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The Raymonds of
Cambridge – 100 Years Chapter 4: 1913-1920, Expanded Duties, Overseas Assignment, and the Great War |
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Los Angeles, California, 1913-1916 In late 1912, Maj. Robert R. Raymond, U.S Army Corps of Engineers, completed a three-year duty assignment in Wilmington, Delaware, as District Engineer for projects along the Delaware River. He next received orders for the West Coast to the office of District Engineer, Los Angeles. After the holidays, he and his family traveled by rail to California, a journey of several days. For the younger kids, Charles (3), Dick (9), Clara (11), and Robert Jr. (13), this would be remembered as a trip, perhaps the trip of a lifetime, experiencing firsthand the rich tapestry of American geography and history, the smoky Appalachians and the muddy Mississippi, the heartland prairies and the painted deserts and dramatic canyons of the two new states, New Mexico and Arizona. The Raymonds would arrive in Los Angeles, not at the classic art deco Union Station (a quarter century in the future), but they rolled to a stop in one of the two terminals of the day serving Union Pacific, Santa Fe, and Southern Pacific lines. They settled shortly into their new abode at 2020 Western Avenue in the emerging Pacific basin and world-class city of LA. Their neighborhood of stately homes along palm-lined, orange blossom-scented boulevards could be captured on matte postcards with sweeping block letters filled with panoramic renderings in pastel, and posted to the East during the bitter winters to envious family and friends. In May Robert received news from Washington that his father, General Charles W. Raymond, had entered eternal rest. Internment followed at West Point, the first in the decades to follow of a number of Raymonds and kin buried there above the Hudson. Major Raymond’s new duties included supervising the construction of mortar batteries overlooking San Pedro Bay, the ocean harbor for the City of Angels. In 1914 the site was commissioned Fort MacArthur, named for Lt. Gen. Arthur MacArthur, father of Gen. Douglas MacArthur of later WWII fame. The fortress served as a training center at first but when the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, large gun batteries were installed for harbor defense, an element of America’s early 20th century coastal fortification strategy. By the end of WWII, though, the large guns were being removed, the last decommissioned in 1948. Most of the batteries of heavy steel and poured concrete were taken out, but two, left intact, are cited today on the National Register of Historic Places as prime examples of U.S. coastal gun emplacements. From 1913-16, Robert served also on the Army’s California Debris Commission managing bayside fills in the state’s cities. That included rubble he was well familiar with, from the San Francisco earthquake a decade prior. Landfill like that, compacted, filled in and built upon to extend the harbor fronts and docksides seen today, have proven through urban archaeology an important source of insight into the cultures of the recent past in California, across America, and around the world. While America remained on the sidelines in 1914, Europe was drawn into the bloody conflict of trench warfare and the ghastly use of chlorine and mustard gas. At home, the otherwise uplifting news of the day was the long-anticipated opening of the Panama Canal that year. Toward the end of his life, Robert’s father, General Raymond, had followed its progress but missed the grand event by a year. After a decade of moving volumes of earth and rock, installing dams and locks, and creating a large man-made lake, two great oceans were linked and America began managing one of man’s greatest engineering achievements to date. When Woodrow Wilson entered the White House in 1913, to serve two terms through 1921, he’d be Robert’s last commander in chief while on active duty.
In the summer of 1914, Robert and Blossom attended the
graduation of their eldest daughter, Caroline, from LA’s Manual Arts
High School, a vocational school recently established. Katherine
followed, graduating MAHS in 1915, and in time, six of the seven
children would obtain high school diplomas. The formal education of
son Robert was interrupted somewhat, first in LA, then Hawai’i
(1916-17) where he attended the renowned Punahou High School. Though
he never did receive a high school diploma, this proved moot with
home schooling in prep for the USMA entrance exams. Immersed in
general and military science and the arts and letters, both at home
and school, Robert Jr. successfully entered West Point in the summer
of 1917. Clara had attended Punahou H.S. just shy of four years by
April 1919 when her father received orders to Ohio, so she received
her sheep skin from Cleveland’s East High that June. Finally, after
their father retired from the Army to upstate New York in 1920, the
younger children would graduate from Cambridge Union School, Richard
in 1922, Charles (as salutatorian) in 1926, and Virginia
(valedictorian) in 1929. Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, 1916-1919 Early in 1916, Maj. Raymond received orders from Los Angeles to the Territory of Hawaii and the Raymonds sailed from San Francisco in February aboard the Army Transport USS Thomas. Upon arrival, he was assigned as District Engineer, Honolulu District. In July, after promotion to Lt. Colonel, he assumed the broadened role of Department Engineer, Department of Hawaii, where he’d command the 3rd Engineers through early 1919. In the photo he’s seen standing on the first step with his staff officers.
