The Coat of Henry Edgar Williamson

            In my parents house underneath the bed that I slept on when I moved back home is my Great-Grandfather’s World War One coat.  The coat itself isn’t anything remarkable:  it’s a forest-green long coat made out of wool that looks like any other U.S. Army coat issued during that time.  What is remarkable is the story behind the coat.

            My Great-Grandfather was named Henry Edgar Williamson.  He was born halfway between Ashland and Millerville, Alabama in 1893.  He came of age at a time in America when the issues of the day were prohibition, suffrage, and what the best way was to icrease the American sphere of influence around the world and how we would assert ourselves as an international power.

            Then on the 28^th of June, 1914 the Archduke of Austria and heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary Franz Ferdinand was assassinated.  In the blink of an eye Europe was engulfed in war.  But for a young man—barely twenty—from a farming community in East Alabama I find it hard to believe that the immediate reaction was more than a shrug of the shoulders as he continued to labor.

            In time though The Great War, as it came to be called, reached America’s shores.  There was panic in the streets of cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago.  Conscription became a volatile issue much like it would with Vietnam nearly half a century later.  Men don’t like to die for causes they don’t believe in and hate it even more when they die for the ones they don’t give a damn about.  And certainly no son of the south was going to die for any Yankees, much less a bunch of Europeans.  But while I’m sure the old veterans in the south complained about how the young men from Alabama were betraying their real country, Henry Edgar chose to serve after he was drafted into the army.

            And this is where the story of the coat comes in.

            According to my grandfather after his father and his fellow draftees were processed into the army the young men from Clay County, Alabama were sent about an hour up the road to Fort McClellan to begin the initial phase of their training.   My great-grandfather Henry Edgar Williamson would have begun the slow transformation from citizen to soldier.

            After about a month or two at Fort McClellan the new soldiers were sent to Camp Shelby in south Mississippi to finish their training.  In November of 1917 they finished their training and were pronounced “ready for combat” by the men who decide that boys are ready for combat.

            I have no doubt that the young men from Clay County, Alabama were ready to not only do their country proud but also see to it that the Germans remembered the Volunteer County of Alabama.  However, in their haste to move the soldiers to New York and then send them France to fight in The Great War, the army issued the new soldiers a coat to keep warm and forced them to ride on a train from Camp Shelby, Mississippi to New York City in December.  This was before global warming mind you.  It was cold.

            My grandfather says that his dad told him they had to stand on the train while the traveled north because they were packed in so tight.  The government could spend money on a million different things it seemed, but it couldn’t put these poor young soldiers on a passenger train and then the army forced them to travel over the Smokey Mountains in a boxcar like hobos.  Many died on the way to New York and the conditions caused many more of the soldiers to become ill.  Henry Edgar was one of these.

            He was not a weak man let me be straight about that.  But when riding in a boxcar in freezing weather day and night for nearly a week it is hard to not catch pneumonia.  And so he did.  His condition was such that by the time he reached New York City to begin the final phase of his journey he was unable to continue.  Those Yankee doctors thought he was dead.

            So they laid my great-grandfather on a cot in a room with all the other men who died on the ride up.  He was left in his army issued coat that did not protect him from the bitter cold of the Tennessee Smokey Mountains, much less France.  He was left for dead 4000 mile away from home in a land that many southerners in that time period felt was just as foreign as any country in Europe.

            Only he wasn’t dead.  My grandfather tells me that Henry Edgar lay on that cot and was aware but was too weak to move or speak.  He spent the night on that cot again in the cold with just his coat between him and the elements.  And the next day the dead bodies were moved to the morgue.

            I can only imagine the fear he felt as they wheels of the stretchers carrying the deceased made their squeak over that frozen New York floor.  As they came to his cot and prepared to load him on to his death bed a miracle happened.  Some will say it was divine intervention and others will say it was one Yankee finally paying attention but the attending doctor checked Henry Edgar’s pulse.  Although weak the doctor did feel it and declared “this one is not dead, take him to the infirmary.”

            Over a period of several months my Great-Grandfather healed and was finally discharged from both the hospital and the service and sent back to Alabama without ever setting foot in Europe to fight in The Great War.  He was allowed to keep that coat as he rode by passenger train back to Ashland, Alabama.  He would end up living out the rest of his days on the land he had always lived on.  He died on Christmas Day of 1988 at the age of 95.

            Sixteen million, five hundred forty-three thousand, one hundred and eighty-five people around the world died in The Great War.  Of that number one hundred seventeen thousand, four hundred and sixty-five were Americans.

            My Great-Grandfather could have easily been one of those men who died.  One errant riffle shot or lacking the ability to get a gas mask on fast enough or even being trampled as the boys went “over the top” could have lead to death in The War To End All Wars.  But he didn’t die.  He got sick on the train ride to New York and because of that he married Anne Frank Pitts and had they had eleven children and one of those eleven was Billy Frank Williamson.  And Billy married Betty Jane Jones and they had my mother and she had me.

            It’s funny sometimes to think about how close we walk to the razors edge in this life.  One misstep here, one miscalculation there and we can be dead.  Driving our cars, the things we put in or bodies, the places we go for vacation can all kill us.  What’s even more sobering to think about is that humanity has always walked along that razor sharp edge between life and death.  And it always will.

            So when I go back to my parent’s house I hug my mother and father.  I play with my dog and give my sisters a hard time.  And every once in a while I pull out that old coat.  It’s put up in one of those vacuum sealed bags that keep it from going bad and rotting.  Nothing gets to that coat.  But I pull it out and look at it and when I hold it in my hands I am holding a piece of my Great-Grandfather Henry Edgar Williamson in my hands.  A man whose influence reaches across three and four generations of our family.  And I am reminded when I hold that coat that we should be thankful for everyday we have and everyday we have had.  Because sometimes something as common as a United States Army issued coat can be the most important thing.  It can be the thing that ensures the survival of your family.

            Coats cover us and keep us warm.  They protect us from the elements.  My Great-Grandfather’s coat is nearly 100 years old.  And as long as his memory lives on and continues to cover our family and keep us all warm I don’t see the coat going away anytime soon.