Edward H. Pattison Collection, 1915-1924

Edward Hargrave Pattison was born in Troy, New York in the year 1896.  He attended the Albany Academy in preparation for entrance to Cornell University where he was a member of the Cornell Track and Field Team.  He was also active in the formation of the Cornell American Field Service Unit along with Professor Martin W. Sampson, who was the recipient of some of the letters found in the Pattison Collection as well as the subject of a few of them.

Edward Pattison entered the American Field Service on April 14, 1917, a few days after the American Declaration of War on Germany.  Pattison sailed for France with the Cornell Unit on board the “S.S. Chicago” and landed in France before the month of April was over.  Pictures of this trip, of the Cornell Unit, and indeed the chronology of his entire AFS service can be found graphically depicted in his photo album in the collection.

He left for the front from A.F.S. Headquarters at 21 Rue Raynouard on May 9, 1917 as a member of the newly formed Réserve Mallet, at that time a part of the French Army Automobile Service.  The Cornell Unit was the first American college unit to be recruited for the camion service of the French Army and Pattison’s unit was the first to fly the American flag on the French front in World War I.

To be sure, the Cornell Unit’s recruitment for the Camion Service indicated a reversal of its original intention to serve as part of the ambulance corps.  Pattison’s correspondence described the recruitment efforts of A. Piatt Andrew, Director General of the A.F.S., in Paris, in favor of the Reserve Mallet, and his own thought that men should serve France in whatever way was most necessary for the war effort.  In this, he mirrored the general attitude of the A.F.S. Headquarters staff.  Much of this is explained in Professor Sampson’s introduction to Camion Letters from Men in the American Field Service (N.Y., 1918.)

The Pattison Correspondence Series is heavily weighted towards his service in the U.S. Army Field Artillery just as the Photographic Material Series is mainly descriptive of his A.F.S. service.  However, Pattison did attend the French Automobile School for camion drivers at Chevigny Farm after the United States Army militarized the Réserve Mallet at Soissons on November 13, 1917.

By December, 1917, E.H. Pattison had left the American Mission, Réserve Mallet, U.S. Army Motor Transport Corps, in favor of the Heavy Artillery.  However, he had to endure a long waiting period from December, 1917, until April, 1918, while his orders to transfer were being processed.  With orders finally in hand, Pattison was posted to the French Artillery Officers Candidate School at Saumur, the site of the famous pre-war cavalry school.  Much of the material found in the Pattison Collection is connected with the course of study for artillery officers in terms of lecture notes, books, and correspondence.  That he valued his French training in artillery is clear from the reading of his correspondence of this period.

Upon graduation from Saumur in July, 1918, E. H. Pattison was commissioned a 2^nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Coastal Artillery Command, a part of the U.S. Army Reserve.  August, 1918, found him at the Heavy Artillery School at Angers, after which he served a brief stint attached to the French Artillery Intelligence.  Apparently, he saw more action while in the A.F.S. than he did in the U.S. Army, being shuttled from one school to the next until the end of the war.  Curiously, he had left the A.F. S. for a more active role in the U.S. Army.

As the Post-War subseries indicates, he returned eagerly to the United states after demobilization, and there began to grapple with academic decisions concerning which law school to attend.  There is some correspondence to his family in Troy, N.Y. originating on an ore boat on Lake Michigan on which he worked in the summer while attending the University of Chicago School of Law.  Other correspondence is from New York City, where he went to attend Columbia University Law School.  The correspondence ends in 1924 with Pattison’s admission to the New York Bar, of which he was an active and highly respected member in the Albany-Troy area until his death at an advanced age.