Of Irish Blood (55 page)

“If I could get word to Michael Collins, he would get me a false passport. He arranged one for Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington. Got her and her son to America,” she says to me as we celebrate Women’s Christmas in her tiny attic space. Just the two of us sipping tea and nibbling apples by the feeble fire. “You are fortunate, Nora. You can just leave. Go back.”

“Oh, Maud,” I say. “I’m stuck too. Besides Peter Keeley could be headed this way.”

“Too dangerous for him to come to Paris,” Maud says. “Now that the British have the French doing their dirty work. Support the liberation of Ireland and you’re a German spy. The British have turned our oldest ally against us.”

The next month the French arrest a Dutch dancer who calls herself Mata Hari as a spy. The newspapers love the story. Particularly the semi-nude photographs of Mata Hari in the native costume she designed herself. I’m selling photographs to the newspapers too. But mine are of British soldiers at the Eiffel Tower. A little money coming in until Father Kevin warns me to stop. He’d heard from his friend, Capel, that the British are watching me. “They say you are trying to get information about the movement of British units.”

Oh, dear God.

At least Madame Simone’s not intimidated. But there’s very little for me to do at her studio.

I spend most days with Father Kevin at the Irish College helping him finish his lifework, a book entitled
Saint Columcille from Donegal to Iona and the World
.

“No Christian Europe without him,” Father Kevin tells me over and over. “A prince of the O’Neills, a poet,” he says. “A monk and a druid too if truth be told, who saw no contradiction between the old and the new. He scratched crosses on the ancient ogham stones and got on with it.”

Father Kevin corresponds with a Church of Ireland theologian and a Presbyterian minister from Scotland. “Columcille is the only saint that Protestants, Catholics, and Dissenters revere. A good patron for a new Ireland,” Father Kevin says. He is determined to complete his book. Those divided by religion will read it and make peace, he thinks.

Thousands of handwritten pages scattered everywhere. I borrow the new rector’s typewriter and hunt and peck my way through the chapters, which Father Kevin takes and annotates so I type them again. A monk in a scriptorium probably made faster progress than I do. But Father Kevin is pleased and Maud stops by occasionally. I am grateful for the big lunch I eat in the parlor of the Irish College every day. It’s my main meal. All my savings going for rent. I wonder does Mrs. Vanderbilt realize what the token pay given to volunteers meant to me?

APRIL 1917

“Oh Margaret, I feel so bad that I’m not helping out at the hospital,” I say as we sit in my room. “But thank you, thank you so much.” She’s lent me enough money to pay April’s rent and brought me a letter from Carolyn Wilson. Back in the States now but says she’ll be returning to Paris. According to her sources, it’s only a matter of time before President Wilson declares war on Germany. Just looking for an excuse according to Carolyn.

“U.S. banks have already lent billions to the allies. They’d better win or the banks won’t get repaid.” Helen Keller said that we’d be going to war for the capitalists, I think.

“Some other news. Paul O’Toole is dead,” Margaret says.

“Poor fellow,” I say.

“Wasn’t killed in battle. Shot for cowardice,” Margaret says. “He refused to leave the trenches.”

“So they killed him for wanting to stay alive. Insane. And now our American boys will be forced into the slaughter.”

“They think they’re coming over to save the world. My brother John enlisted in the Marine Corps. Said if he’s going to be in the fight, might as well be with the best. He says most of the men he’s met in training are Irish. Ever heard of someone called Dan Daly?”

“I haven’t,” I say.

“Won two Medals of Honor, John says. He spoke to my brother’s unit. Told them lots of the Marine Corps traditions come from the Irish like the Celtic war cry Marines yell when they go into battle,” she says.

“Wouldn’t that be one in the eye for the British army if Irish U.S. Marines come over here and win the war for them,” I say, and laugh. Haven’t laughed much lately, but the thought of General Henry Wilson thanking our Irish fellows is very funny. Margaret’s not laughing.

“According to John, that’s exactly what’s going to happen,” Margaret says.

JULY 4, 1917

So. Half of Paris crowds the Champs-Élysées waving the Stars and Stripes and yelling
“Vive l’Amérique”
with Margaret and me in the middle of it all cheering like fools as the American troops march up the avenue.

