A Salute to Patriotism
The Life and Work of Major General Howard L. Peckham
Jean Peckham Kavale
Copyright © 2008 by Jean Peckham Kavale
All rights reserved.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
ISBN: 978-0-9665855-4-4
Published by:
Cypress Publishing
P.O. Box 188
Manteca, CA 95336
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1. The Peckhams and the Cornings
Chapter 2. Army Engineers in the Great Depression
Chapter 3. Clouds Over Leavenworth and Benning
Chapter 4. Old and New Kentucky Homes
Chapter 5. Petroleum, Congress, and the U.S. Army
Chapter 6. Washington After D-Day
Chapter 7. Marching on the Road to Peace
Chapter 8. Freedom Is Not Free
Chapter 9. An In-Depth Look at the AGRC
Chapter 10. Life in Postwar Paris
Chapter 11. Effects of the War in Europe
Chapter 12. Meetings in France, Germany, and Italy
Chapter 13. Preparing to Leave the Old World
Chapter 14. New York and Fort Lee
Chapter 15. Helping to Fight Communism
Chapter 16. The Era of Kennedy and Johnson
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
About the Author
Photographs
Preface
Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be--DOUGLAS MACARTHUR
When my father was a boy, he often imagined himself dressed in a gray cadet uniform, marching in cadence on a vast parade ground. Because he was an excellent student, especially in arithmetic, Howard Louis Peckham could easily picture himself attending mathematics classes taught by a knowledgeable instructor.
Dad was born on May 29, 1897, in Norwich, a beautiful harbor city located in the southeastern part of Connecticut, adjacent to the confluence of the Yantic, Thames, and Shetucket Rivers. It was an ideal fishing area, a fact that Howard and his younger brother, Oliver, took advantage of as much as possible. After an afternoon of successful fishing, they would eagerly bring their catch home, where their mother, the former Frances Lila Beckwith, would clean it and prepare it for dinner. Frances was an outstanding cook. She knew just the right amount of parsley, salt, pepper, and other spices to sprinkle on top of the fish before popping it into the oven.
He also seemed to enjoy doing chores for his dad, Frank Everett Peckham, who ran a flourishing truck farming business. My father would fill to the brim large straw baskets of tomatoes, corn, lettuce, celery, and other vegetables—as well as flowers such as colorful zinnias and large marigolds—that he had helped to plant and pick. Frank would then sell this delectable produce to local markets.
My father wasn’t interested in truck farming as a profession for himself, however. He also didn’t want to spend all his life in one place. Instead, he felt attracted to the more adventurous and less-settled life of an army man.
After his graduation from the Norwich Free Academy, he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, thus fulfilling his dream of an army career. That career would take him all over the world, but his binding loyalty and love for the ideals of his alma mater, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in November 1918, continued. (It was at West Point, decades later, that General Douglas MacArthur spoke the words that appear at the beginning of this Preface.)
Upon his army retirement forty years later, he eagerly volunteered for alumni tasks. He served as president of his class for three years and was also a member of the prestigious Board of Trustees. Whenever he spoke at meetings of the Board, my father’s appearance commanded attention. His height was five feet ten inches, but he gave the impression of being much taller, largely because of the military bearing he had acquired at the Academy. His straight posture, sturdy frame, broad shoulders, penetratingly blue eyes, and sharp features made him look like a prototype for a professional soldier.
He never tired of driving through the winding, bucolic hills that surround West Point to attend a school reunion or an informal gathering of alumni at a football game, even when he chose to travel to the state of New York from as far away as Washington, DC.
I didn’t join him on those trips, but I do recall the many other times when I was his passenger. “I enjoy driving a car,” he would say, although it didn’t always appear that way to other people. I can still see the way he would grasp the steering wheel tightly with both hands, his back straight and unbent as he stared intensely at the road ahead. He certainly didn’t look casual while driving.
Because my father dutifully answered his country’s call, my parents moved often during his army career. This pattern continued after he retired in 1956, I suppose because moving from place to place had become such a familiar way of life for them. Finally they settled down in Washington, DC, the historic city on the Potomac that my mother, the former Marion MacFarlane Shaw, considered to be her real home.
Both of my parents loved people and had many friends everywhere they lived, usually army families whom they had met somewhere else. Socializing with old and dear friends was especially evident in Washington, DC, their last home. They had many good times there.
Sadly, the good times ended in 1963 when my mother, who had been in failing health for several months, died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Nine years later, after four months of grueling treatment at Washington’s famed Walter Reed Army Hospital, my father succumbed to the effects of leukemia and joined my mother at Arlington National Cemetery.
I will never forget the summer day a few years after my mother’s death when my father and I visited her gravesite. While we were walking down one of the many pathways, he pointed out the names of a few of his friends, whose names were neatly carved in the granite stones. These men were members of his generation and, like him, had served in the army during World War II.
A few were West Point classmates of his, joined by wives who either predeceased them or died after they did. Those men had always seen him as a leader. When they were cadets, Howard Peckham was selected as first captain of his class, the highest rank in the cadet chain of command. The title gave him the privilege of speaking to the administration on their behalf and directing their training.
There was a matter-of-fact tone in my father’s voice as he spoke their names—nothing forlorn. He was well aware of his own mortality and knew that one day, maybe not too far in the future, he would be laid to rest on those same hallowed grounds. Although Dad was a realist in regard to his inevitable demise, he was also optimistic. Ever since his boyhood years, he maintained a strong religious faith and a belief in an afterlife. He was convinced that he would one day see his deceased family members and good friends again.
In the chapters that follow, I describe my father’s life and work, with an emphasis on his Quartermaster Corps service during and after World War II. I have always felt that the difficult and often heart-wrenching efforts of the U.S. Army’s Quartermaster Corps haven’t been publicized enough.
