Читать книгу Beyond Truman - Douglas A. Dixon - Страница 12
ОглавлениеTruth does not always run down the middle.
—Robert H. Ferrell (Letter to Margery M. McKinney, July 23, 1973)
In the last half of the twentieth century and beyond, Indiana University’s Robert Ferrell was caught up in the battle raging among historians characterized as the “quasi-scholarship of revisionists.”1 Critics accused revisionists of impugning the intentions of the United States. Revisionists were tattooed “ideological,” and ironically, denied awards due to their political beliefs.2 Ferrell branded them the “Cannon to the Left,” and if not anti-capitalists then at least budding socialists.3 Arthur Schlesinger Jr. labeled them the self-appointed “moral censors of the history profession.”4 Protagonists of this “new school of revisionism,” as Ferrell described it, found their way into several discussions of the past such as events leading the United States into the Great War or those preceding the attack on Pearl Harbor, or the origins of the Cold War and characterizations of presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.5 In a poignant example, the new collegial breed offered a radical storyline for Pearl Harbor that questioned President Roosevelt’s judgment if not intentions.6 Editors at The Historian and The Review of Politics and leaders of the American Historical Association aired the fight in journals and newsletters.
Not surprisingly, the rebel storytellers were questioning generally accepted understandings of the past at a time when United States was caught in the tumultuous era of civil rights protests, Vietnam, and President Nixon’s implosion. But fertile ground for the new revisionism had been laid in the postmodernist push in other professions such as art, literature, and sociology, well before the 1960s.7 While different in most respects, the chaos of postmodernism and revisionism in this context had some overlap. Revisionists, in the middle of Cold War angst, mixed Marxist ideology with history making according to Ferrell traditionalists; facts were chosen to lead to preordained conclusions (anti-capitalist/imperialism), and at times made up altogether.8 Cold War revisionists as they came to be categorized, viewed in the context of conventional standards of history practice and theory, were considered unprofessional scoundrels.
Although too multiheaded to address fully here, postmodernism as described by historian Callum Brown contrasted sharply with how traditionalists practiced and thought about history. The following explanation underscores a basis for the difference.
The event is something that happened in the past, the fact is a human construction (or representation or statement) of it. The event occurred; the fact is a record and expression of it. The event is neutral. But the fact is built upon documents or records of the event, making it laden with problems of accuracy, bias, editing, significance, and the sheer restrictions of human description. This is the shift from that which can be ascertained to have happened to that which is being packaged by an historian in statements.9
An example Brown described of postmodernists’ critique focused on the commonly understood narrative of the French Revolution, an interpretation of its beginning at the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. The fact that the Bastille was overrun is placed with numerous other facts to create a narrative of significance, one celebrated today. Yet, the historian bunches the Bastille episode with an assortment of other events and facts out of an infinite possibility to create the narrative of the revolution’s starting point. As the storyteller characterizes the facts from the chaos of the past, orders and interprets them, neutrality is lost to imposition, so the theory goes. The grander the scale of interpretation, the further the facts from the events, the more problematic as the basis for objective claims to what happened. Different event selections result in different potential narrative statements and interpretations and approaches to truth.10 A recent discussion among French Revolution experts contrasts the Bastille beginning with a long-term view resting on the decline of the French nobility.11 There is much to postmodernism that is disputed by historians that stem from the evaluation of events, to selection of facts, to narrative interpretation, to whether in fact, one can recapture a/the past. Ferrell and colleagues rejected a specific group of Cold War revisionists based on more than interpretation. They argued that these revisionists also resorted to unethical historical practices to arrive at their interpretations. Aside from Cold War antagonists, Ferrell was experiencing postmodernist influences from scholars at Indiana in other disciplines too.12
Ferrell labeled one group of these followers “crackpot” sociologists.13 In college classes, history students, following the postmodernist philosophy, were dismissing facts and singularly true narratives as only one person’s reality; to some professors, so students shared, “nothing was certain or even true in this world.”14 Ferrell’s response to the new revisionists suggested he questioned stories of the past that did not have a unified coherence, a truthful essence, a right and wrong. Notre Dame colleague Stephen Kertesz, among others (Robert Maddox or Oscar Handlin), agreed with the thrust of Cold War antirevision criticism.15 Ferrell and Kertesz reasoned that these young college students and their green-eared professors had not experienced the world sufficiently to understand it, especially during the decades immediately following the Second World War, as they had.16
With the postmodernist controversy as canvas, there is some irony embedded in three episodes that characterize Ferrell himself, as reflected in the artifacts in his collection at the Lilly Library at Indiana University. These personal episodes are framed using the following questions. How did this future Hoosier historian find his way into the PhD History Program at Yale University? How did his soldiering experience fit with the larger understanding of the Second World War? How might we characterize Ferrell’s matrimonial courtship? Seemingly disparate events, they present a puzzle to those who would draw a straight-line narrative of reality, one with the certainty of truth or appeal to moral judgment. While of no wider historical significance beyond themselves, as Ferrell no doubt would agree, the three stories stand as postmodern allegories, as antithesis, to the Ferrell way of knowing what happened.
In pursuing these questions of the past, Ferrell himself had some advice: Search the archives.17 Some historians have labeled such artifacts “surrogates of the past,” a phrase used to describe remnants that have a history of their own.18 It is argued that this history is separate from what happened. How Ferrell, in fact, got into Yale, for example, may be impossible to know, but the documents that rest at various repositories have their own tale, in collaboration with the sense making of whomever chooses to interpret them, and those who made them available or did not. Ferrell himself had some choice as to what he would save (or create) or not for posterity and for reasons known to him alone. Processes of evaluating evidence, that is experiencing evidence and applying inductive reasoning, are shared by both postmodernists and “scientists of the past” or empiricists.19 But the two types of historical approaches differ on the meaning they impute to artifacts, and indeed, whether one can recover “the” or any past, whether bias toward it can be minimized, or whether a coherent, singular, truthful narrative is possible. Differences are also rooted in the end goals for historical study. In the episodes presented here, the prevalence of evidence and a sense of narrative and biography drove the process initially.
