John McGavock Grider

(Sans Souci, Arkansas, May 28, 1892 – near Houplines, France, June 18, 1918).1

Oxford ✯  Grantham   ✯  Thetford & London Colney  ✯  Turnberry, Ayr, Hounslow  ✯  With No. 85 R.A.F.

Grider grew up at the family home and farm, Sans Souci, on the Mississippi in northeast Arkansas. His great-great-grandfather, John Harding, had purchased thousands of acres on the west side of the Mississippi in Arkansas in the early 1830s. He presented a large parcel to his grandson, John Harding McGavock, when the latter married in 1853. McGavock and his bride, Georgia A. Moore, saw the erection of an elegant house on the property, and Sans Souci became a prosperous and profitable plantation. During the Civil War the house was used as a hospital for Union soldiers. There were hard times after the war for McGavock’s widow and his only surviving child, Susan John McGavock. However, by the time Susan married William Henry Grider in 1880, the outlook had improved. Their children, John McGavock Grider and his two sisters, Josephine and Georgia, were born into a land-rich southern family in a house and on land to which they were deeply attached.2

Grider’s mother died in 1901. The previous year, the family had purchased a house in Memphis, thirty-five miles to the south, “that the children might go to school,” and at some point Grider began studying at the college preparatory Memphis University School.3 In Memphis he met Marguerite Samuels; they were married in 1909. A first son was born in November of the following year, and a second in 1912.4

When Grider registered for the draft on June 1, 1917, he was divorced and had returned to Sans Souci to farm part of the family land. About three weeks later, having made financial arrangements for his lands and crops with a partner, Gene Farley, and with a friend at the local bank, Emma Cox, Grider was in Champaign, Illinois, beginning a course at the University of Illinois’s School of Military Aeronautics.5 His acceptance in the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps had been facilitated by Jacob McGavock Dickinson, a relative on his mother’s side who had been Secretary of War under Taft.6

Grider had his first taste of flying around June 25, 1917, when an instructor took him up: “I got so used to flying in so short a time, that I had the feeling that if I got out of the car I couldn’t hardly fall but would float down like a leaf.” He goes on: “Now I am studying trig day and night, trying to make good on the lie I told about college.”7 He succeeded. Grider’s class graduated August 25, 1917, and, according to him, he was one of only seven “chosen for this expedition” to Italy.8 That only seven were originally chosen is corroborated by a remark in a letter of his classmate, Marvin Kent Curtis (“I was one of only seven picked to come to Mineola”).9  The opening diary entry in War Birds recounts how Laurence Kingsley Callahan, with whom Grider had roomed at Champaign, was originally bound for France, but was added to Grider’s group, with strings pulled by Grider and Elliott White Springs. In the end, a total of twelve of the twenty-nine men who graduated August 25, 1917, from the S.M.A. at Champaign set sail from New York on the Carmania, on September 18, 1917, as members of the 150-man strong “Italian” or “second Oxford detachment,” bound, as they thought, for Italy.

Grider, like a number of members of the detachment, kept a diary (among the sources Springs later used when he wrote War Birds): “This is the damn fool diary of a son of the South & of rest. I hope he don’t weaken & forget to write in it.”10 Grider wrote the first entry on September 20, 1917, when the Carmania was at Halifax, preparing to join a convoy for the Atlantic crossing: “We are 150 aviators in embryo commanded by Major [Leslie] MacDill who every one of us loves.” Grider shared a stateroom with Callahan—the detachment was travelling first class, a perquisite credited variously to MacDill and to Fiorello La Guardia, who was travelling with them. The latter undertook to teach the men Italian, with, in Grider’s case, limited success: “I am getting tired of this damn Italian I cant understand a damn word of it yet and wont ever be able to I know.”11  The men had no real obligations until about a week into the voyage, when they were tasked with keeping submarine watch. “[N]ervousness has been growing for the last few days about subs. . . . We have had to wear our life preservers ever since yesterday morning. They are damn uncomfortable too I can tell you.”12 On September 29, 1918, they welcomed the presence of a guard of destroyers as they approached land: “Every body felt funny until this evening about 4. . . . I went up on deck and the sea was swarming with Submarine chasers. Lord how happy every one was at the sight of them.”13

