Reginald Carman MacKnight Peirce

[dutchbarge]

Hello, I'm hoping that one of the Forum members can help me track down any information on Reginald Carman MacKnight Peirce.  He was an American whose US Service records state the he served with the BEF 1914-1915.  Any help will be much appreciated.  Cheers, Bill

[DavidOwen]

Hi Bill

Was he the Insurance Broker from NY?

Born 24-April-1887?

If so this is his draft registration card https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-81N7-DCC?i=1892&cc=1968530 which states he had 5 years previous experience as a Private in the National Guard.

There seems to be loads of US records for him on Ancestry (needs a worldwide membership that I don't have) but so far not found anything that directly links him to UK military service. There is a RC Peirce with a Field Ambulance but can't say whether that is him or not,,, I suspect not as this man seems to have moved on to ASC.

Not found anything at TNA.

Sorry not able to find anything more

Good luck with the search

David

 

[JulianR]

Much the same here, I believe that he served with the USMC, born in NY, no hits on UK service

[DavidOwen]

Checked the British Red Cross records but no Reginald Peirce there either.

[dutchbarge]

Thank you, David and Julian, yes, he was the NY insurance man.  Over the years I'd pulled all the docs off Ancestry.com (plus other sources) that you mentioned and thought I had his life's history pretty well figured out.  I recently acquired copies of his official USMC service records.  On his application to re-enter the Corps in 1942 I found the expected history of his military service which included the NY National Guard (Mexican Punitive Expedition) and USMC AEF service in WW1. However, listed under "Military or naval service other than above, Including enlisted service" was written in Peirce's own hand, "Winter 1914-15 British Exp. Force (France)".  Needless to say this was a surprise.  However in amongst all the information I had collected on him was an October 1914 US passport application which would fit that time frame.  He was a Yale man (class of 1909) and many Yale men served in Allied forces prior to the US entrance in WW1.  While it was illegal (if not treasonous) for a US citizen to serve a foreign government US authorities seem to have turned a blind eye.  So it may well have been him in the Field Ambulance.  Because of the legal issues e may have served under a Nom de Guerre.  Many of his records list him as Pierce rather than Peirce.  I have a copy of a letter signed "Rex".  He also went by Reginald CM Peirce.  He was a very interesting man.   Amongst other gems found in his USMC service records was a letter of recommendation for the Distinguished Service Cross for valor at Soissons, written by no less a personage than Colonel Harry Lee, commander of the 6th Marine Regiment.  The War Depart claimed it never received it.  After lengthy correspondence the recommendation was finally found and presented to the War Office who reduced to a Citation Star (his second, the first being for actions at Belleau Wood).  Cheers, Bill

[DavidOwen]

Bill

All very interesting. A bit of an adventurer one thinks.

I have been through the MICs on Ancestry for all the Rexs and can't see any obvious candidates (only 107 of them). Do you know his mother's maiden name?

As an aside I did find a MIC for a Belgian Agent as a result of an incorrect indexing of "Rev" as "Rex"....

Regards

David

[JulianR]

When I looked earlier on, there was a passport application for him in about 1922 to go to Mexico he was described as an engineer, where was his 1914  application for?

 

Julian

[DavidOwen]

I have had a browse through the Canadian personnel records but not come up with any promising candidates....

[DavidOwen]

Been back through the BRC records checking for Pierce, Rex, Carman and MacKnight/McKnight but no hits... 

[dutchbarge]

Hello fellows,

 

