Courage of the Heart: An American Odyssey 1915 to 1923

By Christine Chatterton

The author, Christine Chatterton, has written a true historical narrative of World War I based on the letters found in the house of her husbands grandmother after her death. This is an intimate account of two families and three brothers from western Illinois, each facing the Great War in uniquely different ways. It is the extraordinary love story of Haidee Wilson and Maurice Chatterton, written in their own words, spanning the years from 1915 until 1923. This is an odyssey of courage, hardship, war, death, illness, and finally, survival and a love that endured. This is an American Odyssey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524533984

Christine Chatterton

Christine Chatterton is an artist, author, poet, and teacher. She has taught reading improvement and special education for almost thirty years in every grade level from elementary to college. She writes from her heart, telling the stories of her life and family. She has also written and illustrated a children's book entitled "Samuel's Alphabet Zoo" as well as a humorous memoir of growing up in Detroit, "The Kids on Ford Street". She is currently writing a continuation of the Chatterton family saga, taking place from Russia to China to America. She now divides her time between writing, painting, making jewelry, visiting classrooms and giving science and cultural lessons, and enjoying her family.

Book preview

Chapter 1

HAIDEE AND MAURICE CHATTERTON

APRIL, 1975

I first met Haidee and Maurice Chatterton in 1974 at my wedding, when she was 78 and he was 83. Haidee had been born in 1897. Maurice had been born in 1892. Now, I was going with my new husband, Keith, the love of my life, to visit his grandparents. I knew I had met them when we got married, but I hardly remembered anything from the general cacophony that is a big wedding. We were now on Spring Break from Michigan State University. As I look back on it, I can recognize some of the arrogance of youth within us. At 21 years old, I was a child of the modern age, the Seventies. We thought we knew everything about life. We were full of anticipation for the future, college educated, but not quite ready to face the real world.

I looked out of the car window as we traveled across the wide, flat, green cornfields of the Midwest. The newly growing corn passed quickly in thousands of straight rows fanning out in a geometric regularity. Life here seemed somehow quieter, wider, and more orderly than in our crowded and noisy college apartment complex. I thought it would be fun and maybe somewhat quaint to meet the old small town grandparents who had been such a big part of my husband’s life. I had no idea how these two people would affect my life.

As we drove up to the old small farm town of Bushnell, Illinois, I was struck with the feeling that I was entering a different time. Bushnell was built around the railroad line that ran down the middle of the one main street of town. There was the Hard Road outside of town that was paved and would take you to the other small towns like Avon and Prairie City, and even eventually to the big city of Galesburg, but it really didn’t feel like a part of town. The town offered all the necessaries of life: one grocery store, one hardware store, one gas station, one diner, one doctor’s office, one Five and Dime store where you could find pretty much everything that you couldn’t find in the hardware store, one drugstore with an ice cream parlor and soda fountain along one side, and one pool hall. There were several quaint steepled churches, mainly Protestant, set here and there throughout the town. The only other dominating structures besides the railroad were the tall imposing grain elevators standing at the far end of Main Street, next to the rail line.

All the streets in town were laid out in an orderly grid in line with the railroad, which happened to run northeast to southwest. In this case, it meant that none of the streets went directly north, south, east, or west, which was quite disorienting to me. The Elementary School was on the northwest side of town away from the Main Street. The High School which taught all the young people of the surrounding area was a big red brick building for 7th through 12th grade. It was located to the southeast, a couple of blocks from Main Street, conveniently halfway between Main Street and the town Cemetery.

A person could live their whole life in Bushnell and never leave if they didn’t feel like it. They could be born there, go to school there, work there, die, and be buried there. And many people did, including Keith’s grandparents. It didn’t seem to be just a different time era, but a different pace of life; slower, gentler; not at all like the hustle and bustle of the big city and college campus that we were from. What a small and limited life, I thought.

Most of the houses in town were small bungalows from the early part of the 1900’s, except for the somewhat scary Victorian Mansion near downtown. It was said that a reclusive rich old lady lived there and never came outside except to shoo away any wayward children who dared to come on her lawn. Maurice and Haidee lived in a small white house on Walnut St., about six blocks from Main Street. Haidee had lived in the same house since 1906, when as a child she had moved here with her family from the hardscrabble rocky farms and coal mines of West Virginia. Her family grew even though the house did not. Haidee’s parents, Viola and Charles Wilson, raised their six children in that two bedroom house: Ernest, Fred, Jesse, Haidee, Raymond, and Nellie. The oldest boys, Ernest and Fred, moved out and were working in Macomb soon after they moved there. When all the children grew up and left, Haidee and Maurice married and lived in the house and raised two sons, William and Edward, and a daughter, Betty.