The book also briefly describes the careers of several other members of his band of compatriots, those senior officers who were his friends and who performed admirable service to their country. A few of those men are not well known to the general public. With this book, readers will get to know them. At the same time, they will learn new facts about the better-known members of that group, such as George S. Patton Jr. and Omar N. Bradley.
Dad and his army compatriots would see each other at different places over the years and during changing circumstances. They would meet during catastrophic wartimes that shook America like ponderous earthquakes—World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. During those dark days, my father and his army friends resembled ships that pass each other in the bleak nighttime of world conflict. All of those wars affected them in one way or another, especially those men who came through World War II unscathed but who lost sons in the fighting in Korea or Vietnam.
When the storm clouds of war finally drifted away, and tranquility again temporarily hovered over our land, the men resembled travelers who greet each other during the bright daylight of peace. Those are the days they especially treasured.
Author’s Dedication: Ever since the end of the Vietnam War, which is the last major conflict discussed in A Salute to Patriotism, the drumbeat of United States Army history has continued to move steadily forward, and other soldiers have answered the call to duty and country in faraway, dangerous lands.In 2008, as I complete my writing of this book, American young people are stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, helping to keep us free. A Salute to Patriotism is dedicated to them.
Chapter 1: The Peckhams and the Cornings
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.—GEORGE WASHINGTON
Frank Everett Peckham owned some of the largest flower and vegetable gardens in Norwich, a lovely city located on a harbor in southeastern Connecticut. His children—my dad Howard, born in 1897; Oliver, born in 1899; Mildred, born in 1905; and Mary, born in 1910, often worked in the greenhouses on their property. Aunt Mary wrote me about their tasks years later:
We had four greenhouses on our land. One was used for storage of needed supplies. Another was used for growing lettuce (curly, Boston). In another one, wire was strung up for cucumber vines to grow on. The third had dirt-filled flats, into which we children dug small holes. One of our jobs was to set out tiny plants in the holes.
The children also helped to sell produce at a roadside stand near the property’s entrance, where a large painted sign described the unique quality of their wares: “VEGETABLES WITH CHARACTER.” Frank drove most of the produce by truck to local markets. On the preceding evenings, the whole family would assemble at their workstations to tie the carrots and beets together in bunches. Then they would hose down all the vegetables, including the lettuce and cucumbers, and stack them carefully in Granddad’s truck. As a result of these diligent preparations, the vegetables were set to go to market before the truck left early the next morning.
Whenever Frank’s business was especially good, the family celebrated by going on short trips in and around New England. In the summertime, their favorite destination was Ocean Beach in New London, Connecticut, on Long Island Sound. “We packed our bathing suits and caps in a bag, and lunch was put up in a shoebox,” Aunt Mary wrote in her letter to me about their preparations for the trip. “Then we rode from Norwich to New London on the open trolley car. What a refreshing ride it was on a hot summer day!” After their happy day by the sea, they boarded the open trolley again for the long ride home.
Another trip they made was particularly exciting for my dad, who was a good arithmetic student at his school, Norwich Free Academy. Aunt Mary described the trip in a letter to me:
When your dad was a little boy, my parents took him and his brother on a cruise up the Hudson River. When they passed by the United States Military Academy at West Point, your dad said, “Papa, that’s where I want to go to school some day.”
As much as he enjoyed visiting other states, such as New York and New Hampshire, my father’s roots in Connecticut were as deep as the Atlantic Ocean. His paternal grandmother, the former Ann Matilda Corning, was born in Preston, Connecticut. Preston was also the birthplace of his dad, Frank Everett Peckham. According to family records, our Cornings have traced their roots to Saundby Parish, Nottinghamshire, England, to the late fifteenth century.
The first Corning to settle in America was Ensign Samuel (sometimes spelled Samuell) Corning, who was born in 1616 in Norfolk, England. After arriving in Massachusetts, he first lived in Salem but didn’t stay there long. He and his wife Elizabeth chose to settle down in the smaller town of Beverly, approximately four miles north of Salem, because of its better opportunities.
It turned out to be an auspicious move. In 1641, Samuel became a freeman, a title that conferred franchise and other privileges in the community. He also established himself as a trusted citizen of Beverly by serving as a selectman, a responsible job given to a town officer who, because of his capabilities, had been chosen to manage certain public affairs.
Samuel was a Puritan in his religious beliefs. This was not a problem in Massachusetts, as it had been in England. There, as he learned through his own disheartening experience, the domineering Church of England harassed Puritans because of their belief that people should use the Bible as a guide in social, financial, and even—much to the horror of British authorities—political issues. Puritans believed that when the Bible reigns as supreme authority in the foregoing matters, religion stays simple, pure, and unscathed.
Undoubtedly his tenacious hold on Puritan beliefs was the precipitating factor that brought Samuel to the New World, where he was sure to find religious freedom. And find freedom he did. Historical records indicate that he was one of the founders of First Church in Beverly, where he and his family enjoyed worshiping freely and in peace. As evidence that he was a hard worker, another trait of the Puritans, he himself built the church’s meeting house. Because he wanted to keep his mind on God, Samuel had no use for ornate rituals or vestments, thus ensuring that the meeting house’s interior was kept spartan.
He carried his religious beliefs into his home by living a simple lifestyle, although it is known that he had some real estate holdings within the community. It is also known that he was fairly well off financially in his later years (which he interpreted as a blessing from God).
Samuel’s great-grandson Nehemiah, born in 1717, was the first of my family’s Cornings to settle in Connecticut. He was married twice, first to Mary Pride and then to Freelove Bliss, the mother of Uriah Corning. It’s unknown whether Uriah, born in 1758, followed a traditional Puritan lifestyle of hard work, but it is certain that he heeded the call to arms after Congress voted to accept the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
Uriah’s ancestors had found religious freedom but he, like other Colonists, yearned for political and economic freedom. He sensed that the appropriate time for breaking the chains of domination by the British Empire—and the time for liberty—was looming on the horizon like a huge bonfire. And when the time came to fight the Redcoats, Uriah eagerly participated.
