one of the leading families of New Bedford was the Grinnell family. They were very rich and very much socialites. I remember so well Emmy and Catherine Grinnell. Emmy’s husband had gone off to the wars; Katy had lost hers; and the two of them used to entertain a group of us kids at their house. This was the first time in my life that I had ever been out in society. This was the first time in my life that I had ever seen a butler. And a great rush of fear, ineptitude, and self-consciousness swept over me. In conversation, I could hardly say two words. The dinner table was just a terrible trial.’’
At the Grinnells’, Bill was offered a Bronx cocktail (usually concocted of gin, dry and sweet vermouth, and orange juice). Despite all the warnings, despite all his training, despite all his fears about drinking, he found himself accepting it.
“Well, my self-consciousness was such that I simply had to take that drink,” he recalled. “So I took it, and another one, and then, lo, the miracle! That strange barrier that had existed between me and all men and women seemed to instantly go down. I felt that I belonged where I was, belonged to life; I belonged to the universe; I was a part of things at last. Oh, the magic of those first three or four drinks! I became the life of the party. I actually could please the guests; I could talk freely, volubly; I could talk well. I became suddenly very attracted to these people and fell into a whole series of dates. But I think, even that first evening, I got thoroughly drunk, and within the next time or two, I passed out completely. But as everybody drank hard, nothing too much was made of that.’’
By his own account, Bill was an excessive drinker from the start. He never went through any moderate stage or any period of social drinking. Bill’s inner warning system must have told him his drinking was unusual, because he “kept the lid on” when Lois came to visit him and was invited to meet his friends. But he did not stop altogether. Without liquor, Bill again felt inferior.
It was now early 1918; the United States was fully at war; and Bill could be shipped out at any time. He and Lois had set their wedding day for February 1. There was a rumor that Bill was to be sent overseas soon; so they decided to push the wedding date up to January 24 and change the invitations to announcements. They chose to go ahead with the big church wedding they had planned, and everyone pitched in to help. It was all done in such a rush that the best man, Lois’s brother Rogers, arrived from Camp Devens too late to change his heavy-duty boots, and had to stomp down the aisle.
Meeting Lois, here in her wedding dress, lifted Bill out of deep depression and into love and renewed hope.
In Brooklyn for the wedding, Bill was again conscious of those horribly familiar feelings of inferiority. He even imagined that some of Lois’s family and friends were asking, “Where did Lois get that one?” In contradiction, he also remembered that they went out of their way to make him feel comfortable. Lois, on her part, was clearly delighted with her new husband, and with the “great welcome” that waited for the couple at the furnished apartment Bill had rented for them in New Bedford. “Flowers and plants were everywhere, and people dropped in continuously to congratulate us,” she recalled. “Bill was very popular on the post.”
One aspect of his new social life had been unknown to Lois, but she discovered it while they were in New Bedford. Bill remembered that during this period, he must have passed out at about every third party. At a party one evening, Lois was shocked to hear Bill’s Army buddies tell how they had dragged him home and put him to bed. Still, she was not terribly perturbed about it, confident that she could persuade him to return to his former abstinence. “Living with me would be such an inspiration, I was sure, he would not need alcohol!”
In his recollections of that period, Bill referred frequently to his fear of going to war, and his shame about that fear. He even felt that he was letting his Vermont ancestors down: “None of those who came across the mountains with rifles and axes would have acted like that!’’
He was sent to Fort Adams near Newport, Rhode Island, to await orders. Finally, the dreaded day arrived. On an August night just a few hours before he was to ship out for England, he and Lois climbed one of the beautiful Newport cliffs that overlook the sea. Their mutual gloom and depression of a sudden lifted, and was replaced by a feeling of patriotism and duty. “She and I gazed out over the ocean, wondering. The sun was just setting, and we talked about the future with joy and optimism. There, I felt the first glimmerings of what I was to later understand as a spiritual experience . . . I shall never forget it.”
Aboard the British ship Lancashire in the North Atlantic, two significant things happened to Bill. The first was that he met a ship’s officer, who shared his brandy with Bill. The second was that in a brief encounter with danger, Bill discovered, to his great relief, that he was a man of courage after all. The prospect of this test, which he knew he must sooner or later face, had made him apprehensive, pessimistic, and occasionally sick with self-doubt.
The Lancashire was a troop transport; her decks were packed solid with bunks and, in the middle of the night, sleeping men. Officers were stationed at every hatch on every deck. Bill was on night watch belowdecks, “practically on the keel,’’ where the men would be the last to be rescued in an emergency. The Lancashire was not far from the British coast. Bill was trying to stay awake. Suddenly, there was a huge thud against the hull of the ship. The men were instantly awake and, in the same instant, headed in a panic for the ladder at the base of which Bill was stationed.
He pulled out his gun; he had orders to shoot any who tried to climb out without permission. But instead of using the gun, he used his voice. In a few minutes, he found that he was able to calm the men, to reassure them, and to prevent panic without his having any information about what had actually happened. In turn, he was as reassured as they were, because the incident gave proof of the courage that he had so sorely doubted.
There had been no real danger. An American depth charge, a so-called ashcan intended for an enemy ship, had exploded so close to the Lancashire that it had made a shattering noise against the ship’s hull.
The Lancashire reached England safely. It was shortly after landing there that Bill had another soul-shaking experience. As the experience aboard ship had, it revealed an inner resource that he had never recognized before.
An epidemic kept Bill and his regiment detained at a camp near Winchester. Depressed, lonely, and apprehensive about what lay ahead, Bill went to visit Winchester Cathedral. Inside the great cathedral, the atmosphere impressed itself so deeply upon him that he was taken by a sort of ecstasy, moved and stirred by a “tremendous sense of presence.” “I have been in many cathedrals since, and have never experienced anything like it,” he said. “For a brief moment, I had needed and wanted God. There had been a humble willingness to have Him with me — and He came.” In that moment, Bill knew that everything was all right, as it should be.
Benumbed and slightly dazed by his experience, he found his way outside to the churchyard. There, a familiar name carved on an old headstone caught his eye: Thomas T____, dead at age 26. One letter in the last name was different; still, here could be an ancestor of Bill’s good school friend Ebby T. Bill read with amusement the doggerel that was Thomas’s epitaph; this is his memory of how it went:
“Here lies a Hampshire Grenadier / Who caught his death / Drinking cold small beer. / A good soldier is ne’er forgot / Whether he dieth by musket / Or by pot.”2
Soon afterward, Bill was sent to France, where he at last saw the devastation of war. There, too, he discovered that French wine could produce the same effects as New Bedford liquor, or the brandy he had been introduced to aboard ship. In those closing months of 1918, the war was winding down rapidly, and Bill’s artillery unit was settled in a small mountain town, far from the front. The only time he and his fellow artillerymen ran into actual danger was during a practice firing session.
Their battalion had placed its guns in positions dug into a bank. They were then supposed to practice firing over a low hilltop and into the countryside beyond. The target was a piece of canvas that had been set up about nine miles away. Bill was sent to observe the results of the practice. He and his men took up positions in a slit trench about 300 yards from