By: David Baker

Editor’s Note: This article, along with Part 2 to be published later in November 2018, showcases two different approaches to incorporating primary sources into family history writing. Part 1 will provide examples of how one can fact check a letter or diary to better understand what the original writer was describing. Part 2 will explore ways to build a narrative around a source which may not contain enough information in and of itself to be informative.

James Elmer Beville, my grandfather, was a soldier of the Great War. At the time of his death at age fifty-seven in 1956, he had never shared with our family his experiences of military service from April 9, 1917, to June 23, 1919. Among the few possessions that he saved was a small pocket notebook about the size of a three-by-five file card, bound in dilapidated cardboard that had once seen a thin veneer of leather.  About half the pages remain unused and the balance is covered with notes in the cramped handwriting of Elmer Beville and the bold schoolteacher’s hand of my grandmother, Ray Williams Acron Beville. Most interesting, though, are the fifteen pages in which my grandfather described his military service—the story he never told to us.

The family of Elmer Beville lived at Boxtown, a rowdy neighborhood outside the city limits of Leitchfield in Grayson County, Kentucky. When Elmer’s father, James Clarence Beville, married Rose Rafferty in 1896, the couple lived briefly in Louisville, where Elmer was born on March 3, 1899. The Bevilles returned to the family home at Boxtown the following year when Rose was fatally stricken by tuberculosis.  James Clarence also contracted tuberculosis and died in 1903, with a deathbed request that his eighteen-year-old sister, Eveline, care for his son. Elmer lived with his aunt Evvie in the family home until she married Jesse Webb Moorman in 1906. Elmer lived with the Moormans on their Grayson County farm until they could no longer afford to support him after the birth of their third child in 1912.  Thus, at age thirteen and with little more than six years of education, James Elmer Beville was “on his own” in Louisville. Curt Roberts, a Grayson County transplant from Leitchfield and a former neighbor of the Beville family, took in Elmer.  Elmer Beville’s military career began five years after he moved to Louisville.

On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress, laying out the case for a declaration of war against Germany.  Two days later, the U.S. Senate approved a war resolution, with the concurrence of the House of Representatives on Friday, April 6. That week Elmer Beville returned to Leitchfield and volunteered to serve in the locally recruited Kentucky National Guard company.

The U.S. entry into World War I came nearly three years after the war began in August 1914. Both the British and the French expected to amalgamate the fresh U.S. troops into their own depleted ranks to turn the tide in their favor. The American commander, Major General John J. Pershing, however, made a steadfast commitment to maintaining the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) as an independent army under the U.S. flag. Ultimately, Pershing prevailed.

For nearly forty years, Elmer Beville remained silent about his military experiences while quietly preserving his notebook and its memories. I first examined the little volume when my brother and I were sorting through a cache of family keepsakes hoarded by our mother before she died in August 2003. Recently, I undertook to provide members of our family with copies of a transcription of that wartime diary. As I read those fifteen pages over again and again, the task became daunting.

The first seven pages, which cover the period from April 1917 when he joined the National Guard until his arrival in France a little more than a year later, are set down as Elmer’s memoir.  This article presents these pages as Part 1 of a two-part history or Elmer Beville’s World War I experience. The final eight pages, which are at first glance diary entries, provide only the sketchiest record Elmer’s overseas experiences—sometimes on a day-by-day basis—of his assignment to Company C of the 303^rd Engineers, service in the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives, and return home.  Part 2 of the Elmer Beville story will reveal these pages and my work to interpret and contextualize them.

No one reading Elmer’s account will mistake him for an educated person. Although he would become a voracious reader in later life, the young man who created this document was a poor speller, insensitive to the nuance of grammar and totally divorced from the rules of punctuation or capitalization. Whenever these compositional eccentricities become obstacles to understanding Elmer’s message, I have corrected or eliminated these distractions.[1]

Pvt James E. Beville

Co C. 303 Engrs.

I joined the Nat’l Guard Co. I, 3^rd Ky. Inf on April 8^th, 1917.  We stayed at L.field Ky. till May 22 or 23^rd.  We were in camp at Lexington Ky for 4 months and about the middle of Sept 1917 we entrained for Camp Shelby, Miss. And it was such a horrible place for the first few months. We drilled Hard for about 8 months.  When we went to Camp Shelby our old reliable 3^rd Ky. Inf was bursted up one Battalion was put in the 113 Engrs. And one put in the 113 ammunition train and my Battalion was put in Machine Gun Batt and old I Company was Co. A, 132 M. G Bn.