The Raymond family moved into new quarters in Honolulu in what was an embassy of a European ally after the U.S. annexation of Hawai’i in the late 1890s. Exotic flora and fauna populated the grounds with fragrances and blooms accenting the shrubs and treetops. Coconuts tumbled from the skies, lizards zipped about and birds in bright prisms of color flitted and chirped overhead as rainbows draped the Honolulu heights between showers. This was the Tropics, after all, at just 20 degrees North latitude, the stuff of legend, intrigue, and adventure, of romance or whatever captures the fancy. And the new reality for the Army family of seven of Robert R. Raymond. The colonel and missus entertained frequently, his fellow senior staff as well as young officers invited to dinner, to socialize, to meet and greet, in particular, the elder daughters, Caroline and Katherine. Mrs. Raymond kept the family on track and well organized, raised as she was an Army daughter herself. She clothed them in fine fabrics, in fashionable wardrobes skillfully worked on her sewing machine, a foot-pedal-powered Singer classic, as she formed countless stitches from the linen and silk threads off the spools of Coates-and-Clark and the like.
Worldwide Unrest, the Mexican Campaign In 1916, after Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand had been assassinated two years earlier, widespread unrest swept across Europe from the Balkans to Belgium, thanks to Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II (eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria, by the way.) But another conflict brewed at the time not far from Robert’s mid-Pacific posting. The U.S. came to brief blows with neighboring Mexico as Pancho Villa and his band of criminals invaded our sovereign soil at Columbus, New Mexico, killing 24 citizens–sixteen civilians and eight military–before being driven off by the Army. The Mexican Campaign was declared by Army HQ and the White House as U.S. Cavalry chased Villa and his rabble back into Mexico, also exchanging gunfire with the Mexican Army. The Senate almost formally declared war, but taking stock of greater challenges in Europe, the Mexican Campaign was terminated. Villa escaped U.S. justice but was later assassinated by one of his own. He’s curiously elevated to martyr in some quarters including a New Mexico state park bearing the petty thug’s name, which should seem seditious to serious, rational Americans. By 1917 the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) entered the fray in Europe against Germany, the Great War, the “war to end all wars.” Active combat with our Allies in France and adjacent nations would launch a new era of U.S. international relations with a direct hand in global war and peace. This is arguably when the U.S.A. became the “leader of the free world.” While we wisely refrained from the League of Nations after WWI—the League charter allowed any member nation to compel other members into battle but only our Senate has constitutional authority to commit the United States to foreign war—yet after WWII the United Nations would be planted on our soil. Incidentally, in 1917 our two-party system began to reveal an interesting dichotomy: Wilson would be the first of the 20th century Democratic Presidents to lead America to war, while Republicans almost exclusively extracted us or avoided international conflict altogether, a point validated in the following decades, speaking to the Party of War and the Party of Peace, as it were. In August 1917, Robert was promoted to Colonel of Engineers, National Army, and was shortly assigned TAD (Temporary Attachment of Duty) to the 313th Engineers, AEF, at Camp Dodge, Iowa. With the Allies now fully engaged on the battlefields of Europe, he served in Iowa from September to December, 1917. The troops at Camp Dodge were being drilled for eventual departure for: “O-ver there, o-ver there, send the word, send the word, o-ver there, That the Yanks are com-ing, the Yanks are com-ing….” Which reminds us of a quip from Reader’s Digest’s “Humor in Uniform”: Military equipment is provided with explicit instructions for proper installation and operation. Members of the British Royal Women’s Army Corps were issued uniforms and personal apparel, including, ahem, girdles with the following directive: ONE AT A TIME, PLACE ONE FOOT AND LEG INTO EACH GIRDLE LEG AND PULL UP WITH TWO STOUT YANKS. Ahem. While Robert Raymond and his doughboys never did make the trip into battle, they held orders for deployment to France within the year should the need arise, so were eligible for the WWI campaign ribbon. The Jerries (no apologies here considering the victims of chemical warfare) laid down their arms and Armistice Day was declared November 11, 1918. It’s argued that WWII commenced the next day, November 12, since Germany never surrendered but only rose again to wreak havoc, with Italy and Japan, across large swaths of the planet through 1945. At the end of 1917, Colonel Raymond returned to Honolulu from mid-America to be reunited with his family and the 3rd Engineers. He and his staff were assigned continuing work on an array of defensive facilities around Oahu and the outer islands, including the use of large floodlights in an era of emerging airborne combat. Robert also supervised the installation of concrete platforms for anti-aircraft guns used to defend the Pearl Harbor Naval Base, most notably a quarter century later on the “Day of Infamy”, December 7, 1941.
