My Grandfather Joins The Army

(Excerpt from the soon to be published A Hell of an Engineer, the war biography of John McNamara)

23-year-old John McNamara

On the 67th anniversary of California's admission into the United States, John McNamara, a 23 year old Irish emigrant, woke up to the sound of a parade; the small  town he had called home for the past two years was readying for an enormous celebration. It was Sunday, his day off, and although the parade promised to make for an enjoyable morning, he had an appointment to keep.

From his flat at 1628 Ninth Street, John would have to navigate the busy streets of a small town masquerading as a big city, as thousands of parade-goers and automobiles clogged the normally quiet streets of Sacramento, California.

Traditionally the Admissions Day Parade was a production of the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, a fraternal society dedicated to the preservation of the pioneer spirit. It was a celebration of an earlier, simpler time, where small towns were concerned with Main Street issues and certainly not the squabbles and wars of distant lands.

Yet on that bright, late summer morning of September 9, 1917, Sacramento and the rest of the country were preparing for war with cautious excitement. Augmenting the parade lineup, so cheerfully staffed by the Native Sons and Daughters, were representatives of each military branch, a police mounted posse, and a pipe band from Scotland.

Although the parade was scheduled for an 11:00 am start, by 9:00 am the streets were full of people eagerly staking out positions along J and K streets, the traditional celebratory routes of Sacramento.

As John McNamara made his way north up Ninth Street towards greater downtown, he ran into something brand new in Sacramento, a traffic jam.

Automobiles eager to find parking were beginning to crowd the parade participants, forcing the police officers to huddle in search of traffic solutions. Although slowed by the downtown congestion, with an important appointment pending, John was in an ideal position to see the beginning of the parade.

In spite of the traffic issues, the parade began right on time with the Grand Marshall June Harris leading the way. As the President of the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, June, as the newspapers said later, was a dream in a coat of white and cream.

After paying his respects to the nattily attired Grand Marshall, John tried to cross the street before the next parade entry went by. As he readied to dart across L Street, a raucous cheer erupted from the crowd followed by hoots of laughter and hearty backslapping. A goat dressed in a German uniform pranced in front of four sailors who loudly proclaimed to the frenzied onlookers: “We've got the Kaiser's Goat ! We've got the Kaiser's Goat.”

Admission Day Parade, 1917

The growing crowd was delirious with patriotism, and Sacramento had never seen anything like it.  As the city proprietors began to open their shops, taverns, restaurants, and hotels, they began to wonder if their services could sufficiently serve the swelling crowds, rumored now to be over 100,000 strong.

More cheers filled the air as a man dressed as Uncle Sam sat atop a mechanized vehicle called a "tank" and waved to the crowd.  Before the Preston School of Industry Marching Band could begin their set, a man in a bear suite made entirely of prunes waved a large American flag to the applause and laughter from the crowd.  With the parade stalled and the police officers amused by the performing bear, John McNamara quickly crossed the street and spent his final moments of civilian life walking uninterrupted to the recruitment office.

While the parade continued its colorful meander, workers hurriedly attached red, white and blue bunting to the Plaza Park Stage, across from City Hall, where Governor Stephens would lead the oratorical exercises after the parade. 

John McNamara didn't need a speech to join the army, he had registered for the draft immediately following President Wilson's Declaration of War on April 2, 1917. His enlistment day just happened to fall on one of the most inspiring and colorful days in Sacramento history. For the past two years, he had worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad first as a laborer, then promoted to car inspector. With his knowledge of railroad logistics and his willingness to do anything, he was assigned to the 1st Engineers Division of the storied 1st Army.

After passing his physical, he filled out the requisite paperwork and was given a new suit of olive drab pants, a matching tunic, and a wide brimmed campaign hat.

John McNamara had walked into the recruiting office an everyday Irish laborer, so common on the streets of Sacramento, so resented by the native establishment, and ever reminded of that fact by the "No Irish need apply" signs that hung in the windows of some of the finer businesses in town. He walked out a soldier of the American Expeditionary Force, and as he headed down the street towards the studio that would snap his official war portrait, the anonymity that had haunted him in America, disappeared into a sea of back slaps and well wishes.

Army portrait, September 9, 1917

"There's our boy!" "Do us proud, soldier" "Kick the Kaiser for me, will you Pat!"

The parade was beginning to wind down as the dignitaries, wallowing in their self- importance, eyed suspiciously the pecking order of the seating chart on the flag draped stage.

Governor Stevens and his retinue of state officials had been received warmly by the parade crowd, and he beamed with purpose, striding to the place of honor in the middle of the stage. Plaza Park teemed with excitement, and as far as the eye could reach bands played and flags waved in a pure sea of patriotic unity.

Governor Stevens, whose mansion was merely a few blocks away, felt comfortable that this crowd would not repeat the sorry scene he had witnessed on the opening day of the baseball season in Los Angeles, where an unfortunate gentleman of German descent failed to remove his cap during the national anthem and received a savage beating from the fans in the right field bleachers. On the day that the Pacific Coast League would start its 1917 season, the biggest cheer of the day was not for the home town Angles or the visiting team from Salt Lake City. It was the sight of two police officers dragging the bloodied Hun through the centerfield gates.

In contrast, this crowd seemed refreshingly naive, feeling that America was on the precipice of a great adventure. There were no burning effigies of the Kaiser, only the hastily renamed vendor hawked hot dog accouterments of liberty cabbage.

Never one for politics, John McNamara skipped the speeches and headed back home though the various exhibits and demonstrations of modern warfare that had taken root in Plaza Park. In the sky two airplanes circled about while a commentator, with the breathless excitement of a circus barker, described to the crowd the tactics of an aerial dogfight. At a table strewn with various gadgets and telephones, smartly dressed officers spoke of futuristic modes of communications that would revolutionize warfare. There was even a "sham battle" scheduled for later in the day where 200 navel apprentices would demonstrate the present day methods of warfare.

