Edward Mandell Stone
Harvard Class of 1908
The
first Harvard man to die in the war was completely English; the second was
completely American. He was Edward Mandell Stone, born January 5, 1888, at
Chicago, Ill., the third son of Henry Baldwin Stone, of the Harvard Class of
1873, and Elizabeth Mandell Stone, both natives of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Henry Baldwin Stone had made for himself a typically American career: on
graduation he began work as a machinist in a Waltham cotton mill; then he went
West, and entered the shops of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad at
Aurora, Ill.; in a few years he became general manager of the Burlington system
and second vice-president of the road. Later he was made president of the
Chicago Telephone Company and of two other companies representing the great
interests of the Bell Telephone system in the central states, a position which
he held until a few days before his death. This occurred, July 5, 1897, through
an accident. His wife died in 1907.
Their
son, Edward, who made his home in Milton, with his mother until her death, and
then with his sister, was prepared for college at Milton Academy, and entered
Harvard with the Class of 1908. He completed his work for the A.B. degree in
1907, and during his senior year studied in the Law School. He did not finish
his studies there, but in 1909 served in the Legation at Buenos Aires as a
volunteer private secretary to the Hon. Charles H. Sherrill, United States
Minister to the Argentine Republic. Returning to this country he entered the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in January 1910, taking courses in history
and political science, and the next autumn resumed his course in the Law
School. His graduate work showed marked intelligence and a capability which
would have carried him far had he taken up the practice of the law. Of the man
himself Mr. Sherrill, speaking of his first interview with Stone upon his
arrival in South America, has written:
He was
excessively modest, frankly avowing that he had no delusions as to his mental
equipment for making a great success of his life, but in that interview and
throughout my subsequent relations with him there always appeared an unswerving
integrity of purpose, and a desire to be helpful. Those are the traits which
seemed most to mark his character, and those are the traits which later led him
to make his life more useful to civilization than our lives will probably be.
This first Harvard volunteer to die for France bore
a relation to the war of which there is little to tell beyond a record of his
service. Reserved and chary of expression, he was averse equally from letting
himself be photographed and from writing about himself in his infrequent
letters. He had been living in France for some time before the outbreak of the war,
and had become deeply interested in this country and fond of its people. When
Germany attacked France in August, 1914, he enlisted at once as a private in
the Foreign Legion, 2nd Regiment, Battalion C. In October he was
sent to the trenches at the front with a machine-gun section, and served at or
near Craonne until wounded there by shrapnel on February 15, 1915. He was taken
to the Military Hospital at Romilly, where he died of his wounds on February
27, 1915. He is buried in the Military Cemetary of Romilly. His family have
felt sure that his own wish would have been to lie in the country which he
loved and served.
His class secretary reports of him that when he
received his fatal wound a surgeon asked if he wished him to write to anybody,
but that Stone said it was not worth while.
“These words are, in a way,
characteristic of the man. What he did he did well, and invariably felt that no
particular attention should be paid to the results he achieved. He was an
essentially modest person who took life as he found it, and contributed to
everything he took part in both with high ideals and straightforward work.”
The surgeon [Rufus Adrian Van Voast, M.D.] in the Foreign Legion who first cared
for him after his wound has written:
I saw
Eddie Stone frequently during the six months we were together in “Battalion C,
2ème Régiment de marche du 2ème Etrangère.” He was always on the job and in
good spirits: he had a lot of grit, poor chap. One day I got a call from
his company to treat a wounded man. It was Stone, I found, with a hole in his
side made by a shrapnel ball, which had probably penetrated his left lung.
There was no wound exit, so the ball, or piece of shell, stayed in. He was
carried back by my squad of stretcher-bearers from the front-line trench—the “Blanc
Sablon,” our headquarters—where I had applied the first dressing, and from
there removed to a hospital about eight miles back. I did not see him again,
and heard that he died of his wound in this hospital. He had friends in the Legion
who spoke highly of him to me. There was very little help we regimental could
give the wounded, I am sorry to say. All we could do for them was to see that
they were carefully moved back out of the firing zone after a first dressing.
You can tell his people that he always did his duty as a soldier and died like
one. Of this I am sure.
~~ M.A. De Wolfe Howe, Memoirs of the Harvard Dead in the War Against Germany,
Volume I: The Vanguard, 1920.
|
In
the Legion, Stone was one of the quietest, hardest-working, and most unassuming
soldiers, ever ready to propose himself for any post where coolness and
fearlessness were especially required. The other American volunteers saw little
of him after the regiment arrived at the front, as he was the only American in
his machine-gun section.
Mandell Stone was on guard February 15 with his machine-gun section, at an
exposed point in the sector held by his battalion, to the left of Craonnelle.
The Germans suddenly started an intense bombardment. Fearing that it was preparatory
to a surprise attack, Stone stood by his piece, instead of taking shelter in a
dugout, and a few minutes later fell wounded.
Edward
Mandell Stone was posthumously cited in the Order of the Army as a “brave
Legionniare, who died for France on February 27, 1915, as a result of his
glorious wounds received before Craonne.”
Stone’s
letters to his uncle, Frederic M. Stone, tell something of his life in the
Legion:
Mailly, October 9, 1914
We are now at an enormous
military camp at a place called Mailly, about twenty miles from Châlons. We are
working very hard going through exercises of all sorts, as I am glad to say
that the French Government has no intention of sending us to the firing line
without thorough preliminary training.
