World War I Love Stories

by Gill Paul

  Mary Fearon (right) with her sister Catherine. She had worked in domestic service at many stately homes before coming to Haldane Grange, Killiney.

  A Life in Service

  By the start of the war, Mary Fearon was twenty-nine years old and although she had a suitor, she knew she was getting rather old to marry. She had been born into a farming family in Faughart, Dundalk, County Louth, birthplace of Saint Brigid, the patron saint of babies and fecundity, but Mary seemed destined to a life without children. After leaving school, she worked in domestic service, beginning as a scullery maid and working her way up to the position of cook. She served in stately homes in County Louth and County Down, and during the war was working for the Oswald family at Haldane Grange in the wealthy seaside Dublin suburb of Killiney. There she became friendly with a parlor maid, a girl named Theresa.

  Mary’s family members were ardent Republicans, strongly in favor of home rule for Ireland. Just before the war, the Third Home Rule Act had been on the verge of passing into law, but was vehemently opposed by Unionists in the north, who formed a militia called the Ulster Volunteers, while Nationalists in the south formed the rival Irish Volunteers. John Redmond, leader of the Nationalist Party, urged his supporters to fight in the war in order to defend small countries such as Belgium. Some Nationalists did volunteer but the proportion of men enlisting was much lower than in Scotland, England, and Wales, and the more radical Nationalists were strongly against fighting for the British army. In July 1915, the Catholic Church condemned the war, urging all sides to seek a peaceful solution, and voluntary recruitment in Ireland dropped further. Stories circulated of discrimination against Irish soldiers by British commanders, and the news leaked out that a much higher proportion of Irish soldiers than British soldiers had been court-martialed and shot. All of this fed straight into the hands of rebel Nationalists. Some entered into direct negotiations with the German high command, who sent them a ship full of weapons, the SMS Limbau, which was intercepted by the Royal Navy before reaching Ireland.

  A postcard from Joseph to Mary sent from Limburg. Prisoners were told to instruct their families that they should not write too often and letters should be short, clear, and legible so that the camp censors could make them out.

  The tide of opinion was turning against those Irishmen fighting with the British army, but all the same when Theresa Heape asked her friends in Killiney to write to her brother Joseph, Mary Fearon took up her pen. Joseph was only allowed to write two letters a month and one postcard a week. The letters he received were censored, and if a food parcel was sent from Ireland, it had to weigh less than 10 pounds and even then, more often than not, it didn’t get through. The men were on reduced rations once they had turned down Casement’s offer, and their misery was further compounded by a tuberculosis epidemic in the camp which Joseph feared catching. Mary was a good-hearted woman who wrote cheerful, chatty letters to try and bolster his morale, and they soon became warm friends. These letters have not survived, but there’s no doubt they brightened Joseph’s days a little as one year of imprisonment stretched into the next. At the beginning of the war, everyone had believed it would be over by Christmas. The Catholic priests at Limburg encouraged the men to trust in God, but for Joseph that became harder as the years passed.

  Homecoming

  Conditions at Limburg got worse as food shortages hit the entire German nation, and 3 percent of all men held in prisoner-of-war camps would die of starvation and disease before the Armistice on November 11, 1918. Joseph survived, though, and was formally discharged from the army on December 15, 1918; he was home in time for Christmas. He had lost most of his body weight and was suffering from bronchitis, but that still made him one of the lucky ones, as few of the other BEF soldiers who had traveled out to France in August 1914 had made it to the war’s end. One of the first things Joseph did was travel to Killiney to see his sister Theresa and to meet Mary face to face. The mutual affection they had formed through their correspondence did not diminish on meeting, and they began to go out together on her afternoons off work. She often brought home-cooked food for him to build up his strength after the starvation he had endured in the camp. However, her family and friends took a dim view of the relationship. Far from being seen as war heroes, men who had fought for the British army were now, in the post-1916 climate, viewed as traitors. Tom Kettle, a former Nationalist MP who had been killed at the Battle of the Somme, had predicted that the leaders of the 1916 Uprising “will go down in history as heroes and martyrs; and I will go down—if I go down at all—as a bloody British officer.” And he was right. Soldiers returning to Nationalist areas faced insults, threats, and actual violence. Joseph kept his head down and avoided speaking about his wartime experiences, because during the War of Irish Independence (1919–22) most ex-servicemen faced harassment.

