Category Archives: Governors Island

The Base Hospital No. 9 contingent sails

07 Monday Aug 2017

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The Finland took the doctors, nurses, and medical staff to France.

I’m sure many remember my posts of a few weeks back about about Dr. Robert D. Schrock and the physicians and staff of Base Hospital No. 9. The men drilled for several weeks time at Governors Island through a brutal heatwave in July-August 1917. As far as basic training goes, they got off easily; it could have been much longer. There was just no time to waste in getting this medical contingent to Europe however. They were that needed and time was of the essence. Plus military authorities figured that hospital staff could train aboard the transport ship, honing the skills they would need in the hospitals tending the wounded.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the doctors, nurses and corpsmen setting off. The doctors left Governors Island at about 4:00 am on 7 August 1917. Their ferry crossed the harbor and picked up the nurses at Ellis Island before cruising into the North (Hudson) River. There, the Finland was docked at Pier 11. The New York and New Jersey docks were filled with spies, and authorities did all they could to keep the departure as secret as possible. There is no mention of it in either the New York Times or the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. It was an uneventful day but represented over a year’s worth of work on the part of New York Hospital, getting permission, raising the funds, and choosing who would go to Europe. The Finland sailed in the early afternoon, made quarantine, and was off in the Atlantic to face any potential u-boats on the way to France.

(images/Base Hospital No. 9, A.E.F.)

Passchendaele 1917-2017

31 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by in Governors Island, Great War centennial, Media and Web 2.0, Memory

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I mentioned in a post the other day that American surgeon Dr. Robert D. Schrock worked for several weeks in the hospitals during the Battle of Passchendaele, or Third Ypres. Schrock and his colleagues were still at Governors Island at this point 100 years ago, but the Battle of Passchendaele began on 31 July 1917. It lasted well into November. It may be difficult for Americans to grasp the significance that the battles in Flanders have for the people of Great Britain, along with the Canadians, Aussies, and others who fought alongside them. It is analogous to Antietam and Gettysburg for Americans. I was watching some of the footage over the weekend and saw that Prince William and his wife attended the ceremonies in Flanders; today his father Prince Charles will be present. My brother took me to Belgian about ten years ago. We went to Cloth Hall and stayed not far from the Menin Gate. Britain’s Ministry of Defence made this short video to mark the 100th anniversary of the battle.

“a strenuous day on Governors Island”

26 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Base Hospital No. 9, Governors Island

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This past Sunday I shared a letter written by Dr. Robert D. Schrock on the morning he and other physicians from Base Hospital No. 9 were to report to basic training on Governors Island. The officers and enlisted men drilled at Governors, while the nurses undertook instruction at Ellis Island. This training was actually quite brief; the personnel of Base Hospital No. 9 shipped out for France the first week in August. Dr. Schrock, now Lieutenant Schrock, wrote only letter from Governors Island. The one of 17 July he had penned early in the morning before he and the doctors reported for duty at 8:30 am. Note that this one, written from the Department of the East itself, says “checked” at the bottom. Schrock wrote the one below to the wife of his friend Chet Waters, to whom he had written the quick missive of 17 July. Here, a week into basic, Schrock mentions what a tenuous day it was. One can imagine him and the others marching in their heavy woolen uniforms under the late-July sun. There must have been a strong culture shock as well. Overall however, he seems to be holding up well under the difficult and uncertain circumstances.

Officers of Base Hospital No. 9

The Society of New York Hospital
16 West 16th St
New York, New York
JULY 26, 1917
Dear Boss, (Dr. Chet Waters’ wife Marie)

The last five days have been quite a nightmare. But we’re here and by no means exhausted . Off duty until 8:45 AM. Then, a strenuous day on Governors Island. Imagine me teaching military tactics drill etc. to a squad of enlisted men – but that is what we are doing.

Shall send you a list of our crew this week. Due for dinner with the Ward’s and Goldie Monday night. Come on and join us.

