USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1916-1955 > Part 10
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42
106
THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
Company F then fought in the great Aisne-Marne offensive, the turning battle of the war, being at Chateau-Thierry from June 13 to July 30. Serving in the front lines twenty-five of those days, it lost eighty-two men, with eighteen killed and sixty-four wounded.
The company later fought the retreating Germans in the St. Mihiel salient, from September 5 to October 8, and in the Meuse-Argonne sector, from October 18 to the Armistice. Dur- ing these final months of the war, it stood front line duty for thirty-two days, and had eight killed and sixty-one wounded. Pittsfield could be extremely proud, as indeed it was, of "its own" Company F.
In other units on land and sea, and in the air, more Pittsfield men were serving in the ranks or as officers, fighting and dying. The Distinguished Service Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross were won for "extraordinary heroism in action" by Lieutenant Lloyd Andrews Hamilton, son of the Reverend John A. Hamilton, for many years pastor of the First Methodist Church. A flying ace with many enemy planes to his credit, Lieutenant Hamilton was killed in action near Cambrai in August 1918. A military air base in California is named for him -Hamilton Field, near San Francisco-where he had done his training.
One of the great heroes of the war was a graduate of the Pittsfield High School, and of Williams College and the Har- vard Law School, Lieutenant Colonel Charles W. Whittlesey, son of Frank R. Whittlesey, production manager for many years at the local General Electric plant. Young Whittlesey won the Congressional Medal of Honor as leader of the renowned Lost Battalion, part of the 308th Infantry of the 77th Division, which was largely composed of New York state men.
Leading an attack on the Meuse-Argonne front on October 2, 1918, the battalion under Whittlesey, then a major, won its objective. The units on either flank, however, failed to do so, leaving the battalion without support. The Germans surround- ed it, firing at it from all sides. Even worse, American artillery began pounding it by mistake. More than half of the battalion's.
107
WORLD WAR I YEARS
600 men were killed or wounded. Under a white flag of truce, the opposing German commander sent Whittlesey a message suggesting surrender before the battalion was wiped out.
"Go to Hell!" was Whittlesey's reported reply, which made headlines throughout the country. But some years later, another version was published, based on an account of the Lost Bat- talion written jointly by Whittlesey and his second in command, Captain (later Major) George W. McMurtry.
"No answer whatever, written or verbal, was made to the German commander's letter. Whittlesey ordered the two white airplane panels taken in at once. There was nothing white showing in the American position."
After five days of fierce resistance, with rations spent and ammunition almost exhausted, a message got through to the Lost Battalion that relief was on the way. It so happened, curi- ously, that some Pittsfield men in the ambulance unit from the Berkshires were among the first to meet the brave and badly battered Lost Battalion as it left the lines.
One of ninety-five heroes to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor during World War I, Whittlesey, ever reticent and retiring, disappeared at sea in 1921, while on a voyage from New York to Havana.
Whittlesey's name and fame are preserved on a bronze memorial tablet in the State House at Boston. Dedicated in 1924, the tablet bears the names of the four sons of Massa- chusetts who won the Congressional Medal of Honor during the war. Of the four, Whittlesey and Ralph Talbot were of old Yankee stock. The third was George Dilboy, a Greek immi- grant; and the fourth, Michael J. Perkins, son of an Irish immigrant. Courage knows no race, creed, color, caste, or nationality.
Even as the Lost Battalion was fighting for its life, it became evident that the end of the war was not far off. Germany's allies, one after the other, surrendered-Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria-and Germany's last defenses were fast crumbling.
*For an excellent account of the Lost Battalion, see the History of the 308th Infantry, 1917-19 (New York, 1927), written by L. Wardlaw Miles, a captain in the regiment.
108
THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
On November 7 came a United Press dispatch that an armis- tice had been signed. As the word spread rapidly by telephone and word of mouth, the city became a bedlam as people poured into the streets, excited and yelling, slapping one another on the back, friends and strangers alike. Washington quickly denied the report, and the shouting died away. But in the morning four days later it rose again in redoubled volume as the local press put out extras with huge headlines, "GER- MANY SURRENDERS." After killing millions and maiming millions more, the slaughter had ended.
