Front Line Stuff by Claggett Wilson, Smithsonian Museum |
No
single battle in American military history, before or since, even approaches
the Meuse-Argonne in size and cost, and it was without question the country’s
most critical military contribution to the Allied Cause in the First World War.
And yet, within a few years of its end, nobody seemed to realize that it had
taken place.”*
Hervey Allen, 1917 |
Hervey Allen, a
National Guard soldier from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, never made it to the
Argonne forest. Gassed, burned, wounded by shrapnel, and suffering the effects
of shell shock from the attack at Fismette, he was evacuated to a military
hospital in August of 1918. Shortly
before his part in the war ended, however, Allen met up at the front with his
close friend Francis (Frank) Hogan, a fellow Pittsburgher and aspiring poet. Allen
and Hogan “peered into each other’s faces in the dark and sat down on a stone
together and had a close talk.” The two soldiers promised to try to meet again.
Allen remembers, “I had an impulse to take Frank with me, but I only shook
hands with him….I never saw him again.
He was a brilliant and promising poet. He was killed in the Argonne in October
a few days before the armistice.”**
Liberty Bond poster Howard Chandler Christy |
Corporal Francis
Fowler Hogan was 21 when he died.
Soldier-Poet
To Francis Fowler Hogan
I think at first
like us he did not see
The goal to
which the screaming eagles flew;
For romance
lured him, France, and chivalry;
But Oh! Before
the end he knew, he knew!
And gave his
first full love to Liberty,
And met her face
to face one lurid night
While the guns
boomed their shuddering minstrelsy
And all the
Argonne glowed with demon light.
And Liberty
herself came through the wood,
And with her
dear, boy lover kept the tryst;
Clasped in her grand,
Greek arms he understood
Whose were the
fatal lips that he had kissed –
Lips that the
soul of Youth has loved from old –
Hot lips of
Liberty that kiss men cold.
—Hervey Allen
What was the
goal toward which the screaming eagles flew that Frank Hogan was unable to see at the
start? The brutal death that awaited him and so many soldiers of the Great War.
Lured by the promise of chivalrous
adventure, men soon came to know intimately the shuddering music of artillery
fire that blasted them into mist.
Allen’s poem in
memory of Hogan mixes romantic images of war with depictions of
horror: shells drop with the sound of medieval minstrel song, while a soldier’s night-time
tryst with his first love, Liberty, is lit by the lurid demon light of fire and
explosives. American Revolutionary War hero Patrick Henry cried, “Give me
Liberty or give me Death”; soldiers of the First World War learned that the price
for loving Liberty often was death. Hers are the hot lips that “kiss men cold.”
Francis Fowler Hogan |
In an earlier,
longer draft of “Soldier Poet,” Allen mourns the wasted potential of his friend’s
early death and asks,
Where
is my youth-crowned friend who went to war,
With
his strong body and a golden smile?
Francis Hogan’s
own poem “Fulfilled,” written while he was fighting in France, answers,
Think
not that my life has been futile,
Nor
grieve for an unsaid word,
For
all that my lips might never sing
My
singing heart has heard….
I
have made a song of the crescent moon
And
a poem of only a smile…
Frank’s mother
had his body returned to the United States after the war ended; he was reburied
on August 13, 1921 in Pittsburgh’s Homewood Cemetery.***
*Edward G. Lengel, To Conquer Hell, Henry Holt, 2008, p. 4.
**Hervey Allen, Toward the Flame, Farrar & Rinehart, 1934, pp. 76-77.
***Thanks to Jennie Benford, Director of Programming for Homewood Cemetery, without whom I would not have known of these men and their poetry.
***Thanks to Jennie Benford, Director of Programming for Homewood Cemetery, without whom I would not have known of these men and their poetry.
If there is any doubt that the Yanks fought hard in WW1 look towards Meuse-Argonne for confirmation writ large.
ReplyDeleteAnd written on the headstone inscriptions at home and at the Meuse-Argonne cemetery
DeleteI came across "Fulfillment" in the 2/9/1918 New Republic as part of my reading in 1918 project (www.myyearin1918.com). I've been planning to write about it, and I wondered whether I would be able to find out what happened to Hogan. I came across this post by chance through WWriteBlog on Twitter. So sad to see that he didn't make it.
ReplyDeleteJennie Bedford, Director of the Homewood Cemetery, has extensively researched Hogan's life and would be happy to provide further information.
DeleteThanks very much, I'll contact her.
Delete