Boss – your friends are thick here – large in numbers and stability from the number of interested inquiries of you

Cannot thank you enough for your goodness of Tuesday – but it wasn’t any different than what you have done for me in so many ways since the beginning of our East Side existence. Omaha to me means the Waters family. Tell the young man I couldn’t say goodbye to him at the station. There is too close an anatomic relation between my cerebral centers and lachrymal apparatus. Am a poor boob in that way–but couldn’t do it. Tomorrow am starting a little package to the boy– Of little value except in their significance. Put them on his shirt collar and shoulders for me. And praying that the world may never demand that he wear similar ones in later years and also that’s there may be no need of his father. Chet is anxious to go, I know and you know. The greater duty is with you all and it would require an heroic effort in this instance for Chet – And we know he will stay with you until the actual need is indicated. When that comes, if it does, I want to know. There maybe room with us.

Am sorry Bess could be so little with you. It’s the torture of the game. More later.

Ask ever Bob

checked

(image/Base Hospital No. 9, A.E.F.)

Sunday morning coffee

23 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by in Base Hospital No. 9, Baseball, Governors Island, Memory

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Dr. Schrock went back to France in 1928 and returned to the United States aboard the Ile de France.

I listened to the Mets come-from-behind, walk-off-with-a-homer win last night. They were down 4-0 in the first inning and won 6-5. Baseball is so conducive to listening on the radio. The Mets’ announcers got into a long discussion about the 1973 Mets-Athletics World Series, in which the As defeated the Mets in seven games. They had a good talk about Ray Fosse, the As All-Star catcher from the 1970s who currently does As radio broadcasts. Among other points, they noted that Fosse, Johnny Bench, Bob Boone, Carlton Fisk, and Thurman Munson were all born within nine months of each other in 1947.

Robert D Schrock as a young undergrad at Wabash College, circa 1905. He won an award for oratory at Wabash and later graduated with honors from Cornell Medical School before working as a doctor in the A.E.F.

While listening I was also doing a bit more digging on Dr. Robert D, Schrock and his World War I experience. He did his basic training at Governors Island in the middle of a heat wave in July-August 1917. Dr. Schrock was one of more than two dozen physicians at New York Hospital who in 1916 volunteered to go to Europe. By this time they fully understood what they would be getting into; it was the year of Verdun and the Somme. And it was not just the doctors; a full contingent of nurses, administrators, and orderlies all agreed to put on a uniform and go. It would have been more, but someone had to stay back and run New York Hospital itself. That is why the board of directors devised a plan deciding who would stay and who would go. Remember, the United States was not in the war yet. Nor was it a given that America would join the fight at all. Had they gone right away it would have been all about saving and repairing the lives of the various nations in the war at the time. Dr. Schrock and the rest of Base Hospital No. 9 arrived in St. Nazaire in late August 1917 and after a bit more training went to various facilities to attended the maimed. Schrock himself spent nearly three weeks in the front lines at the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Ypres), which was already in full swing when the New York Hospital Contingent arrived in France and lasted in November. He and two other doctors were thrown into saving the British, Indians, Canadians, and ANZACS.

Schrock arrived in France as a first lieutenant and returned to the United States as a major aboard the Wilhelmina in April 1919. One gets the impression that his Great War experience was a big influence in his life. An Ancestry search reveals that he traveled at least twice to Europe in the ensuing decades. At least twice. I found conclusively that he returned to France in 1928, presumably for the tenth anniversary of the Great War. He came home from that trip aboard the Ile de France, one of the great and less heralded luxury liners. In summer 1937 he and wife Elizabeth traveled to Germany, returning on the New York in early August. One can imagine the sobering realization that a second world war was imminent hanging over that trip. It’s an incredible story. I know a few people who have been preserving and organizing their relatives’ Great War letters. If someone in your family fought in the war and you have their photographs and letters, I encourage you to document it in some way. The Great War centennial is an opportune time to do it. Each story is another tile in the mosaic.