Benjamin Corning, Uriah’s uncle, faced unexpected tragedy too soon for him to live in a free America or even to participate in the war for very long. According to records of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), after he joined the Continental Army the British captured him and placed him with thousands of other captured Continental soldiers on one of the British prison ships. His ship, the HMS Jersey, was moored in New York Harbor, and its crowded, unsanitary conditions were notoriously horrible. Because they had little food and no medical provisions, many of these unfortunate prisoners of war died on the ship. That’s what happened to Private Benjamin Corning, who died in 1783, the year in which the British surrendered at Yorktown. The Jersey was abandoned not long thereafter.
Uriah had much better luck than Benjamin in fighting the Redcoats and surviving the war. He served the Colonies in several capacities, according to data obtained from the Veterans Administration (Certificate 3543 issued December 26, 1832). His first assignment was as a private in Colonel Samuel Sheldon’s regiment, in which he served in the Battle of Long Island—the first major conflict of the Revolution—and the Battle of York Island.
Following these conflicts, he became a mariner for five months on board the Confederacy, a Continental frigate whose main job was to protect convoys. It was under the command of Captain Seth Harding. The primary task of personnel on board was to discreetly raid British merchant ships. It was dangerous work, but Uriah came through unscathed. After receiving his honorable discharge, signed by General Washington himself, he returned to Preston. Here he and his wife, the former Elizabeth Willett, raised their family. Along with other former Colonists, they cheered heartily in 1789 when George Washington was sworn in as America’s first President.
In 1868, a descendant of the first Corning in America became entwined in the Peckham family tree. In that year, Ann Matilda Corning, granddaughter of Uriah and Elizabeth, married James Riley Peckham of Norwich, Connecticut. As a result, two clans with deep roots in New England were forever united. Ann Matilda became the mother of my grandfather, Frank E. Peckham, and thus my father’s grandmother.
Like the Cornings, Granddad’s ancestors from the Peckham side of his family also served in the War of Independence. DAR records show that John Peckham of Rhode Island served with Colonel Archibald Crary’s regiment in 1776, but he was not permitted to see action in battle because of his advanced age. His wife was the former Deborah Sweet. Their son, William Sweet Peckham was married to the former Hannah Clark. In 1777, William Sweet Peckham, a sergeant, took part in a daring raid. “Barton’s Raid,” as it was called, became an esteemed episode in the history of the state of Rhode Island. DAR records note William’s participation:
William Sweet Peckham served six years during the American Revolution and was one of the members of the raid [which was composed of approximately 40 men] which crossed Narragansett Bay with [Lieutenant Colonel William] Barton and captured [British General Richard] Prescott.
Documents on file with the Rhode Island Historical Society describe the raid in more detail:
On a moonless night in July, the forty or so Continentals boarded five whale boats and silently rowed from Warwick Neck to Aquidneck Island, their destination. After coming ashore, they quietly crept inward to the home in which General Prescott was known to be staying. Upon reaching the house, they overpowered the general’s sentries, then broke down the door into the general’s bedroom and took the astonished man captive. When the politicians who made up the Continental Congress heard about this feat, they were duly impressed. They expressed appreciation to Barton and his men and then presented the colonel with an elaborate engraved sword.
Granddad Peckham was immensely proud of the valiant Revolutionary War soldiers on both sides of his family. He expressed his own patriotism by enlisting in the Connecticut National Guard, with which he served during World War I. He never failed to display the American flag in front of his home on patriotic holidays.
In addition to their patriotism, the Peckhams, like the Cornings, were noted for their firm religious convictions. Granddad believed that the thirteenth century Archbishop of Canterbury, John Peckham, was an ancestor of ours, although he never could obtain the documentation to prove it.
Nevertheless, the Archbishop appears to have had a keen interest in his name’s history. According to Stephen Farnum Peckham, author of Quotes from the Peckham Family Genealogy, the Archbishop had insight into the origin of the family name, as shown in the following words that appear in this famous clergyman’s writings:
In a dim and unremembered past—and from which no record remains—an Anglo-Saxon reared his dwelling on the crest of a hill on the North Downs, in southwest Kent, and called it ‘Peac House,’ for which the English equivalent is ‘Peak House,’ or ‘House on the Peak.’
The Archbishop lived in the thirteenth century, long before the Reformation and the subsequent founding of the Church of England, and was a devout Roman Catholic. He was a member of the Franciscans, a Catholic order known for its humility and simplicity. Nevertheless, and probably a bit ironically, after his death he was buried in a prominent and ornate crypt at the big Canterbury Cathedral near London, which was far from simple.
In addition to knowing the name’s origin, the Archbishop undoubtedly had considerable knowledge of noted Peckhams who preceded him, such as the following ones interestingly described in Stephen Farnum Peckham’s Genealogy:
Under the Roman kings, Robert de Peckham [the de came as a result of the Norman Conquest] was Chaplain to Henry 1. Hugo de Peckham was constable of Turnbridge Castle. His sons, Peter and John de Peckham, went on the 3rd Crusade, and came home with Richard Coeur de Leon [Lion Hearted] from the Siege of Acre, in 1191. It was there that the two brothers won their Coat of Arms by their valor and bravery. The families of the two brothers have bourne Arms since that date. Peter de Peckham is regarded to have been the ancestor of the Denham Peckhams, while John de Peckham is considered the ancestor of the Yaldham Peckham branch [my family’s branch]….
