Cary T. Grayson Diary
Title
Cary T. Grayson Diary
Creator
Grayson, Cary T. (Cary Travers), 1878-1938
Identifier
WWP17113
Date
1919 March 23
Source
Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia
Language
English
Text
We spent the day visiting the battle-front section. We left the temporary White House at eight o’clock in the morning, returning at eight in the evening. The official statement covering the trip, which was made public following our return, was as follows:
There were, of course, many very intimate points of human interest that could not be covered in the official statement because of the necessity of refraining from any over-extravagance in the public account.
The President was unaccompanied by the numerous military aides who have been conspicuous in all previous trips. The result was that he was able to get into the human character the entire day, was able to talk as he pleased with the people whom he met by the roadside, and was able to spend a untrammeled by form and pomp, which is extremely distasteful to him. The party was made up simply of the President, Mrs. Wilson, Miss Benham and myself, and the necessary secret service guard. The pilot of the day was Sergeant Doughty, who was familiar with this entire section, as he had gone over it for three years as an American ambulance driver. It was a beautiful day, the sun shining, although the usual French spring drizzle overtook us just as we arrived back home at about eight o’clock.
The first of the trip carried us through familiar ground which had been covered on the initial trip to Rheims, passing through Vaux and by way of Chateau Thierry. The first real objective of the trip was the big gun emplacement at Con Coincy. Here an emplacement was erected upon which the Germans had installed one of their so-called supercannon. The majority of the French believe that it was this cannon that was used fotrethe long-distance bombardment of Paris, while some of our artillery experts and most of the British dispute this. However, there is no question that it was a base for a super-cannon. In appearance it resembles very much the average railway turn-table at a railway terminal in the United States. The whole thing was very heavily camougflaged, and in the railway switches leading to the gun emplacement proper, provision had been made whereby trees could be stuck in in order to disguise the rails from aviators flying overhead. While the emplacement itself had been dynamited by the Germans in an effort completely to destroy it, yet there was sufficient left in order to permit one to reconstruct the whole thing in their mind. When the gun was in use it must have resembled an enormous turret such as is on battle-ships. The President went all around, over every section, at one place picking up a small tree and placing it in the hole across the track so he could get an idea of just how the camouflage was worked. He also went down into the great pits underneath the emplacement where the Germans kept the ammunition stored. We picked up a large number of bolts and other little souvenirs in this vicinity. We remained at this point for about twenty minutes getting a good view of the gun emplacement itself and everything in that locality. The President and I tried to surmise to outrselves how the gun was pointed, and what distance the projectile ascended in the air, and the calculations for lack of resistance at certain heights. The President wondered what the length of time was from the moment of discharge from the gun to the landing of the projectile in Paris. The President and I both made guesses based purely ohn observation and in no way on any scientific knowledge of what had actually transpired. The gun emplacement is entirely 110 kilometers from Paris as the crow flies.
Leaving the gun emplacement we proceeded northward, and following the enemy’s line of retreat in , as far as Soissons, which we reached at exactly 12:10. It was rather remarkable, and I took a little personal pride in the fact, that Colonel Jones and myself had figured out the schedule and had arranged on it to reach the city at 12:10, and we did so to the second.
Soissons is one of the great points of history in the war. It was destroyed chiefly during the engagements of , when for several days street fighting took place. From the time of the battle of the Marne in , when the German retreat took place, the enemy lines had been practically at the gates of the city. For all of that period Soissons was under daily bombardment, yet the people or at least a great many of them remained in their homes, living in their cellars, and refusing to run away.
We rode through Soissons proper and had pointed out to us the various places where street barricades were erected and house to house fighting took place, the points where the French and the Germans exchanged rifle and shell fire across the Aisne River, finally winding up in a half-ruined inn, where we had lunch. Colonel Percy L. Jones, Chief of the American Ambuland Corps, had arranged for the luncheon for the party and was awaiting us upon our arrival. Even before the luncheon was placed on the table the news that the President was in town had spread and soon a crowd of natives and French soldiers began to gather about the entrances to the inn courtyard. They were very much interested and all were trying to get a look at the President of the United States.
