From Bohemia to the battlefields and back again, our dainty heroine describes her adventures

My brother Larry Mannion has been researching our family history and spending a lot of time reading microfilm as a matter of course, mostly looking up wedding and birth announcements and obituaries.  We Mannions descend from quiet and law-abiding folk on both sides who spent their lives avoiding the notice of newspapers.

But Larry’s turned up a few articles that resulted from one ancestor or another of Mom or Pop Mannion’s drawing the attention of reporters, and when my forebears made news, they made news.

Pop Mannion’s great-grandfather made it by being crushed to death when a wall of the pit where he was working as a sandhog caved in on top of him and six other men and a horse.

Mom Mannion’s grandfather made the papers many times by being late 19th Century Albany’s equivalent of T.J. Hooker.

He was a cop who made a career of daring rescues and chasing down and capturing violent criminals single-handed.  I’ve been meaning to write about him, but I’m not doing it now.  I’m writing about another relative who made news for less dramatic but maybe even more heroic deeds.

Technically, Marion Pullar isn’t a relative.  She’s the aunt of the man who married Mom Mannion’s aunt.

Marion was an aspiring actress who had only recently risen out of the chorus when the United States entered World War I.  For reasons the reporter for the article Larry found seems to assume readers will understand without having to have them explained, Marion decided she wanted to enter the war too.  She made her way over to France where she drove an ambulance and worked as a nurse in a field hospital.

The story, which ran in the New York Evening Telegram, is almost comic in it’s old-fashionedness, with its  mix of 19th Century genteelisms, tried and true journalistic cliches, the obviously doctored quotes---although I’m sure as an actress Marion was adept at speaking in character offstage as well as on---and the mustache-twirling salaciousness.  The reporter was a woman but she obviously knew what her job required when the subject was a pretty young woman.  Note the return of the “scant” nightie and young bare arms at the end of the story.  Given the conventions of the times, that’s pretty close to describing her as naked, folks.  Implied nudity in a story about a war hero.   I’d like to say times have changed over the last hundred years, but imagine the photos that would accompany a story in Vanity Fair or Esquire about a starlet who’d come home from Iraq or Afghanistan and was giving an interview in her scant nightie in her hotel room.

Also, I don’t believe that anybody who actually met the Boche on the battlefield called them the Boche, not even the French.

The story ran on July 23, 1919.  I’m not sure that means it was written on July 22 or that the reporter had interviewed Marion recently.  But assuming that an editor hadn’t been holding the story for months, for some reason, then Marion, who’d only been back in the States for a day when she gave the interview, stayed in France for eight months after the war ended, presumably continuing her duties as a nurse.

That’s a heroine.

One thing I want to know, though.

Who took care of “Mugsie” while she was over there?

At any rate, here’s the story, transcribed from the scan Larry sent me.

Miss Pullar, Who Stepped Out of the Land of Make Believe to Win 3 Medals in France, Glad to Prove What Chorus Girls Can Do.

Dainty Hospital Worker Finds Transition Back to Stage Harder Than Leaving It.

Heroine Praises Bravery of “Our Boys.”

From Bohemia to the battlefields.

From midnight chafing dish suppers to the bedside of the dying.

From the footlights of Broadway to an ambulance in
France.

Like the goddess of sleep, raising herself from her billows of bedclothes in a silken nightie as rosy as the dawn, Miss Marion Pullar, formerly of the world of make-believe told of her sojourn in the world of grim reality.

It was the morning after.

That is to say, Miss Pullar bad just awakened from her first night's sleep after her return from Europe as a war worker, where she won all sorts of medals for sacrifice and bravery.

Many years ago—not so very many at that, as she is only twenty-six—Miss Pullar left her home town to come to New York.

About the same time her dearest friends. Miss Nell Arnold and Miss Margaret Hasbrook, hit the trail for the city of careers.

The result was a happy-go-lucky little nook at No. 135 West Sixteenth street.