The Mayor proclaimed the rest of the day a holiday, a rather gratuitous measure, for everybody would have taken the day off in any case. Park Square and the main streets were packed with laughing, shouting, and wildly elated crowds. All for- malities were forgotten. The city celebrated as one big happy family.
Young and old danced in the street, or marched along sing- ing lustily, accompanied by the tooting of factory whistles, the tolling of church bells, the scream of fire sirens, and the raucous blast of automobile horns. Girls almost mobbed any man in uniform they sighted. Mothers and fathers with sons in the service, wives anxious for their soldier husbands, wept openly with joy at being relieved at last of sharp, heart-tearing worries.
A new era, it seemed, had dawned. A passionate desire for peace was universal. A local wounded veteran very well summed up the general feeling among America's citizen soldiers.
"It was a damned good war," he said, "and I don't ever want to spoil the memory of it by another."
During the war, 2,750 men and thirty-two women from Pitts- field served in the armed forces. Of these, eighty-six died in service. Twenty-three had been killed in action, and thirteen had died of wounds. Disease took a higher toll-forty-two in all. Five died of accidents, and three were "missing," having passed to a fate unknown.
Pittsfield was happy that its sons and daughters were no longer under shot and shell. But its joy in the Armistice was
109
WORLD WAR I YEARS
tempered by the great suffering and sorrow the city had recent- ly experienced in a fearful influenza attack, the worst epidemic in its history. It struck without warning. The first case of "Spanish flu" was reported in Boston on September 18, 1918. Spreading with almost incredible speed, it was in Pittsfield two days later. Within a week, forty-five in the city had died of the disease, with more than six hundred cases reported and at least three times that many unreported.
The local schools were quickly closed, as were the theatres, churches, clubs, the courts, and all places of public resort. People were urged, almost commanded, to remain at home unless they had an imperative reason to go out. Even so, scarcely a household escaped the virulent contagion. Whole families perished. Doctors, nurses, health officers, and hospitals worked heroically to meet the emergency, taxing their strength and facilities to the utmost. But there were just not enough of them to tend all the sick and their needs. To help out, hundreds performed voluntary services, knowing full well they were risking their lives, and a number died in aiding their friends and neighbors.
By early November, six weeks after the outbreak of the epidemic, the influenza appeared to have run its course in Pitts- field, and the city counted up its grievous losses. Almost four hundred had died, and the health authorities estimated that one out of four in the city-some 10,000-had been sick with the "flu," more or less seriously. On November 7, the very day of the report of the "false Armistice," Mayor Moulton spoke of the city's tragedy and grief.
"These past weeks have been sad ones for many of the people of our city," he declared. "Coming almost without warn- ing and sweeping rapidly onward, the epidemic of influenza and pneumonia has left us a community stricken as never before in our history. The traces of it will be seen and felt for years . . .
"The response to the calls for assistance have been wonder- ful ... The wonderful nurses, the doctors, the women of the city who made possible the diet kitchens and the children's home, the Red Cross, the citizens who consented to act on the
110
THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
Advisory Committee, the police and firemen, the government assistants, and the many others who assisted-all have our sin- cere thanks. What has been done is just another exhibition of the Pittsfield community spirit which, I believe, is not surpassed anywhere."
The city had need of all the community spirit and coopera- tion it could muster, for more in Pittsfield were to die of the influenza, which shortly broke out again, though in less virulent form. Also, war casualty lists kept coming in, striking many a home in Pittsfield and the Berkshires. A large number of men in uniform died in the epidemic, which was particularly severe in Camp Devens, Massachusetts' largest army base. More servicemen lost their lives in the epidemic than on the battle- fields.
Under the circumstances, the celebration of Thanksgiving in 1918 was the quietest in years. There was no disposition to make it a happy holiday. Rather, more people than usual at- tended the churches for prayer and services. There was a com- munity "sing" in the high school auditorium. The traditional high school football game on the Common was cancelled. With turkeys selling at 62 cents a pound, the highest price within memory, many families could not afford to have a bird on the table.
