Sorry Steve,

I was rushed when I sent you the email. I don't think I have what you'd be interested in.  Any letters my Grandfather might have sent were destroyed after his death. He did start a diary while he was shipping overseas on the Olympic but he ended it before arriving in France and long before he was assigned to be an officer with the 369th.

Last summer I went out to Syracuse NY to visit with members of the 369th organization. The last of the vets died two years ago but its memory is kept alive by others. Currently they are pushing to get Henry Johnson a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor.

Harry

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Subj: Re: 369th  Date: 7/4/2002 7:33:34 AM Central Daylight Time From: slharris@sover.net To: A1Snowman@aol.com

Harry"  I do have a letter that George wrote to Maj. Little on Dec. 27, 1936 that's pretty interesting.  I'm at a stage in my book where I'm about write the events leading up to the Medal of Honor.

Merry Fourth,
Steve

From: A1Snowman@aol.com
To: slharris@sover.net
Subject: Re: 369th
Date: Fri, Jul 5, 2002, 12:29 AM

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Ohmygosh! Steve,

I've been trying to collect stuff about my grandfather off and on for years thus my foray to NY to meet people in the 369th organization.  I'd love to see the text of the letter he sent to Little. Was it in connection with Little's book?

My Grandfather's role was not a big one in the 369th but if you're looking for bits about him I think I can give you some interesting details which will dovetail nicely with your research. For instance, I was in NY NY last week and visited Columbia University. My Grandfather got a master's degree in History from Columbia in 1915 the same year that Birth of a Nation came out. One of his teachers was a guy named Dunning who, with a collection of like minded historians, helped reinterpret the Reconstruction era along the lines of the movie.  

I've been trying to get a better idea how his studies at Columbia affected my Grandfather especially when he later became an officer in the 369th. I've got some ideas about that.

I'd love it if you could send me a copy of the Little letter.  I'll send you a more complete essay on my Grandfather's history pre and post 369th.

I'll be very interested to see what you have to write about Sechault. What is the emphasis of your book?

Best regards,

Harry Robb Welty

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Subj: Re: 369th  Date: 7/5/2002 7:56:39 AM Central Daylight Time From: slharris@sover.net To: A1Snowman@aol.com Sent from the Internet (Details)

Harry:

Here's the letter.  And yes it had to do with Little's book.

Nov. 27, 1936
Dear Col Little:

    For the past three months I have been trying to find time to drop you a letter, but in that time, the trials of the Kansas politician have been many, and there have been a lot of things to do.
    First, let me express my thanks and gratitude to you for the autographed copy of "From Harlem to the Rhine," which came in due time.  If all the personnel of the regiment read it with as much interest as I did, it was the source of a lot of pleasure to a lot of people.  For me, it brought up a host of pleasant memories, and also many sad ones.  When I get to thinking of the many fine officers we left over there, particularly the one I knew intimately, the romance of that really glorious experience, fades in a hurry.
    This "expendable" was particularly grateful for some of the fine things you said about him in that book, and we hope that they have not given you a bad conscience.  However, I will always remember that when I was being carried off of the scene, one Major Little came to the side of the litter and said, "Lieut., you are a man after my own heart, and you have enough guts for ten men."  I have always contended that that was the highest complement I ever expected to have paid me on this Sphere, and one that has been repeated to few men.
        My good friends, R.J. Laubenguayer of the Salina Journal and Clif Stratton of the Topeka Capital, told me that you were in Topeka sometime during the last weeks of the campaign, but that I could not be found as I was out campaigning somewhere.  I am exceedingly sorry that I missed you, but as it turned out, it was a good thing that I put in a lot of time campaigning personally, as we took an awful licking here as elsewhere.  The National result was not unexpected, but the loss of the Governor and Lieut. Gov. here was unlooked for.  However, the other Republican state officials rode the storm.  My majority was not anything to brag about but the official count gave me 17,130.
    Around last march, Col. Hayward came through Topeka and I had a delightful visit with him.  He has lost none of his old time charm, as if I had been a long lost son, he could not have been more cordial.  John Dunlap is with the Merdian Creamery at Hutchinson, Kansas, and we hold a Council if War every time we meet.  He is the only man of the old outfit who is within shooting distance.  Just yesterday, I had a letter from J. Hal Connor,  from whom I have not heard since shortly after the war.
    I was very sorry that I could attend your party on the 14th.  That would have been a joy indeed, but a political campaign is hard on a slim pocket book, and not withstanding the results of the election, I am still Scotch enough to sincerely believe that Budgets should be balanced.
    Again, Many thanks for the book.  The two Robb boys, who happen to be girls, eight and ten, will no doubt treasure it also.
    Sincerely yours,
    George Robb