The first of our Yaldham Peckham ancestors to set foot on American soil, another John Peckham, was born in the Parish of Boxgrove in England. In 1634, he was appointed Chaplain to the Earl of Hertford. But because of disenchantment with the Church of England, which he felt had become too powerful and domineering, he renounced Anglicanism and sailed for America that same year. Like so many other English seekers of religious liberty, he lived first in Massachusetts, where he practiced the Baptist faith. At that time, the Puritans were persecuting Baptists in Massachusetts, so this esteemed and well-educated clergyman had not yet found the religious freedom he had sought by journeying to the New World.
His luck changed, though, when he became the friend of a Baptist minister named John Clarke, who had sailed from England to Massachusetts with his sister, Mary. Upon getting to know them, John Peckham became a compatriot of Reverend Clarke’s in the cause of religious liberty—and fell in love with his charming sister, whom he married in 1638. That same year, Roger Williams, founder of the first Baptist church in Rhode Island, and a close friend of Reverend Clarke’s, invited John Peckham and his bride to settle in Rhode Island, where, in 1644, John became one of the founders of First Baptist Church of Newport. Four years later, he was one of ten male members in full communion with the church.
He and Mary had five children; after she died, he married Eleanor Weaver, with whom he had seven children. God had finally blessed John with his true religious calling and with many offspring. It’s little wonder that the surname “Peckham” is so common in Rhode Island.
Ann Matilda, Dad’s grandmother, exemplified the good traits of both sides of her family. She devoutly practiced the Baptist faith of her Peckham ancestors, but she also abided by the Puritan work ethics of her Corning ancestors. For example, as a teenager she worked as a typesetter in Hartford for the Evening Press, during the struggle between the North and South when labor was scarce. In 1865, the year of President Lincoln’s assassination, she worked all night long to set up type for a story of the assassination, family records proclaim. She carried this talent for industriousness with her throughout her life. For example, she often arose before dawn to pull weeds from her flower garden and perform other household tasks. “Land sakes, folks would think I was lazy if I stayed abed,” she often declared.
Like his mother, Granddad was a Baptist. His wife, the former Frances Lila Beckwith, was a member of that faith as well. Granddad’s serious romance with Frances, however, was not his first, as was common knowledge among his kin. His first love was a beautiful girl from the Island of Majorca who, my father once told me, “temporarily stole his heart away.” He had met her during one of his travels to faraway places. When their long-distance romance faded and eventually ended, he turned his attentions to Frances, a local girl who had probably been waiting patiently for him a long time. A strong-faced woman with bright, determined eyes, she seemed to be a prototype of a stalwart Connecticut Yankee.
Granddad and Frances were married in 1894, and their marriage was happy, by all accounts. No doubt they lived in a tidy house and ate very well. Frances was noted for her thorough housekeeping and excellent cooking. In fact, my Aunt Mary, a resident of Newport, Rhode Island, wrote an article in 1989 for The Newport Daily News in which she extolled her mother’s delectable Fourth of July dinners:
Mother put fresh salmon into a cheesecloth bag for steaming. In the meantime, she made a cream sauce, with hard-boiled cut-up eggs in it. Small new potatoes were peeled for boiling. Peas were cooked with salt pork, which gave them that extra good Yankee flavor. When the potatoes were done, melted butter was poured over them and chopped parsley sprinkled on them. When all was ready, our family sat down to eat a delicious meal—tiny white potatoes, goodly servings of salmon covered with the cream and egg sauce, and a soup plate filled with fresh peas, a bit of salt pork, and some of the tasty liquid from the cooking. How my mouth waters as I remember one of the traditional and delicious meals prepared by my wonderful Yankee cook—my mother.
A couple of Frances’s other specialties were parsnip stew and turkey with oyster stuffing, but she got help from Granddad when it came to preparing clams. In regard to culinary skills he was no slouch, at least as far as clambakes were concerned. He acquired the title of “bakemaster” and put on clambakes annually for the United Commercial Travelers of eastern Connecticut, as well as for family and friends. These events often took place at Poquetanock Cove, which was near Preston and named after the Indian tribe that at one time inhabited that area of the state.
Frances was known to be a kind, but strict, mother who made sure that her children attended church on Sundays. My father, his brother Oliver, and his sisters Mary and Mildred were brought up in the Central Baptist Church in Norwich, where they always wore their Sunday-best clothes. For my dad, this consisted of knickers, long black socks, a clean pressed shirt, a fancy bow tie, and polished brown-leather shoes. Often after the conclusion of church services, Frank, Frances, and their four children would stroll down to Ann Matilda’s house.
They didn’t have far to go. As Ann often said, “My house is just down the road apiece from my son’s house, and it has shade trees aplenty in the front yard.” They all lived on Corning Road, which was named for their Revolutionary War ancestors. These Sunday visits were imprinted in the memories of all the grandchildren, but they especially impressed my father’s younger sister, Aunt Mary. She reverently recalls them in a reminiscence she wrote:
A Sunday afternoon treat was a visit to Grandma’s parlor, which was permeated with the sweet scent of the potpourri she regularly made by crushing dried rose leaves and placing them in jars. Family portraits hung on the walls, and a large family Bible was on the table. With a feeling of awe, I would walk through the room to the front entry, where I was allowed to play the gramophone. How mysteriously melodious it sounded to my childish ears when hymns such as “Rock of Ages” and “Nearer My God to Thee” came forth.
Granddad’s religious faith, nurtured in his childhood, sustained him when he faced the loss of his son Oliver (“Ollie”), who died at the age of twenty-nine after succumbing to a respiratory illness. My father was also devastated by this tragic loss, since he and Ollie were always quite close to each other. The two brothers had often fished together at ponds between Westerly and Norwich, such as Long Pond, Factory Hill Pond, and Lantern Hill Pond, where the perch and pickerel were usually plentiful.
