New WWI book looks at war from two sides

At Smith Hall, in autumn 1949, the paths of three University of Washington historians intersected—W. Stull Holt, chair of the history department; Thomas J. Pressly, a new faculty member beginning his career; and Maclyn P. Burg, an undergraduate history major.

Now, 50 years later, a book in which they were all involved has reached the bookstore shelves: The Great War at Home and Abroad: The World War I Diaries and Letters of W. Stull Holt.

W. Stull Holt and then-fiancée Lois Crump. From W. Stull Holt Papers, UW Libraries

The story begins in 1917, before either Pressly or Burg were born. Holt, then a 20-year-old undergraduate at Cornell University, left his studies to volunteer for the American Ambulance Field Service. He arrived in France just before the United States entered the war. After driving Ford Model T ambulances in France for six months, Holt enlisted in the American Air Service and earned his pilot’s wings. He later trained as an observer-bombardier-gunner and flew combat bombing missions against Germany.

Holt’s wartime experiences were rugged. While driving his ambulance in the 1917 fighting at Verdun, he was gassed and almost lost his life. Later, during one of his combat bombing missions, his plane was badly shot up, forcing Holt to make an emergency landing. After his plane crashed, rescuers had to cut holes in the plane’s fuselage to remove Holt.

Through these and other war experiences, Holt kept a journal and saved his correspondence, which in the 1990s became perfect fodder for Burg, who had retired as an archivist at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and was looking for a project. Holt, by this time, was dead; Pressly had reached emeritus professor status.

Burg remembered hearing Holt speak of his World War I experiences and started looking for any surviving material. He found plenty. Not only had Holt kept a journal while in France in 1917 and 1918, but he had saved the letters written to him by his fiancée, his family and friends. His fiancée and family, in turn, preserved the letters Holt had written to them. Holt also had a camera with him in France and returned with an album of photographs.

Burg edited the Holt papers, talking about them regularly with his officemate Pressly. But, Burg died before the edited manuscript could be published. Pressly took over, adding photographs from Holt’s album, preparing maps, and seeing the manuscript through publication by the Sunflower University Press, Manhattan, Kansas.

The resulting book is unusual among personal accounts of WW I, or most other U.S. wars. Most personal accounts of wars have been written by male soldiers or by individuals, usually women, who remained at home during the fighting. But in At Home and Abroad, Holt’s observations as a soldier are supplemented by the letters from his fiancée, from a Cornell classmate who served as chief clerk of a local draft board, and from members of his family, including his mother and two sisters.

Holt’s descriptions of war conditions contrast with stories from the home front—the influenza epidemic, his 17-year-old sister’s innocent involvement in an alleged ‘scandal’ with her boyfriend and a “Bolshevik’ meeting on New York City’s East Side attended by his classmate. ¶