Dear Readers,
As November Veterans Day approaches I am reminded that on November 11, 1918, the Armistice agreement was signed and fighting on all battlegrounds ceased at 11 a.m. as the guns of World War I fell silent after 4 long years. The “war to end all wars” was finally over and a year later, in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 as Armistice Day to remind Americans of the tragedies of war.
In 1938, the day by law became a Federal holiday and in 1954, Congress changed the name to “Veterans Day” to honor all United States Veterans, because WWI, “the war to end all wars” didn’t and World War II and others followed.
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An “Abbondanza” of good wishes and “Buona Salute fino a Cent’Anni” to all you Veterans of World War II or the wars that followed. There was a time when our military power brokers steadfastly insisted on “nothing but the best for our boys”, unfortunately many new veterans, covered by better body armor return home battered or suffering from post traumatic stress to find that, due to funding cutbacks, they have long waits as their paperwork is processed.
President Kennedy, quoted this unsigned indictment by an unknown soldier, etched on the wall of a sentry box during the Cold War back in 1962 and assured all that this country does not forget. I hope so.
God and the soldier, all men adore
In time of danger and not before.
When the danger is passed and all things righted,
God is forgotten, and the soldier slighted.
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America’s attitude of “nothing but the best” for our boys prevailed during World War II and as a result one of America’s finest resort estates, Greenbrier, nestled in 6,500 acres of Allegheny Mountain Woodlands was purchased by the Army from the owners, Chesapeake Ohio Railway Company and converted into Ashford Military Hospital at Sulpher Springs, West Virginia, to treat our war casualties, the first from North Africa and later the Pacific.
As casualties return from our military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, I thought I would share a few Italian connections from “Shangri-La for Wounded Soldiers” by Louis E. Keefer, first published in 1992.
Greenbrier has a celebrated past of over two centuries that reads like the history of our nation. Generals, presidents, commoners and kings have nestled into this notch of 6,500 acres of West Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains to experience the hospitality and the unique experience that is America’s Greenbriers Resort.
The Greenbrier served as a military headquarters and hospital for the Confederacy during the Civil War, it became Robert E. Lee’s summer home follow- ing the war and in the 1970’s and 1980’s housed a secret under- ground bunker that was reserved for the U.S. Congress in case of a Cold War attack.
Dating back to the eve of the Civil War, Greenbrier’s reputation as the most fashionable social resort in the southern states was well established. This led to the 1858 addition of the first large hotel on the property, officially named the Grand Central Hotel, but known to patrons as the Old White Hotel. The hotel boasted three stories of porches to catch summer breezes and ample space to promenade the latest in fashionable attire. In 1910, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway purchased the historic resort property and embarked upon a major expansion.
By 1913, additions included the Greenbrier Hotel (the central portion of today’s hotel), a new mineral bath house and an 18-hole gold course designed by the most prominent gold architect of the day, Charles Blair MacDonald. In 1914, for the first time the resort was opened year round and President and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson came to spend their Easter holiday at The Greenbrier, and Joseph and Rose Kennedy traveled from Boston for their October honeymoon.
Through the years guests came to Greenbrier Resort to be pleased, pampered and well fed but in Europe several countries were at war and by 1940 German troops had taken Paris. German Luftwaffe pilots were conducting nightly bomb- ing raids over London, Italy siding with Germany declared war on Britain and France, and British troops were launching attacks in the West Desert of North Africa on the Italians.
On December 7, 1941 the Japanese bombed the American base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
War was declared and a week later at Greenbrier, the hotel’s general manager received an urgent telephone call from the U.S. State Department that would shatter tranquillity at Greenbrier for more than six years...
The manager was asked if the hotel would be willing to accommodate interned diplomats and citizens from the Washington embassies of hostile countries.
The manager said it would, and within forty-eight hours, the Greenbrier no longer would accept regular guests.
By special trains, over eight hundred diplomatic guests arrived in White Sulpher Springs, for a stay at the Greenbrier Resort. Most were German, but the total included 170 Italians, 53 Hungarians, and 11 Bulgarians. In addition to the diplomats, their families and servants, the internees included bankers, businessmen, journalists, military attaches, and engi- neers.
American and enemy diplomats soon began to be exchanged, and The Greenbrier’s unique guests gradually departed. Over a seven-month period, the hotel had hosted 1,697 people from five different nations. Though some had been arrogant and demanding, most had behaved responsibly, respecting the hotel’s property and its staff.
The Greenbrier reopened to the public in mid-July, but its 1942 “season” lasted only six weeks. As the enemy diplomats departed, both the Army and the Navy discussed with hotel management The Greenbrier’s 650 rooms and their further use, for wartime purposes.
The Chesapeake Ohio Railway Company and the Army failed to agree on a rental arrangement, so the government condemned and bought the property under the War Powers Act. The C&O received $3.3 million for the hotel and 7,000 acres of West Virginia countryside, a package then thought to be worth at least $5.4 million.
