Caryl Holton - WWI & Statue of Liberty

Caryl Holton served in France during World War I. He wrote home regularly and those letters were saved. On this Veterans Day, it’s fitting to share our Grandfather’s thoughts about going and coming from war, expressed in his feelings on seeing the Statue of Liberty. 

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In a July 1918 account of the trip from New York to France, Grandpa writes about sailing to France on the USS Leviathan, the largest ship afloat, along with 13,000 other men. “We were towed out into the river. Then our own engines began to throb, although we could hardly tell it because there was so little vibration, - and we were on our way. … As we passed the Goddess of Liberty, every man removed his hat and a wonderfully inspiring cheer went up. 

The thought that came to me then – and to almost every man, I think, was “WHEN WILL I SEE YOU AGAIN? As we sailed out of the harbor, any number of little submarine patrol boats moved all about us. A destroyer showed up in front of us and started that weaving back and forth in front of us which is [sic] kept up for two days. Overhead a dirigible balloon hovered. It seemed that they were making a lot of fuss over us. All the way down the river were passing larger boats. Some transports; some cargo vessels, and many destroyers and patrol boats. All of them were camouflaged until they looked like a futurists nightmare. In fact everything we saw reminded us of the precautions that were necessary in fighting our hidden enemy, the submarine.” 

He tells about the voyage and remarks “It would have been a wonderful trip for a honeymoon!” This is an interesting comment since he and Celia were married just a few months before he went to Europe. 

“On the second morning out, we discovered that our destroyer had left us and that we were left on our own resources. We were alone then until the following Friday morning. When we first went on deck that morning we discovered that we were convoyed by four US destroyers. Until you have seen the Stars and Stripes show up under just such circumstances as that, you have one sensation to experience because never did they look so good.”

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May 11, 1919 he wrote to “Mother o’Mine”

Caryl will be leaving France in about 2 weeks to sail back to the States.  He writes that he will watch France disappear from view and “… as soon as it disappears below the horizon I’m going to plant myself up as near to the bow as possible and stay there as much as my duty and physical condition will permit so I may be among the first to spy the Statue of Liberty as her torch appears “over the hill” where we left her a year ago. When we passed her last year I removed my hat because everyone else did. This time I’ll remove it for another reason – because I’ve come to an understanding of what she means and represents.”