reading

co-author, Dr. Gordon Ehlers, M. Evans & Co., New York, 2002. Included as one of only three health books in Publishers Weekly’s “Best Books of 2002.”

Behind the Lines follows a handful of Belgians in German-occupied Belgium and a group of Americans in the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) from August 1914 through December 1914. The book is the first in a series that will span the time from August 1914 until April 1917, when America enters the war and the CRB delegates have to leave Belgium. The second book will cover January 1915 through spring 1916 and is planned for publication in 2015. The third book will cover summer 1916 through April 1917 and is planned for publication in 2016. More information can be found at www.WWIBehindTheLines.com.

Jeffrey B. Miller has been a writer, editor, and author for nearly forty years. His career includes starting six magazines (city, regional, and national), being editor in chief of five in-flight magazines, and serving as director of communications for AAA Colorado, where he supervised its magazine, public relations, public affairs, traffic safety programs, and website. He lives in Denver with his wife, Susan Burdick, and is working on the next book in the Behind the Lines series.

WWI’s little-known story of German occupation, Belgian resistance, and the band of Yanks who saved millions from starvation.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover photographs. Front: public domain; War Bread, E. E. Hunt (Henry Holt & Co., 1916);

Back, left to right (all public domain): multiple sources; Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Archives; author’s archives.

Precisely 100 years ago, in 1914, the world descended into chaos. The cataclysm known initially as the World War or the Great War, and subsequently as the First World War or World War I, powerfully resonates today. We can trace the ascent of the United States to a position of global preeminence, the unraveling of European imperial control over many parts of the world, and the political demarcation of a fractious modern Middle East to this war and its immediate aftermath.

Although the war is best known for the industrialized slaughter of millions of soldiers along the western front and the innovative and horrific use of chemical weapons, machine guns, tanks, and submarines, as well as the strategic bombing of civilian population centers, it is a conflict that is nevertheless poorly understood. Compared with the Second World War, few Americans study the prior war in depth. European audiences are generally more familiar with World War I’s contours, but it remains an enigma. Fierce scholarly debates still rage over its origins, conduct, and consequences.

Collectively, the war’s centennial is providing historians, writers, and journalists many new opportunities to reexamine this titanic conflict and to establish its connections to a globalized world today, to link the two eras spanning a century.

A wave of new scholarly writing and documentary films connected to the war’s anniversary promises to bombard us with images of the past. Surely many of these reflections on World War I will mostly reinforce what we already know. We are generally familiar with the diplomatic and ethnonational disputes that triggered the war and prevented its swift conclusion and with the slaughter of millions on an ever-expanding and ever-more-destructive battlefield. Reflections on this century-old conflict will certainly further canonize the enduring sense of the war’s futility, the failures of imagination and implementation by statesmen and generals, and a glowing appreciation for the valorous troops swept into a tragic vortex.

It remains to be seen what effect, if any, a new wave of research and writing on the war will have on shaping these powerfully held popular memories.

The growing field of histories on humanitarianism and humanitarian interventions ranks prominently among new areas of scholarly interest in World War I. Once the almost-exclusive province of nurses’ and ambulance drivers’ memoirs, the emergent front of humanitarian studies has cast a wider net to encompass the activities of international relief organizations, transnational disease-abatement campaigns, nation-building initiatives, and the dynamics of state-sponsored social welfare programs for soldiers’ dependents and permanently disabled troops.

We are presently developing a deeper understanding of the power struggles between and interactions among the swirling constellation of humanitarian actors, state and private donors, and recipients of aid. Just as states and societies waging World War I focused considerable attention on industrial mobilization for the purposes of waging war, they also developed humanitarian countermeasures to mitigate war’s destructive effects on soldiers, their families, and millions of others engulfed by its violence.

Those involved in humanitarian efforts exercised profound influence over the war’s conduct and outcome. They helped to shape policy and strategy among belligerent and neutral powers alike. As they gave hope to many beleaguered peoples who lacked the means to provide for themselves, humanitarians demonstrated outstanding life-sustaining alternatives to unbridled destruction.

Behind the Lines reveals one of the most remarkable humanitarian enterprises undertaken during World War I. In this historically accurate and gripping account, Jeff Miller traces the activities of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, the CRB, an ingenious organization established in October 1914 to import food and to ensure its distribution within German-occupied Belgium (and subsequently northern France).