  EASTER UPRISING

  On April 24, 1916 a group of about 1,800 Nationalists, led by James Connolly and Patrick Pearse, seized key buildings in Dublin, including the General Post Office, and proclaimed Ireland a republic. The British government dispatched 8,000 troops to crush the rebellion and, during the six-day battle that followed, the city suffered extensive damage and 466 people were killed, most of them civilians caught in crossfire. At first the rebels had little public support, but the execution of fifteen of their leaders transformed them into martyrs, as a result of which support grew for Irish independence. Radical Nationalists comprehensively defeated the more moderate Nationalists at the 1918 general election, sparking the War of Independence that eventually led to the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. Éamon de Valera, a leader of the Uprising, escaped execution on a technicality and went on to become a key party leader, head of government, and president of Ireland during his long political career.

  The Daily Sketch of May 3, 1916, shows the General Post Office on Dublin’s Sackville Street burning out of control.

  Joseph’s certificate of discharge from the army. He had served for ten years and nine months with “exemplary character.”

  A card certifying Joseph’s employment on the Great Southern Railways in 1943.

  Still, Mary was determined not to let the injustice of the accusations put her off. Joseph was Irish through and through and had chosen to fight for the British army to better his prospects. When he proposed marriage, she accepted, and the ceremony took place at morning Mass on August 5, 1919, in the beautiful sandstone church of St. Alphonsus in Killiney, with Mary’s sister Catherine as her bridesmaid. A reception was held afterward at the home of Mary’s employers, Haldane Grange. Many friends would never speak to her again for marrying a man who fought for “the Brits,” but she paid no heed to that; she was marrying the man she loved. In March 1921 her happiness was complete when she gave birth to a daughter, whom they named Elizabeth.

  As the years went by, there was little recognition in Ireland of the Irishmen who had died in the war, and anyone attempting to sell poppies on Remembrance Day took their life in their hands. The Irish Civil War of 1922–23 concluded with Ireland being partitioned and most of it becoming the Irish Free State. Mary and Joseph moved to Dublin, where he obtained work with the Great Southern Railways in the gas-producing works at Inchicore.

  Mary and Joseph in the 1950s: After surviving the difficult years, they had a comfortable, happy life together.

  Joseph was one of the lucky ones: he got home and found the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

  Joseph died in 1972, twenty-six years before Queen Elizabeth II of England and President Mary McAleese of Ireland jointly unveiled a memorial at Messines in Belgium, honoring the spirit of all the Irishmen who fought in the First World War. As President McAleese said that day, “They fell victim to a war against oppression in Europe. Their memory too fell victim to a war for independence at home in Ireland.” Joseph was one of the lucky ones; he got home and found the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Mary was lucky, too. Many Irishwomen of her generation never found husba
nds because, of the 210,000 Irishmen who went off to fight in the war, a sixth of them were dead before Armistice Day.

  Quentin

  ROOSEVELT

  &

  Flora

  PAYNE WHITNEY

  Quentin’s prayerbook, in which he kept a photograph of Flora.

  In a letter of July 11, 1918, Quentin proudly tells his father about shooting down a German plane over enemy lines.

  Quentin Roosevelt

  AMERICAN

  Born: November 19, 1897

  Second lieutenant, 95th Aero Squadron

  Flora Payne Whitney

  AMERICAN

  Born: July 27, 1897

  The young Quentin at the family home in Sagamore Hill: He was brought up to be a daredevil with a love of adventure and the great outdoors.

  Quentin was an ex-President’s son and Flora a millionaire’s daughter but neither was remotely self-important, and their love for each other, according to her friend Irene, was “of the truest and most wonderful kind.”

