Edward H. Pattison Collection, 1915-1924
| Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs
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Abstract
Administrative/Biographical History
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 2nd 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.
Subjects (links to similar collections)American Field Service--Cornell University Unit
American Field Service--Réserve Mallet
American Field Service--TMU 526
American Field Service--Transport Matériel [États-] Unis (TMU)
Camion drivers
Cornell University
Pattison, Edward H. (Edward Hargrave), 1896-1986
Saumur (France)
U.S. Army
World War, 1914-1918
Administrative Information
The Pattison Collection is particularly significant, not only for the scope and the diversity of the materials found within it, but also for the fact that it mirrors the creation of the Cornell University Unit of the AFS in 1917, and the formation of the Réserve Mallet in that same year.
The Cornell Unit had been formed as a part of the American Ambulance Field Service that had originated as a volunteer ambulance service in 1914 at the outbreak of the war, under the aegis of the American Hospital of Paris. However, when the men of the Cornell Unit came to France in April of 1917 at the time of the United States’ Declaration of War, their services were urgently requested by the French Army Automobile Service as camion drivers rather than as “ambulanciers.” The Cornell Unit was, therefore, the first of a number of such college or university units to volunteer for the American Field Service’s Transportation Corps. The Cornell Unit, as a part of the Réserve Mallet, was the first to raise the American flag on the French front after the United States’ declaration. The creation of the Réserve Mallet, named for its French commanding officer, Major Richard Mallet, thus widened the scope of the American Ambulance Field Service to encompass aid to France as camion as well as ambulance drivers. The title of the service was therefore changed at this time to simply the “American Field Service,” to reflect the broadening scope of its work.
The Pattison Collection can be seen as source materials for a case study of a young college man in the United States during the period of American neutrality. It shows his awakening, and that of his friends, and indeed, his university, to the state that the world wide conflict portended for the United States. Hence, his decision to volunteer on behalf of France and its allies. The collection also illustrates the typical sojourn of a young AFS volunteer from the time he left American shores, his introduction to the A.F.S. at its Paris headquarters at 21 Rue Raynouard, and his hard and unrelenting work as a camion driver on the front. It is also important for demonstrating the various facets of the take-over of the entire Field Service by the United States Army in the Fall of 1917.
Edward Pattison’s decision to join the United States Army Motor Transport Corps, or as it was know, the American Mission, Réserve Mallet, and then, to opt for a more combatant branch of the U.S. Army, was typical of many former American Field Service men. The desire of these men for U.S. Army commissions was understandable in those who had already been tested under fire with the French Armies before the U.S. entry to the war. Then, one had to take into account the fact that most of these men of the AFS were naturally U.S. Army officer material by virtue of their backgrounds and educations, to say nothing of their previous service.
It happened that Edward H. Pattison chose to join the U.S. Army Field Artillery, and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in that branch. What the collection has to say concerning the training of U.S. Artillery officers in French schools, and in the famed French artillery methods and techniques, is instructive for any military or social historian. The closeness of the Allied cooperative effort to prepare the American Army for the field can be seen in the documents in this collection.
What a soldier thought about in terms of his training, his conditions of service, his food, friends, recreation, his prospects for advancement, his ideals, and thoughts about the wider pictures of the war, all can be seen in the letters that Pattison wrote home to his friends and family in the United States.
At the end of the war, Pattison returned to the United States to finish his education. In this, he was typical of many men who broke off their college or graduate studies to volunteer for service. The last part of the Correspondence Series in the Pattison Collection takes him through law school and his admission to the New York Bar. He spent the rest of his professional life as an attorney in Troy, New York.
For more information, please see the individual series descriptions.