Orphans of the Front in World War I

By Elizabeth M. Motich

“One of the most heartening and cheering things about this whole business of war making is the infinite capacity for mutual friendship that exists between the children of France and the soldiers of America.” —The Stars and Stripes: American Expeditionary Forces Newspaper, November 29, 1918

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Lucien Jonas, “1778-1783, America Owes France the Most Unalterable Gratitude: 1917–French Comrade, Your Children Shall Be as Our Children,” UNT Libraries, US Government Documents Division

Typically, when we commemorate World War I, we think of great battles and haunting scenes of European cities’ destruction. The stories of the war’s victims, orphaned children from France and Belgium, are now often forgotten. Although orphaned children are seldom mentioned today, they played an important role in boosting troop morale and lending humanity to the war’s devastation. Their images decorated posters and their stories were told in advertisements in well-known newspapers like The New York Times. These orphaned “Children of the Frontier” as they were called in France and Belgium had truly incredible stories. The relief efforts that took place to assist the children were even more extraordinary, brought about by thousands of concerned citizens from France, Britain, and America.

Servicemen of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) encountered a multitude of orphaned children when they joined the war in 1917. Prior to that date, relief organizations’ advertisements estimated that as many as 200,000 children were orphaned or left with one parent in France. Volunteer Red Cross war nurse and orphans’ relief worker Alma A. Clarke’s French scrapbook features many images of children evacuating along a trail from Normandy to Versailles, stopping at major railway depots like the Gare du Nord to be collected and sent to orphanages. Many of these orphanages were supervised by nuns and maintained by Catholic charities.

Grassroots orphans’ relief efforts sprang up in France as early as 1914. A 1916 advertisement in The New York Times stated that in August of 1914, a group of drafted factory workers demanded that an organization should be formed to care for their potentially parent-less children. This first charity was founded by M. Vilta, the head of the Paris Université Populaire. It was known as the Association Les Orphelins de la Guerre (War Orphans’ Association), a society “founded in the most informal fashion, without rules, regulations, funds or officers to meet the pressing need of a group of mechanics” to aid French and Belgian children from underprivileged backgrounds.

Children of the society were reportedly housed in haphazard accommodations, “in bakers’ beds, in train conductors’ beds, in any corner where a good woman was found who would give them a scrap of food.” Despite this strange housing, the charities’ advertisement reported that the children soon received more than adequate care, becoming educated and learning trades appropriate to their genders. Most of the children in Clarke’s images and other photographs appear to be happy and well-fed despite their uprooting and the horrors that they may have witnessed. Newspaper advertisements and one British nurse’s letters describe the tragic sights of bombed houses and burning villages young children viewed in the hardest hit area of Ypres, France during 1915-1917.

Bain News Service, "Belgian Orphans Leaving Paris for Country Homes, 1914," Library of Congress
Bain News Service, “Belgian Orphans Leaving Paris for Country Homes, 1914,” Library of Congress

What the French and Belgian children may not have known was that their rescue, care and supervision reached across the Atlantic ocean, supported by a broad network of charitable donors and private citizens. A committee of eminent United States figures including philanthropist William D. Guthrie, Catholic Archbishop John Cardinal Farley, US Supreme Court Chief Justice Howard Douglass White, and French ambassador William H. Sharp (among other dignitaries) spearheaded one of these organizations, the American Society for the Relief of French War Orphans, which solicited funds from Yale University.

In August of 1914, a group of New York-based philanthropists, and several former French residents including August F. Jaccacci, Mrs. Cooper Hewitt and Frederick René Coudert Jr. began the most wide-reaching orphans’ relief organizations, the Franco-American Committee for the Protection of Children of the Frontier. The Committee was greatly assisted by the Service de Transport France-Amerique, a shipping service for transferring goods across the ocean to help the French, and by the American Red Cross. The children were also aided by the Saint Vincent de Paul Catholic charity in Paris.

American relief workers and wealthy philanthropists assisted in supplying French and Belgian children with goods. The Committee’s outreach efforts were substantial. Many small American communities banded together to help the orphans. Even American children from the “domestic science departments of many schools” contributed provisions and supplies to the war orphans. Women throughout the United States formed sewing circles and contributed knitted garments for the orphans. By December 1, 1917, the Committee recorded that they had aided 1,365 children.

Charles H. Foerster, "Guerre 1914-15-16 Journee Nationale Des Orphelins," Library of Congress
Charles H. Foerster, “Guerre 1914-15-16 Journee Nationale Des Orphelins,” Library of Congress

The Committee’s fundraising efforts began to spread and advertisements were printed in publications like the Chicago Tribune. The Chicago Tribune advertisement, similar to the ad produced by the Association Les Orphelins de la Guerre stated that children from the Franco-American Committee were housed in “colonies…established in country places which kind-hearted French people have loaned for [the orphans’] use.” The “country places” mentioned were far-flung locations outside urban centers like Normandy, Versailles, and Touraine, although orphans also inhabited residences in Paris. Children had fled from areas closest to the Front, such as Ypres and Poperinge.

Funds collected from the solicitation on the orphans’ behalf by the American public through the newspaper and magazine advertisements were delivered to orphanages and ensured that they received medical care and food. Each orphan’s care and education reportedly cost “16 cents a day.”

