James R. Davis

National World War I Museum

James R. Davis lived in Marshall, Missouri when he was inducted into the army on April 1, 1918. He was trained as a medical officer at Fort Riley, Kansas and served overseas from October 12, 1918 to August 1, 1919 with the 816th Pioneer Infantry. Arriving in France near the end of the war, Davis missed almost all of the fighting but he wrote vividly of its aftermath.

Lieutenant Davis wrote to his mother while at sea on October 22, 1918. There were British troops on his ship and he had observed them with great interest. Although he never cared for tea, Davis tried it in the afternoons as was the English custom. Admitting the British were more polite than Americans, Davis admired their long heritage and thought he could learn a lot from them.

Davis wrote a number of letters to his mother and other relatives, but censorship prevented him from providing specific information about his location. The regulations had been lifted when he wrote from Verdun on November 23, 1918. Free to write as he wished, Davis described the destruction left behind on one of the bloodiest battlefields of the war. “As for describing what we have seen that cant be done. you just have to see the desolation and destruction and even then you dont fully realize what has gone on - For Instant the above city once had 80,000 to 100,000 people in it when we marched thru there was nothing but soldiers and houses shot to pieces. not a sign of a woman or a child, even the birds have left the country.” Barbed wire entanglements and bones still littered the battlefield as Davis noted in a vivid passage, “ever so often you fall over a skull or some other part of a skelton. Wars a beautiful thing when you have on a nice new uniform etc but Sherman didnt half express it in his famous statement.”

National World War I Museum

The aftermath of war stood in stark contrast with the picturesque French countryside. On New Year’s Day Davis and a comrade climbed Dead Man’s Hill on the Verdun battlefield. From its crest they admired the Meuse River as it flowed through the valley below. Yet where they stood Davis wrote, “There isnt any thing left on the hill even the trees are gone and the grass even gave up trying to live there. It is just shell holes with in shell holes - and it looked as tho each hole contained the bones of some poor devil who had fought for the Kaiser or against him. Ive seen a lot of shot up places but this is the worst Ive seen.”

Despite the human carnage, Davis believed the war had been worth fighting. Although he was aware of the sacrifices civilians on the home front made to support the American war effort, Davis told his family on March 4, 1919, it was “absolutely nothing - for if Germany had won this war - we would have seen some hardship and worse than that we would have seen our women and children treated as some of these people were treated. I may be wrong about that but I firmly believe we would had a war at home with the Hun if they hadnt been whipped here. I do hope when the final settlement comes that they break German so that they cant recover for centuries to come.”

The James Robert Davis Collection contains twenty-nine letters and are housed at the National World War I Museum in Kansas City. The complete collection will be digitized by project staff and available online next spring.

Sources:

Missouri Digital Heritage, Soldiers' Records:  War of 1812---World War I, http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/soldiers/, accessed November 7, 2014.