Bess Truman Read online

  At the same time, the letter revealed his caution about telling her every detail, especially those that would worry her. Not until the war was over did Captain Truman report just how dangerous that first encounter with the enemy had been. “The first sergeant failed to get the horses up in time and The Hun gave me a good shelling. The sergeant ran away and I had one high old time getting out of that place. I finally did with two guns and went back to my former position. . . . The boys called that engagement the Battle of Who Run because some of them ran when the first sergeant did and some of them didn’t. I made some corporals and first class privates out of those who stayed with me and busted the sergeant.”

  From this first brush with the Germans in the Vosges Mountains, the Battery soon moved into one of the major battles of the war, St. Mihiel. Bess got a stream of vivid letters from Harry describing his experiences. He told her about bringing the Battery forward under fire, with shells falling on all sides of them, and never losing a man. “I am as sure as I am sitting here that the Lord was and is with me,” he wrote.

  Peace rumors began sweeping Europe as the German armies fell back under the American assault. Captain Truman read them and promptly turned his mind from shellfire to something more pleasant. “Would you meet me in New York and go to the Little Church Around the Corner if I get sent home?”

  But the peace rumors faded, and the fighting resumed. This time, the 129th fired the opening rounds in one of the most stupendous battles in history, the American drive into the Argonne. “I have just finished putting 1,800 shells over on the Germans in the last five hours,” Captain Truman told Bess on November 1. He also reported he had gotten a commendation for having the best-conditioned guns in the U.S. Army. He gave the credit to his chief mechanic and put a copy of the letter in the files. But he said he was going to save the original. “It will be nice to have someday if some low-browed north-end politician tries to remark that I wasn’t in the war when I’m running for eastern judge or something.”

  This statement must have been startling news for Bess. Eastern judge was an administrative job in Jackson County. There were three judges - actually commissioners - who supervised the county government, in particular the roads. For a few months after his father died, Harry had served as road overseer in Grandview. He had proposed an ambitious road-building program and been fired for his trouble. The judgeship was one of the most fiercely contested jobs in Missouri, because so much patronage power was connected with it. Bess hardly could have been thrilled to discover that Harry Truman was thinking about plunging into the cutthroat political world that had destroyed her father.

  Within minutes of floating that future, Captain Truman was telling her that he would be just as happy “to follow a mule down a corn row the balance of my days - that is, always providing such an arrangement is also a pleasure to you.”

  The next day, in another letter, he was telling her he was proud to learn that she had been made manager of her district for the latest Liberty Loan bond drive. “Should we decide to promote some of my numerous oil leases when I return, I shall know whom to elect secretary and money getter.” He somewhat ruefully confessed that he had yet to buy a bond because each payday he lent most of his centimes and francs “to worthless birds in this regiment.” He had no real hope of collecting these loans. “Maybe I can make them collect votes for me when I go to run for Congress on my war record - when I get tired of chasing that mule up that corn row.”

  Captain Truman obviously did not have a clear plan for his postwar life, except for marrying Bess Wallace as soon as possible. It is interesting that there is not a hint in any of these letters that Bess tried to take advantage of this uncertainty and tell him what she thought he should do. Instead, she concentrated on praying and worrying him through that rain of shellfire through which he rode so confidently in France.

  Suddenly, incredibly, it was over. At 219 North Delaware, everyone was awakened about 4:00 a.m. on November 11 by the sound of clanging church bells. As dawn broke, people took to the streets for the wildest celebration in the history of Independence. Bells rang, fire engines sounded their sirens, factories blew whistles, and cars blared horns continually for the next twelve hours. Bess and her friends joined the exultant crowds in Jackson Square. It was all marvelously joyous and good-natured. Not a single person was injured, and the only reported property damage occurred when some celebrator fired off a gun and the bullet went through a window.

  In France, on November 11, Captain Truman gave Bess a blow by blow (or boom by boom) account of how the war ended for him and Battery D.