Only two years after Ollie breathed his last painful breath, another tragedy struck the family: the death of Frances, who died of what was believed to be a broken heart. She was not as strong as she looked, at least not emotionally. Her first child, Jamie—the brother my father never had a chance to meet—had died in infancy, and she never completely got over that loss. And now Ollie had been taken away. For a long time to come, the deaths of Frances and Ollie enveloped the remaining members of the family in a melancholic shroud.
Nevertheless, like the Shetucket River, Granddad’s life eventually flowed onwards. A few years after losing his wife, he started courting a vivacious widow, Watie Ann Whiting. She and her husband had been longtime friends of Granddad and Frances. After they were married, and after an inevitable period of adjustment, Watie Ann was welcomed into the lives of my father and his sisters the way Connecticut welcomes spring flowers.
My father maintained fond memories of Grandmother Whiting, as everyone referred to her, a stout, good-natured lady who always made us grandchildren feel welcome. She didn’t know as many recipes as Frances (who died when I was two), such as the turkey with oyster stuffing for which Frances was famous. Grandma Whiting’s specialty was freshly baked cookies. The wonderful odor of vanilla, molasses, and ginger surrounded us as soon as we stepped inside the front door during our Connecticut visits, and I knew she would keep the two big cookie jars filled as long as we children were there.
During those summertime visits, my grandparents’ two-story, sprawling farmhouse in eastern Connecticut would be surrounded by scarlet zinnias and bright orange marigolds, among which butterflies danced like tiny ballerinas. The family had moved from Dad’s childhood home soon before I was born, so it wasn’t the same house in which he had grown up. This one was set on smaller acreage than his boyhood home, but Granddad continued to produce vegetables and flowers for local markets. The Peckham clan got together traditionally on the Fourth of July. No matter where we lived in the United States, my father made it a point to get into the car and drive my mother, brother, and me to his father’s house for the July Fourth holiday (it also happened to be Granddad’s birthday).
My father enjoyed being back in his home state, and my brother and I looked forward to playing with our cousins: Kent and Diane Lawrence, the children of Aunt Mary and her husband Dick, a navy dentist; and Gage and Carol Durling, the son and daughter of Aunt Mildred and her husband Ed, a civilian dentist whose practice was in Belmont, Massachusetts.
All four cousins were younger than Howie and I. Although his hair darkened somewhat by the time he was a teenager, Kent’s hair in his childhood was as golden as the corn in Granddad’s vegetable garden. A graduate of Annapolis, he had a navy career, like his dad, except that Kent’s career encompassed many months of submarine training in New London and subsequent submarine duty. Gage, a cute-faced but mentally retarded little boy, died in childhood. I have kept in touch over the years with Diane and Carol.
At dawn on July Fourth, Granddad—always an early riser—would raise the beautiful American flag in front of his house. Before noon, large folding tables would be set up under tall maple trees in the backyard, where we would eat our picnic lunch. Our plates would be loaded with green salad, baked beans, “cawn on the cob,” as Granddad would say, and delicious molasses cookies that Grandma Whiting had baked. In the afternoon, we children would set off a few firecrackers. And we never failed to play with the farm menagerie, which one summer included a huge sow and her tiny, newborn piglets.
I had an animal encounter of another sort that was not fun at all, however; it was really frightening. Mounted on a wall in Granddad’s sitting room was a stuffed moose’s head, which he had acquired on a hunting trip. He was proud of it, but to me its wide antlers and protruding face were large and scary. One night I dreamed that a mooing sound came out of its mouth. When I awoke from that portentous dream and heard Granddad’s cow mooing impatiently in the backyard, I was greatly relieved. Since then, I’ve been glad my father stayed with the sport of fishing and never took up hunting!
Whenever darkness began to creep over the farm, my brother, my cousins, and I would light our sparklers and Roman candles and then send them off into the sky, as if they were rockets headed towards Mars. Later, in the cozy sitting room on the first floor, Granddad sometimes told us fascinating stories about his youth, his blue eyes shining like stars. “I enjoyed boxing as a young man,” he once told us. “In one of my bouts, I knocked out a former champion from England.” We were very impressed.
As I mentioned earlier, Granddad Peckham also enjoyed traveling in his younger days. He usually paid for the trips by working his way. For example, he worked on the night boat from New London to New York City. “The city pubs were a welcome sight when I got off the boat in the morning,” he said. “They served beer, rye bread, pickles, and cheese, all for five cents.” Once he worked on a freighter that sailed to Caracas, Venezuela.
He had enjoyed these travels because they enabled him to gain insight into what his life’s work should be. He concluded that he wanted to be “out in nature with the good earth,” as he described it, helping things grow and then reaping the rewards of his labor. In his middle years, he relegated most of the farm chores to hired helpers and slowed down his outdoor activities a bit, especially the physically taxing chore of moving a big plow through the cornfield. I watched him do this on more than one occasion. I saw a determined-looking man with arms as strong as steel, forcefully guiding his plow through packed brown soil. On sunny days, he often wore a big straw hat to shade his face.
Granddad stayed reasonably well during his later years, until he reached the age of ninety-one. By that time, he was more than ready to “meet my Lord,” as he often said. He died four years later after his left leg became infected and had to be amputated, causing him to go into shock.
Dad and his father had always enjoyed a close relationship, for which Dad would be forever grateful. Often during his army career, nostalgic thoughts about his father and Connecticut would enter Dad’s mind, like rays of sun lending brightness to a shade-covered landscape. This was especially true when he was a young lieutenant and was ordered to serve in a faraway American colony—the exotic and tropical Philippine Islands.
First, though, he had to complete his education. After graduating from Norwich Free Academy, a school with high scholastic standards (it even required prospective students to take entrance examinations), he received an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His boyhood daydream about a career in the U.S. Army would soon become a reality.
