Dinsmore Ely / One Who Served
PUBLISHER’S FOREWORD
In the battlefields of France there are thousands of American graves; graves of our best and bravest; sacred places to which we shall make pilgrimage in the years to come and over which we shall stand with tears on our faces and with pride in our hearts. Our heads will be bared because the ground is consecrated; the last resting place of heroes who gave their young and beautiful lives for their country’s cause.
Dinsmore Ely was one who gave. His was the Great, the Supreme Sacrifice. Never was Crusader of old inspired by higher and holier motives. In his letters home, which we have the privilege of giving to the public, there is revealed a knightly soul: the soul of a Bayard “without fear and without reproach.”
PRELUDE
By Dr. James O. Ely
Of old Scotch-Covenanter blood he came.
Into the Presbyterian Church he was born, and at her altar dedicated to the service of his God.
Taken back, when four years of age, to the old home in the Pennsylvania hills, he was present at the Centennial Celebration of the church where his ancestors have worshiped for five generations.
Called on to say his little speech – I can see him yet – he marched bravely down the long aisle of the crowded auditorium, climbed up the pulpit steps, too high for his short legs and, facing the great audience, the childish treble rang out true and clear, as he volunteered for his first service under the banner of the Cross:
My name is Dinsmore Ely, I’m only four years old;
I want to fight for Jesus and wear a crown of gold;
I know he’ll make me happy, be with me all the day;
I mean to fight for Jesus, the Bible says I may.
Twenty years passed. His country called. Among the first to answer, he volunteered in the American Ambulance Field Service that he might secure immediate passage to France and go at once into active service. Arriving there on the fourth of July, 1917, on the sixth he volunteered and was accepted the same day, in the Lafayette Flying Corps.
Taking his aviation training for a fighting pilot in the French schools and leaving the last school in January, with the reputation of wonderful skill as a flyer and aerial gunner, he volunteered at once for service with a French escadrille, serving and fighting with it from January to April in the Toul Sector near Verdun, when his escadrille was ordered to Montdidier, then the center of the great German drive.
On reaching Paris, he was notified to report at American Army headquarters to receive his commission in the United States Army. Having received it, at his own request, he was assigned as a detached volunteer American officer to go into battle at once with his old French escadrille.
On the following day, in closing his last letter to his parents, he wrote, in a single short sentence, his creed as an American Soldier, and, all unknowingly his own epitaph, now carved in stone upon his grave in the cemetery at Versailles, the heart of France:
It is an investment, not a loss,
when a man dies for his country.
Flying in his Spad to Montdidier, Death met him near Villacoublay.
In his poem, To Whom the Wreath, an appeal for the fatherless children of France, he wrote:
Give us to help beat back the Hun,
But give the French the honor won;
Pray God, we’ll know when Death is done,
That France is safe and Children’s Homes.
Death is done, my Soldier Son, and you know, aye, you know, that France is safe and children’s homes.
And the little mother (ah! well we ken, Laddie, you and I, how much she gave herself to you) sends you this message:
“Thank God I gave my boy to be a Soldier,”
and saying it, her face glowed with the pride of the mother whose first-born son, flying in the heavens, was transfigured before her eyes as he soared upwards into the presence of his God.
We’ll nae’ forget you, Laddie, and we’ll be greeting you soon, but while we tarry here, sitting often alone by the fireside in the old home you loved, we won’t grieve for you, Laddie, and if we are a wee bit lonely at times, we will open the treasure box of “pleasant memories” you left us and let the joy of them fill our hearts.
Winnetka, Ill., March 1, 1919.
Dinsmore Ely
O great day! O wonderful world! O fortunate boy! Can it be I sail for France – France, the beautiful – the romantic – the aesthetic, and France the noble – the magnificent? Yes, it is true. It is all real. The babbling crowd and gangplank and piled trunks and excited companions – the hissing, roaring, thundering whistle, the cry of shrill voices, the moving of mass, the joyous and sad faces, waving handkerchiefs, passing boats and docks, the Battery, Liberty, the open sea – and New York fades behind with the pilot boat taking back the last letters of frantically written farewells. The noise is past now; there is a strange silence as the gentle swell of a calm ocean comes to us; we become aware of the steady throb of the engine. People wander about restlessly with hands dangling at their sides. They know the past; they try to realize the present; they are ignorant of the future. We are on the great Atlantic, we are sailing to France!
Five-thirty found me wide awake, so I got up, and with great difficulty succeeded in making the steward de bains understand that I wanted a bath. They all speak French very fluently – just as fluently as I speak English. Well, I shall know how to take a French bath by tomorrow, or know the reason why. There were only a few on deck, so I had a good walk. Breakfast (petit déjeuner) was at six-thirty. Real breakfast comes at ten-thirty, but one eats so often that it is too tiresome talking about meals. The real topic of conversation is seasickness. It is enough to make anybody sick. Everyone looks at everyone else and at themselves in the mirror to see if they can find or create symptoms. The ocean is as smooth as glass, and still they talk. If I am to be seasick, it must come naturally. Darn if I’ll create my own atmosphere. The boundless blue is the most beautiful and serene outlook imaginable. It is great. Already I am at perfect rest. After breakfast I went right to sleep on the deck. At nine there was a Y. M. C. A. French class on the hatch cover, and we joined them. It is a “blab” school in which everybody yells in unison with the leader. It is very funny while your voice lasts, and remarkably instructive. It gives confidence in pronunciation. There are a lot of people outside of our party whom I know. Probably more will turn up. I have not met all our own men yet… Well, there is time to burn. The day was mostly spent in lounging about. I did not try to make any acquaintances. Dave Reed and I were lucky enough to get chairs. He is the “salt of the earth.”
We had a preliminary life-insurance drill today, which consisted in our assembling in our proper positions on the deck, and then going to dinner. Rumor has it that on the last trip this boat had its rudder shot off and that our captain sank a submarine. Yesterday a freighter passed and they kept our guns trained on it from the time it came in sight till it sank away to the rear. The Germans are using such boats now to sink transports. We are not allowed to open portholes, and the lighting of matches and cigarettes is forbidden on deck at night. This sounds like war. From the time when I first read Treasure Island and Via Crucis I have envied those who lived in the ages of pirates and crusaders and Indians. I felt that they faced real hardships and fought real foes – in short, lived life to its fullest – while we, raised on milk and honey, were deprived of the right to face our dragon and bear our metal. But behold! Here we are facing the greatest foe of civilization in the greatest war of Christendom – a war not merely of steel and brawn – but a war on and over and under the seas; on and around and through the earth – a war in which plants and animals and all that is animate take part