In “A Bulwark Against Mighty Woes” (February/March 1980) we celebrated the work done by the American Red Cross during World War I—and the fact that this year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the organization. Now reader Priscilla M. Harding of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, offers a sidelight that demonstrates the remarkable dedication of many Red Cross volunteers:
“One cold December night in 1914, nurse Mary Gladwin kicked something metallic while making her rounds in the American Red Cross Field Hospital in Belgrade, Serbia—the only Red Cross hospital then located in a combat zone. Looking down, she saw a hand grenade roll from beneath an Austrian soldier’s cot. It was not the first time that weapons had been found in the hospital. Several weeks earlier, rifle-bearing Serbian patients had crawled to the windows to blast away at an Austrian plane. After this fusillade, the hospital had been declared a neutral zone; anyone caught concealing arms would be shot. Now the patients tensely watched the pantomime between their comrade and the American nurse, fearful that she would report him. Once they understood that her only concern was to get the grenade out of the ward, many rummaged through their own pallets. Sheepishly, like small boys caught in an orchard with their pockets crammed with apples, the wounded men turned over their arms, gently placing them in Gladwin’s outstretched apron, which soon was heavy with grenades. Cautiously, she made her way out of the ward toward Dr. Edward Ryan, who gingerly relieved the nurse of her deadly harvest.
“Gladwin—who, through a long career contributed much to her profession—personified the best that was in the Red Cross volunteer in other ways, as well. The organization’s purpose was never better stated than in her reply to a 1913 flood victim in Ohio who had refused Red Cross aid, which he called charity and considered demeaning. ‘This isn t charity,’ she told him. ‘It’s just your neighbors, some of them at a distance, that’s true, but all of them trying to help you because you are in trouble.’ ”
CIVIC MASONRY
Fraternal Arts,” the portfolio of Masonic symbols we presented in our October/November issue last year, noted that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Masonic symbology “became a common part of the decorative arts, incised into furniture, woven into rugs, shaped into watch parts, blown into bottles, enriching the texture and aesthetics of everyday life.”
And that’s not all, Dan E. Shepherd writes to tell us from Sandusky, Ohio: “In 1818 the Masonic square and compass transcended mere decoration and were forever imprinted in the minds of the citizens of our beautiful city. I quote from Sandusky’s Yesterdays, by a local historian, Charles E. Frohman: ‘When Sandusky was platted, the surveyor, Hector Kilbourn, imposed upon the regularity of the streets laid at right angles, the square and compass of the Masonic order. Kilbourn, a Mason, was first master of Science Lodge, founded in Sandusky in 1818. Remembering that Monroe St. was the southernmost street (at that time), the corner of the square would have rested south of it, while Elm and Poplar streets formed the ends of the square. Superimposed would have been the compass, down Miami and Huron avenues, and projected to the central point at Market Street and Columbus Ave. Modern traffic has made these angling streets unpopular, and those who find directions puzzling often have trouble with Sandusky’s streets.’
“It is sort of a standing joke around here,” Mr. Shepherd goes on, “to curse the ‘demented Mason’ who laid out our streets. … It would be extremely interesting to find out, through your readers, if any other Masons so permanently inscribed their symbolism on any other city’s life and history.”
SANDTRAPPED
Red Smith’s profile of Bobby Jones (“Four!”) in our August/September 1980 issue included the statement that “no organization devoted exclusively to golf existed in this country before November 14,1888, when the St. Andrew’s Golf Club was formed at a dinner in John Reid’s home in Yonkers, New York.”
Not so, writes one of our readers, Edward Owen Perry of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: “That distinction belongs to the Foxburg Golf Club of Foxburg, Pennsylvania, which was founded, opened, and used in 1887 and is still used. It is a golf club exclusively, and always has been.”
Mr. Perry is dead right. The Foxburg Club was founded by Joseph Mickle Fox, a wealthy Philadelphian who had fallen in love with the game of golf while visiting Scotland as a member of an American cricket team in 1884, returned to this country loaded down with clubs and gutta-percha balls, and in 1887 laid out a five-hole course on his Foxburg property for his friends and neighbors—using quart tomato cans for the cups. The course was later expanded to nine holes and a clubhouse was built, making the Foxburg the oldest golf course in continuous use in the United States. In 1965 it also became the site of the American Golf Hall of Fame—one of whose first inductees was none other than Bobby Jones.
THE HEARTS OF NEWBURGH
In “The Newburgh Conspiracy,” the article beginning on page 40 of this issue, author James W. Wensyel makes passing reference to the fact that an awards board at the Newburgh encampment “granted three sergeants purple, heart-shaped medals of valor, the first time in any army that enlisted soldiers were so honored.” He has since provided us with a footnote to that intriguing incident:
“On August 7, 1782, General George Washington established two awards for his soldiers. The first—the Honorary Badge of Distinction—consisted of strips of white cloth to be sewn above the left cuff of regimental coats, one for each three years of honorable service, an award that remained a tradition in the Army for the next two hundred years. Today’s GI s call the diagonal stripes ‘hash marks.’
“The second—the Badge of Military Merit—was far more restricted and far more coveted. It would be given upon recommendation of a soldier or officer, after consideration of a special awards board and approval of Washington himself, for ‘singularly meritorious service.’ It could be won only for ‘instances of unusual gallantry … extraordinary fidelity and essential service.’ Washington personally designed the medal as ‘the figure of a heart in purple cloth, or silk, edged with narrow lace or binding’ to be worn on the left breast. The soldier’s name would be entered into the Army’s Book of Merit, and Washington would himself present the medal to those selected. Soldiers awarded the purple heart medal, regardless of rank, could pass all sentinels and receive salutes as if they were officers.
“On April 24,1783, the awards board recommended that the medal be given to two Connecticut soldiers: Sergeant Elijah Churchill of the 2nd Regiment of Light Dragoons and Sergeant William Brown of the 5th Connecticut Regiment, Continental Line. Washington presented the awards on May 3. Several days later, the board recommended the award for Sergeant Daniel Bissell of the 2nd Connecticut Regiment, Continental Line, and on June 10, he received it.
“Existing official records document the medal’s award to only these three Connecticut soldiers. The Army’s Book of Merit, supposedly listing all winners of the medal, has never been found. The medals themselves disappeared over the years—Bissell’s to fire in 1813; Brown’s, after being passed down the generations of his family, to robbery in 1924; Churchill’s simply vanished—until 1961, when it was discovered in the hands of a great-grandson of the Revolutionary War hero (it is now on display at the restored New Windsor Cantonment).
“Yet there may well have been a fourth. In 1925, in an old barn in Deerfield, New Hampshire, an officer of the New Hampshire Society of the Cincinnati found a fragment of a greatcoat of Washington’s Continental Army. Badly moth-eaten and covered with the dust and cobwebs of ages, it hung on a wooden peg near the horse stalls. Sewn on the left breast was a heart-shaped badge of what appeared to be steel-gray silk. Some believed it to be a reminder of pledged faith from some soldier’s sweetheart, but the experts who studied it believed it to be a genuine purple heart medal of our war for independence; it is now on display in the national museum of the Society of the Cincinnati in Washington, D.C. We may never know who received it, when and for what deed of valor; what we do know is that since it differs slightly in design, it cannot be the still-missing medal of Sergeant William Brown.
“Although the purple heart fell into disuse by the Army after the Revolutionary War, it was revived on the anniversary of Washington’s birth, February 22, 1933. On that date, General Order No. 3 of the War Department again authorized award of the medal, with modifications of Washington’s design. The first of the reborn medals was issued to a young officer who showed great future promise—Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur.”
