A FORCE IS BORN

Charles H. Brent, an Episcopal bishop and senior chaplain of the American Expeditionary Forces, was concerned. The Great War had just ended, and thousands of homesick troops remained in Europe awaiting orders to rotate home. The food was barely edible. Recreation was scarce. The troops were restless, going AWOL and stirring up trouble. Brent came up with an idea and took it to Gen. John Pershing, allied commander of the AEF, who permitted the chaplain to start Comrades in Service, a fellowship that would work to improve plummeting morale.

It never really took off. 

Pershing ordered 20 officers to meet in Paris to discuss ways to stabilize behavior among Americans stranded in postwar France. At a dinner after the meeting, at the behest of Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., a plan emerged that Roosevelt had long harbored: a new type of veterans organization.

All 20 officers agreed in principle. They also agreed that there should be two gatherings – one in Paris and the other stateside – to hash out the aims of the organization, a name for it, and how to get enough members to make it viable. To make it work, they understood that enlisted personnel needed to join, too. Enlisted personnel, however, rarely had the luxury of traveling wherever they wished, even for the founding of a veterans organization, an idea that initially raised skepticism from command. Lt. Col. Eric Fisher Wood, however, wired Roosevelt on March 7, 1919, a simple statement: “Am inviting enlisted men.”

Some had orders to attend the March 15-17 Paris Caucus. Others did not. Some were smuggled in, and others showed up dressed as couriers with pouches containing nothing but waste paper. Some enlisted staff of Stars and Stripes (notably Pvt. Harold Ross, later the editor of The American Legion Magazine and founder of The New Yorker) were asked to at least show up long enough to register.

Fearing that an organization launched by the son of a Republican former president might appear too closely aligned with a political party, Bennett Clark, son of the Democratic Speaker of the House, was elected chairman. A voting plan was quickly identified, to be allocated by divisions or other units, and a motion was passed to declare that any use of military rank would be out of order. There would be no privates, no colonels, no generals – only delegates. And those delegates would be placed on one of the four committees that would decide the permanent organization, constitution and bylaws, name and location of the next meeting.

By the morning of March 16, the Constitution Committee, chaired by Lt. Col. G. Edward Buxton, would present its report, which was quickly adopted. “We, the members of the Military and Naval Service of the United States of America in the great war, desiring to perpetuate the principles of Justice, Freedom, and Democracy for which we have fought, to inculcate the duty and obligation to the citizen to the State; to preserve the history and incidents of our participation in the war; and to cement the ties of comradeship formed in service, do propose to found and establish an association for the furtherance of the foregoing purposes.”

Unlike Comrades in Service, which had failed to fire up the troops, this new organization was doing that from its first moments. Even Brent, an early skeptic, came forth to offer the seconding speech. “I will tell you frankly that I was fearful ... lest you should create a great mechanism without adequate purposes,” he said. “I see in the report of your committee the ideals not only of the Army but of the nation adequately expressed ... I will give you my most hearty support.”

Many names were suggested and discarded until “Veterans of the Great War” and “Legion of the Great War” were selected as the final two.

Alexander Woollcott, a portly medical corps sergeant, objected to the use of the word “Legion” because he found it “savoring slightly of the silk stocking.”

An anonymous delegate from the 1st Division who had fought alongside the French Foreign Legion rejoined that “if the fat medico thinks those babies are sissies, he is just nuts.”

In the end, a motion from Maurice K. Gordon of Kentucky was adopted. “The American Legion” was named, at least temporarily.

The committee to decide the location of the next meeting, however, devolved so much it was disbanded. According to Richard Seelye Jones’ “A History of The American Legion,” before St. Louis was chosen for the stateside caucus, “Home-town pride burst forth with vigor akin to violence.”

It was also important that the next meeting include those who, “through no fault of their own, had been denied the privilege of making history on a European battlefield,” historian George Wheat noted in his 1919 “The Story of the American Legion.”

With less than two months until the May 8-10 St. Louis Caucus, much had to be done, the bulk by Roosevelt and a coterie of individuals working out of a borrowed office in New York City with staff provided by the Military Training Camps Association (MTCA).

Roosevelt and others made a concerted effort to reach out to Navy and Marine Corps veterans who had been unable to attend the Paris Caucus. Additionally, geographic diversity was needed, so it was decided to mold an executive committee much like the U.S. Senate, with delegates from each state. Drawing heavily upon MTCA alumni, Roosevelt and Clark identified state leaders and gave them the responsibility of finding delegates who could attend the St. Louis Caucus.