Thank you for your help.  Peirce was born into one of NY's most prominent families.  Their enormous wealth was based upon family granite quarries in Maine.  Peirce granite built NYC.  His father also helped found the first NYC subway and was a major investor in the Panama Canal.  It  would  appear that for the times the younger Peirce was quite the traveller.  I have him as a young boy doing several trans-Atlantic crossing pre-WW1 (probably doing the Grand Tour) with his mother, maiden name, Abby B. Mills, born 1869.  Also several crossing post-WW1 with several pre and post WW1 trips to Mexico and the Bahamas.  Unfortunately his 1914 passport application does not request nor list a destination.  But it is interesting re his BEF service to note that the passport application (dated Nov 12, 1914) requested that his passport be sent to "U.S. Despatch Agent, #2 Rector Street, NY, NY.' (the building contained offices of now defunct U. S. Express, a well known Int'l shipping and forwarding company of its day)  and that there is a record of him leaving Naples, Italy bound for NYC in March 1915.   He came from a politically connected family so it is possible that his 1914 passport was done in absentia (while he was already in Europe) and forwarded him while overseas.  What is definitely known is that he applied for a passport in Nov 1914, returned to NYC from Italy in March of 1915 and as an officer of the Marine Corps, in a sworn statement to same, stated that he served with the BEF in the winter of 1914-15.  Those were obviously different times....not computers, no facial recognition scans, etc.  Authorities were known to turn a blind eye to the formalities if a strapping lad was keen to join the fight.  But I can't see how, once in the BEF, he could have gotten out and returned home in such a short time.  I'm supposing that he, if his service was indeed with the BEF, rather than as a volunteer ambulance driver, ect. would have to had adopted a nom de guerre as it was illegal for a US citizen to join a foreign army.  And if he came clean later about his real identity and nationality that might have seen him released (family influence with the US State Dept would not have hurt). Still, the picture of him that I've been able to put together paints a very adventurous chap.  Cheers, Bill 

Edited 10 March , 2019 by dutchbarge

[JulianR]

I wonder if he served under his mother's maiden name. 

 

As to terminating his service with the BEF, I wonder if political influence again played a part.  In the back of my mind there is something that says Americans were accepted for service in the British Army, but were also discharged in needs be before the war was over.  There may be something on the forum about that.

 

On the forms I could find on Ancestry for his service there was no record of BEF service,  I note that you said that occurred on his 1942 application, which is a bit surprising, unless in 1917 he thought that it might be better to be discreet about recent military activities.  

Edited 10 March , 2019 by JulianR

[dutchbarge]

Hello Julian,

 

After 1 1/2 years serving with the US Marine Corp as a temporary captain, USMC reserve (during which time he commanded the 73rd (Machine Gun) Company and had the legendary Dan Daly as a subordinate) Peirce requested he be commissioned as a captain in the regular USMC.  Despite glowing efficiency reports and a letter from the commanding officer of the 6th (Marine) Regiment, the formidable Colonel Harry "The Hard" Lee, whose letter as much as told the Corps that if they did not immediately commission Peirce into the regular Corps as a captain they would forever regret it, his request was denied.  He had received a Citation Star for heroism at Belleau Wood, and was recommended by Col H. Lee for a Distinguished Service Cross for his valor under fire at Soissons (the War Department claims they never received the letter), was a Yale graduate, had attended a prestigious military academy (the Hill School) as a youth, took part in the Mexican Punitive Campaign, was fluent in French (spoken and written), well travelled and well connected.  It was no secret that Pershing (like MacArthur later) thought that the Marines received too much press and too many medals.  He might be responsible for the DSC fiasco (in 1920 the War Dept finally acknowledged the recommendation but reduced it to another Citation Star).  But it could also have been that the Corps felt uncomfortable around Peirce, who was by all accounts a bon vivant, socialite and gentleman.  Peirce applied for a commission the the Corps in 1942, asking his old commanding officer, now a major general, for help.  But his health was shot.  He couldn't pass the physical.  Vision impaired and heart wonky.  Probably both from the effects of mustard gas (an entry in the USMC Muster Rolls shows him hospitalized in 1919 for conjunctivitis, a classic delayed effect of mustard gas).  His 1942 application, in which he mentions the BEF service, was denied.  Sadly, through machinations of his business partners Peirce's father was ruined, the mansion in NYC Rex grew up in was sold, his father, dropped off NYC's radar, and reportedly died of dementia.  After his return from France, Peirce lived in a number of Hotels, sometimes with his mother, was briefly married, worked as insurance broker, realtor, Mexican oil company engineer, contractor and finally, just before his death, as a laborer at a steel mill.  The last document in his USMC service record is a request for $75 to help defray the cost of his burial.  Yet during these years he retained his membership in a NYC sportsman's club (he was an avid tennis player) and the Yale club of NYC.  He travelled a bit and, judging by his surviving letters, retained his sense of humor.  One can't forget that during much of his later years the US was (as was much of the world) gripped in the Great Depression and as his family was financially ruined Peirce had to shift gears and get by as he could (unlike his father he couldn't take over the family granite business for which his years at Yale's Sheffield Science School had prepared him).  His is a character that I can't help but admire.  Oddly, despite his heroic and commanding service in several of the Marine Corp's most revered battles (Belleau Wood and Soisson), his shoulder rubbing with legendary Marines, and his altogether dashing life (chasing Pancho Villa across Mexico, service with the BEF, world travels) he is not mentioned in ANY of the huge amount of literature concerning the 4th (Marine) Brigade in WW1.   Through the good offices of the Forum and members such as yourself, his story will be told again.

