Viewing page 36 of 171

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

March 15, 1973

Dear Wanda, Jessica and Ted:

The main building of the cavalry school at Saumur has walls of stone and big stone pillars on the porch at the entrance.  Those pillars bear the carved names of distinguished alumni, one of the earliest being that of Marshal Ney.  In 1917 there were two or three offices just inside the entrance.  There was an amphitheatre upstairs.  All the rest of the building was dormitory space.  Each room held two men comfortably, and there were enough rooms to accommodate all the 200 new American artillery officers who moved in at the end of September.

Soon after arriving we were assembled and counted off into sections of 20 men each.  Our group of Tennesseeans happened to be standing where the counting started, so we found ourselves in Section 1.  John Ransom had attached himself to our group at Southampton, so there were now seven of us.  Each section was assigned to a cluster of contiguous rooms in the dormitory.  Our original six paired off in three adjoining rooms just as we had in the hotel in New York.  I do not remember clearly who Ransom's roommate was, but I think it was Bob Hussey, a congenial soul from one of the north shore suburbs of Chicago.  For the next three months I associated only with members of my own and the second section, having practically no contact with anyone else.  I never saw a roster of the 400 men in that class at Saumur, but I got the impression that I was in elite company.  I knew by sight R. Norris Williams, once international tennis champion, and Charles P. Taft, whose only claim to didtinction at that time was that he was the son of an ex-president.  Then there was Ransom, but he had then published only his first thin volume of poems entitles "Chills and Fever".  Some time in the 1930's Howard Vincent O'Brien, a columnist for the Chicago Daily News, wrote something that identified him as one of us.  I wrote him and received a cordial note in reply. 

A French lieutenant took charge of each section.  Ours was a round-faced, swarthy Provencal named De Salinelles.  Over him, in general charge of five sections, was Captain Risler, an Alsatian.  He was one of three Alsatians on our teaching staff.  All of them had been born