World War I

The Soul of an Immigrant

Immigration audiobooks, Constantine Panunzio, immigrants, Immigration, librivox, memoirs, World War I

Constantine Panunzio (1884-1964)

Constantine Panunzio (1884-1964) begins his autobiography by describing his childhood in Molfetta, Italy. At age 13, he left home as a sailor, landing in Boston in 1902.

Listen to the story here:
Read the book on-line here:

His trials finding work, learning English, and securing an education in the U.S. were many, but eventually, he became administrator of a social service agency in Boston. During WWI, he served as head of the YMCA on the Italian front. Concerned throughout his career with the treatment and assimilation of immigrants, Panunzio criticized the post world War I hysteria about alien radicals in his book The Deportation Cases of 1919-1920.

In 1925, Panunzio earned a Ph.D. at the Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government. From 1931, until he retired in 1951, he taught sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

From Sue: A few notes about Panunzio’s retirement activities: An in memoriam tribute to Panunzio written in 1966 by the Academic Senate of the University of California has this to say: “It is curious that Panunzio, a sociologist, perhaps did his greatest sociological work after he had retired. The then (1952) existing University pension system was grossly inadequate. . . In certain instances, the consequences were pathetic: to cite one example, a well-known full professor who had been an important figure in the early days of UCLA’s development worked as a night watchman to supplement his $93-a-month pension. . .”

Outraged at the small retirement benefit he was receiving himself, Panunzio “drew up a bill of particulars, setting forth the facts and statistics” which, in turn, set in forth a successful movement to reform the California university retirement system! He also, personally, created a bequest funding the Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award honoring “outstanding scholarly work or educational service performed since retirement by a University of California emeritus or emerita in the humanities or social sciences.”

It is interesting to me that there are many pictures on the internet of persons who have won Panunzio’s distinguished emeriti award, but I could find no picture of Panunzio himself. The “in memoriam” biography concludes with this assessment of the man : “Although a person of great social charm and given to human warmth and kindness, Panunzio could be a tenacious and unyielding opponent in matters which involved his convictions. He was not a man to be awed by opposition, however great. This singleness of purpose, though it sometimes lost him potential friends and created strained relations with colleagues and administrators, made it possible for him to achieve goals which otherwise would have been out of reach.” I would like to have met him!

I have also recorded Panunzio’s The Deportation Cases of 1919-1920.

Other immigrant memoirs and poems you might like:

An American in the Making, by Marcus Eli Ravage
From Plotzk to Boston, by Mary Antin
My Mother and I, by Elizabeth Stern
The Ghetto, by Lola Ridge

The Night Patrol

Arts, Poetry Arthur Graeme West, audiobooks, librivox, poetry, World War I

Arthur Graeme West (1891-1917)

Above: “Friday afternoon at 4:40,” April 8, 2016

The Night Patrol–France, March 1916.

Over the top! The wire’s thin here, unbarbed
Plain rusty coils, not staked, and low enough:
Full of old tins, though–“When you’re through, all three,
Aim quarter left for fifty yards or so,
Then straight for that new piece of German wire;
See if it’s thick, and listen for a while
For sounds of working; don’t run any risks;
About an hour; now, over!”

And we placed
Our hands on the topmost sand-bags, leapt, and stood
A second with curved backs, then crept to the wire,
Wormed ourselves tinkling through, glanced back, and dropped.
The sodden ground was splashed with shallow pools,
And tufts of crackling cornstalks, two years old,
No man had reaped, and patches of spring grass.
Half-seen, as rose and sank the flares, were strewn
With the wrecks of our attack: the bandoliers,
Packs, rifles, bayonets, belts, and haversacks,
Shell fragments, and the huge whole forms of shells
Shot fruitlessly–and everywhere the dead.
Only the dead were always present–present
As a vile sickly smell of rottenness;
The rustling stubble and the early grass,
The slimy pools–the dead men stank through all,
Pungent and sharp; as bodies loomed before,
And as we passed, they stank: then dulled away
To that vague fœtor, all encompassing,
Infecting earth and air. They lay, all clothed,
Each in some new and piteous attitude
That we well marked to guide us back: as he,
Outside our wire, that lay on his back and crossed
His legs Crusader-wise; I smiled at that,
And thought on Elia and his Temple Church.
From him, at quarter left, lay a small corpse,
Down in a hollow, huddled as in bed,
That one of us put his hand on unawares.
Next was a bunch of half a dozen men
All blown to bits, an archipelago
Of corrupt fragments, vexing to us three,
Who had no light to see by, save the flares.
On such a trail, so lit, for ninety yards
We crawled on belly and elbows, till we saw,
Instead of lumpish dead before our eyes,
The stakes and crosslines of the German wire.
We lay in shelter of the last dead man,
Ourselves as dead, and heard their shovels ring
Turning the earth, then talk and cough at times.
A sentry fired and a machine-gun spat;
They shot a flare above us, when it fell
And spluttered out in the pools of No Man’s Land,
We turned and crawled past the remembered dead:
Past him and him, and them and him, until
For he lay some way apart, we caught the scent
Of the Crusader and slid past his legs,
And through the wire and home, and got our rum.

