Your letter received. Glad to head that you were all well and comfortable. But reports from _____ indicate that your cool weather was passed. I hope you have paid Senn [Note: Her brother] a visit. You couldn’t see much of Senn of course, but the poor cuss seemed very much in need of a bit of bracing up. I know the feeling. I fear that some of his past misdeeds are being resurrected at the Academy [Note: West Point military academy] , but don’t know. At any rate, some of his cockiness is being taken out of him all right. I hope you received the little souvenir I sent you when I first landed. Also that Sally got her cap. You may not recognize the old chap in the enclosed photo, standing on the left, your right, of the bald headed duck in civilian dress. On his right is a French General. We were saluting our National Air on July 14th, the French “Independence Day.”
C.C. Ballou
I am well, and believe I am doing fairly good work. Glad you are less bored by Mrs. Miller. I received a note from Miss Magruder telling me she has at least recovered “serial No. 770,” I hope she is content. Please write as often as you can and tell me all the news.
Love to Mamma and Sally. Address, “Arm. Ep. Forces, A.P.O. 766, via U.M. City.” That P.O. will not change unless I go to some other command. It is our number, wherever we may be in France.
Your loving dad.
Dear Bertha,
I am sure you will excuse my having opened this. There was none for me. Hope you are feeling pretty well and having a nice time. I sent Reba’s letter along, too.
[Note: He is unaware that his daughter Reba died four days earlier.]
My dear Specks,
Are you up today? I received the telegram ordering me to organize the 92nd Division. I wired Mamma and left Camp Dodge without a regret. I am much more comfortable here than I was doing last October.
I received your letter postcard October 3rd today and will at once mail Sally a pocketbook like the one _____ Bertha took Mamma. General Pétain gave me several little cupcakes, including these two ladies articles, a cigarette case, a jack knife and a pipe. [Note: Pétain would later become the head of Vichy France]. I don’t expect to command the 6th corps very long, as I fancy it will be thought that the 92nd _____ me worse than the corps does. In fact, the 92nd is likely to prove a hindrance to my advancement rather than a help.
I am well, have a good appetite, a good French Chef, and plenty to eat. Also, a very comfortable bed to sleep in. The big guns are booming tonight, but that is so much a matter of course that it has ceased to be a novelty, as have the attacks of dozens of anti-aircraft guns on the enemy’s planes or our own. I have never yet seem an airplane combat, though many have taken place on our front. In one our aviator got the _____. We found two officers in the wreck, a cavalry man and an artillery man, and the next day when the debris was moved a third of officer was found under it.
The New York Times on 10/27/1918
Everybody you know in the division is well. One of my War College classmates is my corps Chief of Staff. The war is not over yet by any means but I think Austria is crumbling. Turkey is bound to knock under soon. Austria will, I think, go to pieces. Charles will be the last Hapsburg Emperor and perhaps Wilhelm will be the last of the Hohenzollerns. It is the twilight of Kings and Emperors.
Charles I of Austria (1887 – 1922) was indeed the last ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
_____ these are wonderful days. Old John Bull is, as always, coming in strong on the homestretch. For bulldog tenacity, he can’t be beaten. The 92nd has not done anything very noteworthy, but it keeps on going. I have no idea where _____ is now. It is a big army that we now have ______ _____, more than two million, and one can’t keep track of people. Though constantly running into them.
I saw today in a magazine the photos of practically of all of the corps and Division Commanders of last summer except mine. Some old ones, in Captain’s uniforms of years and years ago. A motley crowd. I hope the Corcoran will prove more satisfactory this year. Don’t suppose Senn will get back to the Point [Note: West Point military academy], but still hope for the best. My letter to General Ireland was last card. The rest depends on Senn.
Senn’s cable reached me at 11:30 am today, and I know what sad hearts are in our home tonight. It is useless to write of it. I don’t know who is hardest hit. We all know how dear she was to us, yet never knew it as well as now. My hear goes out in sympathy to each of you in turn.
I think of Mamma and of all the love and happiness she felt in our first _____ one, and all ____ can she lavish on it. And I know that her heart is now _____ from this loss. (…) And poor Senn. He never dreamed that he could lose Reba, and I am sure he is now realizing the first real deep sorrow of his life.
And Sally – we all remember how she mourned when Reba first left home. Poor Sal! Her suffering is as poignant as her nature is intense.
Reba Ballou
Among us all Mamma alone will have none of those bitter regrets because of things done, or left undone. Always faithful, patient, loving, kind. What wouldn’t I give tonight to be able to feel that I had been the same! But I don’t think she remembered my harshness and my impatience. She realized that she shared my nature and forgave it all. My poor baby girl, and I can never see her again.
At one point today, an hour and a half after this cable came, I was at my post of observation and stood there during two hours of fierce fire from a hundred cannons. It was a Godsend in a way, yet I nearly forgot what was going on.