Belgium, the most highly industrialized and densely populated country in Europe, urgently needed international assistance from willing neutral powers that would intercede on its behalf. It was threatened by starvation because of its acute dependency on foreign food imports, Germany’s acts of destruction and/or forcible acquisition of native agricultural stockpiles and livestock as it conquered Belgium, and Britain’s erection of a strict naval blockade along the Belgian coast to deny its German adversary imported war materials, including food.

Emerging as the CRB’s indomitable and dynamic leader was a figure that few Americans today associate with gallantry, effective leadership, or managerial success: Herbert Hoover.

This man, whose reputation in the United States would forever be linked to the Great Depression of the 1930s, was nevertheless the guiding force that orchestrated the nation-saving food relief of Belgium and northern France.

Hoover and his deputies, whom he called a “band of crusaders,” were comprised mostly of American university students and developed the CRB into a highly efficient, neutral international relief organization. They negotiated and maintained the consent of the belligerent governments of Britain, Germany, and France, and the neutral powers, including the United States and Holland, to permit the distribution of foodstuffs across occupied Belgium and France. The CRB secured nearly $1 billion in funding (nearly $20 billion in 2014 dollars) to purchase millions of tons of food, and it developed a global logistics system reliant on a fleet of ocean-going ships and canal boats to transport the food to Belgian and French communities.

CRB officials—known to many as “delegates”—worked closely with tens of thousands of Belgian and French counterparts to distribute the food and feed more than 9 million Belgian and French civilians. And they voluntarily (and without salary) rendered this humanitarian service during a war that constantly threatened to kill or maim them personally.

Remarkably, the CRBers (as they called themselves) pulled it off—the rescue of a nation from starvation—despite the improbability of success, the lack of precedents upon which to rely, the extraordinary and constantly changing difficulties associated with shifting war policies and strategies, and formidable constraints on finances and food supplies.

Never before had private individuals rallied to prevent the wholesale starvation of a nation and actually designed and implemented a successful program that accomplished this purpose. They halted what would have surely been a national calamity.

Although it is little known today outside scholarly circles and among Belgians—who, since 2006, have been exposed to a multi-year historical commemoration program titled “Remembering Herbert Hoover and the Commission for Relief in Belgium”—the CRB made several profound impacts on the world.

First, it demonstrated that humanitarian countermeasures could be devised to resist the tidal wave of carnage unleashed by industrial empires waging total war. Never again could someone claim that relief in wartime was an absolute impossibility—the CRB had shown otherwise.

Second, the CRB awakened expectations among suffering peoples across war-ravaged Europe that they should receive prompt and efficient assistance, just as the Belgians had received. Many Europeans identified the United States and American society as a font of genuine benevolence and unlimited humanitarian aid. When the channels of American aid were slowed or distinctly shaped by geostrategic motivations, once-grateful foreign populations expressed frustration and distrusted American intentions.

Third, Americans, who had always harbored beliefs about their special status in the world, found in the CRB’s accomplishments even more evidence to substantiate their exceptionalism. Many Americans were inspired by “saving Belgium” to embark upon even greater adventures in saving lives and remaking other societies during the war and its aftermath, although it would take a second global war to fully convince American society to embrace this perpetual mission.

Throughout the twentieth century and beyond, Americans have espoused a Wilsonian foreign policy of fighting “for the rights and liberties of small nations,” such as Belgium, and of making the world “safe for democracy” (Woodrow Wilson, The War Message of President Woodrow Wilson, Washington, D.C., 1917, page 19). These transformative visions have urged continual American involvement in the affairs of peoples across the globe.

Fourth, the CRB was the conceptual seed from which many other international humanitarian agencies have sprung. Advocacy for human rights and the routine delivery of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief is a hallmark of modern society. Expectations of efficiency and transparency among aid organizations are routine today, but they were a novelty when the CRB first publicized its ledgers as a way to demonstrate its comparative advantages to rival aid organizations. It is easy to overlook the ways in which the CRB and its humanitarian counterparts in World War I established essential precedents for the delivery of relief during crises and the underlying arguments about the ethical burdens to do so lest millions unnecessarily perish.