As we were about to partake of lunch, the President called my attention to Bernard M. Baruch, the head of the War Industries Board, who seemed to be trying to push his way through the crowd to enter the inn. The President asked me to go out and ask Mr. Baruch to join him at luncheon. I went out and found that Mr. Baruch had been denied entrance to the inn because of the fact that the President was there. I repeated the invitation of the President to Mr. Baruch, but he said he did not desire to intrude. He seemed distinctly and decidedly embarrassed, but I told him that the President had directed me to convey the invitation, and then Mr. Baruch blushingly admitted that he was not alone, but that he was accompanied by a very beautiful French lady and a French officer. All three were invited to the luncheon. But Mr. Baruch was still distinctly embarrassed, and while he did remember to introduce the lady to the President and Mrs. Wilson, he forget entirely to introduce the office, and when I rallied him about it he took refuge in the excuse that he had forgotten the name.
During the progress of the lunch a terrific explosion took place apparently from the northward. The concussion had sufficient force to rattle the dishes on the table, and it developed when we went outside that the explosion was at an ammunition dump, less than a mile outside of Soissons, which had been on fire for two days. It was impossible, of course, to do anything to check the fire, so all that the French authorities had been doing was to keep people from going too close, leaving the shells and high explosives stored there to burn themselves out without danger to any one.
We passed northward from Soissons en route to the region which forms the western extremity of the Chemin des Dames. Before we had gone very far we came to a little bridge guarded by soldiers, and a large number of soldiers not on duty. They moved over in front of the car and stopped it, appealing to us to go no further in that direction as we were even then under shell-fire from the exploded projectiles in the burning dump to the north. We halted and I returned to the inn to consult with Colonel Jones about the situation. I found Colonel Jones surrounded by a number of French soldiers and non-commissioned officers, who had watched us. They were addressing him and one, explaining their position in English, asked him to convey a message to the President. This spokesman was a French officer, and he said that he and his colleagues wanted the President to furnish France with the sort of peace he (the President) stood for. The officer told Colonel Jones that the soldiers wanted the President to know that they were back of him and his plans of peace, and they did not want him to allow France to get a kind of peace that Clemenceau and the members of the French Commission at the Quai d’Orsay were desirous of having made. They declared that the Clemenceau peace would be a peace designed to favor the capitalists in every way, while they had such faith and trust in the President of the United States that they knew that he would give them a peace that would be just to all.
Colonel Jones and I proceeded to the bridge and went across it to determine just what the situation was. We found that it would be impossible to go on over to the right as was originally our plan, as a soldier and a woman had already been wounded just shortly before by being struck by an exploding missile. We saw them being conveyed away in a motor truck, so it was decided that we would bear our road away to the left, which we did at high speed.
We passed on through the region west of Chemin des Dames, crossing the village of Coucy, which had been entirely destroyed. We visited the famous Moulin de Laffaux, which was before the war one of the most noted points of interest in all of northern France, and which is now simply a mass of ruins and broken stone. This territory is distinctly historic as during the entire war almost daily engagements had been fought. Here it was also that in , the American troops conducted themselves most heroically during the advance, which culminated in the taking of Laon.
The road from here on branched to the west crossing the region next known as the Massif de St. Gobin, which formed one of the strongest of the enemy’s positions. The road led on through Anizy and Coucy de Chateau. The latter place contained a very famous old chateau which was destroyed by the Germans in their retreat in . The President after looking at the lamentable ruins of this wonderful old historic structure, shook his head and said: “What a pity that a place like this should be destroyed when there was no military or other advantage to be gained - only wantonness.”
We reached the Oise River at Chauny, and then took the road which follows the river as far as Noyon. Chauny is nothing but a mass of powdered stone and filled cellars, bearing no resemblance to the city it once was. Noyon was the next poont of interest.