Cleveland, Ohio, 1919-1920 With the end of the First World War, officers and men mustered out in droves, and in March 1919 Robert was returned to permanent grade Lt. Colonel. In April he received new orders to one final duty station in his long career, an assignment of one year before retirement. He transferred to the Army engineering facilities in Cleveland, Ohio, and managed harbor facilities along the southern shore of Lake Erie. After half a dozen years of balmy breezes in Los Angeles and Honolulu, the winter of 1919-20 was a climate and culture shock, especially for the younger children. Robert’s projects included inspection and redesign-repair proposals for breakwater facilities ripped apart by winter storms barreling in off the lake, as well as offshore lighthouse skirts torn up by runaway ore lakers. On July 1, 1920, Robert was promoted to the permanent rank of Colonel, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and after 31 years of national service, he requested and was granted retirement effective December 21, 1920.
Retirement from Active Duty Campaign service ribbons/medals Robert was entitled to wear, at retirement functions and for formal portraits, included three of the four American campaigns that spanned his career. Some awards require active field combat, as was the case in the Philippines during the Insurrection of 1910-12; that was an early chapter in counter-terrorism with no conventional front lines and few opportunities to engineer and install combat facilities using heavy equipment. On the other hand, Robert qualified for three combat medals since he could have been assigned field engineering projects in Cuba, Mexico, and France, such as redoubt fortifications, landing docks, and pontoon bridges. For the Spanish American War Service Medal, during that brief conflict in 1898, he was in NYC charged with harbor defensive works; for the Mexican Campaign Service Medal, he was in Hawaii working on shore defenses in 1916-17; and for the World War Victory Medal, while the AEF were engaged in Europe, his unit trained in Iowa, 1917-18, for possible overseas duty. During these years Robert was also credited with an array of refinements to field service, artillery, and munitions systems. He invented and was granted a patent for a practical, efficient folding camp table, typically used in officers’ tents for battle planning, maps, documents, etc. He also co-invented an ammunition hoist system which found its way into broad usage after the turn of the century. By late 1919, for their retirement Robert and Blossom had chosen to settle in upstate New York, 200 miles up the Hudson River from his original hometown of Brooklyn and a little closer to his alma mater of West Point at 130 miles, which he would anticipate visiting frequently. But they’d be at home in a new community surrounded by many of Blossom’s cousins. Robert was private citizen once again and on the voting roles of New York State. With acute native intelligence, his military training and acquired technical skills, he became an active member of the village of Cambridge. Also serving him well were the influences of those of character he’d met in uniform over the years, and of his own integrity and industriousness, his faith in his nation, his faith in God. The West Point motto, “Duty, Honor, Country”, inherited from his father and passed along to his own, would guide his remaining years, to be taken to the grave and into the next life. The years became decades for the Raymond family and the yellow brick road, metaphorically speaking, approaches a century now while the hard brick blocks themselves, outside the front parlor windows of 120 West Main, were paved over in the late 1960s. Ten decades have passed (two years shy) and while most scattered to the four cardinal directions—children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren—a Raymond (a Burlingame, Spangler, or Ott) may be occasionally seen about the Owlkill Valley and in the nearby Capital District.
Next Time - Chapter 5: 1920-1929, the Robert R. Raymonds Settle in Cambridge
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