But I will continue to work and fight, and in many ways I am more fortunate than you who are at home. Do not worry about me. I only wish I could comfort you who are at home. There are months of heartache for us all, yet we are of the many. France is a land of heartaches. A house of mourning – and our own land is being deeply wounded. We must bear our part, and do it ____ _____as the others.
(…)
Her life was , in a sense, full and complete, in that she had known the best that life has of joy and happiness, and except for the final parting, none of life’s great sorrows – none of its bitterness. She was good and true. May her example and her memory remain with us as an inspiration, and may time assuage the pain.
It is hard to write. You know how I feel for each and every one of you. You and Mamma have the hardest part, for you will have least distraction.
Your loving dad.
[Note: Report of her death in Oakland Tribune, Oct. 23, 1918]
The 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic-Colonel Hunter’s Wife Grip Victim
BERKELEY, Oct. 23- Broken with grief over the death of his wife, which occurred yesterday afternoon from influenza, Lieutenant Colonel George B. Hunter, commandant of the School of Military Aeronautics at the University of California, will seem immediate transfer to active service in France to forget his sorrow on the field of battle.
Colonel Hunter left last night with the body of his wife for West Point, where services will be held at the army cemetery at the military academy. Should his request for transfer to France be granted, it is probably that he will not return to Berkeley.
Mrs. Hunter’s death occurred at the family home, 1536 Le Roy avenue, after a two weeks’ illness of influenza followed by pneumonia. She was 30 years old and was born at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. All of Mrs. Hunter’s life was spent in army environment, her father, Major General C. C. Ballou, being a prominent army officer and now in command of the 52d division of American troops in France. Mrs. Hunter was a graduate of Randolph Macon College, Virginia.
It is three months today since the last shot was fired. What a change I find a little blue at times, but when I think of the fact that you don’t feel that I have done so badly, and that you can love the ugly photograph because it is most like me. I feel more content. I am sorry that I did not make a brilliant success – for your sake and that of the others. Yet perhaps I did about as well as I could with the tools I had to work with. I certainly tried.
I will have completed by Friday the mustering out of the 19th Division if the _____ approve the recommendation I wired today that the H.Q. also be mustered out. Of course I knew that it meant in all probability my own immediate demotion, but I can see no good reason for delaying the muster out the headquarters and as I recommended just as I would had my own head not been concerned.
Where I will go next, I don’t even guess. Perhaps to the Mexican border. I am going to talk tomorrow night to the colored people of Des Moines and to another bunch on Friday night; and to the white folks on Sunday evening. I don’t know what I will say but it will not be much.
Today I received Mamma’s letter. Glad Bowd was not hurt and sorry I did see him again. [Note: George Bowditch Hunter was Reba’s Husband. He would remarry in 1937 and retire from the Army as a Brigadier General in 1943]. I hope he will not forget us and drift entirely away. I have been trying to catch up on my letter writing since I arrived here and have the docket pretty well cleared. The letters from France will soon fall off. None have arrived since I got here.
It is a beautiful day, warm and sunshiny. There are now two good roads to Des Moines, one of brick and one of cement. I have not been in town except as I passed through coming here. The rooms here are kept fearfully hot and dry as a bone. I don’t enjoy it at all. There is very little grippe here now. Colonel Newman is here, in command of the _____ Brigade. If I stay long, I will have to get one some reading matter for evenings.
[Note: Bertha is 29 years old, and currently studying at the Corcoran in Washington, DC]
Headquarters
Camp Doge, Iowa
My dear Specks,
It turned cold last night, the mercury dropping to zero or lower, but it cleared up and though cold, is not unpleasant. No news yet as to what is to become of me.
Yesterday, a lady came to interview me about your painting and also about the pictures I brought back from France. I don’t know what she will publish, and I don’t suppose it matters very much though I don’t particularly care to get the customs tribe on the _____ of anything brought in without duty. However, I told her what the paintings were, and by whom painted, and gave her the essential facts about your work. At any rate, few people in the East will be likely to read a Sunday article in a Des Moines newspaper, especially matter of a more or less personnel and social character. I don’t hear any more from the various people in France, but I dare I will when they find out that I am landed and located.
The New York Times on 02/25/1919
A week yesterday I talked to the largest audience I ever addressed. It was in the largest church in Des Moines, and not only were all the seats filled, but the aisle in both pit and gallery were jammed full. Colonel and Mrs. Newman said they went early but couldn’t get standing room and had to leave. It was estimated that there were four thousand in the church. I put in quite a bit of time in visiting the Camp ______ _____ and other places of assembly, in order to remove some of the discontent or the part of men who are in a hurry to be discharged. I am also trying to find men who do not care specially to get out right now, and by holding such, enable me to discharge the discontented.
I sent you a photograph yesterday that may have enough wrinkles to suit you, though it is to my thinking rather flat. The photographer should have instead that there a white map in rear of my head, making a very bad background. It is too bad that your painting is not in a better place in the exhibition, but the fact that it elicited observation and comment in spite of the unfavorable hanging is all the more complimentary.