Another Ferrell recommendation guided the search: Find the incongruencies, follow the evidence to address them, and create an accurate and faithful narrative that solves the puzzle.20 As one reads the narrative elaborated below, it is hard to overlook evidence first encountered; that is, course grades, exam feedback, military correspondence, parental reflections, Ferrell’s conjecture, and so forth. The initial artifacts reviewed raised questions about how Ferrell found his way into a prestigious graduate history program at Yale. The head scratching subsided as an alternative narrative appeared. The alternative gained more steam, if more complexity, as young Bob’s extracurricular activities came to the fore. Another missing piece was a complete college transcript, this by way of Bowling Green State University. What resulted from this search for historical answers achieved some coherence and unity, but truth is hard to come by. The same may be said of Ferrell’s courtship and military service stories. The topic of Ferrell’s path to Yale comes first.
Midwest to Yale
Ferrell’s rise to well-respected historian by way of Yale’s graduate school is a useful prelude to the puzzling narratives of his war service and matrimonial courtship. Each vignette highlights postmodernism’s tussle with the Hoosier historian’s singular, unified, truthful history approach.21 Considering Ferrell’s path to Yale, there is reason that he was reluctant to share his early life experiences with the present author since they encompass both highs and lows and personal vulnerability. He may have found it undesirable to share his lack of interest in history in the first several years as a student at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) beginning in the late 1930s.22 In an interview years later, the emeritus professor Ferrell noted that BGSU professors awarded him a grade of D and C in his initial world civilization courses. This was the first sign that Ferrell may not have been invited through the front door at Yale’s graduate history program. Another artifact, a World Civilization Exam bluebook marked C-, described another deficiency—not writing to the question.23 Several BGSU transcripts for the semesters from 1939 to 1940, aside from music, show Ferrell to be a good student overall, though hardly top notch.24
Bowling Green State University, itself, was a surprising launching point given Ferrell’s critique of it through the years. In two missives to BGSU presidents, the Indiana University historian said as much years after graduating. In a letter to President Ralph McDonald, the former alum pointed to the “inadequacy of [BGSU] undergraduate training,” “poor teaching,” and faculty who were “asleep intellectually.” BGSU, as with many other schools, had gained university status even though its faculty produced a “scarcity of scholarship since 1910.” The reality in Ferrell’s eyes: “the graduate school” was a “solemn farce.”25 The Indiana professor’s opinions stood unchanged a decade later, as President Sumner Canary received Ferrell’s critique on a wide array of issues including the lack of quality history faculty and the scholars needed to recruit PhD students and establish a program.26 Such shortcomings may explain why his favorite history professor at BGSU, Walter Sanderlin, left after the initial year, transferring to Jefferson and Washington University in Pennsylvania in the fall of 1946. Even if one discounts the inveterate critic’s remarks, a BS degree in Music Education with a minor in English and German would hardly have included the prerequisites for a middle class Midwesterner to hope for admission to a history program at an Ivy League school.27 Additional archival evidence, for instance, Ferrell’s remark to an acquaintance, Mark Gallagher, raised more questions than it answered: “I went back to Bowling Green for two years and change[d] courses from music education to history.”28 There was also an abbreviated vita attached to a letter Ferrell sent to Philip E. Mosley as part of an application to do research for the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. In it, the future Yale graduate student noted that he earned a BA in Music with minors in history and political science.29
The puzzle of how the future historian came to Yale is muddled more by his inconsistent thoughts shared at the early and late stages of his military service. Staff Sergeant Ferrell’s interest in the discipline of history came partly during his travels overseas in Uncle Sam’s fight against totalitarianism.30 Repeatedly cycling out to the pyramids in Egypt, near the army base, certainly had a pronounced effect; long after, Ferrell continued to recall it as pivotal.31 History as a vocation began creeping into the horizon, if only mutedly, a year into the war and only partly because music held out such lousy prospects as a career.32 A letter responding to his dad’s query stimulated the following response:33 “[T]he prospect of going out and teaching public school music [psm] is not especially interesting to me. The more I think about it the less I like it. There are so many young girl [teachers] who can go out [and] teach psm much better than I can. It is essentially a job of singing, which is not for me.” Ferrell found the inherent limitations of schools to develop acceptable orchestra and band programs impractical. He lacked the skills to play professionally. The Army soldier shared that “I became dissatisfied with [music education] by degrees” and “the Army” had given him “plenty of time to think. This history business at present seems the best to me,” but it would fall short of “working for [ones]self.” Soldier Ferrell went on to judge the advantages and disadvantages of teaching regardless of discipline—“English, language or history.” Sociology and economics were also on his radar. Striving for a master’s or PhD degree was imperative to obtain a teaching job due to the glut of teachers and might work to his advantage at the college level, he believed. “Stability and safety” were the highest priorities, the result likely of living through the Great Depression, his dad’s loss of a banking job, and move away from friends and boyhood home.34
Another letter in response to Ferrell’s dad, Ernest Sr., came late in the war. Despite the early pronouncements, young Bob was ambivalent about his future or at least what he felt comfortable sharing with his parents.35 In letters back and forth, his dad repeatedly shared what he thought best for his son, and young Bob’s replies reflected this: “As you said Dad, it is important to get into something where there will be dough. That is one of the big assets of the medical business, besides the fact that you work for yourself. In the army, I’ve had some experience working for other people, and naturally one would get along best working for himself. . . . The trouble is, though, that I’m not sure yet just what I want to do.” Ferrell thought that taking a leisurely course load, perusing the BGSU catalogue, and sorting out his options were important. The only certainty was to avoid a career in music education.