The caucus opened on the afternoon of May 8 at the Shubert-Jefferson Theater. More than 1,100 delegates from across the country attended. After Roosevelt repeatedly declined chairmanship, that responsibility fell to former Dallas Mayor Henry D. Lindsley, a Democrat who had served as a colonel in France. Among the vice chairmen were a private, an Army sergeant, a Navy sailor and a Marine. Other existing veterans organizations were also invited to attend and given one vote each, with the exception of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Council, which was denounced as “Bolshevik and communist” because the group was aligned with the Industrial Workers of the World – although the IWW’s representative, S.H. Curtain of Seattle, was allowed to join as an individual.

Chaos ensued when Chicago was proposed as the site of the first national convention. “John F.J. Herbert of Massachusetts got the floor and opened a lively debate by declaring that the mayor of Chicago, William Hale ‘Big Bill’ Thompson, was lacking in real Americanism,” Jones wrote. “Thompson had been widely considered if not pro-German certainly very much anti-British ... Herbert gave him an oratorical tongue-lashing and told the Legion caucus that if Chicago wanted a Legion  convention it should get a new mayor.” After much debate, Minneapolis was chosen.

To Thomas Miller of Delaware and Luke Lea of Tennessee went the task of drafting and getting passed a congressional charter – a first for a veterans service organization. Miller was a former Republican congressman who enlisted in the infantry as a private after losing re-election, and was cited by Pershing for “especially meritorious and conspicuous service.” Lea had been a senator for six years before his commission as a colonel of artillery and being sent to France. Introduced in the House and Senate on June 27,  the charter became law Sept. 16.

Under editor George A. White, a Paris founder, The American Legion Weekly began a series of articles aimed at the Federal Board for Vocational Education for “shameful mismanagement of the affairs of our afflicted comrades,” author Marquis James wrote. Financial concerns were entrusted to John W. Prentiss, Finance Committee chairman, who raised $257,000 from 213 Legionnaires from 13 states. The Legion later repaid the loans at 6 percent interest.

Former Army officer Franklin D’Olier of Pennsylvania, who would serve as the first national commander, led the State Organization Division, which funded national speaking tours of luminaries like Roosevelt and Herbert. By Oct. 1, the Legion had grown to 5,670 posts. It was in every state, Alaska and Hawaii (then territories), Cuba, Panama and Mexico. By the time of the convention, membership stood at more than 685,000.

“There is no power that can destroy The American Legion except The American Legion itself,” Lindsley said. It “has the confidence and support of the American public. The Legion ... will open its convention in Minneapolis with solemn purpose. It will lightly pass on no big thing. It will be ruffled by no chance wind. It knows it has a task to do and will perform it. With faith in God and country, with faith in itself, The American Legion will march on for the years to come.”

On Nov. 11, 1919, in Centralia, Wash., Legionnaires were under attack. As the local post’s founding members marched in an Armistice Day parade, gunfire erupted. IWW members shot and killed four Legionnaires. To convention-goers in Minneapolis, Jones noted, the murders “stamped the proceedings with a feeling of seriousness. That the new Legion should so suddenly have become a target, not for words but for bullets, was cause for thought .... the firmness with which the Legion men in Centralia had met a crisis, had stood for law and order, brought to the gathering at Minneapolis an added dedication to high principles.”

Minnesota Gov. J.A. Burnquist offered conventioneers words of hopefulness in a complicated nation and world. “In this day when old empires are falling, new nations are being born, and the fundamental principles of the American republic are being attacked, you advocate the upholding and defending of the U.S. Constitution.”

A final directive came from D’Olier, the newly elected national commander, whose acceptance speech had four sentences: “My word is simply this. We came here to work. Let us keep working and not listen to speeches. I thank you.”

Apportionment of delegate strength, the resolution process, the organization’s unitary head in a national commander and powers vested in the National Executive Committee came from that first convention. So, too, was born the Legion’s image as non-sectarian and non-partisan. Any man or woman, regardless of rank, could effect change through resolutions and a determined effort to shepherd them through for local, state or national consideration. 

As James noted, The American Legion went to Minneapolis “a pair of words and came away a living force ... composed of men and women whose qualifications for service to their country and their comrades were their records with the nation’s fighting forces in the World War; a force aimed to express the ideals of citizenship of 5 million people; a force such as neither this nor any other country had ever seen.”  

Mark Seavey is a writer and digital media specialist for The American Legion.