Chapter 2: Army Engineers in the Great Depression
People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.—ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
On battlefields throughout Europe, the thunderous sound of artillery finally ended. Replacing it, in addition to a ghostly silence, was the awareness that the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II had been defeated. An armistice signed on the eleventh of November 1918 assured that Germany’s defeat was official. To many people in the United States and abroad, the “war to end all wars,” which shook the world for four long years, had been senseless. So many young Europeans, representing several different countries, had lost their lives in battle. Thousands of American soldiers had died, too, after obeying the directives of President Woodrow Wilson and crossing the Atlantic to help save the citizens of Europe.
The West Pointers who graduated in November of 1918 celebrated the end of World War I with clapping, cheering, and joyful celebrations. Because the war was still raging while they were at West Point, two classes graduated that year—first in June and again in November. My father was one of those newly commissioned second lieutenants who graduated in November. He had appreciated his studies (especially mathematics) and had enjoyed the drills, parades, and other aspects of cadet life. Unlike some of his city-bred classmates, arising at dawn every day had been no problem for him, since he had done that throughout his childhood on his dad’s farm.
My father corresponded as much as possible with his parents, and his letters were generally enthusiastic. While he was growing up, he had regularly attended services with them at Central Baptist Church in Norwich, so they approved highly when he wrote of his consistent church attendance at West Point on Sundays and membership in the cadet choir. They were also pleased when he wrote that he firmly believed in the West Point code of honor: “A cadet does not lie, cheat, or steal—nor tolerate those who do.” Along with the firmly entrenched religious convictions he had held since boyhood, my father suspected that the code of honor would serve as his moral guideline for the rest of his life, as it did.
Although the war was over by the time his years at West Point ended, Dad’s studies did not end. He and other high-achieving second lieutenants who had graduated into the Corps of Engineers reported soon after graduation to the U. S. Army Engineer School in Virginia, which had a curriculum known to be rigorous and demanding. Even though he had been awarded a bachelor’s degree from West Point, he looked forward to continuing his studies. Also, he revered military engineering and knew that military engineers had played a vital role in overseeing the construction of buildings, fortifications, canals (including the Panama Canal), and other structures that had made America great. He was overjoyed about becoming part of that history.
In addition to basic construction classes, battlefield engineering was an important part of his course of study. During the summer of 1919, he and his engineering school classmates visited Europe to inspect the battlefields in France and Germany. They focused primarily on the engineering aspects of battlefields, which involved learning to build bridges, construct airfields, transport troops across rivers, lay roads, and destroy enemy fortifications in a combat-style environment. They were aware that these and other engineering tasks could be better learned on the actual battlefields of World War I than in classrooms.
Like most of the young men in his group, my father had never before traveled outside the United States, so he was glad for the opportunity to come face-to-face with the culture of the Old World. He recalled years later that he and the other officers were, for the most part, welcomed politely in postwar Europe. French people fondly remembered the Americans, many of whom were very young and had cheeks as fresh as apples on Brittany’s trees, who had come to help them during the war.
At Bellicourt in northern France, the group saw the location of an offensive that had taken place in September 1918. Here troops from the United States had boldly charged through Germany’s Hindenburg Line, which subsequently crumbled like a wall of clay. The Germans had built that intricate system—composed of barbed wire, wide trenches, long tunnels, concrete bunkers, and machine gun pads—thinking it would be impenetrable. They were greatly mistaken. Although the offensive had been a success, American casualties had been so heavy at Bellicourt that a cloud of sadness hung over Dad’s group as they walked along the dusty roads surrounding it.
After graduating from the engineering school in June 1920 and receiving his promotion to first lieutenant, Howard was ordered to report to the Missouri School of Mines, located in the small town of Rolla. The school, which emphasized the study of mining engineering and metallurgy, was later incorporated into the University of Missouri system. Here he served as an instructor in military science and tactics in the Reserved Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) department. At the completion of his two-year assignment, he enjoyed a similar position at the nearby University of Kansas. These Midwest assignments were not only very pleasant interludes; they bolstered his leadership image among his superiors. They now saw him as a very professional officer who was also an excellent instructor. These assessments would serve him well in the future.
In February 1923 my father boarded a transport vessel and made the long journey across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippine Islands, his next station. The Philippines, made up of seven thousand islands of various sizes and shapes, had been a colony of the United States since 1900. (For three hundred years prior to that date, it had been a colony of Spain.) A strong American military presence was evident throughout this humid land of mangoes, papayas, and milky coconuts.
Several West Point graduates who became well-known generals during World War II served in the Philippine Islands earlier in their careers—including Jonathan M. Wainwright, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Douglas MacArthur. They and other officers learned that it wasn’t an easy country in which to navigate. Like the Spanish before them, Americans in the colonial days inherited an archipelago of dense jungles and deep ravines. Residents of the various islands depended on small boats, which often moved slowly through murky water, to communicate with each other —especially in the early years.
When Dad’s ship sailed gently into Manila Bay, located off the big island of Luzon, he paced slowly along the deck to get a better look at the city as its sprawling Spanish-style buildings became more and more visible. He also observed the hilly terrain far away to his left, where his first assignment would be—the Bataan Peninsula. It looked dark and mysterious as he glanced at it through a haze-covered sky.
In the weeks to follow, he spent sweltering days in the tropical sun working with other army engineers on a topographical survey of Bataan. The hot climate and exotic wildlife were quite different from the mild spring weather and domesticated animals of Norwich. “When I was a lieutenant in the Philippines,” he told me once, “I used to watch lizards dash across the ceiling as I lay in bed at the end of a hard day.” Sometimes while he was resting, he could hear American soldiers singing in the distance, quite often an old song that pokes fun at the challenges of weather and wildlife in the Philippines.
Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga,
Oh, the monkeys have no tails,
They were bitten off by whales,
Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga.
Oh, the carabou have no hair in Mindanao,
Oh, the carabou have no hair,
Holy smoke, but they are bare,
Oh, the carabou have no hair in Mindanao.