Oxford

When the Carmania docked at Liverpool on October 2, 1917, the cadets learned that their Italian lessons had been for naught, as they were to stay in England for their training. There was initially considerable grumbling about this change of plans, particularly when the cadets (as they were now called) realized that they would not begin flying immediately but would be put through ground school again. However, England in autumn soon cast its spell. Grider was enchanted with the countryside rolling past as the train took the cadets from Liverpool to Oxford. His farming background is evident in his October 3, 1917, diary entry: “The greenest fields imaginable and no fences just hedges & occasionally a stone wall. We did see some fences too but very few & they were boards no wire. I think the biggest field I saw was about 60 acres & they ranged down to 1 ½ & two acres. Most of the fields were pasture land or seemed so. They were covered with this intensley [sic] green grass. I saw a good many hay stacks so I guess they must cut this grass to cure it. In fact I saw some fields freshly cut.”14

From Oxford Grider wrote his banker friend Cox: “No flying yet. We have another ground school here and our hopes of Italy are dead. The latest is, we will fly in Egypt, but there are so many rumors flying around that you can’t tell anything positive. Our work is as easy as can be.”15 They were now at the Royal Flying Corps’s No. 2 School of Military Aeronautics at Oxford University in a holding pattern until places were available at training squadrons. Grider gravitated to fellow southerners: he shared a room at Christ Church College with Springs of South Carolina, James Whitworth Stokes of Nashville, and Callahan (from Chicago, but from an old Kentucky family).16 With an undemanding schedule Grider was able to explore Oxford and made several bicycle rides into the countryside, on one occasion visiting Blenheim with Callahan, Marvin Kent Curtis, and Charles Edward Brown.17 He also apparently enjoyed tea at Sir William and Lady Osler’s (“I went to tea at Lady Somebody’s house yesterday”18).

A fair amount of alcohol was consumed. Grider, in the course of describing the dining hall at Christ Church College, wrote in his diary (the all caps are his): “WE HAVE CHAMPAIGN [sic] with our meals,”19 and his diary entry for October 22, 1917, provides an account of Walter Andrew Stahl’s bibulous birthday party, which was in part responsible for all the American cadets being relocated from Christ Church and Queen’s Colleges to Exeter College.

The powers that were at American Aviation Headquarters in London and at the Royal Flying Corps continued to look for ways to occupy the cadets.  Places for twenty men became available at Stamford’s No. 1 Training Depot Station in early November, and Springs, charged with selection, chose mainly men who, like himself, already had flying experience. The remaining men, including Grider, went to machine gun school at Harrowby Camp near Grantham in Lincolnshire, with the exception of Stokes, who, according to the November 6, 1917, entry in War Birds, remained behind to be operated on for appendicitis; according to Grider’s diary entry for that day Stokes was “in the hospital at Oxford for Hernia.” Grider wrote to Cox in early November that he “had a chance to stay here [Oxford] and accept a non-flying commission, be a supply officer attached to a flying squadron.” Presumably this option was offered to all the other cadets; as far as I can tell, all, like Grider, “turned it down cold.”20

Grantham

At Grantham Frederick Joseph Stillman, Jr., was “in charge and I am now a platoon leader and eat at the head table with the other NCO’s and the english officers.”21 Grider shared a hut with Leslie A. A. Benson, Callahan, Thomas John Herbert, Clarence Horn Fry, Finley Austin Morrison, Joseph Raymond Payden, and John Howard Raftery22; he missed “old Jim Stokes and Springs. [T]his is the first split I guess it will be pretty tough to part from all the boys and I know it will be hell when the hun starts bumping us off.”23 Classes and machine gun practice occupied a good deal of time, but weekends were free for trips to Nottingham, the nearest large town, which the cadets found notable for its large population of unattached women.