The Three Musketeers

They call themselves "The Three Musketeers," because in the following years they have gone through shot and shell in the way of tests of friendship.

Three care-free girls with nothing to do but carve out their careers and enjoy life according to their conception of happiness.

Miss Pullar rose from a chorus girl to a role with Mrs. Fiske.

Miss Arnold chose to tread the thorny path of literature.

Miss Hasbrook chose the business world.

And then the urge that sent some fair women to rolling bandages and others to the bloody fields of France.

Miss Pullar didn't want to roll bandages, nor did she want to do her part, like so many of her profession, as an entertainer.

"I had no money." she laughed, sitting up In bed and shaking a heavy strand of dark hair from her eyes, “but I made up my mind I’d get over if I had to stand on Fifth Avenue a cup and collect my fare in pennies.”

Mrs. Hammond Planned Trip

"But Mrs. John Henry Hammond, of No. 9 East Ninety-first street, one of the patronesses of the Three Arts Club, told
me to keep my cup because she would finance my trip."

The transition from the sparkling "artistic" atmosphere of No. 133 West Sixteenth street to an atmosphere thick with
smoke and poisonous gas.

There she drove an ambulance under fire and nursed in first aid hospitals, for which she received the Croix de Guerre,
the Medatlle Reconnaissance and the Medaille des Epidemic, the latter for exposure to contagious diseases.

Perhaps the word of Gertrude Atherton, famous novelist, who was the American representative of the Bien Etre des Blesse (well being of the soldiers)—the society under whose auspices Miss Pullar sailed—will give you an idea of how the artistic temperament behaves under pressure.

Said Mrs. Atherton, in an article appearing in the June  number of the Delineator:—

"One word in regard to Miss Pullar, whose accomplishment seems to me of peculiar interest to All American girls.”

Doubtful About Sending Her

"She was a young actress who brought me a warm letter from Mrs. Fieck.  As she was very small and dainty, extremely pretty and looked far less than the twenty six years she claimed. I hesitated about sending her over, for the rules of the State Department as regarded young and pretty girls grew more exacting every day.

"It seemed to me that no one I had Interviewed looked less like a worker of any sort until I examined the face under the drooping, coquettish hat In detail and realized its character. Moreover, her earnestness and determination won me, and I sent her over.

“The very day she arrived at her quiet kitchen in the war zone, where she first served, the Germans began to shell the town.

She ran out of the hospital and, as the Germans were entering at the opposite end of the little town, helped load the wounded men Into ambulances with the shells bursting about her and did not leave until she was forcibly lifted up and thrown into one of the departing ambulances.
"Madame d'Andigne says that her escape from Injury was miraculous."

That’s Nothing," She Says.

But that is nothing at all.   Miss Pullar assured me, as she ecstatically hugged “Mugsie," her Boston bull (also temperamental), to her breast.

“I broke down only once," she said.  “The time when we first nursed our own boys.

"They seemed such babies. I prayed and prayed they would be taken to some other camp-and yet I wanted them to
tome to ours-as I knew we could take better care of them.

"Two bovs were very badly wounded and we knew if they were not operated on Immediately we would lose them.

"We grabbed two stretchers and rushed our babies to the operating room.

"Amputations for both, but we saved half a leg and half an arm.

Boys Never Murmured

"Brave?

"You should see our boys-they never murmured.

I just put two nice pair of pajamas on them and made them as comfortable as I could.

“One of the two I was very, very, fond of.  He was so sweet and patient.  I combed his hair, manicured his nails, gave him a clean hanky and some money, helped to arrange him on a stretcher, directed the placing of it in an ambulance, and kissed him.

“For the first time since he arrived he cried and clung to me.

"We— both cried."

Well, blame it on the artistic temperament, if you like.

Also blame on the artistic temperament the manner In which she treated the Boche wounded.

"One of the Boches wanted something." she said, telling me about all her "boys."

"He got it immediately—also a pat onthe hand, a kind word.