Before reaching there we encountered a party of German officers who were out taking their daily exercise. Under the laws of war these officers cannot be worked as our other prisoners but are messed separately and are allowed to take exercise at stated periods. They were a jaunty appearing crowd, most of them carrying canes or swagger sticks, and when the cklaxon on the car sounded, they shuffled slowly to the side of the road, apparently in no way concerned by the fact that the President of the United States, the man who more than any other human, was responsible for their present predicament, was passing by. As a matter of fact, while they gazed at us and we clowed down, it is doubtful whether a single person in the line of prisoners knew who was in the big black cars going by. From casual observation it seemed as though these officers were not guarded but farther along we came upon some French guards. However, the officer prisoners in the north of France are not very closely guarded by the French, as there has been no real incentive for them to desire to escape to Germany under present conditions.
Noyon had suffered very greatly from the bombardments and engagements during the war. It was recaptured by the French in , only to be lost again in , and finally retaken by direct assault in . For many weeks after the Germans retreated the explosion of delayed mines continued to wreck the city, and it was a long time before it was possible to come back into the city.
Leaving Noyon, and while we were crossing over a shell-hole the chauffeur was unable to slow the car down sufficiently to prevent a terrific jar, and the President was thrown from the cushion striking his head hard on the bow of the top, slightly breaking the skin and causing a contusion, as well as giving the President a terrific headache. It was, however, an absolutely unavoidable accident, due entirely to the broken nature of the road.
We continued west beyond Lassigny to Montdidier, which was taken by the Germans during the great attack on the , and all along this section the American troops took a most heroic part.
At the little town of St. Maxence a very large crowd of people gathered around the President’s car while we were taking on oil and gas. Some could speak English, and included in the group were old men and old women, French soldiers, and a number of whom were on horseback, and many little children. They acclaimed the President as the savior of the world and the savior of the nation, and appealed to him to stand by the common people of France and bring about a peace which would be a peace for the people. They told him very warmly that they did not believe in their own government, declaring that Clemenceau and his assocoiates were interested not in the common people of France but in the capitalists of France, and shouted that if the politicians in Paris were given their way the aristocrats and the rich would gain everything and the people would get nothing.
From Montdidier we proceeded by way of Claremont directly to Paris, reaching home just after eight o’clock.
There were, of course, many very intimate points of human interest that could not be covered in the official statement because of the necessity of refraining from any over-extravagance in the public account.
The President was unaccompanied by the numerous military aides who have been conspicuous in all previous trips. The result was that he was able to get into the human character the entire day, was able to talk as he pleased with the people whom he met by the roadside, and was able to spend a untrammeled by form and pomp, which is extremely distasteful to him. The party was made up simply of the President, Mrs. Wilson, Miss Benham and myself, and the necessary secret service guard. The pilot of the day was Sergeant Doughty, who was familiar with this entire section, as he had gone over it for three years as an American ambulance driver. It was a beautiful day, the sun shining, although the usual French spring drizzle overtook us just as we arrived back home at about eight o’clock.
The first of the trip carried us through familiar ground which had been covered on the initial trip to Rheims, passing through Vaux and by way of Chateau Thierry. The first real objective of the trip was the big gun emplacement at Con Coincy. Here an emplacement was erected upon which the Germans had installed one of their so-called supercannon. The majority of the French believe that it was this cannon that was used fotrethe long-distance bombardment of Paris, while some of our artillery experts and most of the British dispute this. However, there is no question that it was a base for a super-cannon. In appearance it resembles very much the average railway turn-table at a railway terminal in the United States. The whole thing was very heavily camougflaged, and in the railway switches leading to the gun emplacement proper, provision had been made whereby trees could be stuck in in order to disguise the rails from aviators flying overhead. While the emplacement itself had been dynamited by the Germans in an effort completely to destroy it, yet there was sufficient left in order to permit one to reconstruct the whole thing in their mind. When the gun was in use it must have resembled an enormous turret such as is on battle-ships. The President went all around, over every section, at one place picking up a small tree and placing it in the hole across the track so he could get an idea of just how the camouflage was worked. He also went down into the great pits underneath the emplacement where the Germans kept the ammunition stored. We picked up a large number of bolts and other little souvenirs in this vicinity. We remained at this point for about twenty minutes getting a good view of the gun emplacement itself and everything in that locality. The President and I tried to surmise to outrselves how the gun was pointed, and what distance the projectile ascended in the air, and the calculations for lack of resistance at certain heights. The President wondered what the length of time was from the moment of discharge from the gun to the landing of the projectile in Paris. The President and I both made guesses based purely ohn observation and in no way on any scientific knowledge of what had actually transpired. The gun emplacement is entirely 110 kilometers from Paris as the crow flies.