Sacramento was having a golden day, and it would only get better as the State Fair was set to open later that afternoon. Professional baseball had taken a leave of absence from the capital city since 1916, but there was to be plenty of ball scheduled over the next week as the Native Son's League of Parlors readied for their annual tournament at Buffalo Park.

The last collision

But with all the pageantry of the parades, the excitement of the war games, and even the thrill of organized baseball, preparations were under way for an event later in the week that all of Sacramento loved. For as far back as anyone could remember, two powerful locomotives were raced into each other with dizzying speed to produce a spectacular crash. It was simply called The Collision. Sadly, for many Sacramentans, this would be the last year of the spectacle due to the events in Europe where great armies of steel and flesh were colliding on a daily basis.

Before taking his leave of Plaza Park, John McNamara sat down on a park bench to review some of his documents freshly stamped with the black ink of orders. He was to report to Fort McDowell, also known as Angel Island, by tomorrow for basic training, and at the bottom of his enlistment papers was a final box that read "destination": France. 

After a 3,000 mile train ride to New Jersey and a dangerous Atlantic crossing, he figured to be in the trenches by Christmas.

He was instructed to bring nothing more than a change of clothes and a few toiletry items, so he made his way down Ninth Street towards Hales Department Store. Once inside the sprawling emporium, he selected two changes of underclothing, a towel, and several handkerchiefs. As he counted out the money for his purchase, the clerk looked up, smiled, and said:

War Service Card

“Will that be all soldier? We are having a nice sale on lace curtains, regular $5.75, now just $2.79 a pair. Your mother would be quite pleased.”

With a quick shake of the head, he was out the door and headed home for his last night in Sacramento. Uncle Sam was impatient, so there would be no time for post parade revelry. Besides, most of the scheduled Admission Day parties, concerts, and balls were for the natives and their various clubs and parlors. The uniform brought him attention and accolades but not respect and acceptance into the mainstream of the American Dream. That would have to come later. If indeed there would be a later.

My Grandfather and the Battle of Cantigny

John McNamara & photos from Cantigny

Today marks the 95^th anniversary of America’s first major engagement of World War I --- the Battle of Cantigny.

Although much smaller in scale than the epic battles of Verdun, Ypres, and the Somme, Cantigny’s importance should not be underestimated. It gave the Americans the confidence, not that they needed it, that they could handle the seasoned and battle-tested German Army.

My grandfather, John McNamara, a member of the 1^st Engineers, Company D, was assigned to accompany the 28^th Infantry Division in the initial attack. In a sense, my grandfather was part of the first group of American soldiers to go “over the top” and race across the crater dotted landscape known as No Man’s Land.

Their objective was to build several strong-points for the infantry to use as machine gun nests. They were successful in their mission, but it was not without cost. The 1^st Engineers would sustain 30 casualties, including my grandfather, who was seriously wounded in the leg by shrapnel. He would earn his first of two purple hearts that day.

After the engineers had completed their constructs, the infantry captured Cantigny, a strategic town on high ground. They plunged a mile-long salient into the German lines, and dulled the momentum of a larger enemy offensive near the Aisne River. The Germans counter attacked several times to take back the town, but were unsuccessful.

Cantigny was the first of a string of battles that would thrust the Americans deeper into occupied France. My grandfather and his fellow engineers would fight and defeat a stubborn German Army in places called Soissons, St. Mihiel, Argonne, Mouzon, and Sedan. In early November, just as they entered Germany, an armistice was reached and the war was over. They watched the German Army, diminished but certainly not defeated, march back to Germany. Twenty years later, that same German Army would be back.

Battered Europe had certainly enough of the five year war, but many Americans soldiers, including my grandfather, were puzzled by the hasty conclusion and the uneasy peace. 

The First World War harnessed technology and unleashed a nightmare of murder that would put 117,000 Americans in an early foreign grave. For the returning soldiers, flashbacks of machine guns, poisonous gas, and lethal artillery would haunt their nights and remain a constant and gnawing presence for the rest of their days. It certainly never left my grandfather, but when German tanks rolled through Poland in 1939, he was the first to try to reenlist. Like many WW I veterans, he felt like the job was unfinished.

He was denied reentry into the army, but continued to work at the Sacramento Southern Pacific Rail Yards, assisting in the massive operation of transporting soldiers by rail to San Francisco where they would board ships bound for battlefields in the Pacific.

The erroneous obituary

He died in June of 1946 at the age of 50. On the same day, a fellow veteran of the First World War committed suicide by jumping into a drainage ditch with his coat weighted down by heavy rocks.

Although he lived by the seemingly sound creed of “never trust a priest or a politician” he did have a funeral mass with many veterans in attendance. The First World War was the seminal event of his life, but sadly the newspapers referred to him as a veteran of the Second World War in his obituary. 

Cantigny was a small battle in what was called the war to end all wars, and soon it would be overshadowed by the apocalyptic Second World War. I was told by my uncle that he remembers his father gathering the family together so that he could regal them with stories of the First World War. With palpable regret, my uncle shared with me how he and his siblings would giggle through his presentations. They were children of the Second World War, and tales of the First World War were simply ancient history. 

The centenary of the First World War approaches, as well as the attendant lectures, books and movies. Somewhere, deep in Washington, there is a committee being formed to honor the heroes of that forgotten war. My only hope is that the tribute is not made in granite, but in policy: a hope that our politicians are worthy of the men and women that they send into combat. That would be the best tribute to my grandfather and his fellow soldiers.