Upon completion of the topographical survey in June 1923, my father was ordered to command Company A, 14th Engineers, at Fort William McKinley, a few miles southeast of Manila. He now lived only a short distance from the city, so he learned to know it quite well. In those years Manila was busy and bustling, and all kinds of vehicles inched their way through crowded, narrow streets. Pith-helmeted policemen stood under the shade of umbrellas as they bravely directed automobiles, horse-drawn carriages, and bicycles through heavy traffic. Women in colorful long dresses, escorted by gentlemen in white tropical suits, chatted with each other in a mixture of Spanish and English. Many buildings sported big signs above their doors, indicating that a dentist, a shoe shop, or some other business occupied the premises. Dad was fascinated by the noise and commotion of it all. For relaxation, he enjoyed spending occasional evenings in the attractive Army and Navy Club, located near Manila Bay, where he could socialize with other American officers.
An interesting change in assignment and climate came in December when Dad was assigned as aide-de-camp to Major General Omar Bundy, commander of the Philippine Division and an honorable veteran of the Spanish-American War, Philippine Insurrection, and World War I. The Philippine Division, established only a year earlier, was composed mostly of Filipino enlisted men led by officers of the U.S. Army. Then and in the future, an American general commanded the division.
My father’s appointment as the general’s aide ultimately had a big effect on his career and on his personal life, as described later in this chapter. For this assignment, he was transferred to the cool, pine-tree-laden area of Camp John Hay at Baguio, in the mountains of northern Luzon. The locale provided a welcome relief from the humidity of Manila. When time permitted, he played golf on the beautiful eighteen-hole course at the camp.
In July 1924 my father returned with General Bundy to Fort Hayes, Ohio, where he continued to be the general’s aide. At this post, named after a man from Ohio who served as President of the United States, General Bundy commanded the V Corps Area. While acting as aide to the general, my father grew fond of the wonderful Bundy family and joined them during some delightful social occasions. Serving as commander of the V Corps was General Bundy’s his last assignment before he retired in 1925, and he now lies at rest in Arlington Cemetery with his wife, Addie Harden Bundy. Mrs. Bundy had always treated my father, a young bachelor living far away from his family, with kindness and hospitality, which he had greatly appreciated.
Dad would become even closer to another family. That story began when he became acquainted with Marion MacFarlane Shaw, the lovely stepdaughter of then-Colonel Frederick B. Shaw and his wife Mary Bell, who lived in pleasant quarters at Fort Hayes. For my father, it was almost a case of love at first sight.
One clear, sunny day while he was playing golf on the post’s course, someone introduced them to each other. He was immediately drawn to her large brown eyes and shiny brown tresses, as well as her demure persona. A bang that swept across the left side of her forehead added to that persona. His outgoing sisters Mildred and Mary were blue-eyed and blond, like him. He enjoyed a close relationship with them, but this girl was someone different—and very intriguing.
Marion, my mother-to-be, was first enticed by my father’s military bearing and air of self-confidence and poise. “The expression on his face was very serious,” she once told me. Upon first meeting him, she wondered if he had any sense of humor at all. Before too long, that perception would change. When he began courting her, she noticed there was a sparkle about him whenever he laughed at a joke. He would lean his head way back, revealing an upper jaw filled with straight white teeth.
Their dates often consisted of attending parties at the post’s officers’ club, where they learned about each other’s love of poetry, singing, dancing, and listening to music. My father had a fine singing voice, as did my mother. She had been educated at the Washington Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia, and the New England Conservatory of Music. In addition to being a fine singer, she was an outstanding pianist.
My mother was glad that Dad enjoyed playing golf, but she was especially impressed that he, like most aides, exhibited correct protocol and impeccable manners when dealing with superior officers and their wives. This quality particularly stood out whenever he dined with her and her family at their home or at the Officers’ Club.
Then-Colonel Shaw approved of Dad from the start, as did his wife Bell, even though my mother’s early life was quite different from Howard’s. She was born in the rugged gold-rush town of Dawson, in the Yukon Territory. Her grandfather, Judge Joseph Davis of Helena, Montana, had traveled there in search of gold and to pursue other financial ventures. Living with him in Canada—just a temporary locale for them—were his wife, Flora, and his four children.
Joseph’s elder daughter, my grandmother-to-be Mary Bell (called “Bell” by her family), soon caught the eye of a Canadian man of Scottish descent. Consequently, she and Robert MacFarlane were married in 1900. Only two years after my mother’s birth in 1902, Robert suddenly died of what was believed to be an overdose of medication. It was a sad end to what turned out to be a very short marriage.
Mother didn’t forget the surname with which she was born, however, or what it represented. For the rest of her life, she maintained a fondness for Scotland, the land of highlands and heather. In fact a poem, Jean, by her favorite poet Robert Burns, influenced her choice of a name for me.
Bell was grief stricken for a long time after Robert’s death, but in 1908 she met and married Frederick Shaw, a career army officer she had met while on a visit to the Philippines, where he was stationed at the time. In addition to raising my mother, Frederick Shaw raised the four children born from his marriage to Bell. Mother’s half-sister, Barbara, was eight years younger than she. Both ended up marrying West Point graduates who pursued military careers; otherwise, they were as different as summer and winter. Mother often had to watch her weight, whereas Barbara usually stayed as thin as a reed, with little effort. Sometimes their personalities clashed.
On the other hand, Mother got along well with her three half-brothers, and they thought the world of her. The oldest, Fred (Frederick B. Shaw, Jr.), was born in 1913, when my mother was already eleven years old. Bob (Robert) was born in 1916, and Dan (Daniel) was born in 1919. All three graduated from the University of Michigan prior to the war and received army commissions. Fred (nicknamed “Buzz” by the family) graduated in 1934 and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel during World War II. After the war, he worked as a business executive and lived comfortably in the Chicago suburbs with his wife, the former Althea Doyle, and beautiful daughter, Valerie. Bob, who graduated in 1938, was the only brother to choose an army career. Like his father, he retired as a brigadier general.