Fifth, despite the previous points, the CRB was a novel response to a particular problem. The improvised solutions conceived by Hoover and his companions are not universally applicable to the innumerable, complex humanitarian crises today. Still, we can glean from them many principles for effective relief administration and for inspiration in undertaking seemingly impossible tasks.

As important as the CRB was to averting the starvation of millions and to establishing precedents for ever-wider interventionist practices, the personal story of the Americans engaged in this relief work has not been widely circulated. Certainly some memoirs were published and read with interest a century ago, but their stories have mostly been forgotten, subsumed in a broader war narrative of empires waging industrial war.

Over the past decade, historians, including myself, have been unearthing parts of the CRB story using the organizational records and personal papers of CRB officials to establish its role in American society during the war and within the broader tapestry of relief organizations. But what we have been missing until now is a thorough and intimate portrait of the Americans who saved Belgium from starvation.

In Behind the Lines, Jeff Miller has written a vividly detailed account of the Americans who rescued Belgium. Miller, who is an independent scholar and writer, is directly connected to Belgian relief by his grandfather, Milton M. Brown, who labored alongside Hoover to safeguard the Belgians a century ago, and by his grandmother, Erica Bunge Brown, who experienced the German invasion of her country firsthand.

Inspired by his grandparents’ tales and entrusted with their diaries and related materials documenting their wartime adventures, Miller has for decades relentlessly pursued the CRB. His steadfast purpose has been to share its story with a wide audience. He has ransacked the archival papers of the CRBers and conducted extensive research into their lives. This volume represents the first installment in a series Miller is writing to showcase the dramatic history of the CRB within the context of German-occupied Belgium. Among its revelations are that Americans were deeply involved in World War I from the outset. Behind the Lines depicts Americans who were living and traveling in Belgium and Britain responding to the outbreak of war. Miller shows how American diplomats and businessmen working in foreign capitals perceived the cataclysm, how American journalists-turned-war-correspondents reported their firsthand experiences traveling through war zones, and how Americans studying in European universities reconsidered their studies in light of the opportunities war presented. He also shows us from diaries and related sources the responses of Belgians to the German invasion.

As Miller takes his readers Behind the Lines, he firmly establishes that Americans were deeply engaged in European affairs as part of a broader transatlantic relationship that enlarged during a period between the 1870s and 1914 called the Belle Époque, the “beautiful age,” when steam travel and undersea telegraphic networks strengthened the connections across the North Atlantic world.

By addressing the humanitarian reaction of Americans to Belgian distress, Miller recasts the familiar saga of Americans first becoming “involved” in World War I when the United States declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1917. Instead, he shows that Americans energetically participated in the war from its opening salvos in 1914.

Oriented around German-occupied Belgium and the life-sustaining food relief campaign of the CRB, Behind the Lines also illuminates the constructive problem-solving innovations to address war-induced suffering.

Hoover’s humanitarian statecraft conducted while chairman of the CRB pitted warring nations against each other and secured a tenuous lifeline for the Belgian population. Among contemporaries of his time, Hoover was commonly ranked as great a statesman, as were President Woodrow Wilson and his European counterparts. Hoover did not bear his cross alone in the crusade to save Belgium. He was joined by a remarkable and unlikely group of diplomats, businessmen, engineers, students, and hundreds of thousands of others across the world.

In Behind the Lines, Miller has re-created a world that brings to life a whole ensemble uncommonly associated with America’s participation in the “Great” War. Rather than focusing on the familiar celebrities such as President Wilson or General John J. Pershing, Miller highlights unsung heroes, including a war correspondent who became a life-giver, E. E. Hunt; a Rhodes scholar from North Dakota, David T. Nelson; an independent scion of a Belgian banker who joined a clandestine resistance movement, Erica Bunge; and a Belgian businessman, Eugene van Doren, and Catholic priest, Abbé Vincent de Moor, who teamed up to inspire a nation and infuriate the German occupiers. These individuals and many more compose a rich tapestry Miller weaves together to depict the triumphs and tragedies of World War I.

Just as if it were taken from today’s headlines, Behind the Lines features invading armies, ransacked villages, desperate refugees, warlord generals, and stalwart aid workers clinging to the hope that their actions will make the difference between life and death for victimized peoples.

