Give the man room

by Robert J. Casey; Mary Montgomery Borglum

The Czecho-Slovak organizers in New York and Washington were pleased by the patriotism of the men who volunteered to fight. But, once they had expressed their satisfaction, they forgot all about the army. It was easy to send passage money to worthy young men all over the country and move them on to the camp in Stamford. As a result of this carefree policy, most of the business of handling the volunteers fell automatically to the Borglum family.

Frequently a batch of recruits would be sent from New York without advance notice or arrangements for provisions. The Borglums would then have to scour the neighborhood to borrow blankets and appeal loudly to the Red Cross for a quick food supply. Once in 1918 when the painter George Luks was spending the summer with Gutzon he and the sculptor painted posters which were sold at auction to raise funds for the camp. The boys needed some adequate kitchen materials, such as a stove, knives and a collection of pots and pans.

The Czechs, after a little pushing by Borglum, put on a sort of pageant which showed an attack on an Austrian village by a band of the new republic’s troops. It was realistic, and press reports said that it was very thrilling.

The soldiers had hurriedly put together a few thatched-roof cottages and hung up a background to give the illusion of the Austrian village. Everyone who came to Wire Mill Road that night was in Czech costume, and that included the Borglums and their guests. It was a gala night, and it brought another tide of volunteers.

On another evening there was an impressive musical program. Masaryk came with his daughter Anna and one of the Benes brothers presently to become famous in Europe. Miss Kitty Cheatham, a singer who had made many concert tours in Europe, was present also. She heard the massed male chorus of the soldiers sing her composition “America” as it probably would never be sung again. The boys were born singers, and they meant what they sang.

Gutzon telephoned one night that he had heard important news and would deliver it to the camp in person. So the Czecho-Slovak army stayed up late that night. There was no radio. The late evening papers would arrive with Gutzon Borglum. So there was nothing to do but wait. About 10 o’clock the sculptor arrived. The boys stood at attention in dead silence. “I won’t keep you long,” he said. “But I have heard good news and I wanted to tell it to you myself.... President Wilson this afternoon announced that the United States has recognized the independence of the Republic of Czechoslovakia.” The boys were enthusiastic that night. They built a huge bonfire on the parade ground. They marched around it and over most of the neighborhood singing and shouting for a large part of the night.

The camp commander, a Czech, was a professional agnostic. He said it hurt him to look at any sort of religious observance. This made things difficult for him because the greater part of the Czecho-Slovak volunteers were deeply religious. They were always aware that they were going into danger, and until they came to Stamford they had always been able to go to church when and if they wanted to. The conflict between the commander and his troops was rapidly approaching a state of open mutiny when Borglum intervened. He arranged to have mass celebrated in his home whenever a contingent of soldiers was due to go abroad. Father Kubacec would come up from Yonkers on the eve of their going, to hear confessions. In the morning he would celebrate mass on the open terrace. And everybody in the camp would attend except the commander.

When the first group left for the front they wanted to carry the new republic’s flag, which, so far, they had seen only on the camp stationery. Gutzon requisitioned one from the headquarters in New York, but there was none there, either. So he toured the New York shops for suitable flag material and brought it home. It was cut by a Bohemian tailor from Chicago on the table in the Borglum dining room. Four stars, representing four provinces, were eventually stitched to the field. The camp commander said that very likely there was no other flag like it anywhere in the world. He was probably right.

A hundred men marched with this flag down Wire Mill Road to entrain in Stamford for the boat from New York. They were dressed in blue-gray uniforms with berets of the same color. And somehow, they looked like soldiers. Gutzon frequently wondered how many of them had survived the war.

Every few weeks a similar pageant rolled out of the Borglum estate. Altogether several thousand volunteers learned squad drill and the manual of arms on Gutzon’s front porch. Several hundred were still there on Armistice Day and went roaring to town to join in the general celebration.