2018 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2017038349
ISBN 978-1-60635-331-8
Manufactured in the United States of America
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Snell, Mark A., author.
Title: Gettysburgs other battle : the ordeal of an American shrine during the First World War / Mark A. Snell.
Description: Kent, Ohio : The Kent State University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017038349 (print) | LCCN 2017039086 (ebook) | ISBN 9781631013065 (epub) | ISBN 9781631013072 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781606353318 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Gettysburg (Pa.)--History, Military--20th century. | World War, 1914-1918--Pennsylvania--Gettysburg. | Gettysburg National Military Park (Pa.)--History--20th century.
Classification: LCC F159.G5 (ebook) | LCC F159.G5 S64 2018 (print) | DDC 355.009748--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017038349
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For my sons
MARK HENRY SNELL,
Gettysburg High School, Class of 2001 and The Citadel, x2005
and
MATTHEW ALAN SNELL,
Gettysburg High School, Class of 2004 and
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2010
On the green they watched their sons
Playing till too dark to see,
As their fathers watched them once,
As my father once watched me
EDMUND BLUNDEN, 1920,
veteran of the Great War
During a field trip to Gettysburg National Military Park by the U.S. Military Academy Class of 1909, Cadet George S. Patton Jr. took the time to reflect on the momentous battle that had occurred in and around this small, yet historic town in southcentral Pennsylvania. Writing to his future wife on May 11, 1909, from the Eagle Hotel, which sat on the corner of Chambersburg and Washington Streets, Patton painted a mystical portrait of the battlefield. There is to me strange fascination in looking at the scenes of the awful struggles which raged over this country, he penned. A fascination and a regret. I would like to have been there too. He continued:
This evening after supper I walked down to the scene of the last and greatest struggle on Cemetery Hill. To get in a proper frame of mind I wandered through the cemetery and let the spirits of the dead thousands laid there in ordered rows, sink deep into me. Then just as the son [sic] sank behind the South Mountains I walked down to the scene of Picketts great charge and seated on a rock just where two of my great uncles died I watched the wonder of the day go out. The sunset painted a dull red the fields over which the terrible advance was made and I could almost see them coming growing fewer and fewer while around and behind me stood calmly the very cannon that had so punished them. There were some quail calling in the trees nearby and it seemed strange that they could do it where man had known his greatest and last emotions. It was very wonderful and no one came to bother me. I drank it in until I was quite happy. A strange
Six years later, in the midst of what Americans at the time called the Great European War, Cadet Edwin Kelton, USMA Class of 1915, likewise on a senior class trip, shared his own impression of the battlefield:
We had a glorious time at Gettysburg. The weather most of the time was ideal. Only when on top of the steel tower on Big Round Top did the mist get so thick that we could not see the battlefield. Monday morning we spent in driving over the field, reading tablets and trying to get an idea of how the fighting did take place. I cant say that we learned much in the way of tactics and how to lead troops, but at least we gained a wholesome respect for those boys and men who advanced in solid lines upon an infantry line that was hurling death at them, besides artillery sending out a steady stream of shrapnel. No, I have not much desire to see this country go to war again, but if the Germans dont wake up pretty soon I shall be forced to become an Ally.
The Germans, however, did not wake up, and many of these young West Pointers, including Patton and Kelton, would be called on to apply the lessons they learnedat the Academy and during their Gettysburg tourson European battlefields after Americas entry into the Great War, after Congress declared war on Imperial Germany the first week of April 1917. (In the following chapters, the terms Great War and World War are used interchangeably.) However, one graduate from the Class of 1915the so-called Class the Stars Fell Ona young man from Abilene, Kansas, by the name of Dwight David Eisenhower, would spend part of the conflict back in Gettysburg instead of France, where he yearned to serve.
Unknown to most Americans today, the site of the famous 1863 battle would become the location of two large U.S. Army camps in 1917 and 1918, temporary homes to thousands of young soldiers destined for the battlefields of France and Belgium. The soldiers would have a deleterious environmental impact on Gettysburg National Military Park, they would bring vice and crime to the famous little town, and they would unwittingly infect the citizens with a deadly disease that killed far more civilians than had the great battle fifty-five years earlier. But they also trained for, and some of them died in, Americas first great overseas conflict. Too, some were inspired by their short stay on the Civil Wars bloodiest battlefield.
This book merges two of my intellectual intereststhe American Civil War and World War Iunder one cover in an effort to understand how the influx of tens of thousands of American soldiers, not wearing blue or butternut and gray, but olive drab and khaki, changed the town of Gettysburg, the environment and the people who lived there. Some of the areas of inquiry include the temporary environmental effects created by those soldiersand their lodging, training, feeding, sanitary, and storage facilities, along with the tread of hundreds of horses, mules, and vehicleson an area that had become an American shrine. Also examined is the social and cultural interaction between those soldiers and the civilians (as well as their governmentlocal, state, and federal) who lived and worked in Gettysburg and the surrounding area. In addition, the impact of the Great War on Gettysburg and its environsaside from the influence of the two campsis assessed: the countys newspaper reporting on the war before and after the United States entry; the reaction of the citizenry and their efforts to support the war effort; and the countys human contribution to the armed forces and civilian relief agencies. Finally, the biological effects of the flood of thousands of uniformed outsiders descending on Gettysburg will be explored, especially when some of those soldiersfor the most part young and healthybrought an invisible killer to town: the Spanish influenza.
Kent, Ohio