the ruins of the flying machine, they were borne to the post hospital on stretchers. Wright,
who sustained a broken thigh, broken ribs, and numerous lacerations, remained hospitalized for months. Selfridge, his skull
fractured, died three hours after the crash.
57
“It came down like a bird shot dead in full flight, describing almost a complete somersault and throwing up a dense cloud
of dust,” said Maj. H. C. Magoon, then superintendent of Arlington. He had been standing near the cemetery wall and was closest
to the plane when disaster struck. “The aeroplane started over the cemetery … and I stood aghast, fearing it would alight
on the trees. From where I stood I could not see the men when it struck the ground. The machine went to smash in the twinkling
of an eye,” he told the
Washington Post
. “All that I have told you happened in a few seconds, probably two or three, but it seemed a much longer time.”
58
After an investigation and hardly a pause for doubt, the Army forged ahead with its aerial ambitions. “I see no reason why
this accident should give any serious setback to the experiments in aeronautics being made by the Army,” said Gen. Luke E.
Wright, secretary of war. “When Mr. Wright recovers, if he desires to try again to fulfill the contract, the opportunity will
be open to him.”
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Orville Wright recovered. He went home to his Ohio workshop, made changes to the plane, and returned to Fort Myer in June
1909 with the improved Wright A aircraft. He crawled in, took the controls, and coolly put the machine through its paces.
Again and again he flew over the parade grounds, casting a flickering shadow over expectant, upturned faces—this time without
incident. Satisfied with the new flyer, the Army accepted delivery of the plane, which it designated Signal Corps Airplane
No. 1. It was the first warplane ever produced.
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LIEUTENANT THOMAS SELFRIDGE, the first casualty of powered flight, was buried with full military honors at Arlington, his
grave marked by a soaring white obelisk and placed a few hundred yards from where he had fallen to earth in September 1908.
The western gates of the cemetery, which opened onto the Fort Myer parade grounds, were renamed in his honor. Shorty after
this, an order went out for all Army pilots to wear leather helmets.
Their future, like that of other combatants heading into the new century, would be characterized by conflict waged on a monstrous
scale unlike anything known before. The new era of warfare would reach into the sky, rumble across entire continents at record
speed, roil beneath the oceans, and finally achieve the promethean power that reduced Hiroshima and Nagasaki to rubble.
A photograph of Selfridge’s crash captured the danger and promise of the new century in a single frame: the Wright Flyer lies
crumpled in the dust; a crowd rushes toward the wreck; a mounted cavalryman sits straight in the saddle, fixing his gaze on
some faraway object; the broken plane lies behind horse and rider; an automobile noses into the scene from the right. Humans
stood at the threshold of a realm they had yet to conquer.
As the century opened, warhorse and musket, caisson and sailing ship—all would begin to fade as the familiar equipment of
war gave way to flying machines, magazine-fed rifles, water-cooled machine guns, torpedo-equipped submarines, armored dreadnought
ships, and massive new field artillery. Powered by internal combustion energy, modern warfare would bring into action bigger
guns with more accurate firepower over longer distances than anything achieved in nineteenth century conflicts. The rate of
fire, for infantry and artillery alike, would jump markedly. Foot soldiers who managed to get off three rounds a minute in
the Civil War could fire fifteen rounds by 1914; heavy artillery pieces, improved with automatic recoil, boosted their rate
from three rounds a minute to twenty; new machine guns could spray the battlefield with six hundred rounds in sixty seconds.
Smokeless gunpowder, introduced in the Spanish-American War, helped to conceal firing positions, increased rates of reloading,
and improved accuracy and distance for small arms as well as artillery units.
1
All of these innovations would make war less human, more aloof, more destructive, and markedly more degrading for everyone
involved. The distance between opposing armies increased, placing the killing on an impersonal level; infantrymen were sent
scuttling into trenches to avoid the rain of metal above ground; anyone who ventured into daylight to face his enemy was often
killed on the spot—or worse. Thousands of soldiers survived the Great War but lost their eyes, ears, noses, or faces, spending
the rest of their days in hiding or wheezing behind painted masks.
2
Spurred by burgeoning industrial growth, new mass manufacturing techniques, and economic expansion, the arms race grew in
Europe, where Continental powers nervously watched their neighbors, added the latest weaponry to their armamentaria, and planned for the worst. Millions were conscripted into the armies of France, Germany, Belgium, Britain, Russia, and other European powers as the Continent moved toward war.
