An American Princess Read online

  And so on May 10, 1914, Mr. and Mrs. Burchard announced their daughter’s engagement to Mr. Glenn Stewart in the New York Times. The couple, the paper wrote, would leave after the wedding for the Cuban capital, Havana, where Glenn had been given a post as second secretary at the American embassy. The appointment was undoubtedly due to an intervention by his future father-in-law, who as a high-ranking figure at one of the largest companies in the United States had excellent connections with the government in Washington.

  Anson, who adored his two stepchildren, also tried to give the forthcoming marriage the best possible start. As a wedding present he gave Greta Birchwood’s accompanying farm and had a brand-new stable built for her horses. Whatever the future might bring, she’d always have her own house close to her mother and him.

  Allene, in turn, gave her daughter the grand wedding she’d never had herself. In the early morning of October 21, 1914, a special train brought more than three hundred guests from New York’s Pennsylvania Station to Lattingtown. The Hostetters, as well as family and friends of Glenn’s, turned out in great numbers: almost all of the twelve bridesmaids and page boys were from Pittsburgh.

  The ceremony itself took place in the Lattingtown Union Chapel, a small church that had been financed almost entirely by members of the Piping Rock Club. The marriage was consecrated by one of Glenn’s cousins; another cousin was best man. Allene had copiously decorated the train, the chapel, and Birchwood, where the wedding breakfast and the reception took place, with autumn leaves and gold- and copper-colored chrysanthemums. It turned the event into “a Chrysanthemum Wedding” as the New York Times captioned it.

  Greta’s wedding dress and her bridesmaids’ outfits were deemed worthy of a separate article in the paper because they had been designed by an American talent at a time when Europe was still considered leading in terms of fashion and taste. The honeymoon was also an all-American affair. After a visit to Pittsburgh, the newlyweds went on to Mount Mitchell, the highest of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Appalachians, where they went trekking and mule packing.

  Meanwhile, there was nothing in the society sections about the real reason for the patriotic nature of their wedding in Lattingtown. The reader would have to turn to the front pages, which were growing considerably gloomier in tone, for that. Those who had seen in the sinking of the Titanic more than two years earlier a foreboding of more shocking events to come were right. Something that had seemed to Americans impossible in this new century, something they had not been expecting and did not want, had nevertheless occurred: a major war had broken out in Europe.

  The direct cause of the conflict, everyone agreed, was the murder of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. “Heir to Austria’s Throne Slain with His Wife by a Bosnian Youth to Avenge Seizure of His Country” said the New York Times. Opinions weren’t divided about the political background to this, either. It had mainly to do with the German Empire, created in 1871 under the leadership of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, which was keen to see its growing economic power translated into international political influence. But how it was possible for the war to spread across Europe so quickly after the incident in Sarajevo, setting the world on fire almost immediately, was a matter that historians would puzzle over for a long time to come.

  The fact was the Europeans who marched to war late that summer were literally singing and had decorated their guns with flowers. Possessed by a kind of romantic war heroism that really belonged to the previous century, they were convinced that they would soon return home triumphant. But what was then modern technology turned out to have fundamentally transformed the practice of warfare. By that fall, armies were stuck in trench lines that ran from northern France to deep in Europe. From the trenches, the warring parties hit each other with ever-heavier ammunition—sacrificing lives day after day, with no one able to break through.

  Czarist Russia sided with France and England; Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire fought on the German side, assisted after a while by Bulgaria. America anxiously stayed on the sidelines. Weren’t these kinds of idiotic wars, instigated by megalomaniac aristocrats and parading soldiers, one of the main reasons so many immigrants had left everything behind to seek out the peace and prosperity of the New World?

  It wasn’t until the passenger ship RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by German submarines on May 7, 1915, taking down with it 128 American citizens, including millionaire’s son Alfred Vanderbilt, that the United States bared its teeth. The German generals, who realized all too well that they wouldn’t stand a chance in hell if mighty America sided with the Allies, hastily backed down: the submarine war would remain limited and the safety of American vessels would be assured. With this, America could comfortably resume its neutral position. The country was by then making money from the war, which, despite triumphant bulletins from both sides, never seemed headed for an end.

  Month after month, the conflict oscillated around a front line that ran across Europe like a suppurating wound, feeding itself with young lives. There were days, as in July 1916 at the Somme, during which 60,000 young soldiers died for what in retrospect turned out to be a couple hundred yards of territorial gain. Or the ten-month-long “Hell of Verdun” that, when it ended in December 1916, was ultimately responsible for an incredible death toll of more than 700,000 lives.

  Parents lost sons and women their fiancés; countries their young men, their prosperity, and their future. The entire international community looked to America: when would the most powerful nation in the New World finally accept her moral responsibility and put an end to the pointless butchery on the Continent?