  We are all wondering what the Hun is going to do about Marshal Foch’s proposition to him. We don’t care what he does. He’s licked either way he goes. . . . Their time for acceptance will be up in thirty minutes. There is a great big 155 battery right behind me across the road that seems to want to get rid of all its ammunition before the time is up. It has been banging away almost as fast as a 75 Battery for the last two hours. Every time one of the guns goes off it shakes my house like an earthquake.

  I just got official notice that hostilities would cease at eleven o’clock. Everyone is about to have a fit. . . . I knew that Germany could not stand the gaff. For all their preparedness and swashbuckling talk they cannot stand adversity. France was whipped for four years and never gave up and one good licking suffices for Germany. What pleases me most is the fact that I was lucky enough to take a Battery through the last drive. The Battery has shot something over ten thousand rounds at the Hun and I am sure they had a slight effect.

  Even before this long letter ended, he was thinking of Bess and marriage. He included a nice compliment for her war work.

  It is pleasant also to hear that Mrs. Wells [Bess’ Aunt Maud] has adopted me as a real nephew and I shall certainly be more than pleased to call her Auntie Maud and I hope it won’t be long before I can do it.

  You evidently did some excellent work as a Liberty bond saleswoman because I saw in The Stars and Stripes where some twenty-two million people bought them and that they were oversubscribed by $1 billion, which is some stunt for you to have helped pull off. I know that it had as much to do with breaking the German morale as our cannon shots and we owe you as much for an early homecoming as we do the fighters.

  Bess was proud of the part she played in this fund-raising achievement. In those attic files at 219 North Delaware Street, I found carefully preserved her commission as a “Liberty Soldier” on the “ladies committee” that sold $1,780,000 in bonds in Blue Township.

  That Thanksgiving, Maud Gates Wells invited the Wallaces and Grandmother Gates to Platte City. The invitation was gratefully accepted. No one wanted to spend the day at 219 North Delaware without Grandfather Gates to carve the turkey. Everyone had a lovely time in the Wells’ spacious mansion. There was a good deal of joking about whether Captain Truman might go AWOL and swim the Atlantic to get home and marry Bess. The well-fed guests returned home by streetcar, which required a change in Kansas City. As they waited for the Independence car, May Wallace noted that Bess and her brother George (now May’s husband) were both shivering. There was a chilly wind blowing, but it was not that cold. The next morning, they were still shivering. Both had the flu.

  In 1918, that was not good news. That year’s flu was not the ordinary bug that gave its victims twenty-four or thirty-six hours of chills and went its way. It was a killer that had already wiped out whole families and villages in Europe and other parts of the world. George was lucky. He recovered fairly soon. So did Mary Truman who caught it in Grandview. But Bess sank into a nightmare world of fever and delirium that lasted for weeks. More than once, the family was sure she was dying.

  The rest of Independence was not doing much better. As the number of dead and dying mounted, the authorities closed schools and theaters and factories to try to isolate people and break the momentum of the epidemic. At 219 North Delaware, as Bess slowly recovered, she found that she could hear almost nothing in her left ear. The doctor in
formed her that it was a not an uncommon legacy of this killer flu. But at least she was alive. Everyone knew that Bess was herself again when she announced, early in January, that she was going to take a walk.

  Separated by 5,000 miles of water and land, Captain Truman wrote Bess letters about a fabulous leave he was enjoying in Paris and Nice and Monte Carlo. He was horrified when he found out, weeks later, that she had the disease that was killing so many people. “I am so glad you are out of danger from that awful flu. You’ve no idea how uneasy I’ve been since hearing you and Mary had it. We over here can realize somewhat how you must have felt when we were under fire a little. Every day nearly someone of my outfit will hear that his mother, sister or sweetheart is dead, it is heartbreaking almost to think that we are so safe and so well over here and that the ones we’d like to protect more than all the world have been more exposed to death than we.”