  Quentin was the youngest of Theodore Roosevelt’s six children and only three years old when his father became the 26th American President, a post he would hold throughout most of the first decade of the 20th century. Quentin was, according to his mother, a “fine bad little boy” who was always getting into mischief around the White House; his exploits included carving a baseball diamond into the White House lawn without permission, and throwing snowballs from the roof at Secret Service officers. He was quick-witted and imaginative and at Groton School in Massachusetts he edited the literary magazine and penned some rather macabre short stories. The Roosevelt brothers (Ted, Kermit, and Archie) were fiercely competitive and often challenged their younger sibling to feats of daring. One such challenge almost ended in disaster when Quentin jumped off a high rock into a deep-water cove near Oyster Bay, the hamlet on the North Shore of Long Island where the family’s 23-room home, Sagamore Hill, was located. That was par for the course: from an early age all four brothers were raised to be courageous and to stand up for what they believed in.

  A family picnic at Oyster Bay, New York: Archie is on the left, Quentin and former president Theodore Roosevelt are in the foreground, and Edith, Quentin’s mother, is to the right.

  Flora had been introduced to the king and queen of England through her father’s contacts in the world of British horse-racing, while her mother introduced her to many of the era’s top artists.

  Flora was the eldest child of Harry Payne Whitney, heir to a family fortune earned in business and thoroughbred horseracing. Her mother, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, was heir to an even greater fortune, and an aspiring sculptor as well as being a patron to other artists. Young Flora was brought up by governesses at the family homes in New York’s Fifth Avenue and at the 700-acre Long Island estate of Westbury, as well as houses in Newport (Rhode Island), the Adirondacks, South Carolina, and Saratoga (New York State). It was a life of fabulous wealth, involving wild parties, gambling, and sporting fixtures, especially horse racing. Flora attended Brearley School in New York, and then Foxcroft School for Girls in Virginia, where she formed friendships she would keep for life. She made her debut into society at the family’s Westbury home on August 4, 1916 and immediately started stepping out with Quentin, a neighbor on Long Island whom she had known since childhood. The young Roosevelt was studying mechanical engineering at Harvard, but he and Flora would see each other during the holidays and kept in touch during term time. He sent her dozens of postcards with newspaper cartoons stuck on them, as well as witty telegrams: “Flora: am in imminent danger of relapsing into barbarism,” he wrote, after accidentally leaving his shaving things behind at Westbury. On one occasion he drank too much and “acted as no gentleman should,” so he telegrammed a profuse apology and promised he would abstain from drink for as long as she chose. Three months later he was still on the wagon and regretting his promise!

  She made her debut into society … and immediately started stepping out with Quentin …

  Quentin was somewhat wary of taking Flora home to meet his parents, who were disapproving of the ostentatious lifestyle of the Whitneys and didn’t consider them to be people of substance. However, when they did meet her in spring 1917 they liked her straightaway. She was thoughtful and quiet, and his father approved of the fact that her younger brother Sonny was training as an aviator while her cousin Caspar was training with the infantry. He had long campaigned against President Wilson’s strategy of neutrality in the war, saying that “Unless men are willing to fight and die for great ideals, including love of country, ideals will vanish and the world will become one huge sty of materialism.” When America eventually entered the war, he campaigned vigorously for increased funding for equipment and weapons, and donated large sums himself. His own sons Theodore, Archie, and Kermit had already signed up and in early summer of 1917 young Quentin enrolled at Mineola flying school. He had poor eyesight but overcame this handicap by memorizing the eye chart so that he would pass his physical exam. Around this time he asked Flora to marry him, and she joyously accepted his proposal.

  THE “LUSITANIA”

  On April 22, 1915 the German government issued a warning to civilians not to travel on the Lusitania, a passenger ship traveling from New York to Liverpool, but still 1,265 passengers and 694 crew set sail on May 1. The ship was the world’s fastest transatlantic steamer, which everyone thought could dodge the Kaiser’s U-boats. Besides, surely the Germans wouldn’t strike at a civilian ship, would they? But on May 7, 11.5 miles off the coast of Ireland, the Lusitania was hit by a single torpedo fired from submarine U-20 and sank a mere 18 minutes later. There was only time to launch six lifeboats and by the time rescue ships arrived, 1,195 people had perished, among them Flora’s uncle, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, who was on his way to Britain to inspect some racehorses. In the outcry that followed, the public began to realize that Theodore Roosevelt had been right to warn that neutrality wouldn’t work. On May 8, the New York Herald headline read, “What a Pity Theodore Roosevelt is not President.”