Edited 10 March , 2019 by dutchbarge

[JulianR]

Bill,

 

Thanks for that.

 

I had a thought and checked Forces War Records just in case he served as MacKnight.  There are no obvious individuals under that name.

 

Another thought, that if he was serving under a nom de guerre to get round the fact he was American and make it hard for him to be traced, did he change his nationality to Canadian?  To British ears there would be no difference between American and Canadian accents.  Can you distinguish between the various accents in the UK, unless you were brought up here?

 

Having said that I do not know how strict the recruiting office would have been in asking for proof of nationality, especially if you went as an officer.

[JulianR]

Cannot find any thing in the TNA catalogue, all that can be said is the record may not have survived

[dutchbarge]

Thanks for your continued help.  I've discovered that Peirce's mother, Abby Berry Blanche Carman was married to a Rhodes MacKnight, a writer/critic/journalist of some note in NYC.  In the absence of marriage licenses, accurate family trees, ect., and considering that Reginald's middle names were Carman MacKnight, that this was her first marriage, that MacKnight was his birth father and that Rex assumed the name of her second husband, Peirce.  So Rex may have enlisted under the name of MacKnight as this was his father's name.  There are 3 reference on Ancestry.com for a Reginald C Peirce under Canadian passenger lists 1865-1935, but alas I'm too cheap to spring for Ancestry's Global package.  However, as it was a short hop to Canada from NYC he might well have sailed from there to Europe in 1914.  This raises the question of whether or not he'd have to have been in the UK to join the colors or could he have joined in France.  Or perhaps he joined in Canada.  I've drawn a blank with the CEF online files with either Peirce, Carman or MacKnight.  A very interesting mystery. Cheers, Bill 

 

PS: regarding UK accents.  I don't think anyone who has watched 'A Hard Days Night' would ever mistake a Liverpool accent, but I take your point.  Funny, I had pictured Peirce spelling his name for a Cockney recruiter, P, E, I, R, C, E,  and having the recruiter write down, P, E, A, R, C, E.

 

PPS: Peirce's birth parents were married 7 October 1886 and Rex was born 27 April 1887....6 mo.s 3 weeks later.  Even back then people could do the math, perhaps this was the reason that Rex's stepfather had him off to military school.....................and why the USMC rejected his application for a captaincy in the regular USMC.................

Edited 11 March , 2019 by dutchbarge

[seaJane]

On 10/03/2019 at 14:29, dutchbarge said:

While it was illegal (if not treasonous) for a US citizen to serve a foreign government US authorities seem to have turned a blind eye.  So it may well have been him in the Field Ambulance. 

I think I read in Lyn Macdonald's 'Flowers of No Man's Land' that medical staff were considered non-combatants and could therefore get away with it.

[dutchbarge]

Hello seaJane,  This from the US State Department,

 

 In Wiborg v. U.S. , 163 U.S. 632 (1896), the Supreme Court endorsed a lower court ruling that it was not a crime under U.S. law for an individual to go abroad for the purpose of enlisting in a foreign army; however, when someone has been recruited or hired in the United States, a violation may have occurred. 

 