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From: A1Snowman@aol.com
To: slharris@sover.net
Subject: Re: 369th
Date: Fri, Jul 5, 2002, 11:58 AM

Mr. Harris,

What a great letter! My Mother; George Robb's daughter, Georganne, and one of the two girls he mentioned; was just up visiting and I told her about your email.  She left a few moments ago but I've forwarded the letter via email to my sister who lives with her.  She'll get a big kick out of it.

Tell me more about your project and how you happened to come into possession of the letter.

Harry

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Subj: Re: 369th  Date: 7/5/2002 12:30:05 PM Central Daylight Time From: slharris@sover.net To: A1Snowman@aol.com Sent from the Internet (Details)

Harry:

I'm a writer.  One day I was reading letters that my great uncle had written while with the old 7th NY Regiment in WWI.  Fascinating, humorous, brilliant.  He was a magazine illustrator and during the war was the art editor of Gas Attack, the 27th Empire Division magazine.  I figured there ought to be a story.  Researched the idea and wrote a book on the 7th Regiment in the war, "Duty, Honor, Privilege: New York's Sulk Stocking Regiment and the Breaking of the Hindenburg Line," published last year by Brassey's."  (Amazon.com has some stuff on it.)  In doing so, I decided to write two more books on NYC's regiments in the Great War.  The old 15th, the Hell Fighters was a natural because many of the officers where transfers from the 7th, including Little.  So I've been hanging out with Bill Miles, the historian of the 369th and filmmaker who did "Men of Bronze."  My book is about done.  110,000 words so.  I'm on the outskirts of Sechault and so your grandfather is about to jump into the picture.

My next book will follow the old 69th, the Fighting Irish of Father Duffy and Joyce Kilmer.  

Best, Steve

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From: A1Snowman@aol.com
To: slharris@sover.net
Subject: Re: 369th More on G. Robb
Date: Mon, Jul 8, 2002, 1:22 AM

Steve,

I don't know if you've checked out my web page but I've been putting stuff about my grandfather on it.

I also wrote some email to Mr. Howe of the 369th about my grandfather. He's the fellow I email occasionally about Henry Johnson and other 369th matters.

I discovered from the 369th that my Grandfather was sent in to replace black officers who were sent away despite the objections of Col. Haywood.  

My Grandfather was a 30 year old single man and school principal when he volunteered to fight on the principle of "my country right or wrong."  This is immensely ironic. When I was an elementary student he lectured me never to vote for a Democrat because he had done it once and "It was the worst decision of my life." That's because he voted for W. Wilson because Woodrow had promised to keep America out of the war.

My Grandfather was a rock ribbed Kansas Republican. He used the standard line, repeated by Bob Dole in 1976, that Democrats always get America involved in wars.  Still, having voted for Wilson because he was opposed to our involvement in the war, he joined up immediately.

My grandfather grew up in rural Kansas. His father, Thomas, was also an ardent Republican. There was a slave in town, Larry Lapsley. (I have his story on my website as told by my Grandfather) Larry escaped from Texas during the Civil War and was a presence in the town when my Grandfather was growing up. My Great Grandfather, Thomas Robb, was one of the men who helped prepare his body for burial after Lapsley died.  Afterwards, he came home muttering about what an evil institution slavery had been.

When Thomas's family entered New York Harbor in 1860 from Ireland they asked for the day's news. They were told that one of the Southern states had just seceded from the Union.  I think Thomas was only 12 at the time and the Civil War loomed large in his growing up. About the time my Grandfather was born  in 1887, Thomas spent some precious money to buy the two part autobiography of US Grant. They are currently sitting on my bookshelf.

When I was a kid I knew that my Grandfather was fascinated by Civil War History and I would buy him books on the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Grandfather once strongly disagreed when I told him that my fifth grade teacher had said Lee was a better general than Grant because Grant was a butcher of his men.

My Grandfather wanted to advance his education to get a better job before the war and was admitted to Columbia University to get his Master's degree in history. I told you I visited Columbia a week ago to do some research. I just found out that one of his teachers was William A. Dunning.