Mercy Surprises German.

"With tears in his eyes he said:—

" 'Sister. I am German.'

"I said. T know that.*

"He then asked me, 'Why are you so kind to me?'

"I told him because he was wounded and some one's baby and to close his eyes and go to.sleep.

"And then he began to cry and said that he had never wanted to fight."

Miss Pullar is full of such tender, womanly reminiscences, but of her bravery she has nothing to say.

Nevertheless, she Is proud of one thing—that the girls of her profession, the pretty, dainty, well dressed creatures of the spotlight, have had a chance to prove the stuff they are made of.

"Yes," I agreed, "the war has surely lifted up the chorus girl in the public esteem.”

“The chorus girl needed no lifting,” she replied warmly.

“Some of the truest, bravest, finest, straightest girls I have known are in the chorus.

"Stage Equips Women."

"From the short time I spent there myself I learned that much—and I know that whether It's for marriage and making
some man happy, or facing danger In France, the stage is the best equipment, for it gives one endurance and sympathy and vision."

From Bohemia to the battlefields.

From the battlefields back to Bohemia.

Back to the stage.

Back to the bright lights.

Back to the old. happy, free life.

And yet the transition is not this time so easy.

Miss Pullar reached out to the tea cart for a piece of toast.

Caressed enthusiastically by "Mugsie" and served devotedly by Miss Arnold, she was having her breakfast In bed.

She looked down at her smooth young arms, left bare by her scant nightdress.

"Gee!" she giggled, "after going to bed every night over there muffled in woolen pajamas and blankets till I looked like Peary, a nightie like this feels positively indecent.”

Comments

[Bill Altreuter]

You'll still hear Germans called "Boches" by Dutch and French people occasionally. It is very rude- I've never heard anyone use the word when sober.

[Fairfax]

Actually, style-wise, that doesn't read all that differently from the stuff you find in Glamour and Cosmo today.

BTW, the phrase "Bien Etre des Blesse" should be translated as "Well-Being of the Wounded" (assuming there isn't a better way to say "well-being" in French).

Speaking of said society, I'd never heard of Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, famous novelist. According to Wikipedia, she had quite an interesting life and career, and if you think this article you've posted is hot stuff by the standards of the time, 20 years earlier Atherton published a novel entitled Patience Sparhawk and Her Times, which according to the NY Times's critic "offered a series of 'fleshy' episodes in [the heroine's] life that must have scared a sensitive reader." Now that would be fascinating to read as an example of what was considered shock-worthy in our great-grandparents' day!

Didn't mean to take the attention off of your distant relative, who seems to have been an extremely admirable person. Not hard to imagine that Mrs. Atherton recognized something of her own daring spirit in Miss Puller when they met.

Here's the URL for anyone interested in Mrs. Atherton:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Atherton

[Ken Muldrew]

In "Suite Francaise", Irène Némirovsky has a character (French, under the occupation) call a German soldier a "boche" to his face. Another character chides her for being tactless. Since it was written contemporaneously, there's a good chance it was adapted from a real event.

[Linkmeister]

Fairfax, you can read/download Patience Sparhawk here.

Lance, as I said on FB, your relative fits the "chorine with a heart of gold" literary trope perfectly. Perhaps she was one of the inspirations for it!

[DeborahT]

Be careful with this genealogy stuff: it's like crack. I'm officially obsessed. I know it sounds like a commercial for that new show, but it really can change your life entirely.

[Larry Mannion]

Yes, I know it is addicting. I never thought I'd be lurking in cemeteries, camera in one hand gps in another...not to mention getting locked into the country's most haunted cemetery with Uncle Sam.
BTW Marion Pullar also went on to become the first stage manager in America and head Play screener for NBC radio.

[DeborahT]

I've been there: the cemetery in Malden, MA, the GPS, the cell phone with my husband in Los Angeles on the other end of the line trying to direct me using Google Earth and his memories as a 7-year-old.