The above illustrates that government thinking was just as nonsensical in 1896 as it is today (the above decision is still being cited......currently as precedent for allowing US citizens who joined ISIS to be repatriated to the US).  While the above court decision no doubt motivated most Americans to follow the letter of the law (seek a recruitment office in Canada willing to turn a blind eye, or hop a ship to Europe and see what happened) many American young men were already 'over there' as the commencement of hostilities coincided with the well heeled college boy's summer holiday.  Legalities aside, the US was a covert Ally anyway and most politicians and titans of Wall Street privately lauded those who went to fight for England (in the parlance of the times) and France.  President Wilson saw in an overt American entry into the war (he originally thought it could be done without sending the army) an opportunity for both the US and himself (mostly for himself.....he was pompous, arrogant, in need of constant adulation and utterly feckless) to enter the world stage and shape history.  While most Americans were against US involvement (covert or overt) US business had been financing the Allied war effort from 1915 onwards.  Without US food, munitions and credit, the Allies would have been scuppered.  While some US business interests were actually sympathetic to the plight of the Allied nations, all profited enormously.  There is compelling evidence to suggest that the real reason the US overtly entered the war in 1917 was (forget freedom of the seas, the Zimmerman letter or the sinkinf of the Lusitania) was a growing fear in the US that the Allies might well lose the war with a resultant ruinous (to the US) Allied debt default and because Wilson by this time had come to believe he could only get his place on the world stage (pitching the League of Nations and self determination for all peoples) if the US was seen to have defeated Germany by force of US arms.  But I digress.  Except for a few high-minded (and amazingly prescient) socialist leaning members of the government nobody much minded if a few young men went off for a European adventure.  The 'unpatriotic ilk' who (and rightly so IMO) pointed out that it was a violation of American neutrality for any US citizen to give aid and comfort to any belligerent nation, including caring for their sick and wounded.  Ditto US business financing the Allied war effort. Of course these voices of reason were shouted down and soon most political and business heavy weights could boast of a son doing his bit to help England or France (the Vanderbilts virtually financed the AFS).  And in due course 116,5000 American boys would pay the ultimate price of securing the Allied debt (most of which was never repaid) and Wilson his place on the world stage (at Versailles).  Sorry, I digress further.  Back to Rex who claimed, under oath as a Marine Corps officer (and as a gentleman) that in the 'Winter 1914-1915' he had 'Military service' with the "British Exped. Force (France).  I've got to believe him.....I just wish I could find more than circumstantial collaborating documentation.  Cheers, Bill

Edited 13 March , 2019 by dutchbarge

[Keith Brannen]

Canadian passenger lists 1881-1922 are available for free at familysearch.org (have to sign up for a free account) and contain the images:

https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1823240

 They only show arrivals, not departures, so probably won't help with your search.

[dutchbarge]

Thanks for the link, Keith, I'll give it a shot today.  Cheers, Bill

[seaJane]

Thanks for the explanation Bill!

[dutchbarge]

 

 

MYSTERY SOLVED!!!!!!

 

From The Archives of the American Hospital of Paris, August 1914 to April 1915, " The first ten cars (ambulances)......were offered to the Red Cross Service of the British Army and commenced its work in November 1914.  In this period of service, extending over about two months, this unit carried 1846 wounded to base hospitals......"

 

From Gentleman Volunteers, by Arlen Hansen, page 18, "By February of 1915, the British Army started allowing British Red Cross Groups to work the British Expeditionary Force's advanced dressing stations".  "The Red Cross men were nervy beyond belief and casualties among them very high, even among the ambulance drivers who run up in daylight to the second line of trenches".

 

From The Archives of the American Hospital of Paris, August 1914 to April 1915, "24 November (1914) Drivers: ..............R. C. M. Peirce............

 

So Peirce, using his real name, did spend the winter of 1914-1915 with the BEF as an ambulance driver.  I wonder if he was awarded the British War Medal?

 

Thanks for everyone's help........the Forum and its members have never let me down!

 

Cheers, Bill

 

 

Edited 13 March , 2019 by dutchbarge

[Mitch Owens]

Greetings, Might anyone be able to help re Peirce's wife, Isabel Peirce (later Mrs Winthrop Curtis Bradley)? Have been flummoxed re her maiden name (may have begun with a T), birthdate, death date, marriage date to Peirce, et cetera. (I seem to have exhausted the possibilities at ancestry.com but hope springs eternal.) She was an interior decorator for a period of time, with an office in New York City. Her best-known project was Government House, The Bahamas, for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Many thanks.

[Mitch Owens]

Found it: Pearce married the former Mrs Eugene Harriman Vredenburgh, née Isabel Odgen Trunkett (born NYC, NY, 1889). She later married, as her third husband, around 1938, Winthrop Curtis Bradley, and seems to have died sometime in the 1970s.

[Mitch Owens]

Yes, Reginald Carman McKnight was indeed adopted (or at least took the name of) his stepfather, John Peirce. His stepbrother John Royden Peirce was an inventor who became one of IBM's most important engineers. 

[Mitch Owens]

Correction: Peirce's wife's first husband was Eugene Harramond Vredenburgh