I was with the boys until June 3, 1918 when myself and a few more of my Friends and my two cousins we got on train at camp Shelby and we were four day until we reached Camp Merritt, N. J.  We passed through Ala. Georgia, North Carolina, S. Carolina, Tenn, Va. and W. Va., Maryland and Washington, D.C.  We got off the train on the 7 or 8^th day of June I have forgotten and hiked from Katskill [Cresskill] N. J. to barracks and stayed there till the morning of the 11^th of June.  We hiked to the old station and got on a New York Central train and rode to Jersey City and there we got on the ferryboat and crossed the Hudson River to New York. Landed in N.Y. City about twelve o’clock and stayed in a shed for a half hour or so and then we got the word to load on the steamship Corascon [Corsican].

We pulled out on the morning of the 12^th of June.  And when I woke up we could just see the City in the far distance.  I was acting as noncommissioned officer going over and the 3^rd day out the boys were feeding the fishes. And everyone was so sick that they couldn’t get any Kitchen Police so I went down in the hole and taken the job. And after I was in there for two days I found out I was getting ten dollars for my trip and I thought that wasn’t half bad for I just went down to get my stomach full.  For they wasn’t feeding the troop much and I got the pick of the food.

On the ninth day out we came in contact with one sub and they opened fire on them and fired two shots which were good one for it went down to never to come up again.

On the morning of the 23^rd of June we saw Scotland on our left and Ireland on our right.  And Gee it did look good to see land once more.  On the morning of the 24^th we set our feet on the soil of England and hiked through the City of Liverpool.  And the streets were lined with civilians and wounded soldiers and every one seemed to be overjoyed to see us.  We stopped for 10 minutes rest and I bet I shaken hands with 20 different English women and men.  I never will forget one old lady came from across the street and shaken hands with 25 or thirty and kissed my cousin Emmett.  She talked to me and told me she lost two sons in the war and she and all the people in England looked to us to finish the war that summer and wanted me to do my bit.

 I wish ever who reads this book would have seen the Boys when we pulled in under the train sheds and saw the funny little trains they had.  One of the boys ask a lady porter in the yard what Christmas was it Old Santa brought that train to Eng.  We rode all the afternoon and night and the next morning about 2 o’clock we hiked through Southampton and went in a rest camp for 3 days and had a good time there.  I will never forget the wickedness of the girls there. Thank God I never touched any one of them. 

On the 26^th of June John Younger my pal I ran with all the time went to the City of S. H. on a street car and got off and went to a picture show and back to camp.  Both of us together just cost 1 shilling equal to 24 cents in good old U. S. money.  I had then left about 1 pound and two florins left of my two pounds I got for my K. P. job. 

On the evening of the 27^th we left S. H.  Got on a train and on the night of the 28^th was the first air raid that we experienced.  We didn’t know whether we were near the front lines or what for we was in Box cars which said 38 to 40 Hommes or 8 chevoux en long.  The Boys were singing and raising the devil for a place to sleep and the minute someone said listen I heard a machine gun you could have heard a pin drop on the floor.  Our eats we were getting was Bully Beef and hard tacks and my bed was the hard floor with my pack under my head for a pillow.

We got off the train some time in the morning of the 29^th and got on the steamship Queen Maria, I believe was the name.  And crossed the English Channel. We landed in Havre the morning of the 30^th and hiked up a hill I thought there wasn’t no end to and was put in English tents for a 36 hour rest.  The tents were very small and they put 17 to each tent.  We left there the last day of June.  And got on a train again in some more box cars which just had four wheels and jumped like a rabbit when a dog is after it. 

That day was a beautiful day and the Boys were sitting with their feet hanging out and a passenger train came along with one of the doors swinging and cuffed several of the boys and killed one.  The lad that died had his arms and legs cut off.

We all got to St. Aignan the first day of July and was classified and we were bursted up.  My cousin E. Beville was sent to the Inf and John Younger sent to the M. G. Bn and my coz Mark was sent to some signal Bn. That happened on the third of July.  Emmett went away and I didn’t get to say a word to him and Mark was taken away that afternoon.  Myself a few of the Boys I knew had to pitch our dog tents and sleep.