Miller’s spellbinding story should help its readers, especially its American audience who views the war through lenses occluded by the even more catastrophic Second World War, to understand the reasons why Americans of an earlier age rallied to the defense of humanity against aggression. Partly by design and partly by chance, Americans embraced the cause of Belgian relief and came to view it as a symbol with profound importance. Americans eventually recognized their relief as but a prelude to a greater role in the liberation and restoration of an independent, free Belgium. This familiar “liberators, not conquerors” refrain in American history has a powerful example in this catalytic war.

Behind the Lines is a book that not only enriches our understanding of World War I but also provides insights into an arena of enduring global concern: human rights and humanitarian intervention.

For at least twenty-five years, politicians, pundits, and scholars have regularly debated the political propriety, ethics, and logistics of humanitarian relief. Many critics allege aid workers do more harm than good and stress the defensibility of inaction amid complex emergencies while many advocates seek to mobilize global responses to avert even larger disasters. Both critics and proponents of what is frequently called “the responsibility to protect” doctrine of humanitarian intervention have overlooked the foundational humanitarian precedents of World War I.

This pivotal era that Jeff Miller lavishly describes established the institutional and popular foundations for international humanitarian aid. Virtually all the problems and promises of foreign aid today were revealed a century ago. The very ideas of rescuing foreign populations endangered by famine, war, and other forms of distress are not new, even though so many current-day policymakers and commentators overlook their antecedents. They would be wiser for reading this book.

The concept of this book lies in the early 1980s when I received an inheritance of the CRB-related letters, journals, and photos of my grandfather, Milton M. Brown, and the edited diary and photos of my grandmother, Erica Bunge Brown. (Bunge is pronounced “Boong-ah.”) As a young man I had been interested in the stories my grandfather had told about his time in German-occupied Belgium as one of Herbert Hoover’s CRB delegates. His stories seemed always to be about Hoover or the other American delegates; rarely did he speak of the Belgians of that time or how he had met my grandmother. My grandmother rarely spoke of that time, although I’m not sure of that because I was a teenager then and had the attention span of a gnat. In the end, most of the stories I remember came not from my grandparents but from my mother, Erica Sophie Lucy Brown Miller, who had heard many of them from her parents.

Before receiving my grandparents’ material, I had graduated from the University of Denver with a BA degree in history. I wanted to be a writer, magazine editor, and book author. My passion was historical novels, so, of course, I decided to write a historical novel about my grandparents and the CRB. But I didn’t want the book to be just about my family’s participation. Besides learning about Herbert Hoover and the CRB, I researched in depth three other delegates (Joe Green, Maurice Pate, and Fred Eckstein) and two U.S. diplomats (Brand Whitlock and Hugh Gibson). I also read a wealth of books written by other delegates about their service in the CRB.

After two full-time years of researching and writing, I produced an 850-page historical novel, Honor Bound. During the writing process, my mother had been my Belgian historical consultant, my brother Eric had been my concept editor, and my cousin Evie Newell had been my copy editor. When it came time to sell the book, I had a few nibbles from a handful of agents and publishers who wanted to read the entire book, but no contract was offered.

As the years passed I did become a writer, a magazine editor, and a book author and in the process had to face the fact that my writing strength was in nonfiction, not fiction. I put away Honor Bound and thought I would someday convert it to creative nonfiction.

In February 2009 I was diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer and began a year I’d prefer to forget. Once I was declared cancer free (thank you, doctors and nurses), it took me a few years to totally reengage with life. I felt like a mountain goat on the shifting sands of a beach, with no solid rock to regain my footing.

Then in December 2012, while exercising in my basement on a NordicTrack machine, I suddenly “saw” myself working on, and completing, a history of the CRB. I ran upstairs and told my wife in the melodramatic way I have, “I’m back!”

Because I had previously written two books that were published by traditional book publishers, I knew that if I wanted to find a traditional publisher interested in taking on my book and printing it in 2014 (the 100-year anniversary of the start of World War I and the CRB), I would have had to have completed the manuscript in 2012. So, the same day I committed to the project, I committed to self-publishing the book in 2014.