A wonderful BGSU mentor and professor of history, Sanderlin, facilitated the progression toward history after the former Staff Sergeant Ferrell was released from service and found his way back home in 1945.36 Youthful, handsome, and student-friendly, Sanderlin’s effect made sense since he joined the faculty at BGSU in 1945 and taught the sorts of courses that would have attracted the by-then widely traveled Ferrell—“Oriental Civilizations” or “Africa and the Near East”;37 Sanderlin would publish his first book in 1946, and this gave him the expertise and scholarly approach that no doubt inspired his protégé. According to various campus newspaper reports in the Bee Gee News, Sanderlin was a constant social presence around campus too, whether at dances, debates, or volleyball matches. Ferrell played organ at campus concerts, and the two likely grew close both academically and through informal events. The returning student finished his Music Education degree by the spring semester. Robert Ferrell’s note to Robert Gallagher suggested Ferrell’s preparation continued beyond music education, and perhaps the full academic record would shed more light, if obtainable.38
Two sources pointed to potential saving graces for Ferrell’s acceptance to Yale, though hardly watertight justifications, given other evidence. Following graduation from Bowling Green State, the war veteran sat for the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) at his alma mater.39 Overall scores were not stellar. In the hard sciences—mathematics, physics, chemistry—the scores came in below average. His verbal skills and literature background did little more to recommend him. Yet importantly to the Yale History Department, Ferrell found himself toward the top few percentiles in history and social studies. Ernest Sr. later pontificated that this must have been the reason his son found his way to Yale, noting, “with the discharge of so many soldiers in 1945–1946 seeking higher degrees, colleges were filled, but he took an examination and on the basis of this test was, much to his surprise, admitted to Yale.”40 Ferrell himself explained, perhaps in gest, that his acceptance was merely on the basis that the department “needed someone West of the Hudson . . . and I was the person.”41 There was no mention of other factors by Ernest Sr. or his son, for or against, that colored the pathway, as the record eventually displayed.
The evidence reviewed to this point hardly made the case for how this young Midwest-rooted former enlisted soldier came to Yale, or rather, was invited. At least several extant BGSU grade cards demonstrate a less-than-exceptional student, Bs primarily with the exception of As in music. An exam blue book comment was decidedly below average. His music degree did not include evidence that history was a pursuit. Above average marks at a lesser school, Bowling Green State, would not be an Ivy League launching pad. While the GRE scores also did not mark him as exceptional, except of course for those top scores in the target area, they would not predict competitive status. There were, nevertheless, signs that Ferrell had attended to history courses beyond those that received poor marks. No records of these were available at this point, but it was an opening to pursue. Military correspondence suggested history was only one of several possible career avenues and one he did not consistently rate highly. Years later, Ferrell shared that cycling trips to Egyptian pyramids during service drew him to history, but the war letters on career choice do not make the case.
Several points may have counted in applicant Ferrell’s favor at Yale, aside from the GRE scores. Young Bob had two Yale-connected family members, both highly respected surgeons in New Haven, who no doubt may have leveraged their weight in his favor. Certainly Uncle Burt paved the way for Ernest Jr. (June), Bob’s younger brother, to intern then gain residency at Grace Hospital, later a Yale Medical teaching facility.42 The elder son also came to Yale and New Haven at his Uncle Burt’s invitation as the Indiana historian later recounted.43 Young Bob also enjoyed other pursuits in high school and college that may have supported his application. He participated in numerous extracurricular activities, achieving the rank of Eagle Scout, excelling at music (and teaching others those skills), swimming competitively, and performing journalist duties. It is possible too that an essay that gained national recognition from The American Magazine’s Youth Forum contest added the extra feather needed to tilt the scale with Yale admissions committee members.44 The award fell somewhere outside the top group, gaining Ferrell five dollars, whereas the top winners earned $1,000 (grand prize), $500 (second place), $100 (third place), $50 (15 winners), and $10 (50 winners). Hundreds of winners received $5. Nevertheless, the award was significant if one considers the 317,161 article entries across the country.45 Young Bob’s 2,000 or so words addressed a topic that might have gained the attention of patriots on Yale’s faculty in the early post–world war period—“What I owe America and What America Owes Me.” Hilda Scott, a fellow competitor from Hickman Springs High in Columbia, Missouri, won the Grand Prize, perhaps producing some irritation given Ferrell’s views toward women.46
Again, considering the times, not so long beyond the victorious troops returning from Europe, Ferrell’s war service certainly may have contributed to gaining admission. Contrarily, neither a war hero nor combatant, he might have encountered an uphill climb against many returning combat soldiers competing for a spot as Ernest Sr. relayed. Indeed, the veteran staff sergeant admitted how safe he was during his assignment while “at war” in correspondence.47 Yet, Ferrell had gone from private to staff sergeant in less than a year outside of the rigors of warfare. As a competent organist and pianist, he played for military-run religious services and at informal celebrations. Officially a chaplain’s clerk, he ingratiated himself with superiors by performing a variety of official and unofficial duties, and in appreciation, these earned him opportunities to travel extensively on generous weekends during the war, gaining a breath of international experience that fit well with scholarly interests of Samuel Flagg Bemis, his eventual mentor at Yale. End-of-war recognition came in the form of a “Bronze Star Medal for non-combatants” that he could list on the Yale application.48