The house had three outbuildings, all in some state of disrepair. The old one car garage held the old station wagon that I never saw Keith’s grandparents drive. There was also the old outhouse, still functional, although a bathroom had been built on the back porch of the house sometime in the 1950s. And finally, there was the washhouse with a trough of cold spring water to keep food cool, before there were iceboxes. It was still used to keep potatoes and onions stored in baskets on the floor and soda bottles cool in the running water. Along the walls were shelves of Haidee’s canned green beans, canned peaches, canned tomatoes, black raspberry jelly, and canned pickles. It was a dark moist invitingly cool place from another era. Keith’s father, Edward and his brother Bill had slept there as boys with an old pot bellied stove for warmth in winter.

Spring had arrived and the weather was warm, clear, and fresh. The backyard had shaken off its winter blanket of snow and was still littered with the brown detritus of last year’s growth. In each of the overgrown beds, new life had pushed its way through the dead and the backyard was full of bright yellow daffodils, white lilies, and other colorful spring flowers growing up below Haidee’s budding out rose bushes. There were blooming fruit trees and black raspberry bushes and big shade trees for the boys to climb in. The leaves were all coming out in that shining lime green of spring.

We arrived there after a hard day of driving, with the long shadows of dusk around us. We parked our rusty old black Valiant on the dirt driveway and got out and knocked on the front door. From inside we heard Haidee call out, Morris, get the door. Oh well, I’m coming. Hold your horses. Haidee always called her husband MORRIS, even though his name was really Maurice. Most everyone else we knew called him Grandpa or Dad. His downtown friends called him Chat.

Haidee opened the door and a blast of slightly smoky, warm air greeted us. The living room was pleasantly crowded with an old out-of-tune piano, old couches, an old leather chaise lounger, and four or five odd shaped tables holding various knick-knacks and ornate oil lamps, converted at some time in the past to provide electric light. A huge quilting frame was set on four dining room chairs dominating the center of the room. It held a beautiful pieced quilt in pinks and greens being elaborately hand stitched to its backing.

Maurice sat in an old overstuffed chair next to a massive fireplace with a poker in his hand and a pile of old newspapers and small pieces of wood at his feet. There was an old smelly tin can sitting on the table next to him (for spitting tobacco in) and a somewhat dingy white handerchief, which I assumed was Maurice’s.

Haidee was dressed in a cotton house dress with an old flowered apron covering the front of it. She looked every bit the Auntie Em image of a Midwest grandmother with glasses. Her face was an odd mixture of stern determination and loving gentleness. She pushed her grey hair back from her face as she shooed us in, closing the door quickly behind us. Come on in and make yourselves at home. We’ve been expecting you. Supper will be ready any time now. She gave us hugs and took our coats at the same time. Morris, move off that chair and give your grandson and his new wife a hug.

Maurice got up unsteadily off his chair and came toward us. He was wearing an ancient pair of overalls and a faded soft denim shirt. He had a shock of grey hair standing straight up in a somewhat uneven buzz cut. He had what looked like a two or three day growth of stubble on his face matching the color of his hair. His face looked like it had a little too much soft old skin causing it to sag in an orderly arrangement of creases and wrinkles from his eyelids down to his neck, especially on his jowls. His wrinkles were probably made a little more obvious by the fact that he had no teeth. As he gave me a hug, I noticed a thin dribble of tobacco juice sliding down the crease next to his mouth.

I might have been taken aback by this first grizzled appearance, but then I looked into his eyes. He was somewhat bent down with age, so he had to lift his gaze up through his grey bushy eyebrows. His eyes twinkled. I looked into the faded blue eyes and saw intelligence and a sense of humor and even a little bit of a prankster there. He didn’t say anything but gave me a wink and a little smile and went back to his seat by the fireplace.

In the week that we were there, I learned a lot about Haidee and Maurice Chatterton. I learned a lot about myself, too. I learned to love these two very different and very special people. I learned that Haidee was the indomitable force that held her home together. She was one of those people who never gave up or gave in. Without her, I am sure Maurice would not have known what to do with himself. She would fuss at him and tell him what to do, and he would try his hardest not to hear her. She spent most of her time in the kitchen, an old-fashioned room with a big old stove and an old refrigerator. Maurice rarely came in there except to eat and to put his cold tea glass in the refrigerator. He never liked ice in his tea and it bothered Haidee to no end that he was always sloshing his tea in her icebox.

The floor in the kitchen was not level but inclined down this way and that, showing a lifetime of changes that had slowly transformed the house over time. The one bathroom took up part of the kitchen’s back porch showing a different old linoleum which strangely contradicted the kitchen’s old floor. The big farm table and mismatched chairs were sliding down in what had once been a type of greenhouse area next to the kitchen. The old windows were still there covering the wall from floor to ceiling. They were now completely blanketed by ancient leafy vines which lent a soft green glow to the room. It was a strangely comfortable room.