I quickly discovered that it was a brave new world out there since my last book was published in 2002. And the research world had changed dramatically since the advent of the Internet. Nevertheless, I still spent a week of research at each of three institutions: the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum Archives in West Branch, Iowa; the Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford University, California; and Princeton University’s Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library in Princeton, New Jersey. I ended up collecting copies of letters, documents, and journals from approximately 30 of the more than 185 CRB delegates who had served. I also reacquainted myself with the two years of research I had done in the 1980s, and I read numerous books about Belgium and World War I, collecting more than 120 volumes on the topic.

My initial 2012 concept was to write one book solely on the CRB delegates. A handful of excellent books have been published about the major international players and the tremendous diplomatic negotiations that were necessary to establish and operate the largest food and relief drive the world had ever seen. To me, though, those books tell the story at the 30,000-foot level. Granted, it’s an important story to tell, but I wanted to tell the story of the boots-on-the-ground CRB delegates who had done the work inside German-occupied Belgium.

As I dug deeper into the material, however, I realized I did not want to write a book simply on the CRB delegates. To fully understand and appreciate the young Americans’ stories, readers had to also have a working knowledge of the war and of Belgium behind “the ring of steel,” as Hoover termed it.

Suddenly the project morphed into a gigantic book, and I was faced with a critical decision: Write one large book that would miss the 100-year anniversary of the CRB’s founding (October 1914) and not include many of the small details that I feel make a book come alive, or write three books that include much of what has never been published before, with the first book in the series being published in 2014. Obviously, I chose the latter.

What I do know is that this is a great story of one of America’s finest humanitarian achievements, and it deserves to be told. For a long time these men and women have been lying quietly—silent through the years because no one has asked them to speak. In this book I hope you feel that they are now standing proudly and telling their stories.

No book is a one-person project. I’ve been fortunate to have a team of professionals who have agreed to help me make this book the best possible. The process of team building started for me in the research stage. I am grateful for the warm, welcoming, and helpful assistance of Matthew T. Schaefer, archivist at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum Archives, West Branch, Iowa; to Carol A. Leadenham, assistant archivist for reference, and David Jacobs, archival specialist, at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford University, California; and to Emma Harrold at Oxford University Archives, United Kingdom. I was also assisted in research in Iowa by professional researcher Wesley Beck.

During this stage I was fortunate to have had a chance meeting at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum Archives with Dr. Branden Little, a history professor who teaches at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. He has been studying the CRB and many other humanitarian relief efforts for more than a decade. In the highly competitive world of academic research and writing, Little is unusual in his friendly openness and his willingness to share his knowledge of historical sources and give of his time. I’m proud to say that he has become a friend who has aided me in countless ways, big and small. He read the manuscript for any major historical inaccuracies, and he wrote the foreword.

I must also thank the ever-gracious George Nash, a scholar and biographer of Herbert Hoover. An extremely accessible and friendly man, he has been constantly supportive since I first began working on this project. He was kind enough to read the first section of the book and gave me wise counsel regarding it and numerous proposed front covers.

During the research stage, I was also fortunate enough to come in contact with a handful of descendants of CRB delegates. They were tremendously helpful and willing to share any information they had about their relatives. They included Dr. Erskine Carmichael, nephew of Oliver C. Carmichael; John P. Nelson, son of delegate David T. Nelson; Sherman and Prentiss Gray, son and grandson, respectively, of delegate Prentiss Gray; and Margaret Hunt, granddaughter of delegate E. E. Hunt.

Outside of the CRB “family,” I was also helped in numerous ways by Marc Brans, a Belgian amateur historian who lives outside of Antwerp, and by a New Jersey high school student, Hanl Park, who created a masterful video on the CRB for National History Day. (The video earned him a trip to the national round and can be seen at www.WWIBehindTheLines.com.)

In the writing, editing, and proofing stages, I am thankful to some general readers—my siblings Carolyn, Buck, and Leslie, my cousin Evie Newell, and Larry Yoder—who gave good advice and suggestions. I gained valuable insights from an editorial evaluation that was completed by professional book editor Mark Chimsky. I am indebted to professional editor Tom Locke, who ably handled the heavy lifting of editing and standardizing the text and having it conform to The Chicago Manual of Style. I’m thankful for the sharp eye of proofreader Laura Furney and for the highly specialized talents of freelance book indexer Linda Gregonis. The book cover concept and design were beautifully developed by professional graphic designer—and friend—Laurie Shields of Laurie Shields Design. The back cover and interior pages were created by the talented team of Dan and Jim Pratt of Pratt Brothers Composition. And the book’s website, www.WWIBehindTheLines.com, was created by the business-savvy team led by Mike Bren and Seth Daire of Crown Point Solutions.