(image/top, New York Public Library; bottom, The Wabash)

Dr. Robert D. Schrock’s Great War

21 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by in Base Hospital No. 9, Governors Island, WW1

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I have something special to share today. Earlier this month long time reader Robert D. Schrock emailed and shared a letter that his father had written from New York City in 1917, with the idea that I might post it here on the blog. Dr. Schrock is a retired orthopedic surgeon and for some time has been editing the Great War papers of his father, namesake, and fellow surgeon, Dr. Robert D. Schrock, Sr. He sent the two photographs you see here as well, which he found as print negatives in his father’s papers and had developed.

Robert D. Schrock was born in Delaware, Ohio in 1884, and when he was a young boy his family moved to Decatur, Indiana. Schrock graduated from Wabash College in Crawfordsville, after which he went on to study at Cornell University Medical School. There he met and befriended a fellow Midwesterner, Iowan Chester Hill Waters. The two graduated with honors from Cornell Medical School in 1912. Doctors Schrock and Waters next worked at Manhattan’s New York Hospital as young physicians. Soon they both returned to the Midwest, practicing medicine in Omaha, Nebraska. Waters married and had a child.

Shipping out: Dr. Robert D. Schrock took this picture as a first lieutenant and surgeon in the American Expeditionary Forces in 1917. He and the medical staff of Base Hospital No. 9 did their basic training at Governors Island.

Though the United States did not join the Great War until April 1917, many American people and organizations had contributed to the Allied cause in the time since the war began in summer 1914. As early as June 1916 the Red Cross organized base hospital units of 500 beds at various institutions, including at New York Hospital. It was called Base Hospital No. 9. Dr. Robert D. Schrock was involved in that project during his time at the facility, and when the United States entered the war Schrock put on a uniform and became a medical officer in the A.E.F. Competition among the medical staff to go to France was intense, and the board selected a mix of senior and younger physicians to go overseas. Before shipping out to France there was that small matter of basic training. That’s where the email I received from Bob Schrock a few weeks back comes in. It was on 21 July 1917—one hundred years ago today—that Robert D. Schrock reported for his basic training at Governors Island in New York Harbor. Below is an extraordinary letter that he wrote that morning to his friend Chester (Chet) Waters back in Nebraska on that very day.

At sea – U boats ahead: Another image taken by Dr. Robert D. Schrock, this one aboard the U.S.C.T. Finland sometime between August 7 – 20, 1917 en route to St. Nazaire, France.

The Society of the New York Hospital
6 to 16 W. 16th and 7 223 W. 18th Street, New York, New York
July 21, 1917

Dear Chet,

We go to Governors Island into camp at 8:30 AM. Just time for a note and breakfast. The gang looks good. You know practically everyone. Will send you details as I can. It is good, I tell you, to be around here again. Only, would exchange these trappings for white clothes for comfort. Walked up Third Avenue yesterday, saluting all the Lord and Taylor delivery boys. Probably shall pass up many Majors, etc without proper recognition. Our ignorance is amusing.

It looks very much like we are to get away the coming week. Somewhere in France.

Everyone asks of you and the family. Tell your young man it was not carelessness that kept me from seeing him at the station. He may not like it. Shall send him a later message.

Chet, don’t get panicky and jump into service. You have a greater duty right there. Thanks for the big help of Tuesday

Ever Bob.

R. D. Schrock
MC.USR.
Base Hospital #9
New York City

(images courtesy Robert D. Schrock)

Sunday morning coffee

16 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by in Governors Island, New York City

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The New York City draft riots raged from July 13-17, 1863.

Good morning, all. I am having my coffee before setting out for Governors Island in a little bit. We are interviewing a lady who served in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps and after that a gentleman who was a high-level officer here during the Coast Guard years. It is always special to speak to people who lived and worked on the island. The lives people have led can be nothing short of extraordinary, even if they are unaware of it in the moment.