As a matter of fact, we are not far from the front, and are well within
hearing of the artillery. The Germans have been here, and a part of the battle
of the Marne was fought in this neighborhood. There are relics of the battle of
all sorts: soldiers’ graves, German and French rifles and uniforms, pieces of
shells, etc. Some of the villages around here have been almost totally
destroyed.
You will be glad to hear
that I am perfectly well and that the life up to the present has been doing me
good rather than harm.
Another
letter dated January 20, 1915 said:
I think it is time I gave a
more detailed account of myself than I have done up to the present time. The
censorship has somewhat relaxed, so I do not think there can be any danger of
my letter being interfered with. As I wrote several times to Uncle Nat, we have
been in this neighborhood, that is to say in the region of Craonne, for nearly
three months. There has been very little action here since we arrived, and
practically no ground lost or gained. This does not mean that we have had an
easy time, for we have been under fire more or less continually. The weather
has been very trying, as there has been an enormous amount of rain and we are
all more or less tired out. Within the last week there have been unfavorable
developments near Soissons, and it looks as if we should have to retreat,
especially as the Aisne is in flood and many of the bridges impracticable. If
there is a battle of any importance, we probably shall not take part in it, as
we are in no condition to go through an action lasting several days. We shall
in all probability go ingloriously to the rear,
giving place to fresh troops.
To go into more detail
concerning myself, I have been able to keep well up to the present time. We are
well fed and all mail arrives regularly, although, of course more or less
delayed. I have so far kept out of all trouble and get on well with officers
and men in the regiment. I am not, however, on the road to promotion, although
several of my friends are already corporals and one a sergeant. I can think of
nothing else except that I have been inoculated
against typhoid fever.
The
Harvard Crimson said, in the number of March 28, 1915:
The papers report that Edward Mandell Stone, ’08,
who last August enlisted in the Foreign Legion of France, has died. His
classmates, his friends, even those who knew him only enough to say a merry
hello to him as he passed them in the Yard a few short years ago, will feel
deep sympathy for his bereaved family. But in a more general sense, this is a particularly
hard loss, for Stone was, I believe, the first Harvard man to lose his life in
the war. We do much talking around the Yard about the war, taking sides
(usually the same side) with earnest eloquence; but here is a fellow, happy,
rich, strong, with a promising life before him, who did not hesitate to
volunteer under a foreign banner and sacrifice his life for the cause he
thought (and most of us think) right. Let undergraduates and professor and
alumni take off their hats in reverent memory of their brother who by dying for
his ideals has brought honor upon himself and upon the University he so nobly
represented.
~~ Paul Rockwell, American Fighters in the Foreign Legion, 1914-1918
(NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1925).
|
Stone, Edward Mandell, A.B., '08; l '07-'08; g '09-'10; l '11-'12. Enlisted private, Battalion C, 2d Regiment, Foreign Legion, French Army, August 1914; wounded February 15, 1915; died of wounds February 27, 1915 at Romilly, France. Engagement: Craonne.
~~ Frederick S. Mead, A.B. (ed), Harvard's Military Record in the World War, 1921, page 911.
|
Edward Mandell Stone, Harvard, 1908, was a quiet intellectual, who worked at the United States Embassy.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Death brushed the Americans ... The first to be killed in action was Edward Mandell Stone, mortally wounded while serving his machine gun near Craonne. The brilliant Harvard alumnus had been a dedicated soldier. He was mourned by his comrades-in-arms and all who knew him back in the United States. The Harvard Crimson said:
Let undergraduates and professors and alumni take off their hats in reverent memory of their brother who by dying for his ideals has brought honor upon himself and upon the University he so nobly represented ...
~~ Irving Werstein, Sound No Trumpet: The Life and Death of Alan Seeger
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1967).
|
PAY TRIBUTE IN PARIS TO AMERICAN VETERAN
Volunteers Honor Memory of Stone, Slain in World War in Foreign Legion
Special Cable to the New York Times
PARIS, Feb 27. -- French, American and other volunteers in the World War paid tribute today to Edward Mandell Stone, the first American member of the Foreign Legion who was killed in battle in France.
Wreaths and flowers were placed on the American volunteer's monument in the Place des Etats Unis by representatives of the veterans' organizations, while a large group of former French volunteers and veterans of the Lafayette Escadrille of the Foreign Legion and of the American Ambulance Corps stood bareheaded beneath Alan Seeger's stature.
"We do not come in a spirit of sorrow," said Roger Bathie, president of the French War Volunteers, "but rather in one of pride to honor the memory of Mr. Stone and of the others who shared his lot, and died for the ideal which we, his survivors, still hope to preserve."
The Rev. J. W. Cochran, pastor of the American Church, offered prayer, and John G. Hopper, president of the Trench and Air Association, which is that of the American volunteer combatants in the French Army, spoke for the Americans, recalling Mr. Stone's life and sacrifice.
Mr. Stone, who was a member of the American diplomatic service, volunteered in the Foreign Legion in August 1914, and was killed near Craonne by shell fire on Feb. 27, 1915.
General Marlaux, Governor General of Les Invalides, the Paris military headquarters, and other French officials were present at the ceremony.
|
|