Higher education historians have described the context and criteria of college admissions during the late 1940s. Elite schools such as Yale were relying less on subject matter mastery (as demonstrated in high school coursework) and more on intelligence testing.49 Granted this was for undergraduate admissions, but researchers at the time noted that “statistical studies showed that general verbal and mathematical ability predicted college grades better than did achievement tests in particular subject matter.”50 In this context, Ferrell’s mediocre mathematics and verbal GRE scores would not have proven useful. Post–Second-World-War students also demonstrated a higher level of competence thus raising the level of competition against returning veterans. Even more, some in the academic community at Ivy League schools were complaining that their admissions committees were placing too much emphasis on academic criteria and too little on the attributes that contributed to a well-rounded student; not until the late 1950s, however, would other factors such as geographic balance or extracurricular activities be advantageous. This, again, discounts what might be thought as part of Ferrell’s admission advantages.51 Another factor, legacy admissions, trended upward through the first half of the twentieth century at elite institutions for a variety of reasons (e.g., excluding minorities, say Catholics or Jews, or bolstering needed alumni contributions, especially sagging since the Great Depression; Ferrell’s use of the GI Bill may have added to his attractiveness in this latter point).52 David O. Levine, an historian, found that these schools even invited alumni to participate in admission decisions, serving “to give legacy applicants an added advantage . . . ensuring the admission of their own children and those of others with whom they closely identified.”53
One can speculate on the path that cleared Robert Ferrell’s way to Yale, including at least two narratives, WASP-advantaged, alumni-connected insider (e.g., Uncle Burt Rentsch) or multitalented, late-to-history, war veteran bloomer.54 It is important not to discount other factors that may have played into either hypothesis directly: the background (and possible empathy) of Ferrell’s second-year mentor, Bemis, who came from a rural farming community in western Massachusetts similar to this applicant or Ivy League officials pushing to broaden the representation of Midwesterners.55 Bob had an endearing personality too, which no doubt contributed to graduate school recommendations or any interviews with Yale officials that may have taken place. A telling document, Ferrell’s second degree (completed in a year) at Bowling Green State University, listed all “A’s” in history and political science, and this during his return from service. These marks no doubt reaffirmed his purposefulness, if not level of academic rigor or equivalent excellence to east coast elite schools. Once accepted in New Haven, those less-than-exceptional GRE scores, aside from history and social studies, may have given the admissions committee pause as Yale graduate student Ferrell struggled in his first year there.56 Moreover, he and fellow student Lawrence Kaplan failed the initial attempt to pass the required German examination, “a pre-requisite . . . to formal admission to the doctoral program.”57 Of course, the much later celebrated Truman and diplomatic history storyteller went on to gain top honors from both Yale and the American Historical Association for his first book, proving that he belonged.
The postscript to Ferrell earning his PhD is less unwieldy. The path to initial professorship is hardly disputable. Bemis’s ties to F. Lee Benns (friends at Clark University) smoothed the way to IU’s History Department along with Ferrell’s characteristics: male, white, protestant (Methodist), Ivy League–trained, and well-connected. The newly published Yale thesis-to-book Peace in Their Time no doubt provided a boost, though it did not prove advantageous a year earlier in a competition for a Michigan State College professorship. Gaining the tenure-track post at IU was just the beginning of Ferrell’s path to prominence. There is more to contemplate before casting judgments on him as an exemplar of postmodernist angst. Ferrell’s war story is another vignette worth considering.
Ferrell at War?
When you read about rear echelon troops, just imagine that I am behind them. I’ve never seen a German plane in action and never heard a bomb of any kind.
—Robert Ferrell
(Letter to Mom and Dad, December 25, 1944)
There are multiple narratives that would put Ferrell, in the end, at Yale and by his second year under the guidance of one of the nation’s most highly respected American foreign relations historians. It was Bemis who knew Benns at Indiana University and others so useful to Ferrell’s early career trajectory. Contingency has its place: What if the faculty member had been someone else? Or if there had been no meeting with William Castle, a U.S. State Department connection to former Secretary of State Kellogg or no Castle diary, events critical to the success of RHF’s prize winning first book published by Yale in 1952. Just as with the narrative of Ferrell’s rise through Yale to prominent historian, his Second World War participation sheds light on the multiple perspectives on that war, how soldiers experienced it, its meaning, its purposes, its chroniclers, its subject matter, from the top-down, middle out, and Ferrell up, and even more, as written by unrecognized historians. For young Bob, it began with enlistment, still an option before the draft-only Army closed that door to others.58 Soldier Ferrell bemoaned that enlistees such as himself were shut out of officer candidate school (OCS) competition simply by bad luck of not finishing college, a seemingly minimalist requirement. Enlistment itself evaporated as an option for others precluding their noncombat choices. Even those “lucky enough” to obtain a coveted OCS spot had few options outside combat. Ferrell, later realizing this, stopped pushing to be an officer.
Certainly, postmodernism would have no reason to deny soldier Ferrell as an appropriate historical focus, given the historical gap his case is worthy of filling, even as it lacks the intrigue of Rick Blaine in Casablanca. Although a WASP, his story is not top-down and even more it is not the mainstream battle narrative. Private Ferrell wrote his itinerary in a little red book to organize the chronology of this civilian-turned-soldier’s early war sojourn to Cairo. Egypt was the first lengthy posting, this at Headquarters, 9th Air Force Service Command (AFSC), by the end of 1942.59 But before arriving and after all the intermediate steps, from beginning of service at Patterson Field to assignment with the 9th AFSC in early September, and after the usual marching, inculcation of military bearing, rifle range practice, and so forth, recruit Ferrell joined a few others at a six-week air “flight operations” clerk school.60 By October, he was on his way to embarkment from Staten Island’s docks aboard the USS West Point, Compartment B-13.61 And this, principally, is where the unorthodox military adventure began for Ferrell.