  While she was recuperating from the flu, Bess received a letter from Mary Paxton that probably did her more good than any of the pills the doctor prescribed. Mary was at a YMCA post trying to give 2,500 homesick soldiers an American Christmas on a limited budget. She had met an Independence man who told her that the 129th Field Artillery had come through the battles with light casualties, and Captain Truman was not among the killed or wounded. When “the boys” come home, she told Bess, “No one can do enough to appreciate what they have been up against - and the trenches are only part. It is impossible for anyone not here to understand the temptations they have. We don’t preach to them but just talk it straight out to them. Don’t worry about Harry though for he is a rock you can build on.”

  Now that Bess could consider the future without dread, she told Captain Truman that she did not think getting married in New York was a good idea. She wanted to have the ceremony in Trinity Episcopal Church in Independence, where her family and friends could join in the celebration. The Captain said he was “perfectly willing” to accept that arrangement. “I just couldn’t see how I was going to wait until I could get to Independence,” he explained. But he had now learned that the army planned to discharge units en masse, which meant he would have to wait until the regiment got to Missouri anyway. “But don’t make any delay,” he warned.

  The wedding and Captain Truman’s growing dissatisfaction with army life mingled in other letters from France.

  I have a nice boy in my Battery whose name is Bobby . . . and once in a while he brings me a letter that he doesn’t want any second lieutenant [an army censor] nosing into, and it’s always addressed to just Dearest and I feel like an ornery, low-down person when I read them - sometimes I don’t, I just sign ‘em up and let ‘em go. But if that girl doesn’t wait for that kid I know she’s got a screw loose. He doesn’t write a thing silly but he’s all there and I hope she is too.

  What I started out to say is that I’d like to write you a really silly, mushy letter that would honestly express just exactly what I feel tonight but I have command of neither the words nor the diction to do it right. Anyway I had the most pleasant dream last night and my oh how I did hate to wake up. Of course I was in U.S.A. parading down some big town’s main street and I met you and there was a church handy and just as casually as you please we walked inside and the priest did the rest and then I thought we were in Paris and I woke up in a Godforsaken camp just outside of old ruined Verdun. . . .

  We just live from one inspection to the next. You know these regular army colonels and lieutenant colonels who’ve had their feet on the desk ever since the argument started are hellbent for inspections. Some of’em haven’t been over here but a month or two but they can come around and tell us who went through it exactly and how we did not win the war. Some of’em are nuts on horse feed and some are dippy on how to take care of harness and some think they know exactly how many ounces of axle grease will run a gun wheel to kingdom come and back. One important little major who had evidently read somebody’s nonsensical book on how to feed a horse came along the other day and wanted us to feed the horses oatmeal, cooked!

  Captain Truman particularly disliked the harsh West-Point style discipline of the regulars. He was distressed to find himself being forced to imitate them to maintain discipline in his bored soldiers. “If we stay in this place much longer,” he wrote, “I’ll either have a disposition like a hyena or be the dippy one. If there’s one thing I’ve always hated in a man it is to see him take his spite out on someone who couldn’t talk back to him. I’ve done my very best not to jump on someone under me when someone higher up jumps on me, because I hate the higher-up when he does it and I’m sure the next fellow will hate me if I treat him the same way. . . . Justice is an awful tyrant. Just to show how she works I took all the privileges away from a fellow for a small offense and gave him a terrific calling down and I had to do it four times more when I found out that four more were offenders in the same way. One of ‘em was a man I particularly like too and I know he thinks I’m as mean as Kaiser Bill. . . .”

