Broken Hearts, Shattered Dreams

Not long after Grandpa returned to King City, on April 9, 1919, he and Grandma had a falling out. This surprised me. The letters they exchanged over the spring, just weeks before his return, were filled with a shared dream, it seemed, of settling down. In time they did make a life together, but it would take nearly ten months—from April, 1919, to January, 1920—to break and repair their wartime romance.

Daddy with Grandma, 1977, on a vacation in Wisconsin.

Many years later, about the time this photograph was taken, Grandma cranked a piece of paper into her portable typewriter and began recording her memories. Grandpa had died–in 1967–and I imagine my father thought it was time for Grandma to fix her life story in print. I pulled out the transcript to see if she wrote about Grandpa’s return.

She did recall Grandpa’s discharge from Camp Grant, and how he didn’t let them know when he’d be home. Her recollection matches Grandpa’s, who wrote in one of his last letters that he didn’t want people to “make a fool of me” when his train came in.

When he reached King City he called me, rented a horse and buggy and came out to our house for dinner. I went home with him for a few days. We dated only a few times when we had ‘a little tiff’ and he went his, and I went mine.

She gave no details on the nature of their quarrel. What could have gone so wrong? I only have two clues.

The first clue is a name I’ve shared on this blog: Stanley Brown. Like Grandpa, he had been drafted for service in Missouri (in Madison, which lies to the east of King City), trained at Camp Funston, and sent to France, where a war injury placed him in the same convalescent facility as Grandpa. It was there, in a hospital complex that served thousands of American soldiers, that the two men first met and discovered that each had the same picture of Grandma tucked in their wallets.

I found a notice in the King City Chronicle, dated August 1, 1919, that mentions a visit by Stanley Brown to King City. In the clipping shown here, the names of Mr. and Mrs. Lucian Frank are those of Grandma’s uncle and aunt (Aunt Susie being the sister of Grandma’s father).

King City Chronicle, 1 August 1919, p. 3.

Grandma vividly recalled a summer visit with her aunt and uncle, one that apparently started before this August event reported in the newspaper.

Early that summer Uncle Dot Franks were up from Madison. They insisted that Mary, me and Dorothy and Sidney go home with them for a two weeks vacation, and they would bring us back. What was supposed to be two weeks lasted most all summer. What a time we had, for they were fine hosts. (. . .) Aunt Susie was also good at seeing that everyone had a date. She didn’t have to worry about me for I began dating a boy I had met there before—Stanley Brown.

Had Stanley Brown crowded into her friendship with Grandpa? Maybe. It’s possible, too, that Grandpa’s war experience had introduced new, unexpected elements into their relationship. He was injured, tired, burdened now with helping his 72-year-old father run a farm. Maybe he was restless, too, “like a bird out of a cage,” the term he used to describe soldiers coming home from France.

Without knowing what caused my grandparents’ quarrel, I think it’s fair to imagine it came along the frayed edges of expectations. The dreams they held during the war, the ones that sustained them over the long months, didn’t materialize at the time of their reunion. The war had changed both the dreams and the dreamers.

That second clue as to what caused the tiff? That’s the subject of my next post.

Adding Insult to Injury

The year ended on a sour note for Grandpa. Out on a walk one afternoon with his buddy, Tom Wright, both recuperating from battle injuries at the Mesves Hospital Center in the Loire Valley, they ran into a man named Stanley Brown.

Undated photo, probably near Camp Funston, 1917-18. Grandpa is standing next to Wright.

Tom Wright, a fellow from Co C that is here with me and I went over to see Wayne yesterday afternoon and on our road back stopped at the Canteen to get some candy. The line was real long so we decided to come back without it. And just as we were starting, there was a nice looking fellow saw the 356 on my cap and says, “Say” what co are you out of? So I told him. After talking a few minutes with him he says do you know Tom Alderson in that co? I laughed and then said this is him you are talking to. He then stuck out his hand and says, this is Stanley Brown.

Like Grandpa, Stanley Brown had been recruited for service in Missouri (Madison, county of Monroe), trained at Camp Funston, and deployed as part of the 356th Infantry, 89th Division (Company E). Also like Grandpa, Stanley Brown had an interest in my grandmother. In a letter Grandpa wrote on December 29, he recounted how he “was showing him a picture of yours . . .

December 29, 1918 letter to Grandma.

I was showing him a picture of yours that I have in the back of my watch, and he pulled out his pocket book and showed me the same picture. So Wright has been teasing me all day about it.

My grandfather was a proud man. I’m pretty sure he didn’t like the teasing, and pretty sure he didn’t like the surprise.

A couple of weeks later, on January 6, 1919, Grandpa reported that Stanley Brown had undergone another operation, “A piece of dead bone taken out of his leg, is what a boy was telling me.” Then he admitted, “I have been laying off going up to see him.” That’s the last time Grandpa wrote about Stanley Brown.

This story might end on the wards of the Mesves Hospital Center, Grandpa’s feelings hurt. But that seems unfair to my grandmother.

Undated photo of my grandmother as a young woman.

Pulling out the lens to see the many women on the home front–charged with letter-writing and knitting and purchasing Liberty Bonds and keeping up the spirits of their soldier boys, as they kept up their own lives and livelihoods–it’s not hard to imagine the emotional burden they carried during the long months of separation from the men sent off to a distant war.

Consider the slow pace of the mail, which took weeks (months) to find its way to the battlefield and back home. After Grandpa was wounded, his mail was sent first to his company before being routed back to the hospital, a journey that didn’t always result in delivery. (More on that in a later post.) So, it was difficult to stay in touch, and perhaps difficult to maintain a friendship.

And then there’s the Midwestern farming culture of Grandma’s family, one that expected young women to marry and have children and set up a farmstead of their own. Were young women like Grandma expected to put their lives on hold, to wait for men to return, some injured, others dead?

In Grandma’s case–and here I struggle to find a word that gathers up what I picture as her family’s concerns and expectations, perhaps even pressure, to maintain a sensible course in her life at this time. Maybe they counseled her to keep open her options. Or maybe Grandma had questions about Grandpa, whom she met just before he set off for training. In any case, it was her family (and his) who set up introductions. That’s how she came to know Grandpa, through his Aunt Ettie (Hale). And Stanley Brown came into her life when her Aunt Susie (Dykes) Frank, who lived in Madison, introduced them there.

Why did Grandma write to these two men, and why did she give them each the same photo to carry with them into battle? I don’t know. Nor do I know the intentions of Stanley Brown, only that he was more than a wartime pen pal. He would stay in the picture of my grandparents’ sometimes bumpy romance in the months ahead.