Emma G. Mullen (1881-1918)

As dedicated readers will know, Grant Willard met a remarkable woman while sailing to France on the S.S. Chicago in the spring of 1917. Her name was Emma G. Mullen. She first made an impression on him by hosting frequent tea parties on board at which she served coffee instead of tea! At the time he hardly could have known how much she would come to mean to him or how deeply she would influence his experience of living and serving in France. Over the next ten months, Mullen became a friend, an advisor and a surrogate mother to Grant.

A native of Wisconsin, Mullen was a buyer for various East Coast department stores. She lived in Paris and was an authority on French fashion, "never failing to be present at the big fashion openings each season," one article read. She introduced Grant and his buddies to Paris--entertaining them and introducing them to her artists friends in the Latin Quarter. What an eye-opening experience it must have been for a young man from the Midwest to find himself in a Parisian salon with writers, painters and musicians.

When Grant went away to the front, the two corresponded, Mullen sending him care packets; and she even let him use her address as a clearinghouse for letters and packages from home. And whenever Grant got back to Paris, he looked her up. He wrote in one letter home, "She has been a God-send to me. Whenever I am in Paris she is always the first person I go to see. Energetic, full of life, interested in everything, experienced and ever willing to help."

Unfortunately, their friendship was cut short by tragedy.

On the afternoon of Good Friday, March 29, 1918, Emma Mullen, accompanied by her assistant, Madeleine Floch, attended mass at St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church in the heart of Paris. One of the oldest churches in the city, with its Gothic architecture and classical facade, it was the musical home of the Couperin family dynasty in the 17th and 18th centuries.

As mass was being said under the beautiful stone-vaulted arches that Good Friday, seventy-five miles to the northeast near the town of Crépy, the Germans were preparing to fire their newest weapon: a long-range heavy cannon known as the "Paris Gun." It was capable of hurling a 210-lb. shell more than 80 miles with a maximum altitude of 131,000 feet. The gun announced itself to the world loudly when a shell exploded suddenly early on the morning of March 23 on the Quai de Seine in central Paris. Confused Parisians thought they'd been bombed by a new German high-altitude zeppelin or airplane, but there had been no air raid warning before the shattering explosion. The random shelling continued through week that followed; it didn't cause wide-spread damage, but it did terrorize the populace of the French capital.

The folks in St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church that Good Friday probably never heard it coming. At 4:30 p.m. a single shell hit the ancient roof causing tons of stone masonry to rain down on the congregation below. In seconds, 88 people were killed and 68 wounded. The carnage was unbelievable; pools of blood were everywhere in the church and on the front steps. Among the dead were Emma Mullen and Madeleine Floch. It was several days before their bodies were identified. Grant, working at the front, wouldn't learn of the tragedy for a week. This was the deadliest single bombardment of World War I.

I find the story of Emma Mullen and her friendship with Grant Willard to be one of the most compelling aspects of my grandfather's World War I diary and letters.

Cheer up, Sis, there’s a big, big day coming.

As I wrote previously on this blog, Marion Willard Everett (1891-1978) was Grant's only sister, and they wrote each other frequently throughout the First World War. She was engaged to William R. Everett (1891-1943) of Waseca, Minnesota. Bill was called up into the U.S. Army in 1917 and shipped over to France early the following year. Even though he and Grant corresponded during the great conflict, there's little in the diary and letters to indicated that they actually ever met up "over there."

If you want to read more about my remarkable Great Aunt Marion, author Amy Dolnick did a fine job of edited her letters and writing about her life in Future in a Handbasket (2002).

In this letter Grant writes about the sinking of the SS Tuscania. She was a luxury liner torpedoed in February 1918 by the German U-boat UB-77 while carrying American troops to Europe and sank with a loss of 210 lives.

Convois Autos.,

S.S.U. 647,

Par B.C.M.,

France.

Sunday – March 17, 1918

Dear Sis:-

Your letter dated Feb. 9 and mailed on Feb. 12 reached me day before yesterday. You have been awfully good to me, Sis, with your letters and all coming through regularly with not even so much as a letter from me in return. I wish I could write as you can. I have tried to write regularly to the family in hopes that they might act as sort of a middle bureau for all the rest of you to whom I should like to write regularly. This isn’t very satisfactory because when I do write regularly they don’t arrive in the same sequence and sometimes it is impossible to write. Then the letters from home during all this mess of changing services have been very irregular indeed, sometimes coming in intervals of a month and a half. It’s awfully hard to carry on a one sided correspondence when censorship regulations prohibit our saying no more than that we are well and happy. With this address, however, I think things are going to be much improved.

With your letter came one from Mother dated Feb. 17 in which she stated that a box containing gauntlets, tooth paste etc. had been sent or rather would be sent as soon as you could find a suitable box. The next day – yesterday – the box came. I was certainly surprised. A letter from [Emma] Mullen over a week ago says that she was sending two boxes from you people out to me. They haven’t showed up yet so you see!!! None of your letters have been censored. Two letters of recent date from the Hutchinsons have been censored. They must have their eye on Cousin Elsie. These two letters together with one from Dot long ago are the only ones which have been opened since I have been over here.

The family pictures which Mother sent arrived sometime ago. I forgot to mention them as they came during a rush period and were tucked away and temporarily forgotten. I got them out the other day and they are now on my person all the time. They certainly are dandies. Who took them? You all look about the same as when I last saw you. Why wasn’t Tib with you? Has he got a small Kodak of himself that I may have?