Several other resorts were acquired because the Army believed new hospitals could not be built quickly enough to accommodate future casualties. Among other resorts the Army purchased were the Don Cesar, St. Petersburg, Florida, the Miami Biltmore, Coral Gables, Florida, the Eastman, Hot Springs, Arkansas and the El Mirador, Palm Springs, California.
Once plans for the creation of an Army Hospital were announced the Army rehired many former Greenbrier employees. The demanding task of converting a 650-room hotel to a 2,000-bed hospital was accomplished surprisingly quickly.
The first step was to dispose of equipment and furnishings the Army didn’t want or need. More than a million was spent on various physical changes.
These included creation on the fifth and sixth floors of a 600- bed surgical unit, with necessary temperature and humidity controls and special lighting.
A dispensary, laboratory, dental clinic, post office, commissary, and post exchange (PX) replaced the shops in the lower lobby; the mineral baths area was designated as a center for hydrotherapy; the North Parlor was made into a chapel; the famous ballroom took on a new life as a recreation center filled with Ping-Pong tables.
One of the biggest projects was the construction, at the edge of the hotel’s airport, of Camp Ashford, a 165-acre stockade for enemy prisoners of war (POWs). Work on the fifty-two building complex was begun during November 1942 and completed in May 1943. The prisoners were to maintain the hospital grounds and perform the kinds of tasks that would free Army personnel for more important assignments. The first POWs to arrive were Italians captured in Tunisia.
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Greenbrier, as a World War II Army Hospital, became the Ashford General Hospital, and was named in honor of Colonel Bailey K. Ashford (1873-1934), a graduate of Georgetown Medical School who as the Chief Surgeon for the sixth Army Medical Corps in WWI and a member of General Pershing’s staff achieved fame for his discovery of the intestinal hook- worm that caused a vicious type of anemia and at one time ravaged the people of Puerto Rico.
A Colonel Beck was the Chief Executive Officer at the Ashford Army Hospital and all the Army doctors, dentists, and nurses that served at Ashford during the course of the war were highly qualified and experienced in their specialties. The early years saw more patients needing surgery, while in later years more of them required treatment for skin and intestinal problems.
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It was in November 1942 that Ashford Army Hospital began its official functions when the first trainload of wounded men arrived after processing in New Jersey. Many had come from Guadalcanal, the Aleutian Island, or North Africa. Since the Army’s usual practice was to send men to hospitals near their homes, many of the patients were from Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and other nearby states. In the years that followed, more than 24,000 patients were treated at Ashford, the hospital that journalists soon began calling “a Shangri-La for sick and wounded soldiers”.
Doing their part for the war effort many celebrities like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Ester Williams, Walter Pidgeon and others often came to visit our wounded at Ashford.
General Eisenhower and his wife Mamie often came to visit too. While there, Ike liked to spend a little time fishing, but he said he didn’t do so well, as all the big trout had been spoiled by GI’s throwing popcorn to them, and they weren’t hungry enough to rise to hand tied flies anymore.
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During the war, Corporal Giacomantonio, a gifted sculptor was assigned to Ashford to help plastic surgeons in recon- structive surgery. There he met General Eisenhower who agreed to pose for the popular sculptor. This was the first sculpture he had ever posed for and Corporal Giacomantonio spent seven days working on the clay model that in bronze is now dis- played in the U.S. Military Museum at West Point.
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Japan surrendered in 1945 and by mid 1946 the last prisoners of war left Camp Ashford, just as the hospital was closing. The P.O.W.’s had not only performed their assigned duties well but had contributed to the hospital’s mission in other ways: they farmed their own vegetable garden, and sometimes shared some surplus with the hospital; fought forest fires; and made contributions to Red Cross drives.
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In late July, the U.S. Senate, under mounting pressure from many previous owners of commercial property acquired by the armed services, passed an act to permit their repurchase of such properties. President Harry S. Truman signed the act on August 7, 1946.The following week White Sulpher Springs waived its acquisition rights, so long as the town obtained the airport, and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway agreed to repurchase the hotel paying just under the 1942 selling price of $3.3 million, a difference mainly due to the transfer of the airport to the town of White Sulpher Springs.
Soon after the railroad’s purchase of the abandoned resort, the noted New york interior decorator, Dorothy Draper, was hired to redecorate the C&O’s executive offices and suites in Cleveland’s Terminal Tower. Pleased with the results she was then asked to begin refurbishing The Greenbrier.
In what was then the largest redecorating program in the history of the American hotel industry, the refurbishing took over a year to complete, and cost more than $12.4 million to complete.
Today, after its patriotic contribution as the Army’s most beautiful World War II hospital, The Greenbrier is more magnificent than ever and if your budget permits for more information call (304) 536-1110 or write The Greenbrier, 300 West Main Street, White Sulpher Springs, West Virginia, 24986.
Or take a virtual tour at www.greenbrier.com