“See. Here come the Marines,” Margaret says. “That’s their flag.”

I raise my Seneca and focus on the banner. Against a red background a gold eagle guards a globe supported by an anchor. Across the top are the words
“Semper Fidelis
.
”
“Always faithful.”

“The eagle, globe, and anchor,” Margaret’s telling me, “their symbol because the Marines are part of the navy. ‘The Soldiers of the Sea,’ John says.”

The troop is close enough now so we can hear them singing:

“Admiration of the nation

We’re the finest ever seen

And we glory in the title

United States Marines.”

Great-looking fellows, young and smiling, marching with such energy. Keep them safe, please God … Keep them safe, I pray.

Margaret sees her brother.

“Johnny, Johnny!” she shouts. He’s at the end of a row right near us. Tall and thin like his sister. Eyes straight ahead. Just as he passes us, he turns and smiles.

Margaret has to go back to the hospital, but I follow the parade. I know from the newspapers they are headed for the grave of Lafayette in Picpus Cemetery. We go east and now are far away from the center of Paris, but big crowds still stand along the avenues. Whole classes of schoolchildren wave American flags.

I keep my eyes on John Noll as the line of soldiers and Marines wheels left and marches along a side street into a courtyard enclosed by buildings. Where’s the cemetery, I wonder. Then I see them go through a gate next to a church. I expect rows of tombstones, but instead we’re in a narrow garden with trees and grass. Finally we turn and I see at the end of the space a scatter of tombstones, and against the far wall, there it is—the grave of Lafayette.

The Marines form an honor guard as their flag bearer holds the Stars and Stripes over Lafayette’s grave. I recognize General Pershing from pictures in the newspaper. But it’s another officer who stands front and center. I notice a group of fellows with notebooks and one or two photographers standing right behind the officer as he begins to speak. Reporters. I push my way toward them holding my Seneca in front of me like a badge and manage to reach the pressmen in time to hear the American officers say, “
Lafayette, nous ici.
Lafayette, we are here.” I line the officer up in my lens and push the shutter.

“Did you get a decent shot of Stanton?” the fellow next to me asks. A short wiry man scribbling away in his notebook. “Pershing hates to speak in public. Leaves it to Colonel Stanton.”

“I got the photograph,” I say.

“Know some place to develop it?” he asks.

“I have my own darkroom.”

“Okay, sweetheart, you’re hired. Get me some close-ups of the brass and the Marines, and the flags over the grave.”

“Pardon me?”

“I’m Floyd Gibbons from the Chicago
Tribune
. My photographer jumped ship and went to work for the New York
Times
. I’m desperate. I’ll pay you good money for those pictures.”

“All right,” I say.

“And be sure to get shots of those burial plots covered in gravel,” he says. “Those are the mass graves. The guillotine was just around the corner. After they cut off the victims’ heads, they dumped their bodies here. Fifteen hundred or so, among them Lafayette’s wife’s mother, sister, and grandmother, who had the bad luck to be aristocrats at the wrong time. A bunch of nuns buried here, too. After things calmed down a bit, the families bought this ground and turned it into a cemetery.”

Spooky and sad. A barbaric time I guess. But then I think of the fifteen men the British executed right after the Rising. Their bodies had been dumped into a mass grave, too, and covered with lime. I wonder if someday their families will be able to put up a monument for them.

I expect only a day’s work from Floyd, but he likes my photographs—especially what he calls my casual Marines.

“Hard to get these fellows to relax. Usually they look into the camera with stone faces,” he says.

“Well,” I say, pointing at the photograph, “that’s my friend’s brother, and that’s his sergeant, Dan Daly…”

“Who’s famous,” Floyd says. “Good girl. Go for the well-known ones. Who’s the young kid?”

“John J. Kelly from Chicago,” I say. I’d been a little nervous when I met him, but he’d been only sixteen when the
Volterra
went down. And after all, nothing unusual about running into another Kelly from Chicago.

“Listen,” Floyd says to me. “I’m going down to Saint-Nazaire where the Marines are training. Want to do some human-interest stuff. How about you come with me? I’ll pay you thirty francs a week and cover the hotel in St. Nazaire. What do you say?”

“Do I need any kind of credentials?” I ask him.

“I’ll get them for you.”