  Somewhere in the fall of 1916, Anson and his friends began to discuss in muted tones, after dinner and with their cigars and port, the possibility that American neutrality might not be sustainable. An international concern like General Electric that also operated in Europe received war updates on a daily basis. They knew, for example, that great dissatisfaction with the czarist regime was brewing among the Russian population. The February revolution and the subsequent collapse of the Russian side on the east front indeed gave the Germans a welcome respite; they could now concentrate their efforts on the Western Front. Determined to force a breakthrough, the high command called for a total submarine war.

  Now America no longer had a choice. On April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson, who a few months earlier had won an election by promising not to take part in the conflict, declared war on Germany. Six days later, Anson and Allene, together on the Empress of Russia, left from Vancouver, Canada, for China and Japan, for what was officially termed a three-month business trip.

  Both the timing—precisely when international travel was more dangerous than ever—and the destination suggest that Anson was, in fact, on a reconnaissance mission for the American government. China had up to that point shown itself a solid partner to the Allies, but the traditionally anti-British Japanese empire was all too happy to be courted by the Germans. Later, the ambassador Anson and Allene stayed with in Tokyo would write in his memoirs that the atmosphere in Japan with regard to America “could be cut with a knife.”

  At the end of July, Anson and Allene returned home, again via Canada, and found their country in an early, excited, and almost infatuated stage of war. The arms factories were running at full speed, and there were improvised encampments everywhere in which volunteers stood at the ready for the journey to France. The first American regiments had already landed in Europe on June 26, 1917, bursting with impatience to show the world what American heroism looked like.

  Across the country, posters of Uncle Sam urged recruits to sign up: “I want YOU!”—and almost the entire Burchard family complied. Anson was drafted by the War Department in Washington to work for Assistant Secretary of War Benedict Crowell. Allene and a few friends from Locust Valley set up a committee to raise money for Hospitality House in New York, a place for young officers on leave. The mother of Kitty Kimball, Teddy’s girlfriend, left fo
r France to work as a nurse. Teddy himself signed up on August 19 as an aspiring pilot in the British air force, the Royal Flying Corps.

  In the eight years that had gone by since Teddy had seen an airplane circle the Statue of Liberty for the first time from his father’s yacht, aviation had progressed at a great pace. If there was anything the protracted trench fighting in Europe had made clear to the governments concerned, it was that the future of modern warfare was not to be found down in the mud but up in the sky. Both the Germans and the Brits now had air fleets at their disposal containing a few thousand single-seater planes from which pilots could fire at each other with primitive machine guns far above the lines.

  These sky fighters were the only ones in the world war who still radiated a certain glamour and heroism. The outcomes of the dogfights, man-against-man battles in the air, were decided by the individual courage and skill of the pilots—elements that barely counted in the mechanized massacres on the ground. What’s more, the parties treated each other with a kind of old-fashioned chivalry, such as dropping messages about deaths and captures on the opponent’s air bases. Flying aces like the audacious “Red Baron” Manfred von Richthofen, who managed to down as many as sixty planes, were treated as heroes by both friends and enemies.

  In the fall of 1917, since America didn’t yet have its own air force in the war, thousands of young Americans signed up for the Royal Flying Corps. Most of them were young men like Teddy from rich upper-class families, fascinated by danger and speed, bored to death by the life their parents had set up for them and their fake studies at Ivy League universities—young men who spotted an opportunity to actually mean something by joining the war in the sky.

  “The RFC attracted adventurous spirits, devil-may-care youth, fast livers, furious drivers and risk-takers, who invested the Corps with a certain style and mystique,” wrote pilot and writer Cecil Lewis in his aviation classic Sagittarius Rising. The admissions requirements were simple: the candidate should be a sporty—a euphemism for overconfident—type and be able to ride horses and drive a car. Rich, in other words, since these were expensive hobbies the average American couldn’t afford.

  Teddy Hostetter was the perfect candidate. And now that he had finally found something he really felt passionate about, he became a model student for the first time in his life. He completed his training at record speed. The first part took place in the United States and consisted of six weeks of general military training followed by his first real flight training. For most of the cadets, flying overshadowed everything else. In the words of one of Teddy’s fellow students:

  It’s a great life, mother, flying alone with nothing to worry about, the whole sky to fly in and not much work to do. I will really hate to see this old war stop, if it ever does. I am having such a fine time!

  The second part of the training, the actual training to be a fighter pilot, took place in England. Teddy was just able to celebrate Christmas 1917 at Birchwood, where he wrote a will leaving everything to his mother and sister in equal parts. He also took the opportunity to get engaged to his girlfriend, Kitty. On January 6, 1918, he saw the three most important women in his life grow smaller and smaller on the shores of New York as he sailed away from his homeland, past the Statue of Liberty, on his way to a war he had made his mission.

  Teddy, the “strange fish” at Harvard, turned out to be a born aviator. He was promoted to second lieutenant after just one month and moved to the RFC’s No. 67 Training Squadron. At the No. 2 (Auxiliary) School of Aerial Gunnery, on the southwestern coast of Scotland, he learned to use a machine gun and drop bombs from an aircraft onto a target on the ground. In the early morning of April 3, 1918, he left for France to join the No. 54 Squadron of what was by then called the Royal Air Force, stationed in Calais. That very same day he made his maiden combat flight.