Dan, the youngest, graduated in 1940; like his brothers, he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel during World War II. His postwar story, however, did not end happily. One day a few years after the war, a mole on his back that had never caused any trouble started to bleed and was diagnosed as cancerous. Treatments he received, including amputation of his right arm in order to strip the lymph nodes, were unsuccessful. The last time my parents and I saw Dan was at Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York, where he had gone for experimental care. When we were leaving, he cheerfully waved goodbye to us with his remaining hand and arm, but he passed away not long afterwards. I have never forgotten the bright smile and admirable courage he exhibited that day. He died at the age of thirty-seven, leaving behind his pregnant wife, Holly, and two small children.
Unlike her half-sister and three half-brothers, Mother didn’t attend a university, which she may have later regretted. She loved to read, though, and our two large mahogany bookcases were filled with The Harvard Classics, the works of Shakespeare, a collection of Robert Frost poems, and other good books my parents enjoyed reading. My father agreed with Henry Ward Beecher’s conclusion that “a house without books is like a room without windows.”
As I have already mentioned, Mother was musically inclined from an early age onward, so her education was in the field of music. Her mother, an excellent pianist, had brought a grand piano with her when she moved into Frederick Shaw’s home after their wedding, and it went with them everywhere they lived thereafter. She made sure that her elder daughter practiced regularly.
In the spring of 1925, Bell helped my mother prepare for her wedding. These preparations required so much time and attention that my mother’s piano playing and musical interests were temporarily put aside.
On Tuesday, June 16, 1925, my parents were married in the small chapel at Fort Hayes. The ceremony was conducted by John O. Lindquist, the post chaplain, in accordance with the rites of the Episcopal Church as contained in the Book of Common Prayer. Members of the Shaw and Peckham families were guests, along with several of my parents’ friends. My mother’s engagement ring was a small gold replica of Dad’s West Point class ring, which she wore together with her narrow, gold wedding band.
Soon after their wedding, the newlyweds drove to Connecticut for a visit with the Peckham clan. For my mother the visit was like a trip to another country. She wasn’t used to spending time in such a rural atmosphere and hearing long, serious conversations about vegetables. The strong New England accents (“pahk the cah”) seemed strange to her, also. Nevertheless, over the years she came to appreciate the Peckham family’s traditions, rootedness, and love of nature.
Occasionally during their marriage, Dad’s New England boyhood evidenced itself in things he would say, such as “These apples want to be eaten” or “These dishes want to be washed.” My mother and I would tease him playfully about his personification of inanimate objects. “Oh, I didn’t hear them speak,” we would say, or “Did they tell you that’s what they want?” He took the kidding in stride and laughed at himself, as he usually did whenever a joke was on him.
In September 1925, after bidding farewell to my mother’s parents and her family’s lumbering but affable dog, Goofy, the newlyweds moved from Fort Hayes. They had received the superb news that my father had been selected to attend the reputable Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. He firmly believed an officer’s education should be well rounded and geared towards learning as much as possible about other army branches, not just one’s own, so he looked forward to attending the school.
The students at the Infantry School were a tightly knit group known for their camaraderie and professionalism. My father liked that aspect of the school and its graduates, but he was not interested in leaving the Corps of Engineers at that time. After his graduation from Infantry School in May 1926, he completed a three-month engineering assignment at Fort Humphreys. Located in Fairfax County, Virginia, the fort was hot and dusty in the summer, but my mother, a new army wife trying to be a “good trooper,” put up with temporary facilities and the camp-like, barren environment. Now, it is called Fort Belvoir and is blessed with green lawns, beautiful trees, and sturdy, permanent buildings.
Fortunately for my mother, my father’s next assignment was superbly located. Starting in September 1926 and for the next four years, he was an engineering instructor at West Point. He was glad to be back at his alma mater, and he loved to teach. “I enjoy being in front of a classroom again,” he wrote to his family in nearby Connecticut. In a clear, firm voice he imparted engineering facts and procedures to young cadets.
When he wasn’t teaching, he and my mother enjoyed the friendly campus atmosphere and active social life. They would meet other young couples at various recreational facilities, or the couples would dine in each other’s homes. Whenever relatives came on a visit, my parents took them to local tourist spots, such as the Academy museum, where Indian relics, displays of uniforms, and presentation swords of famous generals were on display, along with other exhibits. Friends and family members particularly enjoyed watching the cadets march on the parade ground, a wide stretch of grassy land referred to as “The Plain.”
My parents’ favorite pastime, though, was taking walks alone and eating picnic lunches in scenic locations. While sitting on top of a grassy hill, they would munch on Swiss cheese sandwiches and look down at the tranquil waters of the Hudson River, which flowed calmly in the distance. They could see green forests lining the river, which, from a distance, looked like nubby carpets.
It was on an outing such as this that my mother gave her husband the good news that they were to become parents. Near the end of her pregnancy she visited Bell and Frederick Shaw, who had moved to Washington, DC. Thus my brother Howie was born on September 5, 1927, at historic Walter Reed Army Hospital, set amidst verdant acreage near the Maryland suburbs. Later, my mother joked that her son’s birth on Labor Day was “very appropriate.” She was glad his grandparents lived nearby and could drop by the hospital for visits. After she regained her strength, she brought Howie home to West Point, where she and my father resumed a tranquil life.
As my father would soon learn, events were far from tranquil in far-away Asia. In September of 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria. News of the invasion spread like wildfire throughout West Point’s academic buildings, although it was not unexpected. The faculty and students were well aware that Japan had maintained a foothold in China for some years while searching for new territory.