On the fourth of July I felt so down hearted I didn’t know what to do. So I and John Kiby got up and hiked about two miles for our breakfast. When I came back we sold a pair of gloves for five francs and bought some wine.  My buddy sold a pair of shoes for 20 francs and by night I was very drunk.  My first drunk in France.  On the 5^th of July we got on a train and rode to a city by the name of Angers where we were sent.

I have found that when using primary sources as the basis for a story, I need to read them over and over, analyzing the language the writer used and trying to put myself in the place of that person. I also need to know what is happening around them, in their community and in the region. One of the first things I did when starting this project was to read the Grayson County Gazette from 1900 to 1918, just to get an idea of what the family and the community were going through. I uncovered quite a bit of family history doing this but also a lot of the context in which my family was living. I also looked at a universal calendar to help me know what day of the week things happened on.  Other public records can corroborate more formally what a letter or diary will tell you but consider the source when trying to sort out discrepancies. I used both a military division and a company history for this project, and while the division history was very accurate, it contained lots of spin (the officers always did the right thing and it always turned out right). The company history gave me the perspective of the guys in the unit, which was missing from the division story. I will also say that it is worth your while to work your way through a more academic overview of the topic.  Coffman in particular gave me good background on the big picture.

I had some questions when I concluded this portion of Elmer’s notebook and found a few answers. I was struck by the apparent prudery of Elmer’s statement about the rest camp near Southampton: “I will never forget the wickedness of the girls there. Thank God I never touched any one of them.” It appears that the youngster from Leitchfield had been attentive to the anti-venereal-disease campaign enforced by General Pershing. The military camps carried out “an educational program with movies, lectures, pamphlets and posters” backed up by a promise to punish any man who was careless in that regard.[2]

The boxcar Elmer describes on his journey to the English Channel on June 28 seems to have been one of the famous French forty-and-eight carriers, built to hold forty men or eight horses.  A very long search for information about the steamer Corascon ended when I learned that the Canadian steamer Corsican[3]  did, indeed depart from New York on June 12, 1918. I was unable to find anything about the Queen Maria that took Elmer from England to France—though I suspect that a combination of vague recollection and phonetic spelling may account for this failure.

I was unable to find a corroborating account of the submarine sighting on June 21, I did find information that explained how and why it happened.  Edward M. Coffman observes that, while there were frequent alerts and training exercises on board the troop ships, “actual attacks were fewer than the number of alarms.  Nearly every soldier who made the trip had his story of a sub scare.”[4]

By July 5, Elmer Beville was alone. Separated from friends and family members with whom he had entered service at Leitchfield, he was reassigned to a new unit at St. Aignan, a Loire Valley classification center.

Part 2 of this article follows the next section of the notebook, which changes its tone.  In terse, short entries Beville describes his movements and actions, the last entry being:

Discharged June 23 – 1919.

Thus did James Elmer Beville, serve in the Great War before he was old enough to vote.

In January 1920, Elmer married Ray Williams Acron, the widowed niece of his Louisville landlord, Curt Roberts. He adopted her two-year-old daughter, Mary Nell.  Their second daughter, Evelyn Diana, was born in Louisville the following year, and another, Francis Mae, in July 1923—four months after the family moved to Cleveland, Oklahoma. In December 1930, a son, James Elmer Jr., was born in Oklahoma, as Elmer convalesced from tuberculosis in Denver, Colorado.  The couple separated in 1946 when Elmer returned to Louisville from San Francisco and worked for the Veterans Administration as a hospital attendant at Nichols General Hospital.[5] Within a year he would be a patient in that hospital.

Elmer never elaborated on the contents of his notebook, nor did he share stories of his military service. It is not possible to determine whether this avoidance was related to some form of Post-Traumatic Shock Disorder—a condition that was not identified by the medical community until 1980.[6] He spent the last ten years of his life as either an employee or patient at Nichols Hospital. At the time of his death, V.A. records noted that Elmer Beville had undergone undesignated surgical procedures at the hospital in 1947, 1948, 1949, 1951 (two operations), 1952, 1953, and 1954.

Elmer Beville returned home from the Great War physically uninjured, but his personal scars never healed and his hopes never blossomed.

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About the author: 

David L. Baker retired to Owensboro, KY in 2001, after serving as chief legal officer at the University of Louisville and the University of Wyoming, where he was also director of its American Heritage Center. Besides the story of his family, his research and writing focuses on the history of Southwest Jefferson County and the cement company town of Kosmosdale, which was his childhood home.