3
America held back. Memories of the Civil War still lingered, giving“war a lasting bad name in the United States,” in the phrase
of historian John Keegan.
4
When the storm finally broke over Europe in 1914, the United States remained resolutely neutral, in part because public
opinion did not favor intervention and in part because of President Woodrow Wilson, who had beaten William Howard Taft and
Theodore Roosevelt in the three-way election of 1912.
All three had experienced war at first hand—Roosevelt, of course, as a swashbuckling cavalry colonel in the Spanish-American
War; Taft, as governor of the Philippines during its bloody insurrection, followed by a stint as Roosevelt’s secretary of
war; and Wilson, whose first memory in life sprang from the Civil War.
“My earliest recollection,” Wilson wrote, “is of standing at my father’s gateway in Augusta, Georgia, when I was four years
old, and hearing someone pass and say that Mr. Lincoln was elected and there was to be war. Catching the intense tones . .
. I remember running to ask my father what it meant.” The boy learned soon enough. It meant that his father’s Presbyterian
Church was converted into a Confederate hospital; it meant anxious rumors of General Sherman’s approach to Georgia and the
smoking reality of his progress across that state; it meant stripped farms, ruined cities, mass graves, and men with empty
sleeves on the courthouse square.
5
“The impressions of horror produced upon him by the Civil War were indelible,” wrote biographer Charles Seymour. Wilson’s
experience made him into an unwavering man of peace, even as the rest of the world was spoiling for war.
6
Appearing for Memorial Day ceremonies at Arlington two years into his first term, Wilson praised the selflessness of Union
soldiers and urged his listeners to fight for peace as earlier generations had fought for war.
“I can never speak in praise of war, ladies and gentlemen,” he told the crowd at Arlington. “But there is this peculiar distinction
belonging to the soldier … He is giving everything he hath, even his life, in order that others may live, not in order
that he himself may obtain gain and prosperity. And just so soon as the tasks of peace are performed in the same spirit of
self-sacrifice and devotion, peace societies will not be necessary … We can stand here and praise the memory of these
soldiers in the interest of peace. They set the example of self-sacrifice, which if followed in peace will make it unnecessary
that men should follow war any more.” From the hard lessons of his own youth, Wilson built a grand and impossible vision of
a new world without conflict.
7
He returned to Arlington—and to his high-minded theme—on June 4, 1914. Veterans in blue and gray gathered near the Selfridge
Gate, where the 5th Cavalry Band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner,” followed by “Dixie.” Old soldiers whipped off their
hats for both songs. The crowd of three hundred spectators and veterans had come to celebrate the birthday of Jefferson Davis,
to hear the speeches of reunion, and to watch Wilson dedicate the new centerpiece of the Confederate section—a towering bronze
monument to peace.
8
Designed by Moses Ezekiel, himself a Confederate veteran, the sculpture was called “New South” and took the classical form
of a woman in laurel crown and flowing robes. Facing Richmond, she held a laurel wreath in one hand, extending honors toward
the vanquished Confederacy. Her other hand, resting lightly on a plow, held a pruning hook. Everyone in the crowd—especially
Wilson, the clergyman’s son—understood the artist’s allusion to Isaiah 2:4: “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares
and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.”
9
The sentiment was noble, the sculpture magnificent, the moment inspiring. The afternoon sun shone on old enemies tottering
among the graves and shaking hands in a show of forgiveness. From his perch on the reviewing stand, Wilson, a pacifist among
the warriors, smiled down on the scene. Perhaps if old adversaries such as these could settle their differences, so could
others, who might learn from their example. The president rose to make this point, but just as he launched into his message
of reconciliation, the sky tuned purple and a storm of Old Testament fury descended on Arlington. Wind-whipped rain threatened
to topple Confederate and Union flags on the reviewing stand. Crowds scrambled for cover. The president dashed for his car
and, peering out through windows streaming with rain, waited for the storm to clear. When it did not, he was driven back to
the White House, away from the sodden cemetery.
10
That afternoon’s storm portended the four-year tempest about to descend on Europe. Within weeks of Wilson’s appearance at
Arlington, German forces massed for their invasion of Belgium and France. The first wave of Kaiser Wilhelm’s army tromped
into Belgium on August 4, 1914, and headed for the Meuse River crossings. Expecting a quick, easy war, they received a surprise
welcome when a chorus of Belgian artillery and machine gun fire greeted their approach to Liège. Like other Germans, Gen.