Finally, while the book’s dedication says it all, I must end where it all began, with thanks to my grandparents and to my wife, Susan Burdick. The story came to me because of my grandparents; my being a writer came in large part because of Susan’s unreserved love and support. I owe her all that I am—and more.

One of my professional goals has always been to write a history book that would be read by people who say they “never read history books.” Through the years I’ve been inspired by the best history storytellers—writers such as Barbara W. Tuchman, David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Laura Hillenbrand. It remains to be seen whether or not I have come close to my goal.

To me it is to capture a moment in time so that it comes alive and can be seen, felt, and otherwise experienced by those who read it. If, at the end of my book, readers feel they have met and become familiar with the main characters as living, breathing people, then I’ve done my job.

I can’t speak for the reader, but for me, after years of research, these main characters are very much alive. I want to help young Erica Bunge survive the bombardment of Antwerp and fight the Germans. I want to be beside first-year Rhodes scholar David Nelson as he walks alone toward the Belgian border not knowing what to expect. I want to hear Hugh Gibson’s sad, dry wit as he struggles to comprehend the scene before him of Germans who are still burning and looting Louvain. I want to politely scold Émile Francqui for putting unnecessary roadblocks in the way of the CRB. I want to ask Herbert Hoover if the manipulation of others is always acceptable if it’s for the greater good. And I want to have a beer and intense conversation with war-correspondent-turned-compassionate-relief-worker E. E. Hunt about what he learned while fleeing with refugees from Belgium into Holland.

But does my vision of these people, places, and events match up with what other history scholars have written? Is my book “accurate”?

I think of history in fluid terms. I feel that capturing one moment in time is like capturing one moment in the bend of a river. What does the bend really look like? It all depends on your perspective. The pebble on the submerged riverbed sees it differently than the reeds on the right bank, the trees on the left, the bird gliding overhead, the fish battling upstream, and the bit of flotsam floating by.

I have collected, cataloged, read, and assimilated the documents, letters, journals, and photos of close to fifty different people. I’ve studied and read about War World I and Belgium.

This book contains my vision of who those people were and what they did. It is my vision. It is my perspective of the bend in the river.

More than thirty years ago I read a blurb in the front of a book. Today, the author’s name and book title are long gone from my mind, but the words he wrote in that blurb have stuck with me: “I write; let the reader beware.”

I might not have written what some academics would consider a scholarly history book. My formal training is in journalism and magazine writing, not scholarship and academic writing. I have possibly bent—or even broken—a few academic rules of history writing. If I have done so, my only defense is that I did so in an attempt to make the reading experience smooth and enjoyable for general readers.

An example is attribution within the text. If an item is historically common knowledge and/or in multiple sources, I did not attribute it in the text because it would have slowed down reading and been needlessly disruptive. However, the item is sometimes quoted to show I did not phrase it in that particular way or that I did not make it up. And it will be properly attributed in the notes at the end of the book—the source is confirmed, just not in the text.

Some readers might take exception to the way certain words are spelled in the book. In most cases, the words are spelled as they appeared in primary source materials. It is true that spelling has changed in a hundred years, and it’s true that some names of towns, cities, and even buildings have changed. I felt, however, it was best to stay true to the time period and its original documents. An example is the famous Belgian city named Louvain/Leuven. I know that today it is known by the Flemish name of Leuven, but in the vast majority of 1914 materials I reviewed the city was referred to by the French name of Louvain. I, therefore, chose to retain Louvain throughout the book (with first reference indicating the Flemish spelling of Leuven).

I also know that when it comes to the book’s scope and coverage, I have barely touched upon the varied Belgian, English, French, and German activities during the war. Simply put, I did not have the time, the space, or the expertise to do so. It helps to know that for the past 100 years there have been numerous great books that have covered each nationality’s activities far better than I could ever do.