Between July 13, 1942, and early September 1945, the future highly regarded diplomatic historian went to war, but one could hardly tell this by the letters he sent home to his parents.62 The Army Air Force private made the point in one missive later in the war to his folks: “When you read about rear echelon troops, just imagine that I am behind them. I’ve never seen a German plane in action and never heard a bomb of any kind. I go to work each morning just like Dad goes to the bank.” Perhaps to put a finer point on it, Ferrell added, “life here is easy.” Beyond easy, soldier Ferrell’s military service escaped that of routine simplicity.63 The peripatetic private described military adventures beyond what most vacation-minded Americans could fathom. War or not, Ferrell had fun.64
Young Bob’s Air Detachment Group, part of the 9th Air Force Service Command, sailed first to Rio de Janeiro for a brief stopover, then encountered exotic cultural intrigue in India at Bombay and by train to the interior at Camp Deolali. Partiality to American ways was never far from his mind during a ten-day stay in India. A local newspaper captured this sentiment: “Bob Ferrell Describes India as Weird and Mysterious.”65 South Asia was no American Midwest. The newspaper reinforced the point with Ferrell as mouthpiece: the “natives are dressed in turbans and sheets for trousers and go barefooted the year round. Food is very scarce.” Alarming too were Indian lifestyles, natives who had to live in huts on pennies a day and this to feed a family of about eight. Those who could not make it looked for money to borrow, which led to more trouble. After a few weeks of sightseeing, the news account stated that Pvt. Ferrell “was glad to get out.” By December, his group shipped over to Egypt through the Suez Canal.66
Once settled in Cairo (see Figure 1.1), in letters penned to family, soldier Bob shared ancient attractions throughout Egypt—the pyramids of course—and points of interest all along the Nile, even into neighboring Sudan at Wadi Halfa. As early as January 1943, Private Ferrell regaled his mom and dad with stories of the famed pharaoh tombs, and only a few months later, sent plenty of pictures with descriptions of “grand trips” cycling around them.67 Foreshadowing the penchant for detail that would mark his future writings, the letters would often describe with exactitude the pictures enclosed. “The step pyramid at Sakhara,” for example, fascinated the tourist soldier.
Figure 1.1 Reflecting on his past, after retiring from Indiana University, Ferrell explained that cycling trips to the pyramids in Egypt during the Second World War turned his attention to history. Source: Courtesy of Carolyn Ferrell Burgess.
This is the oldest of the pyramids and is falling apart, due to the inferior stone used in building it. The rocks here are merely [slags], approximately 5 inches thick. All the pyramids had a certain number of mortuary temples, and nobles’ tombs surrounding them; many of these have been excavated. When last at Sakhara, they were still digging. Outside the picture to the right, are a couple of large shafts, perhaps 100 feet deep, in which the priest put the mummies from possibly this pyramid, when grave robbers began to become bothersome.68
Ferrell observed the social customs of local women in the same letter. Women’s dress and behaviors held an allure to this bachelor. He noticed that “[t]he Mohammedan women” wore their hair so as not to draw attention from “outsiders,” but big “nose pieces” contradicted the message. With veils and hoods, and “big baggy black dress, which comes down to the ankles,” the women shared a certain anonymity. In comparison, the peasant girls “do not bother with the veil,” only the black dresses, yet “are not troubled by them” in the summer heat. All are capable of “carrying things on their heads.” The “young girls marry at about 15 or 16.” In letters sent during May 1943, Ferrell expanded on various topics from Arabic funerals to habits of cleanliness. Back at the Army base, left with little to occupy himself, Ferrell was reading, even “studying” more, and no doubt expanding his knowledge of and interest in world history.
Beyond Cairo, the future historian found himself exploring much of what there was to see in historic Egypt. Luxor was a favorite spot, one he would revisit years later as a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo.69 As a soldier, traveling with Army buddies Franklin and Bennett, Bob explored the temples and kings’ tombs and returned with souvenirs. Though only three days there, they “had a good time.” One can certainly see the budding historian as Ferrell narrated the significance of Luxor to his parents, the once city “of Thebes . . . the capital of Egypt,” this well before Christ. There were “several fine temples, mostly in ruins, but still worth seeing, a king’s palace, two giant statues, and a lot of tombs.” He could not overlook perhaps the favorite sight, that of King Tut’s tomb, “the carvings and painting”; it stood out partly because it somehow escaped the fate of robberies.
Only months into his encampment at Cairo, a constant reminder of ancient civilization, Ferrell began to use Army connections to launch trips to other Middle East destinations. Not surprisingly given the Ferrell family’s Christian piety, Palestine captured his attention.70 By late February 1943, Ferrell spied Jerusalem and environs as the next tourist visit, targeting “the old city, Mount of Olives, Jericho, Bethlehem, Sea of Galilee, Nazareth, etc.” Young Bob’s good fortune came with the help of his boss, as he relayed, “Being a good friend of the Chaplain’s, I’m sort of in on the ground floor of this trip business.”
The Army assigned Ferrell as a clerk in the chaplain’s office, where he proved himself exceedingly competent and hardworking. Running personal errands for his boss, however, likely accounts as much for the lowly private’s pleasing relationship with the chaplain.71 Bob simply had a winsome way with people, and he had fine-tuned skills as an organist, which he put to good use during Army base worship services. He produced religious activity bulletins, likely an aptitude learned in journalism tasks in high school and through preparing Boy Scout meetings and activities. In all, he fulfilled a variety of mundane but essential duties such as driver, Service Club manager, and supply and payroll clerk; his interactions with so many no doubt illuminated his personal warmth.72 Only two months at post, Ferrell boasted to his parents that Captain Bradford, the 9th AFSC chaplain, recommended his promotion to corporal, and in less than a year, he added two stripes, telling younger brother June, “You can call me ‘Sarge’ now.”73
After the first year of military service, Ferrell found himself well-positioned to explore cities bordering the Mediterranean—Alexandria, Bengasi, Tripoli—among other locales in North Africa, then on to those in the United Kingdom and western Europe (see Figure 1.2), with return trips to Palestine.74 As with Egypt, the letters young Bob sent home read like a vacationer’s travelogue. Bengasi had the look of its Italian conquerors, war-torn “modernistic buildings with a sort of Italian flavor.” He and a friend arriving there by boat dipped into the clean, salty water of its coast for a swim; a sunburn was the result. The trip between Cireniaca and Tripolitania he described as nothing but desert, “where for miles, there is nothing to see but dirty, gravel like sand, littered with tin cans, a few burned out wrecks . . . [and] some kind of desert small, green bushes.” Tripolitania, meaning “Land of the three cities,” the future historian penned to his mom and dad, included Leptus Magna, Sabratha, and Tripoli; each had its allure.75 Leptus Magna was “one of those old Roman [f]ormerly (Phoenician) cities.” Delighted to have “a couple days in which to tour [Tripoli],” Ferrell noted. It was “the old Arab town, in which lived the pirates of the early last century, [but it] looks much like the old city of Jerusalem, dirty, crowded, stinking, narrow streets.” The city’s dietary practices left Ferrell aghast:
Figure 1.2 Soldier Ferrell surveys the Mediterranean Sea in Nice, France, during the Second World War, c. 1944. Source: Courtesy of Carolyn Ferrell Burgess.
