The next day, the commanding general of Camp Upton was in his office, a wooden house on a small hill in the center of the camp’s skinny parade ground. General J. Franklin Bell stood at his window and watched his camp at full life. Because the camp had very low buildings, you could see the house from almost anywhere you stood. Carved out of the marshlands in a remarkable space of four hell-bent months, Upton was built upon sixteen thousand acres of cleared Long Island brush five miles around. Its goal was to house and train 44,000 men, give or take, all under Bell’s iron command.
Once the camp finally opened on September 5, 1917, New Yorkers made up the first 30 percent of its tenants, who took five days to get there by the Long Island Railroad. When six hundred men left Carlton Avenue in Brooklyn on the same day, there was semi-rioting. Five women fainted right there on the street. There were girls kissing every man who was leaving. This first wave was of single men; the army didn’t want sons or fathers. Not until later. Once they arrived at Upton, the boys were given sixteen weeks of intensive instruction in theoretical and practical warfare. Like the song, it was “Goodbye Broadway, Hello France.”
Bell was a two-star general. His white hair was parted down the middle with the sides clipped up high. His wool, button-down army uniform framed his serious face. He wore a tank watch and round glasses. The camp police stood watch in a tower across from his office, looking down at the cars and men. Bell knew the reporters were on the way. And perhaps others. Perhaps even her.
In front of him, on a desk that held troop assignments and maps of France, was a copy of the Washington Post, which contained the story of Grace’s allegations. Bell sat down at his desk and wrote an official response. There was music playing in the background. With Bell, there was always music in the background. Bell took pride in practical instruction, but his other goal was to create soldiers who could not only fight but also sing. He purchased musical instruments and mass quantities of copies of popular songs to create what he termed the greatest chorus in the world. At Camp Upton, Long Island, “A singing man is a fighting man,” General Bell said.
“It is not possible that even one girl could have died at Camp Upton much less seven,” Bell wrote. “Since references in the morning papers to Mrs. Humiston’s address were called to my attention early this morning, I have been diligently investigating every possible source of accurate knowledge or information. These efforts were begun nearly ten hours ago, and thus far I have been unable to locate any one who has heard of anything furnishing the slightest foundation for Mrs. Humiston’s allegations.”
“I cannot conceive of any such condition existing here,” wrote Bell, “and I don’t believe it does exist. I don’t see how such conditions could exist without my hearing of them, and I have heard of no such conditions.”
“I have been expecting a call from her all day,” the general said. “It is now 6 P.M., but I have not heard of Mrs. Humiston being at Camp Upton. I shall continue this investigation, and if I ever succeed in finding any foundation whatever for Mrs. Humiston’s allegation I shall frankly disclose what I learned to the press.” Bell signed the letter sharply and had it sent off to the New York Times. He looked back out onto his camp, now darker and slower, and wondered if Grace Humiston was already here without his knowing it, hiding somewhere in the shadows in her black hat.
Behind the scenes, Camp Upton began taking immediate precautionary measures. All the outlying saloons were closed and higher security measures were imposed, including the frisking of all visitors, even women. In addition, federal deputies patrolled not only the camp but also the locality around it. Bell reiterated the grand standing order that “No women are permitted to be in company barracks after retreat in the late afternoon. And at no time are they permitted to go about the camp unescorted.”
After Bell’s statement ran in the newspaper, another reporter asked him if there would be any special precautions this Sunday, which was always visitor’s day at Upton. Bell finally flashed some anger.
“Look here,” he glowered, with an old whisper of a Kentucky cadence. “If you think Mrs. Humiston, or any others person, can think of any measures we are not already using I shall be glad to put them into effect.” But Grace Humiston couldn’t be reached or found anywhere. To the public, Upton was full of wholly American, New York boys. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran accounts of their individual exploits like they were one-reel comedies. Newly arrived Private James F. O’Brien calmly halted an important second lieutenant on the company street and borrowed a match. Charlie Holmes said, “It makes me sick to hear that mess call. I have to wash about a million pots and pans in the kitchen every day.” John A. Beyer said he would “give a whole lot of money for twenty minutes in Brooklyn.” Major Morris, who commanded “the Negro troops, caught a bootlegger in camp today, and confiscated three quart bottles of gin.” While a score of the men watched, he poured the liquor on the ground in front of his tent. One of the sentries, with a grin from ear to ear, saluted and said, “Please sir, I would like to sleep with ma nose on that spot tonight, if you don’t mind.”
When soldiers first arrived via the Long Island Railroad, passing through miles of evergreens and cleared-away brush, they were shown to their barracks and bunks. There, they were greeted by a gift: their own personal Bible, generously donated by the Scripture Gift Mission of Philadelphia. Each Bible contained a special foreword written just for the soldiers of Camp Upton. It read:
The Bible is the word of life. I beg that you will read it and find this out for yourselves. You will not only find it full of real men and women, but also of things you have wondered about and been troubled about all your life, as men have been always, and the more you read the more it will become plain to you what things are worth while and what are not.
It was signed “WOODROW WILSON.” New recruits, for they weren’t even soldiers yet, came from all the boroughs to read those black words.
While at Upton, these men would train in “going over the top,” the practice of climbing out of an actual trench with a fixed bayonet attacking a prone dummy. “Bell’s Boys,” they called them. When they showed up, clean and shaved, under a big sky that men who had never left Brooklyn before could only stare at, Bell addressed them all, down to the very last man. Irving Berlin was somewhere down in that crowd. There were rumors that Henry L. Stimson himself, Grace’s old boss and the former secretary of war, was coming to Upton as a lieutenant colonel.
“You have entered into this war wisely.” The general’s voice boomed across a field of men. “I have had experience in three wars. And I would be ashamed to look my fellow citizens in the face if I died before I took an honorable part in this war.
“It doesn’t matter so much when a man dies as how he dies,” Bell said. “When he dies as a craven spirit he dies forever, but when he dies like a hero he lives forever.” Bell then invited all those in the audience who had sons or relatives in the service to meet him up on the stage. As people filed up the wooden riser and crowded forward, he shook their hands, sometimes two at a time.
“The world was on fire,” these fighting men were told.