Haidee was always busy, her thin-skinned wrinkled hands in constant motion, whether it was cooking or quilting or gardening. She had a sense of humor that was down to earth and displayed a biting wit. But she had an incredibly soft side, too. Her soul flowed deep, with a love for God and for her family, and a love for beautiful things, whether they were translucent china tea cups or a perfect rosebud or a baby’s smile. She lovingly showed me each precious teacup or knick-knack, telling me who had given it to her and when she had gotten each one. They were more than objects; they were memories. Other than that, she didn’t talk much about herself or about the past. She was too busy living life now.

Both Maurice and Haidee loved to read and books filled shelves up to the ceiling in the living room and in their bedroom. Haidee would lie on the chaise lounge at least an hour every day and read old leather bound books that looked like they had been read many times before. Maurice, on the other hand, preferred to read in his old worn-out leather reading chair in his bedroom, near his desk which was stacked from floor to ceiling with books and old magazines, mostly of the adventure or science fiction genre, including complete sets of dime store novels like Tarzan, or Zane Grey Westerns. I know that Keith and his three brothers coveted those books and would sneak in there to see what undiscovered adventure book Maurice might be hiding in there.

Every night, before they went to sleep, Maurice would sit in his chair and read aloud to Haidee from their daily devotional book and from the Bible while Haidee laid in bed. This had been their own special time for at least 50 years. They had many little routines that had become a part of their lives together over the years.

My husband, Keith, was a lot like his Grandma. I could see her in him. Every day that we were there, he would be busy, trimming the shade trees, or clearing out the flower beds, or laughing and visiting with his aunt and uncle. He has always been the force that held our lives together. Like Haidee, he has always lived in the present.

Maurice, on the other hand, lived a good deal of the time in the past. He had an artist’s heart and a storyteller’s passion. He somehow decided that it was very important for him to tell me as much as he could about his life. He never started a normal conversation. I would walk in to the living room to visit with him. I would sit on a chair next to him by the fireplace. We would sit silently for a minute and then in his soft voice, he would start off telling me about his time in World War I, or his time after the war, or the times he rode the rails as a young man, or the time he got rabbit fever from eating wild rabbits out of season. He would start up right from where his reminisces ended the day before, as if he had just been talking five minutes ago. He would talk until he got tired and then we would sit silently for a few minutes taking it in. I think he was breathing out his memories along with his air. I loved to hear him.

Every day, Maurice would get his daily exercise by walking downtown to Main Street to see what was happening. I don’t know that anything much was ever happening there, but he certainly enjoyed visiting with everyone he saw. He would usually go to the hardware store just to look around and make sure there wasn’t something that he had forgotten to get. Then he would talk awhile. Then he would go to the grocery store to get anything he thought Haidee might need. Then he would talk awhile some more. Then he would walk home.

Sometimes, he would walk out to the garage and bring in a sign he had made and show it to me. He was an artist, after all. His job was making signs for businesses and grocery stores and any commercial enterprise. This was before there were computerized ads and inexpensive printers. He had a particular artistic style that was distinctively his, and we would see his signs along the roads throughout that area for miles in any direction.

As different as these two people were, they shared a strong bond and an amazing love between them. They did not overtly show it. In that whole week, I don’t think I ever saw them kiss or say they loved each other. Their bond was deeper than that, built of a lifetime of struggles and pain that was not quieter or simpler or more orderly, as I had once thought. I found out that the life they had lived and the courtship that led to their marriage was in many ways a harrowing eight year trek that took Maurice from Illinois to Canada to France to England and almost to death and back again. And through it all, Haidee stood as his lighthouse, finally leading him back to Bushnell, back to Haidee, back to home. That was the story that both Haidee and Maurice were trying to tell me.

Chapter 2

HAIDEE WILSON

SEPTEMBER 17, 1915

It was Friday afternoon and a girl with long black hair, tied back by a ribbon, and dark eyes that were shaded by dark eyebrows and long black lashes sat in an old wooden desk near the back window of her English classroom on the second floor of Bushnell Secondary School. She found the desk a little confining since she was taller and older than most of the other students in her class. She was dressed in the dark blue woolen skirt and plain white blouse that was the school uniform The only adornment was a red and blue striped tie on the blouse. Her skirt went down to just above the ankles and today it was feeling a little warm on her.

The girl was busily writing the final essay question for the book that the class had finished reading: The Odyssey, by Homer.

Question: What were Odysseus’ major motivations in the book? How did they change?

I believe that Odysseus goes through three distinct periods in his life in The Odyssey. As the situations in his life change, so do his motivations. You could say that he finds out what is important to him, and that is what motivates him.