Took a walk around the old city, which is very similar to Jerusalem. One sees them cut up meat practically on the sidewalk and throw into the narrow already stinking streets the pigs[’] heads and anything else they have left over. In several places, they were baking bread—the flat pancake bread which the natives eat. The dough lay where the flies could help themselves first. An old black fellow had a long pole with a little round flat part at the end, on which he placed the dough and shoved it back into the oven. In town here, natives carry the stuff on flat box lids . . . all over town and sell it where they can. I saw one fellow whose bread had spilled all over the sidewalks. He was picking it up and putting it back on the tray. If you ever [saw] the sanitary state of the sidewalk . . . you would not want any bread.
Always ready with sardonic wit, Ferrell wrote of his travels in the former Italian stronghold: “From what I saw of Libya, which was most of it, except the desert part, which is most of it, the place is divided into two productive areas, Cirenaica and Tripolitiania. The rest of the country is good for nothing but the flies.” The differences between these two sites, in Ferrell’s mind, was irrigation or not, “rolling country,” Roman ruins, and comparisons to his teenage hometown Waterville, Ohio, and environs. The Army Sergeant described the subsistence agricultural practices of farmers in Tripolitanian small towns: the land divided in small plots, arduous uphill water haul to ditches, buckets of water drained to reservoirs and then to plots, perhaps a cow, the daily grind. The Ferrell family’s Depression era flight-to-farm living in the 1930s no doubt heightened the soldier’s sensitivity to these conditions. Forty miles West of Tripoli stood more ruins, this in Sabratha. After the North African tour, Ferrell secured his first ever airplane ride back to the military base, “which was a lot of fun.”
Tours of England and France awaited the peripatetic staff sergeant by mid-1944 through the V-E Day.76 Red Cross clubs eased the burden of securing lodging. Ferrell shared his travels in England, highlighting the “cathedral and colleges at Oxford,” the unique cathedral at the center of Salisbury, and Stonehenge in Amesbury. At Winchester, the remnants of a castle and its environs, the hospital at St. Cross, and “some nice-looking Elizabethan brick and timber work,” also made the list of interest. Sixteenth-century Gothic-designed parish churches were part of the fascination, but Stonehenge was a disappointment in comparison to Egyptian ancient structures, and Winchester’s abbey cluttered every available space with “hundreds of [plaques] telling of regimental battles, etc., etc.” At Oxford, Ferrell paid six pence to an English-Speaking Union, “a British organization which tries to promote Anglo-American relations,” to learn about the town. Aside from describing eighteenth-century wall paintings at the E. S. house, the tour leader engaged the group on the Christ Church cathedral, first begun as a monastery in typical fashion. Ferrell grew bored with the long-winded distractions and endless “dumb questions” posed by American soldiers and lack of tour progress and wandered off to explore on his own. Pressed to take the noon train back, he had to hurry through the sights. He enjoyed riding English trains. Although compartmentalized, the train seats by the windows permitted one to take in the countryside. He found “British landscape” preferable to the French, “in that everything is orderly and in its proper place.”
Not long after the Germans had been chased out of Paris, but with several months of war left in Europe, Ferrell was exploring well-known travel spots in and around the capital city.77 He also planned trips to London, Ireland, and Wales as part of the adventure.78 Taking in the notable Parisian sights—the Louvre, Place de la Concorde, the Tuileries gardens, Notre Dame, among others—no doubt heightened the lure of history and led to comparisons. Observing exhibitions at the Louvre, he commented, “the only thing on display now is the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities.” Sharing “a K ration bundle of three cigarettes” with a museum guard “who looked especially cold,” unexpectedly gained him admission to an out-of-the-way stairway entry, “where I went down and came into more exhibitions.” Of course, given Ferrell’s natural talents on keyboard, he could not pass up Durand, “the music store,” just near the Louvre. The brisk cold pierced nearly every corner of his journey; it was January, after all. The Red Cross Club became his base of sightseeing operations and tours.
Beyond the sites near the Louvre, the Second World War soldier-tourist made his way to other well-known spots, narrating the journey for his parents: “After freezing slowly in the Louvre . . . [I] walked along the Seine, crossed onto the island where Notre Dame is . . . visited a little chapel which is in the Palais de Justice” [sic]. His telling of the story of “Louis XI” [sic], the acquisition of the “true cross . . . bought from some fellow in Palestine” brought a not unusual realist’s remark: “The true cross business was a good racket in those days, and [I] think lots of people made their fortunes selling them.”79 From Notre Dame, it was on to “second hand bookstores,” a stroll along the Boulevard St. Germaine, a visit to “the church of St. Clotilde, where Cesar Franck was organist for many years,” a music composer to which Ferrell was drawn. A musician, himself, young Bob could not resist “bargains on French edition organ music” nor the Baedeker guide books so useful to inform a tourist of the historic significance of sites investigated, along with general books on architecture.80 Young Bob planned to take future tours to Fountainbleau and Versailles conducted by the Red Cross. Sightseeing in Luxemburg and Germany came only months after the Germans surrendered.