With those caveats in mind, I hope the reader enjoys reading Behind the Lines, my loving tribute to the men and women of Belgium and the CRB during World War I.

Reader Aids

Primary People in the Book

THE AMERICANS

Oliver C. Carmichael—Twenty-three-year-old Rhodes scholar Carmichael was from Alabama and had scheduled a trip to Scotland during Oxford’s six-week Christmas break before he heard of Hoover’s need for neutral observers to go into German-occupied Belgium. If his account is correct, he and a fellow CRB delegate helped to smuggle from Belgium into Holland Cardinal Mercier’s famous pastoral letter, which inflamed world opinion against the Germans and inspired the Belgians to resist their occupiers.

Perrin C. Galpin—He was a second-year man at Oxford when Hoover contacted him directly to see if he could round up volunteers to become CRB delegates. Galpin organized meetings, corresponded with Hoover and his executive committee, and chose the first twenty-five men from Oxford who went into Belgium. He personally went into Belgium with the second wave of recruits.

Hugh Gibson—The secretary to the U.S. Legation in Belgium, Gibson was thirty-one and nearing the middle of his career as a diplomat when the war broke out. He earned admiration and respect for his hard work, dedication to helping the Belgians, and fearless traveling through the country as the war was still in its pre-trenches stage. He would be loved for his unfailing sense of humor and dry, sarcastic wit.

Herbert Clark Hoover—A highly successful forty-year-old U.S. mining engineer, Hoover was living in London before the war and searching for a way to get into public service or politics. When war erupted he jumped right in to organize assistance for stranded American tourists trying to get back home. When Belgian representatives from various cities and provinces came to England looking for a way to avert seemingly inevitable starvation within their country, he took over and started the Commission for Relief in Belgium, which became the largest food and relief drive the world had ever known.

Edward Eyre Hunt (E. E. Hunt)—A sensitive and artistic magazine journalist in America, Hunt became a war correspondent so he could see the war up close and personal. When he did get a clear vision of what was happening—especially in Belgium—he became an important chief delegate in Hoover’s CRB, helping to create and develop the processes of relief within the city and province of Antwerp, which encompassed 1 million people in 1914.

David T. Nelson—In late November 1914 Nelson was a first-year Rhodes scholar ready to embark on six weeks’ vacation from Oxford. When the twenty-three-year-old from North Dakota heard that Hoover was looking for volunteers to go into German-occupied Belgium as neutral observers to ensure the food would not be taken by the Germans, he signed up. Of all the CRB delegates, he was the only one who had to walk solo into Belgium with only the clothes on his back and what was in his pockets.

Brand Whitlock—When Whitlock was appointed minister of the U.S. Legation in Belgium in early 1914, he was looking forward to working on his novels at the traditionally noneventful post. He would be thoroughly tested by the war and the potential starvation of 9 million people in Belgium and northern France. In the end, he would become a figure who was both respected and ridiculed, beloved and belittled.

THE BELGIANS

Edouard Bunge—A wealthy Antwerp merchant, Bunge was vice president of the provincial relief committee for Antwerp Province, owner of Chateau Oude Gracht on the Hoogboom estate, and widowed father of five daughters—three of whom, Erica, Eva, and Hilda, were living with him when the war broke out.

Erica Bunge—A twenty-two-year-old woman from a wealthy Belgian family, Erica Bunge was unusual because she had graduated from agricultural college in England and helped run the farm on the family’s Hoogboom estate. During the German occupation of Belgium, she would help in a soldiers’ hospital, volunteer at a soup kitchen, and work late at night in the underground against the Germans.

Abbé Vincent de Moor—A man of the Catholic cloth, de Moor was not only a priest but a clandestine operative for British intelligence. He became partners with Eugene van Doren on an underground newspaper that would inspire a nation but lead to the imprisonment of many and the execution of a few, including a young Belgian woman named Gabrielle Petit.

Émile Francqui—One of the most powerful and ruthless financial men in Belgium before the war, Francqui would lead the Comité National, the Belgian counterpart to the CRB that handled the actual distribution of the CRB food throughout the country. He and Hoover had met before and disliked each other immensely. With his passion for his country and his dominating personality, Francqui would create numerous problems for Hoover and the CRB.