In mid-November Grider wrote Cox that “We have been on the range all day and I am as deaf as a post. I feel as cheery as can be, however, there is a brand new rumor and it sounds good. 50 of us will be posted to a squadron next week!”24 This rumor turned out to be true—“This is the final bust up of our old ‘Italian Detachment’”25—but before leaving Grantham, Grider, on November 18, 1917, enjoyed “the best day I have spent in England.” He “Went out to Stokes Castle this noon for dinner and stayed for tea. . . . I met a Mrs. Chapin out there from Louisiana. She is a real sure enough old Southern aristocrat. She reminded me so much of Granma. . . . I surely enjoyed talking to her. It was like a visit home. She gave me her address in London and I surely am going to look her up. She made me promise that from now on we are fast friends. She is really a wonderful old Lady. She said I was like her brother. The description of her brother was quite flattering.”26 The woman Grider met was Adèle Le Bourgeois Chapin, who was staying with the Christopher Turnors at their Lincolnshire home, Stoke Rochford, just south of Grantham, and enjoying a respite from her work directing the American Hospital for English Soldiers at Caenwood Towers in north London. She later, in her memoirs, recalled meeting Grider: “It was on one of our visits to the Turnors that a young American airman from Arkansas came to Stoke. I was much attracted by his Southern speech, . . . He had a vivid, amusing way of putting things. I remember at luncheon a distinguished guest asked him in a rather formal and pompous manner what he thought of England. And he said: ‘I think it’s the prettiest little country I ever saw. I’d like to put it in my pocket and take it home with me’.”27

Thetford and London Colney

The day after this visit to Stoke Rochford fifty of the men were dispersed to various R.F.C. training stations, and Grider was one of ten posted to Thetford in Norfolk. The short journey from Grantham to Thetford took over six hours, as the men missed their connection at Peterborough; Grider took advantage of the delay to see Peterborough Cathedral where he was much impressed by the fan vaulting.28

Once at Thetford, the men were assigned to No. 25 and No. 12 Training Squadrons there. Curtis wrote his father from No. 12 T.S. at Thetford that the “boys here with me are Grider, the Arkansas boy you met in N.Y., Callahan of Chicago, Brown of Lake Forest, and Fry, of Columbia, Tenn.”29 In a letter to his sister dated November 26, 1917, Grider wrote that “I am posted to a squadron at last and fly whenever the weather permits, which isn’t often.” He goes on to describe the training planes, Maurice Farman S.11 Shorthorns or “Rumpties,” and then flying itself: “It’s beautiful to see a sunset from about five thousand feet, you cannot imagine anything like it. You wouldn’t be surprised to see God any time. I absolutely can’t describe it.”30 “I am now learning the gentle art of looping, spinning, turning side slips, tail slides, flat spins and vertical banks. . . . My only objection to flying at all is the loneliness. You stay up an hour and thirty minutes and come down expecting to find all of your friends married and raising large families.”31

Not long after his arrival at Thetford, Grider had some leave and, prompted by the need to have his teeth seen to, made what was apparently his first visit to London: “That London is some town.”32 He made friends and partied with theater people; he was also invited to lunch at the Belgravia residence of Irwin Boyle Laughlin, secretary of the American Embassy.33

On December 6, 1917, Grider noted in his diary that “I have been flying the last 3 days & Capt Harrison says I can solo tomorrow if its [sic] calm. I tell you it is a great great life. I am absolutely ruined for anything else I wish I could describe it. The thing most surprising to me is your feeling of complete safety. I have put in 2 hours 30 mins & made about twenty five landings I would have soloed this evening if I hadnt [sic] made two awful landings.” It wasn’t long after that he finished “my four hours solo on rumpteys and am done with them for ever.”34 On December 16, 1917, along with Callahan, he was assigned to No. 56 T.S. at London Colney, near St. Alban’s.35