  Harry Truman was saying goodbye to his boyhood dream of being a soldier. In this letter, he revealed to Bess the part she played in it: “You know when I was a kid, say about thirteen or fourteen, I was a tremendous reader of heavy literature like Homer, Abbott’s Lives, Leviticus, Isaiah, and the memoirs of Napoleon. Then it was my ambition to make Napoleon look like a sucker and I thirsted for a West Point education so I could be one of the oppressors, as the kid said when asked why he wanted to go there. You’d never guess why I had such a wild desire and you’ll laugh when I tell you. It was only so you could be the leading lady of the palace or empire or whatever it was I wanted to build. You may not believe it but my notion as to who is the best girl in the world has never changed and my military ambition has ended by having arrived at the post of centurion. That’s a long way from Caesar, isn’t it? Now I want to be a farmer. Can you beat it? I’m hoping you’ll like the rube just as well as you would have the Napoleon. I’m sure the farmer will be happier.”

  But he remained proud of his military accomplishments: “Personally I’d rather be a Battery commander than a brigadier general. I am virtually the dictator of the actions of 194 men and if I succeed in making them work as one, keep them healthy morally and physically and make ‘em write to the mammas and sweethearts, and bring ‘em all home, I shall be as nearly pleased with myself as I ever expect to be - until the one great event of my life is pulled off, which I am fondly hoping will take place immediately on my having delivered that 194 men in U.S.A. You’ll have to take a leading part in that event you know and then for one great future.”

  When the Thirty-fifth Division, to which the artillery regiment was attached, staged a review for General John J. Pershing and the Prince of Wales, Battery D led the parade. Harry told Bess about it, but he was far more excited by what General Pershing said to him when he shook hands: The division would soon be on its way home. “Please get ready to march down the aisle with me as soon as you decently can,” he implored. “I haven’t any place to go but home [he meant Grandview] and I’m busted financially but I love you as madly as a man can and I’ll find the other things. We’ll be married anywhere you say at anytime you mention and if you want only one person or the whole town I don’t care. . . . I have some army friends I’d like to ask and my own family and that’s all I care about.” He added that he had enough money to buy a Ford “and we can set sail in that and arrive in Happyland.”

  In her answering letter, the earliest that has survived, Bess made it clear that she was just as impatient as Harry, and was not fussing about the details. “You may invite the entire 35th Division to your wedding if you want to,” she wrote. “I guess it’s going to be yours as well as mine. I guess we might as well have the church full while we are at it. I rather think it will be anyway whether we invite them or not, judging from a few remarks I’ve heard.”

  Her mother was obviously exercising her prerogatives in regard to the wedding.

  Bess’ pride in her soldier is visible in the next paragraph. “What an
experience the review etc must have been. I’ll bet the Bty looked grand and no wonder they led the Div. . . . Were you overcome at greeting the Prince of Wales? He doesn’t mean any more to me than the orneriest doughboy but I know I’d choke if I had to address him. It was splendid that you got to shake hands with Pershing.”

  Then she went back to the most important thing on both their minds.

  We’ll be about ready alrighty when you come and then we can settle the last details. Mary said Mr. Morgan [the oil speculator] had a job waiting for you and if you should decide to put in part of your time there, you’ll have another home waiting for you in Indep. for nothing would please mother any better. She said we could have either floor we wanted. . . .

  Hold onto the money for the car - we’ll surely need one. Most anything that will run on four wheels. I’ve been looking at used car bargains today. I’ll frankly confess I’m scared to death of Fords. I’ve seen and heard of so many turning turtle this winter. But we can worry about that later. Just get yourself home and we won’t worry about anything.

  She closed with a comment that compared her picnic test to Harry’s criticisms of some of his fellow officers. “It’s strange that such widely different things as war and picnics will so surely show a man up. I’ve liked lots of people ‘til I went on a picnic jaunt with them and you can say the same thing about several (?) men ‘til you went on a war jaunt with them, eh?”

  Then the letters from France were replaced by telegrams:

  ARRIVED IN CAMP MILLS EASTER AFTERNOON . . . NEW YORK GAVE US A GRAND WELCOME. GOD’S COUNTRY SURE LOOKS GOOD. HARRY.