Eugene van Doren—A Belgian cardboard manufacturer, van Doren so hated the Germans that he took up clandestine work for de Moor before helping to develop the idea for an underground newspaper, La Libre Belgique. His work and the newspaper would inspire the nation and would lead to a German reward of 50,000 francs for the capture of the newspaper’s publisher, whose identity was unknown to the Germans.

BEHIND

THE LINES

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Attributed to Edmund Burke, but specific phraseology is disputed

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

ATTRIBUTED TO EDMUND BURKE, BUT SPECIFIC PHRASEOLOGY IS DISPUTED

ONE

A Story Few Have Heard

“There Once Was a Nice Little Town in That Place”

On a cold evening in late November 1914, a German officer was drinking with a boisterous group of fellow officers in the luxurious Hotel Astoria. Situated in Brussels, Belgium, on Rue Royale near the city’s major park, the hotel was in the fashionable upper part of town and had been commandeered by the German occupation forces for their officers, staffs, and privileged guests.

Nearly four months before, on Tuesday, August 4, the German Army had started World War I by invading neutral Belgium on its way to its real objective, France. The German officer had been a part of that invading force. A “fine-looking man” with “agreeable manners,” he was in his mid-thirties and had lived in England for years before returning to Germany to become a cavalry officer in the kaiser’s army.

Even though it was late—past midnight—and all the other Germans had stumbled off to bed, this cavalry officer stayed at the table and spoke in perfect English to two Americans, war correspondent E. E. Hunt and neutral observer Lieutenant Victor Daniel Herbster of the U.S. Navy, both of whom were visiting the German-occupied city.

Referring to the August days of the invasion, the German calmly stated that the Belgians “do not understand war, and they do not understand the rules of war. I remember once riding into a little town down here in the South of Belgium and finding my four scouts lying dead in the streets. Civilians had butchered horses and men—shot them from behind.

“I ordered my men to go into the houses and kill every one they found. Then I ordered them to burn the town.”

The man sat back a moment, raised his glass, then took a drink.

“There once was a nice little town in that place. There is no such town now.”

Hunt would never forget the German’s calm, brutal words, and they would follow him when less than a month later, in December, he joined a small group of Americans who would try to save more than 9 million Belgian and French civilians from starving to death.

The interlacing stories of German brutality, Belgian resistance, the struggles against starvation, and the American men Hunt joined in the burgeoning Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), all began back in those chaotic days of August 1914, when the Germans attacked the little country. Few could have guessed it then, but the invasion acted like a toppling domino that would cause a tumbling together of extraordinary people into a chain reaction of life-and-death situations far from the trenches and killing fields of World War I.

And hanging in the balance were millions of civilian lives.

It is a story that few have heard.

AUGUST 1914

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INVASION

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The paths that the five German field armies took through Belgium and France in August and where the British Expeditionary Force and the French unsuccessfully tried to stop them (broken white lines and arrows). (The American Heritage History of World War I, Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall, American Heritage Publishing Co./Bonanza Books, 1982.)

TWO

Setting the Stage

Practically Inevitable

“To understand Germany, you must think in centuries.”

While the German who said that believed he was speaking philosophically about his country alone, he was aptly describing the soul of every European power at the turn of the twentieth century. Major conflicts from the past—such as the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), and the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871)—were still very much alive in the hearts, minds, and attitudes of many Europeans. As a result, each country’s collective memory was as much comforting as it was confining and controlling.

So what happened next was practically inevitable.

By the summer of 1914, decades of European political posturing, diplomatic wrangling, treaty negotiations, and international skirmishes—inflamed by the June 28 assassination of Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie—led inescapably to Tuesday morning, August 4, when five German armies, numbering 1 million men, amassed along Germany’s western border.

This was the largest invasion force ever assembled, and it was to follow Germany’s revised Schlieffen Plan of attack, which called for the five armies to sweep in a wide westward arc through Belgium into France, overwhelming the French Army and capturing Paris to achieve a quick victory. Ensuring France’s rapid defeat was essential, the German General Staff believed, so it could then shift troops to its eastern front and help its Austro-Hungarian allies defeat Russia before the tsar’s armies could fully mobilize. It was critical to Germany’s war plans that the sweep through Belgium be lightning fast, or the Germans would be caught in a prolonged and probably unwinnable two-front war.

Dedication

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note