Leaving the gun emplacement we proceeded northward, and following the enemy’s line of retreat in , as far as Soissons, which we reached at exactly 12:10. It was rather remarkable, and I took a little personal pride in the fact, that Colonel Jones and myself had figured out the schedule and had arranged on it to reach the city at 12:10, and we did so to the second.
Soissons is one of the great points of history in the war. It was destroyed chiefly during the engagements of , when for several days street fighting took place. From the time of the battle of the Marne in , when the German retreat took place, the enemy lines had been practically at the gates of the city. For all of that period Soissons was under daily bombardment, yet the people or at least a great many of them remained in their homes, living in their cellars, and refusing to run away.
We rode through Soissons proper and had pointed out to us the various places where street barricades were erected and house to house fighting took place, the points where the French and the Germans exchanged rifle and shell fire across the Aisne River, finally winding up in a half-ruined inn, where we had lunch. Colonel Percy L. Jones, Chief of the American Ambuland Corps, had arranged for the luncheon for the party and was awaiting us upon our arrival. Even before the luncheon was placed on the table the news that the President was in town had spread and soon a crowd of natives and French soldiers began to gather about the entrances to the inn courtyard. They were very much interested and all were trying to get a look at the President of the United States.
As we were about to partake of lunch, the President called my attention to Bernard M. Baruch, the head of the War Industries Board, who seemed to be trying to push his way through the crowd to enter the inn. The President asked me to go out and ask Mr. Baruch to join him at luncheon. I went out and found that Mr. Baruch had been denied entrance to the inn because of the fact that the President was there. I repeated the invitation of the President to Mr. Baruch, but he said he did not desire to intrude. He seemed distinctly and decidedly embarrassed, but I told him that the President had directed me to convey the invitation, and then Mr. Baruch blushingly admitted that he was not alone, but that he was accompanied by a very beautiful French lady and a French officer. All three were invited to the luncheon. But Mr. Baruch was still distinctly embarrassed, and while he did remember to introduce the lady to the President and Mrs. Wilson, he forget entirely to introduce the office, and when I rallied him about it he took refuge in the excuse that he had forgotten the name.
During the progress of the lunch a terrific explosion took place apparently from the northward. The concussion had sufficient force to rattle the dishes on the table, and it developed when we went outside that the explosion was at an ammunition dump, less than a mile outside of Soissons, which had been on fire for two days. It was impossible, of course, to do anything to check the fire, so all that the French authorities had been doing was to keep people from going too close, leaving the shells and high explosives stored there to burn themselves out without danger to any one.
We passed northward from Soissons en route to the region which forms the western extremity of the Chemin des Dames. Before we had gone very far we came to a little bridge guarded by soldiers, and a large number of soldiers not on duty. They moved over in front of the car and stopped it, appealing to us to go no further in that direction as we were even then under shell-fire from the exploded projectiles in the burning dump to the north. We halted and I returned to the inn to consult with Colonel Jones about the situation. I found Colonel Jones surrounded by a number of French soldiers and non-commissioned officers, who had watched us. They were addressing him and one, explaining their position in English, asked him to convey a message to the President. This spokesman was a French officer, and he said that he and his colleagues wanted the President to furnish France with the sort of peace he (the President) stood for. The officer told Colonel Jones that the soldiers wanted the President to know that they were back of him and his plans of peace, and they did not want him to allow France to get a kind of peace that Clemenceau and the members of the French Commission at the Quai d’Orsay were desirous of having made. They declared that the Clemenceau peace would be a peace designed to favor the capitalists in every way, while they had such faith and trust in the President of the United States that they knew that he would give them a peace that would be just to all.