Throughout the war, Pittsfield had contributed very gener- ously to all financial appeals. On May 25, 1917, to forward the first Liberty Loan drive, all business was suspended for an hour as the city concentrated on raising its quota of $2,000,000, which it exceeded by $220,000. Its quota for the Second Liberty Loan, $4,000,000, was oversubscribed by more than $800,000, with 11,200 of its citizens buying bonds. It exceeded its quotas on all of the war loan drives, at the same time contributing lib- erally to a local War Chest and to such national organizations as the YMCA, Red Cross, Salvation Army, and others serving the men in uniform.
Peace, welcome as it was, brought economic complications. The war boom was over. The cancellation of war orders threw millions out of work across the country. Industrial activity in
111
WORLD WAR I YEARS
Pittsfield slowed down. Wages dropped, and labor everywhere was restive. Several nation-wide strikes were threatening-in steel and coal, and on the railroads.
The employees and management of the local General Electric plant were in dispute less on the fact that men were being laid off than on the manner in which this was being done. A strike was called. A month later the men agreed to return to work on the company's terms, but a thousand or more were turned away from the plant because there was no work for them to do. To spread employment, the company reduced the work week from fifty to forty-five hours and introduced the five-day week, closing the plant on Saturdays.
Seeking better pay and shorter hours, the telephone operators organized in New England for the first time. At a strike call, seventy-two walked out and set up a picket line around the telephone exchange, a not unpleasing sight, for Pittsfield had previously known the "hello girls" only by their voices, now finding many of the operators very pretty indeed. There was a prolonged strike on the trolley lines, almost as inconvenient and exasperating as the trolley breakdown in the winter two years before.
Around the country, as the strike movement spread, there was great official hysteria and many raids resulting in the arrest of thousands of alleged "socialists," "anarchists," and "Bolshe- viks." It seemed to some that the country was about to run up the Red flag instead of turning for leadership, as it soon did, to Warren Gamaliel Harding and the GOP Old Guard, led by its acknowledged "field marshal," almost a Pittsfieldian him- self, United States Senator W. Murray Crane, of Dalton.
The city election in December 1918, a significant one, was very close and bitterly contested. For the first time, Pittsfield had a labor candidate for mayor, David L. Kevlin, who ran on a combined Labor-Democratic ticket against the Republican incumbent, Mayor Moulton. The latter campaigned on the issue that he had cut the city debt by $350,000 during the war years by his financial "rest-cure" policy. Kevlin talked about jobs, relief for the unemployed, and related matters.
112
THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
To the surprise of many and the consternation of a few, the labor candidate almost won the election, losing by only a few hundred votes. Though accused of "socialism" and worse, he carried the majority of the wards. He was defeated, as the phrase went, by the "solid South"-Wards 3, 4, and 5. Kevlin and his chief aides soon left the Pittsfield scene because, it is said, they were starved out; no one would give them a job.
Early relieved as one of the units that had done its full share of duty, having served a hundred days in the front lines, Com- pany F sailed from France on the Mt. Vernon late in March 1919, arriving in Boston on April 4 and proceeding to Camp Devens. Since becoming a part of the 104th Infantry in August 1917, it had had on its rolls 464 enlisted men and thirty-three officers, including ten company commanders. Two officers and thirty-six men had been killed in action or died in service; 157 had been wounded or gassed; two had been taken as prisoners.
Pittsfield men now were only a minority in the company, the majority being replacements from California and the South. But the Pittsfield men remained a united group, and the city sent a special committee to Boston to greet them as they docked. What did they most want? the committee asked.
"Next to seeing our families and friends," they said, "apple pie and ice cream."
While waiting at Camp Devens to be discharged, they were granted a 72-hour leave to visit Pittsfield. An advance welcom- ing committee went to Springfield to meet their train, carrying plenty of apple pie and ice cream. As the train approached Pittsfield on the morning of April 7, 1919, every siren, factory whistle, and church bell in the city announced the soldiers' coming. It had been raining, but just before the train arrived, the sun came out to make it a beautiful spring day-and one of the happiest that many had known for some time.
The huge crowd at the station wildly cheered the returning men as they stepped on the platform-just thirty-nine of them in this party. Of the original company of 144, many had been transferred to other units; sixteen had been killed in action; three times that many bore scars of battle.