The proximity to London was welcome; on the occasion of one of many parties there “We had the cast of ‘Cheep’ up in our suite at Savoy & they brought Lord somebody with them. Cal sallommmed before him & I shook hands & said Howdy Jesus. He was very much shocked.”36 On January 13, 1918, Springs, who had been at Stamford since early November, reported to London Colney; Grider, Springs, and Callahan—the “three musketeers”—were back together.37

By early February 1918, Grider had “about 8 hours dual and 13 hours solo to my credit having about nine hours solo on avros. I have looped many times. And today I rolled an avro rather a difficult thing to do I am told. I cant do really good vertical turns yet but I am learning and hope to get by soon onto Pups.”38 The next day he did his altitude test: “Went up through thick clouds to 8000 feet and damn near froze. The buss was covered with ice where it had been wet by the clouds coming up. The sky up there was the bluest I ever saw. Absolutely glassy blue with just a few cirrus clouds about five miles up. Snow white and this beautiful snow white plain [sic] of clouds beneath me. I could see I know at least 100 miles.”39

By the end of February, Grider had completed the first stage of his R.F.C. training and was entitled to several days leave, which he took in Bournemouth.40   Around the same time he qualified for a commission, and Pershing’s cable recommending a first-lieutenancy is dated March 5, 1918.41 Meanwhile, along with Curtis and others, he served as a pall-bearer at the funeral of Joseph Frederick Stillman, Jr., who had died on February 23, 1918, some two weeks after a crash at London Colney.42

Turnberry, Ayr, Hounslow

Sometime in the first half of March Grider travelled to Scotland where he initially attended aerial gunnery school at Turnberry: “This is a wonderful place! The flying corps has taken over this wonderful summer hotel and we are billeted in it. My window overlooks the sad sea waves on one side, and on the other, one of the most famous golf courses in the world.” He goes on to note that he had “put in about twelve hours on the meanest thing with wings, known as a ‘Spad’.”43 From Turnberry Grider went to the School of Aerial Fighting at Ayr, apparently sometime before March 20, 1918.44 There he would have trained on S.E.5s.

Springs, also at Ayr, wrote in his diary for March 25, 1918, “Mac [Grider] gets orders to depart for overseas. I go down to London with him.”45 Springs was determined that he, Grider, and Callahan should remain together and on April 1, 1918—the day Grider learned he had received his commission—Springs was able to write of his success in his diary: the three of them were assigned to No. 85 Squadron R.A.F., an S.E.5a squadron that, under the command of Billy Bishop, was at Hounslow preparing to depart for France.46 It appears that Grider arrived at Hounslow on or before March 29, 1918. Eugene Hoy Barksdale notes in his diary for that day: “Mac Grider came over [to London Colney] from Hounslow in Avro and took 2^nd Lt Webber (American) up for a flip and put wind up him properly.”

Grider wrote to Cox on May 10, 1918, from Maidenhead—a town west of and within easy flying distance of Hounslow—about his commission and reported that “Three of us, ‘The Three Musketeers,’ are stationed in London, or almost, and have been living in a house in Berkeley Square.” “We are in the squadron we want to be in and all three together. . . . We are going with the fastest, keenest crowd in London, and I have gotten away with the handsomest, most charming and sought after girl in the drove”; this was the actress Billie Carlton. In the same letter he remarks that “We are getting a good deal of flying now” and goes on to recount a crash in a Sopwith Pup in which he was not injured, but the plane was “written off.”47 In the same letter, he laments the death of Fry, who had been with him at Thetford and London Colney: “Emma, I lost one of my best friends last week, a boy named Clarence Fry from Columbia, Tennessee. Killed in a Spad. . . . Poor fellow, one of the very best.”

With No. 85 Squadron R.A.F.

