GEORGE T. ROWE
An Angel in the Trenches
Dublin’s George T. Rowe desperately wanted to serve his country in the “War to End All Wars,” known better as World War I. Rowe enlisted in the United States Army and traveled to Fort McPherson, southeast of Atlanta, to become an officer in the Army. Members of his ancient Laurens County families had previously served in other wars with nobility and gallantry.
Army doctors decided Rowe wasn’t physically fit. His strong, round, black, glasses gave an immediately a clue. But, Rowe was not deterred. He was going over there, over to the battlefields of France to serve his country. Rowe chose an alternative route to the scene of the main fighting. If he couldn’t be an infantryman, he would volunteer with the Y.M.C.A.. You might ask, the Young Men’s Christian Association? What does fighting a war as a member of an organization which concentrated on physical and spiritual health? Besides, serving as volunteer in France with the “Y” was seen as a way to escape the fighting. As you will see, George T. Rowe did not escape any enemy fire. Rather he found himself in the thick of the trench to trench fighting for more than one hundred consecutive days of constant artillery barrages on the American and allied armies.
Rowe left the United States for France just before Christmas of 1917. Despite the fact that his duty stations would be “Y” huts on the firing lines, Rowe kept thinking of his mission which he learned at Fort McPherson with another three dozen or so Y.M.C.A. volunteers. He left his child and his wife, who was associated with Lanier University in Atlanta, at home. After the war, Mrs. Rowe moved to Dublin to teach school.
Josephus Daniels, a former newspaper publisher and editor from North Carolina and then the Secretary of the Navy, proclaimed that whenever young men die, there is usually a YMCA worker by their side giving them physical aid and spiritual comfort.
From February 25, 1917 during the cold, cold winter until the last week of a thawing spring, Rowe, attached the 17th Field Artillery, performed his duties under the most arduous conditions. It was in the Verdun sector where German artillery batteries rained high explosive rounds on Allied positions all day long and all night long. Sleep, if only for 30 minutes, was a highly prized commodity. The allies were so used to the constant fire that they could tell by the sound of a round if they needed to take cover. There was a saying that “you never hear the one which gets you.” Moving from trench to trench, from rock pile to rock pile, and from one wounded or dying man to the other, carrying a heaving load of supplies, food, and water, Rowe put his life in jeopardy every time he moved away from his supposedly secure position.
Rowe commented after his return from the war that on many occasions that the battle lines were changing so fast that there was little time to even dig more secure trenches. There were those deathly harrowing times when Rowe and the other volunteers carried heavy loads across 400 yards of open, cratered, fields, filled with nerve gas, to get to those men who needed them for spiritual and physical comfort.
And then there were those days and nights, when Rowe could only eat hardtack and drink rainwater out of a puddle.
As the month of June approached, the action accelerated and in particular in the region around Chateau-Thierry, a small city in north central France, about 56 crow-fly miles from Paris along the Marne River.
It was around the first of June 1918, when one of those heavy artillery rounds fell all too close to George Rowe. This time, his name was not on it. Rowe recovered and resumed his duties.
About June 14, a Friday, when George Rowe was resting for a moment before returning to duty, a large artillery round struck the ground on the edge of a “Y” hut. Although the huts were fortified with thick walls of sand bags, the powerful explosion buried the young Dublin man up to his waist in dirt and mud. This time, the second time he was injured, Rowe’s luck still kept him alive.
As rescue workers quickly uncovered Rowe and his body out of what could have been his grave, they discovered that he had suffered moderate damage to his body from nerve gas. George Rowe’s body was physically useless. His nerves were shot from months of barrages of artillery rounds exploding all around him. Rowe was quickly rushed to a field hospital near the front lines, but not far enough that he could not help but hearing the thundering roar of explosions all around him.
“How long was I unconscious, I don’t know,” Rowe recalled. He joyfully remembered that glorious, bright morning when he awoke from a long slumber in a hospital well behind the regimental lines, far from the fighting.
George was going home. At least, that’s what the YMCA authorities ruled. George had different thoughts. He knew how grateful the soldiers were to have George and the volunteers constantly beside them in battle. George had other ideas. Broken in spirit and body, George vowed that he would return to France, where his boys needed him.
George arrived in New York City on July 15, 1918. C.V. Hibbard, of the Y.M.C.A. wrote to Mrs. Rowe that it was not necessary for her to come to New York because George was improving very rapidly, but that he would need a little rest before returning to his normal duties. Before the war, George worked in the family drugstore and managed a large farm in Laurens County.
It was on this day, July 19, a century ago that George made it back home to his wife and family. As he began to speaking of his harrowing experiences, he would humbly point to his Croix de Guerre, which was awarded for his acts of heroism by the French government. He proudly held up a souvenir Iron Cross, taken from a fallen German soldier who was not so lucky.
While George was holding his child again, the war was raging around Chateau-Thierry. The Allied forces held strong and thwarted the German advance toward Paris and signaling the beginning of the fall of the German army. Sadly, it was the time when many young Laurens Countians began to die in the battles which followed.
I wish I could say that George Rowe went on the live a long, healthy, and happy life. Truth is, I don’t know. I lost his trail when he came home in the summer of 1918. And, we are all glad that he made it back home.
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