In the great book on Reconstruction by, Eric Foner, a current Columbia history professor, I discovered that Dunning and a collection of academics at Columbia led the charge to reinterpret the Reconstruction period in a manner consistent with D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation." They may even have influenced how D.W. told the story of reconstruction. In other words they helped convinced America that the South had been badly treated after the war and that Negro legislatures had helped screw things up.  It was the Gone with the Wind view of things that lives with us still.

Birth of a Nation was released in 1915 the same year my Grandfather earned his degree. I'm sure that what he heard in Columbia was in stark contrast with what he learned growing up in Salina, Kansas.

So, three years later, after hearing about the evils of post war black rule in the South, he was an officer in France waiting to be assigned to an army unit. The word in his camp was that a "crack Texas outfit" was in need of a few officers. Every officer in my Grandfather's camp was eager to get the assignment and my Grandfather was chosen.  Who knows what he thought when he discovered that his crack Texas outfit was the 369th a unit assigned to the French 4th Army no less.

I'm sorry to say that years later he adopted the standard white liberal line that blacks were good fighting men as long as they were led by white officers. I'm sure he encountered resentment from some of the remaining black officers when he was in the 369th. Frankly who could blame them for their resentment?

My mother once asked him if he was ever afraid to go out on patrol with his black soldiers and he replied, "What do you think?" That seems to be a confirmation that he wasn't certain what to expect from his men.

I have a glowing speech he gave about the worth of black soldiers as fighting men. He gave it to a group of white leaders in Topeka, Kansas back when he was State Auditor in the 1940's or 50's, that's where he adds the caveat about white officers.

My Grandfather came from a strong temperance family. He had never touched a drop of liquor in his life. Yet the French troops were routinely given port in their canteens. After he was shot up he felt a searing pain in his side. The bullet had passed through his canteen and the wine got into his wound. It was probably a wonderful antiseptic.

My Grandfather was a man of honor in the old fashioned sense. I'm certain he had good command qualities although his Midwestern upbringing made him as different from his Harlem troops as night is from day. I was hoping to talk to Mr. Miles to see if there were any recollections of him from any of his troops. I'd be surprised. The 369th's soldiers were quite right to celebrate their own accomplishments and my Grandfather was clearly an adoptee inflicted upon them late in their war.

I've read the MOH citation and Little's book and looked at maps of Sechault to try to envision what happened in the battle.  I know that one of the officers killed when my Grandfather was wounded was a fellow named Siebert, or something like that, and that my Grandfather liked him quite a lot.  

Little's book mentions that Grandfather was gassed in the aid station but I don't think he had any memory of that or at least he didn't tell his family if he did. It was news to my Mother. She remembered that he suffered nightmares and migraines after the war with one particular recurring dream about finding a disembodied head in the trenches. He didn't talk much about the war to my Mother's consternation.

When he came back home after the war he was informed that he had been awarded the Medal of Honor and he told the army officials to just mail it to him. He didn't regard himself as anything special. He always maintained that the honor was "political" and that lots of people had done more than he had.

Of course they made a big fuss out of him in Kansas.  Later he became the Salina Postmaster, appointed by Herbert Hoover, and was later appointed to fill the spot vacated by the Kansas State Auditor when the Democrat Auditor died in office. Governor Alf Landon appointed him. The letter you sent was from a couple of years later after Landon's crushing defeat against FDR.

When Governor Landon called him to his office shortly after he assumed the Auditor's office, he told my Grandfather to fire the Auditor's employees who had been appointed by his predecessor because they were Democrats. My Grandfather refused because, as he told Alf, they were good workers who knew what they were doing and he wouldn't hold their politics against them. This was during the Depression and I'm sure those jobs were dear.

Some of my Grandfather's Democrat employees were still working with him when he retired 24 years later. (and this from the man who told me never to vote for a Democrat!)

I'll be the first to buy your book. Good luck.

Sincerely,

Harry Welty

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Harry:

Thanks for the stuff on your grandfather.  The officer that was killed was George Seibel from Findlay, Ohio.  I'll keep you posted on the progress of my book.  You may want to check out my first book on the old Seventh Regiment, from Manhattan's silk stocking regiment.  The title is "Duty, Honor, Privilege"  A number of the Seventh's men transferred over to the old 15th, including Capt. Cobb, Arthur Little himself and a guy named John Clark who commanded the 2nd Battalion in the Meuse-Argonne fight.  I have a few of his letters.

Best, Steve