At the beginning of the story, Odysseus is interested in being a great warrior and achieving glory in the war with Troy. His motivation is mostly about making a name for himself and achieving glory and honor. He wants to be victorious for his King and for his country, Ithaca. In a way, he seems kind of selfish, in that he leaves his family for what he knows will be a long time, but he is not thinking of anyone else.

After the war, he takes his men, who have trusted him with their lives, and he heads for home. But when they are thrown off course, Odysseus realizes that he is responsible for the lives of his men, his friends. He realizes that he needs to lead his men to safety if possible. His motivation has changed. Now he must think of someone besides himself. His motivation is to save his shipmates and to lead them home. The many trials that they go through are heartbreaking to Odysseus, in that he loses more and more of his friends, until at last he finds himself all alone.

Odysseus’ final and greatest motivation is to get back to his wife and son. He realizes that his family is the most important thing to him in the end. He finally understands how hard it has been for his wife to wait for him for all those years. He sees, in the end, how faithful she has been to him, even though she didn’t know if he was alive or not. In the end, the story is about an enduring love and a reuniting of two people who have struggled to return to each other.

It seems to me that the character of Odysseus has grown throughout this story. He has changed, and as he changed, so have his motivations. He grows as a person from someone motivated by glory and victory for himself, to being motivated to save his friends, and finally to be motivated by love for his wife and son.

Haidee put down her pen. Haidee had actually enjoyed the book very much. To her, it was a romantic adventure with exciting exploits and trials and a happy, if somewhat bloody, love story ending. She could hardly believe it had been written by some Greek poet named Homer, almost 3000 years ago. When Haidee finished, she reread her response and was satisfied that she had written a good answer. She wondered if anyone nowadays ever went through adventures like that and finally came home to find true love.

After she finished the test, she turned and looked out the tall ceiling-high windows at the glorious trees and bushes outside. It was a warm Indian Summer day, one of those last warm days of autumn when the trees had painted themselves in all the colors of Solomon’s treasure house; bright golds, tawny coppers, ruby reds, rich amber browns, and even limbs of shining silver. The warm breeze was gently blowing the branches of a tree making them tap rhythmically on the window.

When Haidee looked out at the tree limb she saw a Monarch butterfly sitting on the limb resting its wings. It must be starting its annual migration south to spend the winter somewhere warm. She watched as it slowly spread its gold and black wings, so strong and yet so fragile. She sighed as it fluttered away out of sight. Haidee thought wistfully that it was starting on a great adventure while right now she was stuck in the stuffy atmosphere of Miss Johannson’s class, especially since she had finished all her work already and was just waiting for the class to end.

She pulled out another piece of paper and started to write a letter to her friend, Claire. Claire was her best friend and was probably bored senseless in Mr. Brown’s World History class down at the other end of the hall. She dipped her pen into the inkwell on her desk.

Dearest Claire,

I have finished my test on The Odyssey and I am sitting here in English Class wishing that I was outside in the beautiful autumn air. On a bright, clear day like today, it seems a shame to be sitting in a stuffy old classroom. I would much rather be reposed under a golden oak tree with a book and a nice picnic lunch. We have Snow Days with no school, why can we not have Indian Summer Days to enjoy this fine weather?

Thank the Lord, I was able to talk Mother and Father into letting me go to the Prairie City Picnic with you tomorrow. They were not at all sure that it was proper for two young ladies to go that far, unescorted. They finally relinquished as long as my brother Jesse goes with us, and we take the train back on time.

I am so excited. I have to admit, I am also a little nervous about going. I heard that there will be dancing and I am sure that my two left feet will make me look the fool. I am glad that you will be with me. At least then, I will not feel so left out when no one asks to dance with me. I know that once we are there, Jesse will be off with his friends or trying to dance with the Avon girls.

Oh dear! Miss Johannson is looking my way. So, I had better put this away for now. I will see you at the flagpole after school.

Always your friend,

Haidee Wilson

Haidee quickly put the letter under her test and folded her hands in her lap. Her teacher, Miss Johannson was looking seriously over her spectacles at Haidee. Miss Johannson was a tall, rather severe looking woman who looked meaner than she actually was. Haidee was a good student even though she was a couple of years older than the other students in her class. She had missed a lot of school in West Virginia and in moving out to Illinois. Miss Johannson smiled at her and looked away. Haidee spent the rest of the class time trying the read the names and messages scratched into the desktop, probably years ago by some mischievous boy with a pocket knife. At the end of the period, Haidee turned in her essay test and rushed out of the room. She hurried down the hall and was able to slip the letter into her friend’s hand before they rushed off in different directions to their next classes. The rest of the day went along at a snail’s pace until the last bell finally rang. Haidee quickly gathered her books and practically skipped down the stairs to the flagpole, where small groups of friends would gather before heading home. Claire was