From The Diary of a Dead Officer, Being the Posthumous Papers of Arthur Graeme West (1919?), read for Vol. 85 of the Short Poetry Collection.

The Land Where Hate Should Die

Arts, Poetry audiobooks, Denis A. McCarthy, librivox, poetry, World War I

Denis A. McCarthy (1871–1931)

Above: Strip mall sunrise, September 5, 2016

The Land Where Hate Should Die

This is the land where hate should die —
No feuds of faith, no spleen of race,
No darkly brooding fear should try
Beneath our flag to find a place.
Lo! every people here has sent
Its sons to answer freedom’s call;
Their lifeblood is the strong cement
That builds and binds the nation’s wall.

This is the land where hate should die —
Though dear to me my faith and shrine,
I serve my country well when I
Respect the creeds that are not mine.
He little loves his land who’d cast
Upon his neighbor’s word a doubt,
Or cite the wrongs of ages past
From present rights to bar him out.

This is the land where hate should die —
This is the land where strife should cease,
Where foul, suspicious fear should fly
Before the light of love and peace.

Then let us purge from poisoned thought
That service to the state we give,
And so be worthy as we ought
Of this great land in which we live!

From Heart Songs and Home Songs (1916), read for Vol. 154 of the Short Poetry Collection.

The Journal of Submarine Commander Von Forstner

War & Military audiobooks, librivox, memoirs, U-boat, war and military, World War I

George-Günther von Forstner (1882–1940)

The Journal of Submarine Commander Von Forstner is a graphic account of WWI submarine warfare. Forstner was the commander of German U-boat U-28. His journal, first published 1916, gives a gritty picture of daily life inside a submarine and details several torpedo attacks on Allied shipping. The 1917 translation of Forstner’s journal into English was unquestionably intended to bolster the Allied war effort. In the foreword, the translator states: “Nothing at the present day has aroused such fear as this invisible enemy, nor has anything outraged the civilized world like the tragedies caused by the German submarines.”

This audio read of Forstner’s journal was prompted by a tour of a captured WWII German U-505 submarine, which is a prime draw at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. The sub’s interior is not for claustrophobics — a hunkered maze of pipes and valves, banks of engines and batteries that leave very little room for humans. Particularly arresting are the sleeping quarters — bunks cozy’d up with the 15 foot long torpedoes.

You also might find interesting this recording: Gallipoli Diary, by John Graham Graham.

The Deportation Cases of 1919-1920

Immigration audiobooks, Constantine Panunzio, immigrants, Immigration, librivox, World War I

Constantine Panunzio (1884-1964)

“The study here presented embodies the findings of an investigation into the recent [1919-1920] deportations of persons deemed to be unlawfully in the country. . . Its purpose is to call public attention to practices that are inconsistent with the American tradition of justice and fair-play.”
Constantine Panunzio.

Listen here:
Read the book on-line here:

I have also recorded Panunzio’s autobiograpy: The Soul of an Immigrant.

You might also find interesting the Address of Oscar Neebe, from The Chicago Martyrs — The Famous Speeches of the Eight Anarchists (at the Haymarket bombing trial) , by John P. Altgeld, 1899. “There is no evidence to show that I was connected with the bomb throwing, or that I was near it, or anything of that kind. So, I will ask you to hang me, too; for I think it is more honorable to die suddenly than to be killed by inches. I have a family and children; and if they know their father is dead, they will bury him. They can go to the grave, and kneel down by the side of it; but they can’t go to the penitentiary and see their father, who was convicted for a crime that he hadn’t anything to do with.” I read Neebe’s speech for the 8th Anniversary of LibriVox.

also: An American in the Making, by Marcus Eli Ravage

Gallipoli Diary

War & Military audiobooks, Gallipoli, John Graham Gillam, librivox, memoirs, war and military, World War I

Major John Graham Gillam (1883-1965)

Above: 4.5 Howitzer in Action, Sulva Bay, Gallipoli

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Read the book on-line here:

Major John Graham Gillam, British Supply Officer, wrote in his World War I Gallipoli Diary that when he sailed from England for the Dardanelles in March, 1915, he had visions of “trekking up the Gallipoli Peninsula with the Navy bombarding a way for us up the Straits and along the coast-line of the Sea of Marmora, until after a brief campaign we entered triumphantly Constantinople, there to meet the Russian Army, which would link up with ourselves to form part of a great chain encircling and throttling the Central Empires. . . We little appreciated the difficulties of the task,” he continues, in potent understatement.