On May 22, 1918, the pilots of No. 85 Squadron set off in S.E.5a’s for Lympne, not far from Dover. From Lympne they crossed the Channel to Marquise, and then flew to Petite Synthe near Dunkirk.48 Grider and the other pilots of No. 85 spent until the end of May familiarizing themselves with the area and practicing gunnery. On May 26, 1918, Grider wrote that “I started over to have a look at the Great War today, when my engine cut out at twelve thousand feet. . . . Major Bishop was taking Springs and me over before anybody else and of course I had this kind of luck.”49 When the squadron became operational on June 1, 1918, they flew patrols down to Ypres and escorted bombers into Belgium. On June 8, 1918, “Mac distinguished himself by filling a Hun full of lead bullets”; both Springs and Grider provide lively accounts of this “dog fight.” Although the German plane was last seen “diving vertically to the ground” (Grider), “headed towards his future home and breaking all records” (Springs), it was not seen to crash, and Grider apparently did not receive credit.50

On June 10, 1918, the squadron was ordered south to St. Omer, where they arrived the next day; their patrols now extended from Ypres south to Nieppe. Assuming Grider flew the same patrols as Springs, he flew a practice patrol on June 12, and then was over the lines every or nearly every day thereafter. On June 17, 1918, Grider, by Springs’s account, shared credit with Springs and Callahan for shooting down a two-seater. They had gone out on a patrol as a threesome just before 7 a.m. and encountered the lone enemy plane ten miles inside the German lines south of Merris.51

The next morning the three set off again. Callahan turned back with engine trouble. After another encounter with an enemy two-seater near Menin (Belgian Menen, about twelve miles east northeast of Armentières), Springs made it back through clouds to the aerodrome, but Grider did not. Springs wrote several accounts of this patrol, in his flight log, his diary, an undated narrative, a letter home, and a letter to Grider’s sister. Details vary, but the essence is always the same: Grider was following Springs back towards the lines and then disappeared from view.52

A casualty report was filed with the information that Grider had left at 9:15 a.m. and that he was “last seen over enemy Lines near Menin by Lieut Springs, who with Grider had engaged an E.A. No conjecture as to fate.” Springs claimed a German two-seater plane over Menin at 10:05, which suggests an approximate time for his last sighting of Grider.53

According to Grider’s sister Josephine, Grider’s father received a telegram on June 21, 1918, informing him that his son was missing.54 On July 11, 1918, he received a letter dated June 19, 1918, from 85’s acting C.O., George Brindley Aufrere Baker, holding out the possibility that Grider was a prisoner of war.55 Springs, recuperating in Paris from injuries sustained in a crash landing, tried to get news of Grider through the Red Cross around July 25, 1918, without success.56 But at the very end of the month, reassigned to the U.S. 148^th Aero at Capelle, Springs wrote his father that “News has been received that Mac Grider was killed in action but we can’t figure how.”57 There is another letter to Grider’s father from Captain Baker dated August 14, 1918: “. . . you will have learned that the worst, I fear, has befallen your son. . . . We had hoped with hopes we thought well founded that he was alive, but it seems from a message dropped over the lines, that although the name was misspelled, the name referred to was his.”58

A casualty card for Grider includes the notation: “Report from B. M. Mission states this Officer was brought down dead on the 18^th June ’18 near Houplin. No further information to hand.” A second casualty card has the notation: “killed between Houplin and Armantieres [sic].”59 “Houplin” was presumably Houplines, less than a mile west of Armentières.  The source of information on this second casualty card may have been a notice published in the Gazette des Ardennes on Jun 27, 1918.59a

There have been efforts to match the disappearance of Grider and his plane to German victory claims, but always with discrepancies as to time, place, or type of plane, leaving open the possibility that his plane was shot down by ground fire or suffered some catastrophic structural or engine failure.60

Grider’s body was not recovered. His is one of forty-three names memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Flanders Field American Cemetery, at Waregem, Belgium.61

 

mrsmcq August 10, 2017; revised to reflect Griders’s diary, April 14, 2021

Notes