113
WORLD WAR I YEARS
In the most impressive parade the city had ever seen, with flags flying and bands playing, the Company F men marched up West Street to the Park, up North Street and down Sum- mer Street to the Armory, with an honor escort that stretched out for blocks. In line were Civil War and Spanish War vet- erans, the mayor and city officials, the clergy, Company K of the State Guard, members of the Board of Trade, the officials and the band of the General Electric plant, the Salvation Army, the drum corps of the Eaton, Crane and Pike Company, a police platoon, several hundred Red Cross workers led by the Pitts- field Military Band, and many sailors from the Fleet. In the sailors' front rank marched a local woman, Mrs. Wheaton (Elizabeth Weston) Byers, a Navy yeo(wo)man during the war.
At the Armory, a large luncheon had been set for the occa- sion, with the usual number of speeches on the menu. But the guests of honor, for the most part, chose not to stay for either the food or the oratory, being naturally eager to be off to the privacy of home and family.
Mustered out on April 28, with all of its members receiving a year's furlough, Company F never saw active service again under its proud name, becoming Company I of the 104th In- fantry in 1920, under the military reorganization plan of that year.
The local Home Guard Company saw brief service in Sep- tember 1919, when Governor Calvin Coolidge summoned them to Boston to help preserve order during the police strike there. The company was billeted in the "Cradle of Liberty," old Faneuil Hall, where the signal had been given to the "Indians" who staged the historic Boston Tea Party, prelude to the Revo- lution. After some uneventful patrol duty, the company was back in Pittsfield on October 9 and immediately discharged.
Meantime, in the summer of 1919, the 301st Ambulance Company, originally Ambulance Company #13 of the Berk- shire County Red Cross, had returned home after almost a year in Europe. Under the command of Captain (Doctor) Melvin H. Walker of Pittsfield, it had served behind the battlefronts in
114
THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
Europe and with the American occupation troops in Germany. Three of its men had died in service, none of them from Pitts- field.
During the war, another more or less local military unit had been formed as part of the National Army-the 390th Field Artillery. With Colonel William H. Eaton of Pittsfield in command, the regiment established its headquarters in the city, being perhaps the first regiment to do so in Pittsfield's history. It was officered entirely by men from Berkshire County and Springfield. Though well trained, the 390th did not see service in France.
After the war, in 1922, a coat of arms for the regiment was officially approved. It bore part of the coat of arms of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, for whom Pittsfield was named, and a blue band bearing a "gold cross potent" representing the arms of the town's first minister, "Fighting Parson" Thomas Allen of Revolutionary War fame. The motto on the coat was "Stead- fast"-a good and inspiring motto at any time.
In May 1919, several thousand veterans met in St. Louis and organized the American Legion. Jay C. Rosenfeld of Pittsfield had attended this meeting and upon his return home with a report, fifteen local servicemen met in the Armory and decided to request a charter for a local Legion post, naming two pro- tem officers-William H. Eaton as commander and Reginald M. Ames as secretary.
A charter was quickly granted and on August 6, 1919, Pitts- field Post #68 held in the Armory its first regular meeting, electing Dr. Harry J. Tate as commander, Alexander C. Jasper- son as vice commander, Jay C. Rosenfeld as adjutant, and Charles F. Reid as finance officer. Fifty-seven new members were admitted at this meeting, and within a few years mem- bership totalled 600 or more. Post #68 continued to meet at the Armory till 1920 when it secured rooms in the Lloyd Block on North Street, which remained its headquarters for thirty years.
During the war, Pittsfield had dealt with its own concerns as best it could. It carried forward the program, started in 1916,
115
WORLD WAR I YEARS
of reforesting the slopes from which it drew its water supply, planting them with white pine, red pine, and Norway spruce. South Street got some pavement at last, as far as Housatonic Street. Most of the old horse blocks along the main streets were removed as pedestrian hazards. More sidewalks were laid. The Council passed a measure placing a ceiling on the city tax rate, limiting it-what optimism !- to $15 a thousand. The rate at the time stood at $23.50. The mayor got a pay boost from $1,000 to $1,800 a year, effective in 1920.
It had long been usual on the morning of St. Patrick's Day to find a green flag flying from the pole on top of the Pittsfield High School building, presumably put there during the night by boys of St. Joseph's High School. Before someone could break his neck, the authorities took down the flagpole in 1917, ending the old tradition.