Given Ferrell’s embrace of world travel and history, it is hardly remarkable that he would later find himself a leading historian of American foreign relations. What is remarkable, with dominant stories of the Second World War conflict, is the ease with which soldier-cum-tourist Ferrell traveled through destinations in the Middle East, North Africa, the British Isles, and Europe from 1943 through the V-E Day. What, of course, one reads in the Second World War stories during Ferrell’s jaunts to “parts unknown” is hardly that of this Sergeant’s account.81 While the Allies were attacking Italian forces along the peninsula off the Mediterranean Sea, this Army chaplain’s clerk interrogated the landscape and cultures of North Africa. During the Battle of the Bulge, he whisked around celebrated sites in the United Kingdom. As Hitler’s forces made their last-ditch push into Belgium and northeast France, Ferrell found it convenient, even if a little chilly, to take in the world’s art masterpieces and architecture in and around Paris, seemingly untouched by the bloody casualties of the Second World War narratives. Though a lowly enlistee, this is quite a story, one missing from mainstream accounts.
NOTES
1. Letters to Charles Blankenship, July 8, 2006 and January 25, 2003 (in possession of Charles Blankenship, San Marcos, Texas); letter from Robert Maddox to Botzenhart, November 19, 1973; letter to Richard S. Kirkendall, February 26, 1973; letter to David S. McKellan, May 20, 1973; letter to Margery M. McKinney, July 23, 1973; letter to Holsti, September 1, 1973, Box 41, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Gregory M. Pfitzer, Samuel Eliot Morison’s Historical World: In Quest of a New Parkman (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991), 277. Into the twenty-first century, see Richard S. Kirkendall (ed.), Harry’s Farewell: Interpreting and Teaching the Truman Presidency (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004); Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman and Cold War Revisionists (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006).
2. Index Card, Robert Ferrell’s evaluation of candidates for the David D. Lloyd Prize associated with the Harry S. Truman Library; Ferrell wrote that Bruce Kuklick’s entry American Policy and the Division of Germany is “revisionist” and “for that reason alone we really cannot give it the prize” (circa May–June 1974), Box 48.
3. Ferrell, The Review of Politics 36, no. 2 (April 1974), 323–326, Box 179.
4. AHA Newsletter, “Professor Schlesinger Replies,” circa 1963–1964, Box 41.
5. Robert H. Ferrell, “Pearl Harbor and the Revisionists,” The Historian 17, no. 2 (Spring 1955), 215–233; letter to George Brinkle, April 14, 1974; Robert H. Ferrell, “The Revisionist Historians,” symposium paper, April 1974, Box 41.
6. Ferrell, “Pearl Harbor and the Revisionists,” 215–233.
7. Callum G. Brown, Postmodernism for Historians (New York: Routledge, 2005), 3–6; Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 103–l09; see Mark Donnelly and Claire Norton, Doing History (New York: Routledge, 2011), for the multiple purposes of history in the ancient world and beyond, Chapter 2; Howell and Prevenier, From Reliable Sources, 14–15.
8. Ferrell details many of the arguments put forth against these revisionists in Ferrell, Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionists, esp. Chapter One. The overlap is remarkable (given the dates the two were published) if one compares this account to Ferrell’s Pearl Harbor and the Revisionists,” 215–233.
9. Brown, Postmodernism, 27.
10. Ibid., 26–29.
11. Jonathan Dewald, “Rethinking the 1 Percent: The Failure of the Nobility in Old Regime France,” The American Historical Review 124, no. 3 (June 2019), 910–932.
12. For two well-documented studies discussing interdisciplinary history, see David S. Landes and Charles Tilly (eds.) History as a Social Science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971); H. Stuart Hughes, History as Art and as Science (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).
13. Letter to Stephen Kertesz, June 23, 1953, Box 44.
14. Letter to Ferrell from Stephen Kertesz, July 3, 1953, Box 44.
15. On Maddox and Handlin, see David S. Brown, Beyond the Frontier: The Midwestern Voice in American Historical Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 143–144.
16. For an excellent overview of this period, controversy, and context, see Richard J. Evans, In Defense of History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 18–37.
17. Interview with Robert H. Ferrell, conducted by Elizabeth Glenn, transcript p. 42, November 3, 1994, Indiana University Oral History Research Center, Bloomington, Indiana (hereafter IUOralHistory).
18. Brown, Postmodernism; Donnelly and Norton, Doing History, 5.
19. Brown, Postmodernism, 6–31.
20. Interview with Robert H. Ferrell, by Glenn, 42, IUOralHistory.
21. Interview with Robert H. Ferrell, conducted by Steven Sheehan, February 13, 1998, IUOralHistory; Theodore A. Wilson, “Introduction: Individuals, Narratives, and Diplomatic History,” in Presidents, Diplomats, and Other Mortals: Essays Honoring Robert H. Ferrell, ed. J. Garry Clifford and Theodore A. Wilson (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007), 3–11.
22. Interview with Robert H. Ferrell, Sheehan, transcript p. 3. IUOralHistory.
23. History 103, December 6, 1940, Box 74.
24. Robert H. Ferrell BGSU grade card sheet, semesters January 25, June 10 and August 9 (all 1940), Box 74.
25. Letter to Ralph McDonald, January 10, 1952, Box 44.
26. Letter to Sumner Canary, January 17, 1966, Box 7.
27. See transcripts and note discrepancy in Ferrell’s telling (e.g., minor in English and German) and letter to Mom and Dad (hereafter M/D), August 15, 1943, Box 74.
28. Letter to Robert C. Gallagher, September 19, 1952, Box 44.
29. Letter to Philip E Mosely, January 27, 1957, Box 43.
30. Note contrary evidence on “enlistment” draft board letter, in letter to Ferrell from H. A. Siphen (Chairman, Selective Service System, Local Board #23, Lucas County, Ohio), Box 74.