Ottovon Emmich had expected little resistance from Belgium, a mere doormat to be crossed on the way into France. Enraged by
the hostile reception, Emmich led five brigades of infantry into the tiny country, where his men proceeded to torch villages,
fire into homes, and kill hostages. The violence was necessary, a German officer explained, because “we are fighting for our
lives and all who get in the way must take the consequences.”
11
Emmich’s troops slogged through Belgium as his comrades to the south gathered for a direct thrust into Alsace. Europe rushed
to respond. To meet the combined forces from Germany and Austria-Hungary, which would mobilize more than 22 million troops,
Russia raised an army of some 13 million, Britain 9.5 million, France 8.2 million, Serbia 1 million, Italy 500,000, and Belgium
380,000. Before August was half spent, the French had formed defensive lines in the north and east of their country. Across
the Channel, the first British Expeditionary Force clattered aboard transports, crossed the water, and put ashore at Boulogne.
Russia slowly gathered its strength and took up positions on the Eastern Front. The Great War was under way.
12
While the first clashes began, President Wilson, watching anxiously from afar, offered to broker a settlement among the belligerents.
He might as well have tried to quell Vesuvius. When his American ambassador approached Kaiser Wilhelm with a peace proposal
on August 10, the idea was summarily rebuffed. Confident of victory, the Germans were in no mood for mediation.
13
They advanced through northeastern France during the late summer and fall of 1914, driving the Allies before them. But when
the kaiser’s army reached within striking distance of Paris, the French rallied and launched a furious counterattack. Forced
back across the Marne, the Germans halted along the Aisne River and began to dig a line of entrenchments that would cut across
more than four hundred miles of Europe, from the North Sea to the Swiss border. British and French brandished shovels and
followed suit, digging their own trenches and settling in for a long, numbing stalemate, which would be punctuated by massive
artillery assaults and futile, murderous infantry advances in the months and years to come.
14
Tens of thousands of soldiers would be sacrificed to gain a few yards, only to yield the same ground a few weeks later; then
came another round of waiting, another shuddering deluge of artillery, another order to go over the top. “It isn’t death we
fear so much as the long drawn expectation of it,” a British captain wrote of life in this setting.
15
The first few months of war offered a foretaste of grisly days ahead: from August through November 1914, more than 800,000
soldiers died—510,000 French, 241,000 German, 30,000 Belgian, and 30,000 British. Russians contributed their own casualties
from the Eastern Front—just how many was never known. As the deaths mounted in Europe, letters from the front revealed the
brutal character of the new conflict.
16
“You cannot imagine, beloved mother, what man will do to man,” a French soldier wrote in February 1915. “For five days my
shoes have been slippery with human brains, I have walked among lungs, among entrails … We have no officers left.” The
writer went missing in action a few weeks later. He was never recovered, but his letters, published anonymously in 1917, spoke
for all who lived and died in the trenches.
17
More than one serviceman spoke of the tenderness with which fellow soldiers cared for comrades dying under unspeakable conditions.
One wrote about the rough-and-ready epitaphs the British composed for temporary graves at the front. “Sleep on, Beloved Brother;
take thy Gentle Rest,” someone chalked over a shallow burial in a part of the trenches where bones protruded from the parapet.
Behind the lines, where time allowed for decent burial, Harold Chapin marveled at the kindness fellow soldiers lavished on
two dead friends. Writing to his wife in May 1915, Chapin, a lance corporal in Britain’s Royal Army Medical Corps, described
the preparations for such a funeral: “Their chums were so particular to dig them a
level
grave and a
rectangular
grave and
parallel
graves, and to note who was in this grave, who in that, that my mind, jumping to questions as always, was aching with whys
which I wouldn’t have asked for the world—almost as if the answer—you take me—would disgrace me for not knowing it already,
brand me as lacking some decency the grave-diggers had. O Lord, the mystery of men’s feelings.”
18
Just as Chapin’s letter was making its way home toward London that spring, the British ocean liner
Lusitania
left New York, crossed the North Atlantic, and steamed into the crosshairs of Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger’s U-20 submarine,
then patrolling off the coast of Ireland. The German captain fired a single torpedo, which slammed into its target broadside.
The great ship exploded and began to sink. Schwieger stole away in his sub, and in less than twenty minutes, the
Lusitania
disappeared, taking 1,198 people down with her. Among those killed were 128 Americans.