Early in 1918, a new hospital had been established, St. Luke's; the old William Russell Allen mansion on East Street was converted for the purpose. Previously, in 1916, a group from Pittsfield and the county had formed the Berkshire County Society for the Care of Crippled and Deformed Children, with Dr. Henry Colt of Pittsfield as president. In 1917, through the generosity of Mrs. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and Mrs. W. Murray Crane of Dalton, the Society conducted a summer camp for crippled children near the historic Sprague Cottage on West Street, overlooking Onota Lake. Pleased with the work, Mrs. Coolidge gave $50,000 to endow it permanently.
A few months later, in 1918, she transferred to the Society her beautiful estate known as Upway Field. On its forty acres stood not only the Sprague Cottage but a large modern house, which became the Berkshire County School for Crippled Chil- dren. Mrs. Coolidge gave an additional endowment of $150, 000 for its support. To this was added a sizeable trust fund left to the institution by Senator W. Murray Crane upon his death in 1920.
At the same time, Mrs. Coolidge, a woman of wide interests and many talents, presented the first in the now world-famous series of chamber music concerts on South Mountain, off lower
116
THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
South Street. The initial concert on September 16, 1918, was attended by more than 400 persons, many of whom were celebrated musicians, composers, and conductors. Special trol- leys were run from Park Square to the stop on South Street, where a fleet of automobiles was waiting to carry visitors up the mountain to the Temple of Music, a large and simple structure well adapted to its purpose. The seats were pews brought from an old church in Nashua, New Hampshire.
The first concert opened with a Beethoven work played by the Berkshire String Quartet, which Mrs. Coolidge had or- ganized in 1916 to play with her, and for her and her guests, at her West Street house, which she gave at this time as a home for crippled children. The second number was a quartet in E Minor by Alois Rieser, who had won the $1,000 award offered by Mrs. Coolidge for the best original composition for string quartet. Eighty-two scores had been submitted to the distin- guished jury that made the award.
A composer herself, Mrs. Coolidge was always tremendous- ly interested in encouraging new talent. The first concert closed with a work for piano and strings, with Mrs. Coolidge at the piano, for she was an accomplished musician, having once been a concert pianist. This initial Berkshire Festival of Chamber Music concluded with concerts the next afternoon and evening.
Few in Pittsfield ever did more for its well-being and fame than Mrs. Coolidge, who came with her husband and family to live here in 1908. She gave generously to aid the sick and un- fortunate. Her contributions to its musical life and that of the nation have long been gratefully acknowledged, for as was once said of her, she added to the "fine art of the composer and the fine art of the performer, the fine art of paying the bill."
The Fourth of July in 1919, the first since the Armistice, was one of the city's larger and happier celebrations. After a sunrise salute, there was a long colorful parade, followed by a mid-day dinner for hundreds of recently returned veterans. In the after- noon, thousands attended the ceremonies as Mayor Moulton dedicated Clapp Park, a ten-acre tract given to the city by for- mer Mayor Allen H. Bagg in memory of his wife's father and
117
WORLD WAR I YEARS
grandfather, Edwin and Jason Clapp, builders of fine coaches and carriages, who had their large shop on what is now Clapp Avenue.
But the big event of the day was Pittsfield's first real "avia- tion demonstration," staged by a barnstormer, L. Victor Beau, in his Curtiss biplane. Using the Allen farm on Dalton Road as a flying field, Beau took up Mayor Moulton and other notables. Thrilled with their first view of the Berkshires from on high, they were most enthusiastic about flying, declaring that Pittsfield should build an air field immediately as it was "likely to be on one of the great air routes from Boston to Seattle."
As thousands craned their necks skyward, Beau did the loop- the-loop and other stunts, skimmed so low over Pontoosuc Lake that he almost hit the boats, then came roaring down North Street, just above the trolley wires, "at a speed of more than 100 miles an hour!"
It was "a great treat," all agreed, and the city expected sev- eral more days of flying. But the aviator ran into a fence post and damaged his machine. Even worse luck dogged him. On his way back to Long Island, he cracked up along the Hudson and his plane burned, so that this pioneering air enterprise in Pitts- field was not profitable to the barnstormer, however much the city may have enjoyed it. Flying enterprises have never much prospered in Pittsfield, though the city has long had an airport.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.