31. Interview with Robert H. Ferrell, by Sheehan, 3, IUOralHistory.
32. Letter to M/D, July 16, 1943, Box 74.
33. Letter to M/D, August 15, 1943, Box 74.
34. Letter to D. Gregory Badger (Field Executive, BSA, Cleveland), January 15, 1938, Box 74.
35. Letter to M/D, January 8, 1945, Box 74.
36. Letter to Sunderlin, April 28, 1951, Box 84 (among others to Sanderlin, May 9, 1979, August 16, 2001); letter to M/D, circa late July 1945 Box 74.
37. “The Key 1946,” BGSU Key Yearbooks, Book 20 (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University, 1946), 30.
38. Letter to Robert Gallagher, September 19, 1952, Box 44.
39. Ferrell, GRE (Graduate Record Exam), May 10, 1947, Box 84.
40. Ernest Ferrell Sr., Stories I Want My Grandchildren to Know (Columbus, OH: author, 1980), 69.
41. Interview with Robert H. Ferrell, by Sheenan, 3, IUOralHistory.
42. Ferrell Sr., Stories, 72.
43. Interview with Robert H. Ferrell, by Sheehan, 3, IUOralHistory.
44. “150 Additional Awards,” The American Magazine 128, no. 3 (September 1939), 70.
45. The American Magazine 128, no. 1 (July 1939), 42.
46. The American Magazine 128, no. 4 (October 1939), 27.
47. Letter to M/D, December 25, 1944, Box 74.
48. Ferrell’s Bronze Star Medal certificate, August 23, 1945, Box 74.
49. Elizabeth Duffy and Idana Goldberg, Crafting a Class: College Admissions and Financial Aid, 1955–1994 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), especially pp. 73–84; Michael P. Riccards, The College Board and American Higher Education (Madison, WI: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2010), 44–45; Peter Schmidt, “A History of Legacy Preferences and Privilege,” in Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admissions, ed. Richard D. Kahlenberg (New York: The Century Foundation Press, 2010), 33–69.
50. Duff and Goldberg, Crafting a Class, 80.
51. Ibid., 82–84.
52. Leonard Cassuto, The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 33–43.
53. Schmidt, A History, 40.
54. Yale was an all-men’s school at the time, thus gender comparisons were irrelevant.
55. Riccards, The College Board, 44–45; H. C. Allen, “Samuel Flagg Bemis,” in Pastmasters: Some Essays on American Historians, ed. Marcus Cunliffe and Robin Winks (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 204.
56. Letter to Ferrell from Leonard Lebaree, June 15, 1948, Box 74.
57. Lawrence Kaplan, “Robert H. Ferrell: An Appreciation,” in Presidents, Diplomats, and Other Mortals: Essays Honoring Robert H. Ferrell, ed. J. Garry Clifford and Theodore A. Wilson (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007), 316–317.
58. One document suggests that the Selective Service Board denied Ferrell’s application to enlist, contrary to his telling. See letter, H. A. Sipher to Robert Ferrell, June 19, 1942, Box 74.
59. V-Mail, to M/D, December 31, 1942 and May 23, 1945, Box 74.
60. Letter to M/D, August 19, 1942 and “Monday Evening” (circa July 1942), Box 74.
61. Ferrell would later arrive at West Point Academy as a visiting history professor.
62. Letter to M/D, August 30, 1945, Box 74.
63. Letter to M/D, December 25, 1944, among other letters, Box 74.
64. Travel booklet, for itinerary, and see example letters to M/D, May 6, July 18, August 8, September 1, 4, and 9 (all 1943), Box 74.
65. “Bob Ferrell Describes India as Weird and Mysterious,” (newspaper article, circa January 1943), Box 74; see also letter to M/D, December 25, 1942, Box 74.
66. Letter to June (Ferrell’s brother, Ernest Jr.), December 27, 1942; postcard, Ferrell to Ernest Ferrell Sr. (Dad), December 8, 1942, Box 74.
67. Letters to M/D, April 13, May 6, and September 1, 1943, Box 74.
68. Letter to M/D, May 6, 1943, Box 74.
69. Letter to M/D, May 6, 1943, Box 74.
70. Letter to M/D, February 28, 1943, Box 74. Later, Sergeant Ferrell turned tour guide for Army buddies while revisiting Palestine and other sites and complained that travel can be difficult during wartime, “because transportation is erratic and crowded, and the hotel situation is tough. . . . [But we] didn’t have too much trouble.” By this time, Ferrell was enjoying flying to his destinations too. Letter to M/D, August 3, 1943, Box 74.
71. Letters to M/D, September 27 and November 25, 1943 and circa November 1942, Box 74.
72. Letters to M/D, September 27 and November 2 (V-mail) and November 25, 1943; July 7 and October 2, 1944; letter, Venna Patterson (American Missionary Society, Cairo, Egypt) to Edna Ferrell, October 18, 1943, Box 74.
73. Letter to M/D, February 8, 1943, and letter to June, August 5, 1943, Box 74.
74. Letters to M/D, July 2 and 4, August 3 and 17, September 6 and 14, (all 1943); June 20, August 26 and September 1 (letters #1 and #2), (all 1944); January 22, February 20, and March 11, (all 1945); letter to June (Ernest Jr.), March 11, 1945 (all Box 74).
75. Letter to M/D, July 3, 1943, Box 74.
76. Letters to M/D, June 20 and 24, August 26, September 1 (letters #1 and #2) (all 1944). For 1945 trips before the official end of war in Europe (May 8, 1945), see letters to M/D, January 22, February 20, March 11 (all 1945).
77. Letter to M/D, January 22, 1945, Box 74.
78. Letter to M/D, March 11, 1945, Box 74.
79. Ferrell is likely referring to the Sainte-Chapelle built by King Louis IX to house holy relics in the Palais de la Cite. http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/architecture/sainte-chapelle.htm.
80. Letter to M/D, November 19, 1944, Box 74.
81. “Parts Unknown” was the popular twenty-first century exotic travel show of the late Anthony Bourdain.