The news that Fred Allen went down on the Tuscania was a blow. Please keep me posted on this disaster because we hear nothing of it here.

Sis, I’m more sorry than I can tell you that you and Bill are going to be separated. I was hoping that you two would be married before he was called to this side. He is quite right in not wanting you to come to New York to see him off. I see his point of view precisely. Cheer up, Sis, there’s a big, big day coming and you know as well as I do that you would never have felt quite right if Bill hadn’t gotten to this side before this mess is settled. You may kid me about the way I rose up and flew over here when I made up my mind but I’ll bet you that Bill, down in his heart, is crazy to come as I ever was.

Remember me to all the gang and use your influence to get Mother and Tib off for California.

Much love,

Bub.

I sure am in love with this side of the pond.

Grant Willard's brother, Harold, known as "Tib," was two years his junior. Following his graduation from the University of Minnesota in 1917, Tib wanted to serve in France, but couldn't pass the physical examination. He suffered from varicose veins and was forced to have an operation that nearly killed him. A blood clot broke loose and settled in his lungs, causing a pulmonary embolus. Disabled and in great pain, Tib spent the winter of 1917-18 in California with his mother. The climate and rest got him back on his feet, but he never got to serve in France. Several of Grant's letters discuss Tib's frustration at being sidetracked.

Varicosis and pulmonary embolus notwithstanding, Tib lived to be a very old man; he was nearly 90 when he passed in 1984. He became a professor of animal husbandry at the University of Wyoming.

Convois Autos.,

S.S.U. 647,

Par B.C.M.,

France.

Monday, March 11, 1918

Dear Tib:-

Have been postponing this letter long enough. I was in hopes of receiving some definite information as to what has been ailing you. The first inkling I had of your illness was about two weeks ago when a letter from Mother spoke of your doing nicely after 3 weeks in bed. Today another letter from Mother dated Feb. 10 says in part, “he looks white and thin but has a good appetite and is in good spirits – the left lung, Dr. said, might not be normal for another month – the limb is not swelling much so we really feel that he is getting along nicely.” My guess is pleurisy. Is that right? It’s tough, Tib.

I had pictured you as busily engaged in pumping up balloons or flying in the clouds making diagrams of Boch fortifications and artillery placements, directing shell fire, dodging enemy planes, etc., etc. Am tickled to death that you selected this department of the work, Tib, and hope your sickness won’t interfere with your following it up as far as you can go. Balloons and planes are two of my pets. Wish you could see them in action as we have seen them. Stick to it, kid.

But you have been pretty darn lucky in your nurses. Wow! How I envy you! Five weeks should have seemed like a day to you under your circumstances. Sis writes that you are a first-class patient with your voice going when your fiddle won’t. I would have contracted pleurisy (or whatever it was that you had) in a minute if I could have traded places with you for about five weeks. I don’t know that I could have stood more than five weeks without longing for this side again, however, for I sure am in love with this side of the pond.

Mother’s letter dated Feb. 10 arrived today. You sure have been having some cold weather over there this winter. It ought to be about over now. Mother’s dissertation on dark flour, barley gems, rye bread, buckwheat, etc., was very interesting. If your wheatless days are responsible for the white bread we are getting over here in the American Army we are very much obliged to you all. It sure is good bread. We eat oatmeal for breakfast now which is a rare treat after having nothing but black coffee and bread–the coffee sometimes with sugar and sometimes without.

Well, Tib, stick to it, old boy, and go the limit on this balloon business. Hap and I will be very glad to hear from you when you can write.

As ever,

Bub.

Grandma Robbins

Grant Willard's maternal grandmother, Abigail Williams Baldwin Robbins, died in Mankato on the last day of 1917. She was 74 years old. Due to the slowness of wartime mail delivery, Grant didn't learn of the fact for weeks.

His Grandma Robbins was a transplanted New England Yankee from Chester, Vermont, where her family had lived for generations. She and her husband, George, moved to Minnesota some years after their daughter married W.D. Willard.

Convois Autos.,

S.S.U. 647,

Par B.C.M.,

France.

Friday, March 8, 1918

Dear Family:-

Don’t blame too much of the dirt on this paper to transportation. My supply of writing paper has diminished to such an extent that this letter will clean me out until I can get into the village for more.

There is no new information of interest. Since last writing I have found out that we are permitted to say that we are with the American Army at Base Hospital #66. The work is going along about as usual with no mishaps nor streaks of good fortune worth mentioning.

Got my first letter from you in about a month and a half day before yesterday. I guess it was the first of yours addressed to S.S.U. 647. Miss Mullen must hold much of my mail and I can’t understand why she doesn’t forward it. Maybe she never received my letter.

It must be very, very strange at home without Grandma Robbins. It’s very hard for me to get accustomed to the fact that she is not still in the old yellow home on Second Street. Yes, she was a wonderful pal, always ready for a laugh and a joy ride. I sincerely hope that there is nothing to the rumor that my coming over here as I did had considerable to do with bringing on the trouble.

Allen Alhers just came in from a trip with a very red face and says it is very cold out. Must go out and drain my car before it freezes.

Hope to hear from you again soon.

Much love,

Grant.