“You might have a problem. I got on the wrong side of the British army,” I say, and give him a quick summary of my problems at the American hospital.

“You got in trouble because you were helping the Irish against the English?” he says.

“More or less,” I say.

“The Marines will love you. Lots of them are Micks like us. You just tell Dan Daly the Brits gave you the dirty end of the stick. He’ll take care of it, believe me.”

Floyd’s right. At Saint-Nazaire, Gunnery Sergeant Daly marches me right into Marine headquarters, and I walk out with a letter appointing me “Official photographer of the U.S. Marine Corps.”

Being with this bunch of Americans lifts my spirits. Father Kevin has the address of the small hotel in the village where I’m staying. Any sign of Peter, any news, he’ll telegraph me immediately. It’s not that I’ve forgotten Peter but I must say it’s fun to be with the Marines, to let go of fear. No question that these fellows will win the war once they are given the chance. Eager, they are. The Marine slogan is “First to Fight” and they are not happy to be kept out of the battle. The French and British insist that the American troops need more training. So I spent all that summer and fall photographing Marines marching along country roads carrying forty-pound packs. Or running at sacks of straw with bayonets. Some excitement when they get behind the machine guns and lay waste some empty fields. Floyd’s determined to get a profile of every single Marine and sell it to their hometown papers. So I’m photographing the fellows from morning till night.

“Our boss, Robert McCormick who owns the Trib, is over here now,” Floyd tells me just before Christmas. “He’s on the staff of Army Intelligence.”

Geeze Louise, I think. Ed’s friend. He’ll certainly recognize me and know the story of my drowning.

He doesn’t.

I’m wondering if anybody remembers anything they read in the newspaper, which I don’t say to Floyd because he seems to think getting on the front page is the greatest achievement anyone can aspire to.

The Marines want to give a Christmas party for the children of Saint-Nazaire. Floyd and I write a story for the Chicago
Tribune
about their plans. Gifts for the kids begin to arrive in the mail from America.

The biggest Marine plays Santa Claus, which confuses the children. Their St. Nicholas doesn’t have the heft of ours. But each child receives a toy and shares the Christmas meal.

Dark, cold Paris seems a world away. Maud and her children are in Ireland. She’d outsmarted the British by going to England and then crossing to Ireland in disguise. Though how a six-foot-tall woman could manage that, I don’t know.

It’s good for me to feel useful again. I’m taking photographs of the fellows for them to send home and helping out at the medical station that’s been set up to deal with training accidents and just plain sickness.

Full days but not as
“abrutissant”
as the nursing I’d done before. Being a soldier could be quite enjoyable if combat could be avoided, I think.

JUNE 1918

But of course it can’t.

Floyd Gibbons comes rushing into the hotel dining room on June 2nd. Madame Guerin’s serving me the coffee the Marines gave her from their stores. Wonder if anyone in Paris is drinking real coffee now.

“Come on, come on,” Floyd says. “They’re moving out. Petain has convinced Pershing to bring the Marines into the line. The Germans have gotten back to the Marne and this time they are pushing straight through to Paris. The Huns’ last chance. I hope you’ve got plenty of film.”

I watch Dan Daly, John Noll, and John Kelly ride by me on trucks. Smiling. Waving. The “First to Fight” Brigade finally getting into the war.

And I’m so bewitched by the Marine Corps spirit that I imagine they’ll simply float across the battlefield like John Feeney’s angels only with guns blazing. The marines will so frighten the Germans, the Boche will throw up their hands. Surrender. And that will be the Battle of Belleau Wood.

Except it isn’t.

Floyd promotes a ride on a Red Cross truck going to Paris. Then he manages to rent a touring car and we head for Château-Thierry near the Marne River. We drive the thirty miles from Paris in the middle of the night, which turns out to be a good decision because during the day the two sides shoot at each other across the highway. We arrive late on the 5th of June. There has already been four days of fighting. I go with Floyd to find an officer to interview. No one has much time for us but a corporal takes us to Captain Lloyd Williams. He’s at headquarters looking at a map of Belleau Wood, where the Germans are dug in.

“What can you tell us about the fighting yesterday, Captain Williams?” Floyd asks. “I understand the French were retreating when you entered the wood and you told them…”