Gillam’s charge was shepherding supplies–food and munitions–from beach depots to the trenches for a brigade of 4000 men. Since it was his first experience with “real war,” he decided to keep a diary, which he did from the day he landed at Gallipoli (April 25, 1915) until he was evacuated at the end of the campaign in January 1916. He aptly states in the preface to the published version of his diary: “those who desire to survey the whole amazing Gallipoli campaign in perspective must look elsewhere than in these pages. Their sole object was to record the personal impressions, feeling, and doings from day to day of one supply officer to a Division whose gallantry in that campaign well earned for it the epithet “Immortal.”

As the campaign intensifies, Gillam’s entries mature. Early on (May 30), a sample entry: “This afternoon I ride . . . to Morto Bay, and on the way have a delightful cross-country canter. I have difficulty, though, in making my mare jump trenches. She jumped hurdles at Warwick race-course like a bird.” A month later, on June 30, “The smell of dead bodies is at times almost unbearable in the trenches, and chloride of lime is thrown over them. I know of no more sickly smell than chloride of lime with the smell of a dead body blended in.” Another month, and respect for the Turks, and also for the rugged terrain of the peninsula is evident (August 29): “Behind me, purple Turkish hills, every point of which is held by the enemy. Then in between our line and the hills the scrubby low-lying country. . . I look at it hopelessly–for I know now, as we all do, that the conquest of the Peninsula is more than we can hope for. All that is left to us is to hang on day by day. . . Death in various forms walks with us always . . .”

Today, the Turkish Government maintains a war memorial and cemeteries at the Gallipoli Peninsula Historical National Park. Memories are very much alive there. Preserved trenches and the sad graves of many, many soldiers from both sides of the conflict are made especially poignant by the beauty of the setting– the sea and high hills beyond.

Gallipoli Diary has been viewed more than 100,000 times! See for yourself!

I you have enjoyed Gallipoli Diary, you might also like these personal accounts of courage and fortitude:

Five Years of My Life 1894-1899 by Alfred Dreyfus
Reminiscences of a Southern Hospital, by Phoebe Pember

WWI history from a vastly different viewpoint (submarine warfare): The Journal of Submarine Commander Von Forstner.

FANNY Goes to War

War & Military audiobooks, librivox, memoirs, women, World War I

Pat (Catherine) Beauchamp (1892–1972)

Above: Women ambulance drivers, WWI

“I had been up since 5 and was taking a lorry-full of stretchers and blankets past a French Battery to the E.M.O.’s. It was about midday and there was not a cloud in the sky. Then suddenly my heart stood still. Somehow, instinctively, I knew I was “for it” at last. Whole eternities seemed to elapse before the crash. . . I felt myself being hurled from the car into the air, to fall and be swept along for some distance, my face being literally rubbed in the ground. The stretcher bearer in behind had been killed instantaneously, but fortunately I did not know of this till some time later. . .

The French soldiers were down from their Battery in a trice, all great friends of mine to whom I had often thrown ration cigarettes. Gaspard (that was not his name, I never knew it, but always called him that in my own mind after Raymond’s hero) gave a cry and was on the ground beside me, calling me his ‘ little cabbage,’ his ‘ poor little pigeon,’ and presently he half lifted me in his arms and cradled me as he might a baby. I remained quite conscious the whole time. . .

The pain was becoming rapidly worse and I began to wonder just where my legs were broken. As I could move neither I could not discover at all, and presently I gave a gasp as I felt something tighten and hurt terribly. It was a boot lace they were fixing to stop the haemorrhage (boot laces are used for everything in France). The men stood round, and I watched them furtively wiping the tears away that rolled down their furrowed cheeks. One even put his arm over his eyes as a child does. I wondered vaguely why they were crying; it never dawned on me it had anything to do with me.”

Pat (Catherine) Beauchamp lost a leg in WWI, while serving as an ambulance driver in France, with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). She was awarded the French Croix de Guerre. I read a selection from her 1919 book Fanny Goes to War for the LibriVox First World War Centenary Prose Collection

Other memoirs and poems from WWI:

The Night Patrol, France, March 1916, by Arthur Graeme West
Gallipoli Diary, by John Graham Gillam
The Journal of Submarine Commander George-Günther von Forstner