  Early news reports of the sinking of the Lusitania underestimated the number of casualties.

  All too soon, on July 23, 1917, Quentin was dispatched to continue his flying training in France. His mother accompanied him to his ship at the 14th Street Wharf in Manhattan, and Flora sailed in on the Whitney yacht to say goodbye. She sprinkled a little bottle of salt water on his uniform, a tradition supposed to bring luck, and was “wonderfully brave” as she sat waiting with him for the ship to sail. He wrote to Flora from mid-Atlantic, saying, “If I am not killed, there will be a time when I shall draw into New York again, and you will be there on the pier, just as you were when I left, and there will be no parting for us for a long time to come.”

  Archie and Quentin Roosevelt at military training camp while at Harvard, 1915/16. The uniforms they wore and the archaic rifles they fired were left over from the Spanish–American war, but it was thought important that students prepared for war.

  Flying over France

  When Quentin arrived in Issoudun, near Bourges, on August 14, 1917 he was appointed supply officer for the American flying school there. Eddie Rickenbacker, America’s most successful flying ace, was the engineering officer and hugely admired by all the men. In the States Quentin had trained on an antiquated plane known as the Curtiss Jenny, but he now had to learn to fly a more modern French pursuit plane, the Nieuport 28. But even these were not the most up-to-date technology, as the French used a sturdier Spad S.XIII and the Nieuports were their cast-offs. Quentin had to learn evasive acrobatics, and he wrote to his mother that “The French monitors make us do all the wild flying stunts that were considered tom fool tricks back home.” He also had to learn to fly in formation, which was no mean feat in “a hundred and twenty horsepower kite.” He attended the aerial gunning school at Cazaux to learn how to fire a machine gun while flying, then went back to Issoudun as quartermaster, a role in which he excelled.

  It was a wet autumn
followed by a freezing winter and Quentin succumbed to pneumonia. Luckily, an old school friend of Flora’s, Irene Givenwilson, was working nearby in France as a Red Cross nurse and was able to take care of him in his own bunk rather than send him off to the local hospital where he might have been exposed to other infections. When he was well enough, he traveled up to Paris to stay with his sister-in-law Eleanor in the house of an aunt of hers near the Bois de Boulogne; it was here that he spent Christmas recuperating from the illness.

  Meanwhile, Flora had become a frequent visitor at Sagamore Hill, where she let Quentin’s mother, Ethel, read any letters from her son that were not too romantic; in the process the two women became close friends. When Theodore Roosevelt went to Canada to promote war bonds, Flora accompanied him. She wrote to Quentin that she was terrified while his father stood on a stage making his speech because it made him an easy target for any assassin. Afterwards, Ethel wrote to Quentin that “the family were all perfectly devoted to her and thought her a very fine person.” To Flora, Ethel wrote, “His love for you has made a man of Quentin. Before it came to him he was just a dear boy.”

  In March 1918, Quentin’s brothers were making names for themselves: Archie, seriously injured in action, was awarded the highest French military honor, the Croix de Guerre; Kermit was awarded the British Military Cross for “exemplary gallantry” in an offensive against the Turks at Tikrit in Iraq; and Ted was in command of the 26th Regiment of the American First Division. The competitive spirit in which the Roosevelt brothers had been raised came to the fore, and Ted let Quentin know they considered him “a slacker” because he hadn’t yet seen any action. It was very unfair. The reason Quentin hadn’t seen front-line action was the shortage of planes, but Quentin was still ashamed and wrote to Flora saying, with customary modesty, “I am a very, very ordinary person I am afraid.” She was “boiling with rage” when she got his letter and related its contents to Ethel, who was furious with Ted. In an act of moral support, Theodore also cabled Quentin: “If you have erred at all it is in trying too hard to get to the front . . . We are exceedingly proud of you.”