I was listening to the radio the other day on what turned out to be the 40th anniversary (July 13) of the 1977 New York City blackout. There was intense rioting and looting then and over the next several days. When I moved here and began working for the public library in the late 1990s, patrons in my branch told me that in the week after the riots, which at this time were only twenty years past, people were gathering in a sort of ersatz bazaar/flea market in the local park around the corner from the branch to exchange their ill-gotten gains. It would be three pairs of sneakers for a color television set, a gold chain for a transistor radio, or what have you. In my book about Civil War New York I am trying to put the July 1863 draft riots into perspective, explaining that such unrest has a long history in the city. There were several riots in the decades before the Civil War. There were major riots here and elsewhere in summer 1919 just after the First World War, and in New York City again in 1943 during the Second.

I was in Green-Wood Cemetery recently when I came across this new headstone for Edward Jardine, a Union officer from Brooklyn who was wounded in the Draft Riots. Jardine died 124 ago today, on 16 July 1893.

Beautiful day

29 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by in Governors Island

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I was at Governors Island today where two other volunteers and I conducted some oral histories. We spoke to a Coast Guard man who worked on the island in the mid 1990s as the island was preparing to shut down. Closing down Governors Island was no small feat and the process took several months. Several thousand Coast Guard service persons and their dependents lived on the island until 1996. The process was well along for them to transfer. Everyone was gone by the end of that year, but in 1997 a few dozen workers, including the man to whom we spoke today, lived for a few months in Staten Island, commuting on the ferry and crossing over to do the mop up work mothballing the island. It’s strange that the mid 90s are part of history, but such is life.

The other interviewee was a First Army musician in the mid 1960s. He was actually stationed at Fort Dix but once came to the island for a First Army talent contest, which he and his bandmate won. The level of talent in the various military bands, even today, is more impressive than the general public might know. People like John Coltrane had extensive military band experience, in Coltrane’s case in the Navy. It is always special to speak to the people who served on Governors Island. Equally special is to collaborate with the volunteers and rangers who care for the island today.

Two Roosevelts crossing the Atlantic

24 Saturday Jun 2017

Posted by in Archibald (Archie) Roosevelt, Governors Island, J. Franklin Bell (General), Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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Archibald and Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt Jr. left for France on 20 June 1917.

Theodore Roosevelt spoke from the pulpit of the Oyster Bay Reformed Church at Brookville on Sunday 24 June 1917 on behalf of the Red Cross. Raising funds and awareness for that relief organization was not his only reason to take to the podium however; with sons Archibald and Theodore now crossing the Atlantic aboard the Chicago to join Pershing’s nascent forces, he could announce that the boys had indeed left American soil. By June it apparent that the Wilson Administration, wisely, was not going to let Roosevelt command a division in France. The Colonel was committed, quite publicly, to sending his sons, so much so that he pulled all the strings he could get his sons to Europe as quickly as possible.

That became a reality when the Chicago left New York for Bordeaux on Wednesday 20 June. The late spring of 1917 had entailed a great deal of back and forth for Archive and Ted. They had spent the past several weeks getting in some final training in Plattsburg before traveling ceaselessly between New York City, Washington, and Oyster Bay as their fate was being decided. Eventually the War Department sent secret orders directing them to report to General J. Franklin Bell on Governors Island. It was there at the Department of the East that they received their final instructions. They had a few more days to pass before the passage of the Chicago and so went back to Long Island to say their final goodbyes to their families. Then it was back to New York. The waiting to go overseas was finally over.

Theodore Roosevelt had been an advocate for American involvement in the Great War since 1914. When he spoke at the Oyster Bay reformed Church one hundred years ago today, he had a personal stake in the conflict that was not there even one week prior.

(image/New York Times)

“The return of the Mayflower, armed.”

