Information
Sheet
R Hume, John Robert.
357 Papers, 1898‑1919.
Two folders,
photocopies.
These are typescript copies of a World
War One diary and poetry of John R. Hume, a native of Doniphan in Ripley County, Missouri,
and captain of a U.S. Army medical detachment in France, 1917‑1918.
The Hume family, which had antecedents in
Scotland and Virginia, was among the earliest to settle along the Current River
in Missouri. They located near Doniphan, in Ripley County,
sometime around 1800. John R. Hume was
a physician at Doniphan. Some of his
poetry, dated 1898 at Jacksonville, Florida, and 1900 at Asheville, North Carolina,
suggests that he may have been educated in those places. Hume entered the U.S. Army before World War
I. He was surgeon of the 7th
U.S. Infantry Regiment, serving with Pershing’s expeditionary force in Texas and Mexico
in 1916‑1917. He was captain with
a field hospital detachment which landed in France in September 1917. The unit served variously at Bourmont,
Goncourt, and in the Verdun
sector, attached to the French 77th Infantry Regiment, the 23rd
U.S. Infantry Regiment, and the 1st and 2nd U.S.
Infantry Divisions.
Hume’s diary and most of his poetry
concern his military experience in Europe. The diary entries begin on 8 September 1917,
as the medical detachment sailed for France, and continue through 14
February 1918. The entries concern the
movements of his field hospital unit and Hume's own hospitalization twice in
four months. He was wounded while
visiting British forces at Cambrai in November 1917, and developed pneumonia
after prolonged exposure to chlorine gas in January 1918. Hume’s narrative ends during his second
hospitalization, but the dateline of his poetry indicates he recovered and
served in France
through the summer of 1918. By November
1918, Hume was in Genoa, Italy.
Hume was particularly sensitive to the
health and well‑being of the troops he served. He was exceedingly disaffected with the
quality of American leadership, especially that of Gen. Omar Bundy, who led the
2nd Division. He accused
Bundy of precipitating many cases of exposure and death among soldiers who
had fallen out of forced marches and who were ordered left along the
roadside. The “Joseph Boyce Incident,”
narrated in the diary, was a particularly disturbing example. Hume’s poetry describes the plight of the
common soldier and the motives which sustained the troops in combat.
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