Colonel Jones and I proceeded to the bridge and went across it to determine just what the situation was. We found that it would be impossible to go on over to the right as was originally our plan, as a soldier and a woman had already been wounded just shortly before by being struck by an exploding missile. We saw them being conveyed away in a motor truck, so it was decided that we would bear our road away to the left, which we did at high speed.
We passed on through the region west of Chemin des Dames, crossing the village of Coucy, which had been entirely destroyed. We visited the famous Moulin de Laffaux, which was before the war one of the most noted points of interest in all of northern France, and which is now simply a mass of ruins and broken stone. This territory is distinctly historic as during the entire war almost daily engagements had been fought. Here it was also that in , the American troops conducted themselves most heroically during the advance, which culminated in the taking of Laon.
The road from here on branched to the west crossing the region next known as the Massif de St. Gobin, which formed one of the strongest of the enemy’s positions. The road led on through Anizy and Coucy de Chateau. The latter place contained a very famous old chateau which was destroyed by the Germans in their retreat in . The President after looking at the lamentable ruins of this wonderful old historic structure, shook his head and said: “What a pity that a place like this should be destroyed when there was no military or other advantage to be gained - only wantonness.”
We reached the Oise River at Chauny, and then took the road which follows the river as far as Noyon. Chauny is nothing but a mass of powdered stone and filled cellars, bearing no resemblance to the city it once was. Noyon was the next poont of interest.
Before reaching there we encountered a party of German officers who were out taking their daily exercise. Under the laws of war these officers cannot be worked as our other prisoners but are messed separately and are allowed to take exercise at stated periods. They were a jaunty appearing crowd, most of them carrying canes or swagger sticks, and when the cklaxon on the car sounded, they shuffled slowly to the side of the road, apparently in no way concerned by the fact that the President of the United States, the man who more than any other human, was responsible for their present predicament, was passing by. As a matter of fact, while they gazed at us and we clowed down, it is doubtful whether a single person in the line of prisoners knew who was in the big black cars going by. From casual observation it seemed as though these officers were not guarded but farther along we came upon some French guards. However, the officer prisoners in the north of France are not very closely guarded by the French, as there has been no real incentive for them to desire to escape to Germany under present conditions.
Noyon had suffered very greatly from the bombardments and engagements during the war. It was recaptured by the French in , only to be lost again in , and finally retaken by direct assault in . For many weeks after the Germans retreated the explosion of delayed mines continued to wreck the city, and it was a long time before it was possible to come back into the city.
Leaving Noyon, and while we were crossing over a shell-hole the chauffeur was unable to slow the car down sufficiently to prevent a terrific jar, and the President was thrown from the cushion striking his head hard on the bow of the top, slightly breaking the skin and causing a contusion, as well as giving the President a terrific headache. It was, however, an absolutely unavoidable accident, due entirely to the broken nature of the road.
We continued west beyond Lassigny to Montdidier, which was taken by the Germans during the great attack on the , and all along this section the American troops took a most heroic part.
At the little town of St. Maxence a very large crowd of people gathered around the President’s car while we were taking on oil and gas. Some could speak English, and included in the group were old men and old women, French soldiers, and a number of whom were on horseback, and many little children. They acclaimed the President as the savior of the world and the savior of the nation, and appealed to him to stand by the common people of France and bring about a peace which would be a peace for the people. They told him very warmly that they did not believe in their own government, declaring that Clemenceau and his assocoiates were interested not in the common people of France but in the capitalists of France, and shouted that if the politicians in Paris were given their way the aristocrats and the rich would gain everything and the people would get nothing.
From Montdidier we proceeded by way of Claremont directly to Paris, reaching home just after eight o’clock.
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Diary
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Citation
Grayson, Cary T. (Cary Travers), 1878-1938, “Cary T. Grayson Diary,” 1919 March 23, WWP17113, Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.