  The 54 Squadron had originally been set up as an escort for bombing raids, but since the Battle of Arras in 1917, it had specialized in so-called low-level attack missions, in which enemy observation balloons were eliminated with bombs and machine-gun fire. It meant the pilots flew low to the ground, diving within range of enemy artillery. The squadron flew Sopwith Camels, which weren’t just the most advanced aircraft in the British air force but also the most dangerous. The engine’s cooling system caused a strong torque to the right during flight, which made takeoff and landing a risky business. Aside from this, minor damage to the planes, which were built from oilcloth and wood, could result in a burning inferno within seconds. The pilots weren’t given parachutes; these were considered unsporting and could also have led to unnecessary loss of machinery. The average life expectancy of a fighter pilot was no more than fifty to sixty flight hours. This came to about four weeks, depending on the weather conditions.

  It looked like Teddy’s war was going to be even shorter. Late in the day on April 11, eight days after his first flight above the battle lines, he was hit by German machine-gun fire from the ground. Although his legs were seriously injured, he managed to land his plane safely on the Allied side of the line. After having his wounds treated at a hospital in the coastal town of Wimereux, he was transported back to England to recover further. In late May, he was released from the hospital to recover at No. 7 Aircraft Acceptance Park, a former golf course near London where airplanes were assembled in large hangars.

  At that moment, the chances didn’t seem great that Teddy would ever return to the war, undoubtedly to the great relief and hope of the women he’d left behind on the shores of New York. In June 1918, a major German offensive led to nothing. The Allies now finally seemed to hold the winning hand, partly thanks to a weapon developed in America that seemed to supply a long-awaited solution to trench warfare: the tank. Although in the Vaterland, which was exhausted and depleted after four years of war, German Kaiser Wilhelm II continued to make warmongering speeches, it now seemed only a matter of time before his generals would come to their senses and finally end their losing battle.

  Against all expectations, however, the complete collapse of the German front failed to occur. The Germans had dug themselves into the as-good-as-impregnable Hindenburg Line and seemed keener to fight to the death than to surrender. And Teddy, who had been champing at the bit all summer because there was nothing he wanted more than to be able to fly and fight, managed to get approval for a return to active duty in early August. On August 16, 1918, he reported to the central assembly point for all troops leaving for the Continent, and on September 5, he crossed the English Channel for the second time, once again as a fighter pilot headed to France.

  For a short while, Teddy was put to work at a supply depot in Marquise—this was probably at the request of Anson Burchard, who did everything he could behind the scenes in Washington to keep his impetuous stepson out of the danger zone at the tail end of the war. But on September 18, no more excuses could be found to keep Teddy on the ground any longer, and he was allowed to report to the No. 3 Squadron, which was under command of the famous flying ace Major Ronald McClintock. He went back up into the sky that very evening.

  Nine days later, September 27, 1918—Greta celebrated her twenty-seventh birthday that day—began what promised to be one of the last, if not the very last, battles of the world war. The target was a number of large underground tunnels along the Canal du Nord near Cambrai, reputed to be one of the toughest parts of the Hindenburg Line to crack.

  At seven o’clock that evening, Teddy and four other pilots were instructed to destroy a few German observation balloons above the Canal de l’Escaut, between the locks of Masnières and Saint-Vaast. After a half hour of flying, a German aircraft appeared in their sights, and they managed to shoot it down. Teddy and a fellow pilot dived down to finish the job with bombs. At that moment, several German planes appeared and attacked the patrol from above. After a short but intense dogfight, the three British planes at the highest altitude were able to evade the enemy attack and return their planes safely to base. The two other planes failed to return home that evening.r />
  Two days later, Masnières was taken by ground troops. No trace was found of the two missing pilots or their planes. Another two days later, a telegram from the British Air Ministry arrived at Birchwood: “Lieutenant Hostetter was reported missing on September 27, having failed to return from flying duty.” A few days later, a letter followed in which Teddy’s commanding officer provided the family with more details surrounding the young pilot’s disappearance and the impression he’d left during the short time he’d been under his command:

  Your son came to the squadron on the 18th of September, and though he was only a short time with us, showed great keenness for his work and was rapidly becoming a fine pilot whom we could afford ill to lose. He was extremely popular among us and we all feel his absence very keenly. I wish you the sincere sympathy of all members of the squadron for the great anxiety you must feel.

  The letter from Teddy’s commander reached Allene and Anson at a moment when America was in the grip of a major panic. In late August, a mysterious illness, which had first appeared that summer in southern Europe and was therefore called the “Spanish flu,” had taken its first victims in Boston. From one moment to the next, perfectly healthy people developed coughs, high fevers, sore throats, and severe muscle pain. Sometimes they died within the space of a few hours, sometimes within a few days, literally drowning in the liquid of their infected lungs as their skin turned a bluish black from a lack of oxygen.