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.