07 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by in Governors Island, J. Franklin Bell (General), John J. Pershing (General), Peyton C. March (General)

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Pershing (seated second from left) and his staff, June 1917

The above quotation may sound like hyperbole–because it was–but that was the mood on board the RMS Baltic when she was pulling into Liverpool one hundred years ago tonight with Major General John Pershing and his entourage of nearly two hundred on board. As the pilgrims had once sailed from the Old World to the New, so their descendants were doing nearly three centuries later. At least that is the way one diarist captured it for the New York Times as the Baltic was met by the American destroyers coming into port. It had been almost two weeks since Pershing had left Governors Island and sailed from Sandy Hook. The trip had been a quiet one, largely because Pershing and his staff were so busy planning, but the mood was now ebullient when land was seen. Everyone knew this was Next Phase in the war.

The Great War was to be an extraordinary challenge for the American military, which had been hampered by all kinds of logistical problems in the relatively small campaigns in Cuba and Mexico over the previous two decades. Men like Pershing; J. Franklin Bell, still back in New York Harbor commanding the Department of the East; Chief of Staff Peyton C. March in Washington; and the Regular Army officers at the new bases materializing across the United States whose job it now was to train the raw recruits, had learned many lessons from these experiences. Leaving the United States was itself a lesson learned. Pershing’s voyage was the worst kept secret in New York; everyone knew something was afoot when they saw the docks operating with greater urgency than usual. It didn’t help either when the cannoneers on Governors Island set off a salute as the Baltic set forth. So much for confidentiality.

Pershing’s first night in Europe was fairly anti-climactic. The Baltic pulled into the River Mersey at 11:00 pm and docked for the night. The real action would begin the following morning. Everyone was anxious and excited to see what they next day would bring.

(image/Library of Congress)

 

Decoration Day 1917

29 Monday May 2017

Posted by in Baseball, Charles S. Whitman (Governor), Governors Island, J. Franklin Bell (General), Leonard Wood (General), Memory, Monuments and Statuary, New York City

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I wanted to share a few images from Decoration Day 1917. These photographs were taken near the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Monument in Manhattan’s Riverside Park. Turn out was higher than for Decoration Day parades in recent years, which is not surprising given that this was the first Memorial Day since the call for war. The parade route was actually cut shorter in 1917 to accommodate the increasingly infirm veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic. About four hundred GAR veterans marched in New York City’s 1917 Decoration Day parade, one hundred and thirty fewer than just a year earlier. Veterans of the Spanish-American War and New York Guardsmen recently returned from Texas fell in behind. All told, 18,000 men and women marched in the parade through the Upper West Side. For the first time ever there was a regiment of Negro troops included in New York City’s Decoration Day parade. Though many would not have grasped it at the moment, the perceptive understood that this was an early sign of the coming of what became the New Negro Movement.

That is Major General J. Franklin Bell, commander of the Department of the East on Governors Island, and Governor Charles S. Whitman on the review stand. In the two middle image, they are there on the right in the box. Conspicuously absent is Leonard Wood, though his spirit in a sense was present. Before leaving New York City several weeks earlier he had given his blessing for a parade of the Public School Athletic League. While the veterans’s event was going on, a separate parade comprised of 40,000 schoolchildren was taking place south of here.

Memorial Day also means baseball. Just north of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Monument in the Polo Grounds Grover Cleveland Alexander of the Philadelphia Phillies lost 5-1 to the New York Giants. He went on to win thirty games that season. The following year Alexander was in France fighting the Germans. The Yankees were in Philadelphia playing the other team from the City of Brotherly Love, the Athletics. The Yankees won a double header and held the A’s scoreless over twenty-four innings. The Dodgers, then still the Brooklyn Robins, lost 2-0 to the Braves in Boston. It’s worth noting that the American League was less than twenty years old at this time and very much a competing association with the National. American League owners consciously put teams in cities were the Senior Circuit already had a presence. It says something about the size and influence of Gotham that unlike Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities New York ended up with not just two but three teams.

Enjoy your Memorial Day, everyone.

(images/Library of Congress)