In addition to these relief agencies’ fundraising campaigns, the US Red Cross hosted several large-scale Child Welfare Expositions in Saint Etienne, Lyons, and Marseilles in 1917 to raise awareness and funds for children’s and maternal health initiatives. Orphans’ care and maintenance was not only valuable to the Belgian and French children and their families; relief efforts to aid the orphans also served the important purpose of boosting troop morale.

French orphans like the children shown in this newsreel clip were unlikely mascots for American soldiers at the Front. However, toward the end of the war, numerous editions of the American Stars and Stripes American Expeditionary Forces’ official newspaper discuss The Red Cross’s orphan relief campaigns and suggests ways that individual soldiers could help orphaned children. The presence of cared for children in occupied areas was mutually beneficial, Stars and Stripes stated; soldiers were reminded of their children at home and orphans received food and candy from the Allied troops. Army regiments and companies went so far as to adopt children as official mascots and ensure their long-term care. A columnist for the April 12, 1918 Stars and Stripes reported that 38 children were adopted by various Infantry companies and one sergeant potential to be aided throughout their childhoods.

Orphaned children were a sad reminder of destruction along the Western Front in the Great War. Despite the children’s tragic circumstances, the efforts of hundreds of private citizens, American companies, philanthropists, religious charities, and members of the Red Cross and US Army resulted in a huge international campaign to ensure that these children of Belgium and France would be cared for, even in the midst of war.

Bibliography and Works Cited:

For more information about orphans in World War I, please view the following list of resources:

“Appeal for Children of French Soldiers Who Have Died In The Defense of France”. Yale Alumni Weekly. Sept. 22, 1916, vol. XXVI, no. 1, 475.

“Children of the Frontier: Comite Franco-Americain pour la protection des Enfants de la Frontiere, Third Annual Report”. Jan. 1, 1918. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/childrenoffronti00comi/childrenoffronti00comi_djvu.txt

“The Child Welfare Exposition”. Till I’ve Done All That I Can…http://almaaclarke.omeka.net/exhibits/show/the-child-welfare-exposition–/the-child-welfare-exposition

Clarke, Alma A. “French WWI Scrapbook”. Bryn Mawr College Special Collections Library. http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/almaclarke/id/450

“Gare du Nord”. Paris-Architecture.info.http://www.paris-architecture.info/PA-080.htm

“French War Orphans To Be Made Good Citizens”. New York Times. Feb. 6, 1916, v, p. 10.

McCutcheon, John T. “Franco-American Committee for Protection of the Frontier Children”. Chicago Tribune. Nov. 4, 1915. http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1915/11/04/page/13/article/franco-american-committee-for-protection-of-the-frontier-children

33 More War Waifs Adopted As Mascots By American Units,” Stars and Stripes, Image 3, Edition 1, Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/resource/sn88075768/1918-04-12/ed-1/?sp=1

“294 War Orphans Taken By A.E.F. In Banner Week of Campaign,” Stars and Stripes, Image 3, Edition 1, Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/resource/sn88075768/1918-11-29/ed-1/?sp=3

Storr, Katherine Excluded from the Record: Women, Refugees, and Relief: 1914-1929. Bern: Peter Lang, 2010, 127-129.

Young, Robert J., Editor. Under Siege: Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000, 61-63.

“US Servicemen with Adopted French Children in Brest, France at the Close of World War I,” CriticalPast, YouTube.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXrb1gbDZnk


Bibliography and Works Cited:

“French War Orphans To Be Made Good Citizens,” New York Times, Feb. 6, 1916, v, p. 10.

 

“Appeal for Children of French Soldiers Who Have Died In The Defense of France,” Yale Alumni Weekly, Sept. 22, 1916, vol. XXVI, no. 1, 475.

Alma A. Clarke, “French WWI Scrapbook,” Bryn Mawr College Special Collections Library, accessed November 19, 2015, http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/almaclarke/id/450

“Gare du Nord,” Paris-Architecture.info, accessed November 19, 2015, http://www.paris-architecture.info/PA-080.htm

“French War Orphans,” New York Times, Feb. 6, 1916.

“French War Orphans,” New York Times. See also: Robert J. Young, ed., Under Siege: Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), 61-63.

“French War Orphans,” New York Times, Feb. 6, 1916.

Katherine Storr, Excluded from the Record: Women, Refugees, and Relief: 1914-1929 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010), 127-129.

“Appeal for French Children of Soldiers,” Yale Weekly, Sept. 22, 1916.

“Children of the Frontier: Comite Franco-Americain pour la protection des Enfants de la Frontiere, Third Annual Report,” Jan. 1, 1918, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/stream/childrenoffronti00comi/childrenoffronti00comi_djvu.txt

“Children of the Frontier”, 17.

“Children of the Frontier”, 15.

“Children of the Frontier”, 17-18.

John T. McCutcheon, “Franco-American Committee for Protection of the Frontier Children,” Chicago Tribune, Nov. 4, 1915, accessed November 19, 2015, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1915/11/04/page/13/article/franco-american-committee-for-protection-of-the-frontier-children

“Franco-American Committee,” Nov. 4, 1915.

“Franco-American Committee,” Nov. 4, 1915.

“The Child Welfare Exposition”. Till I’ve Done All That I Can…http://almaaclarke.omeka.net/exhibits/show/the-child-welfare-exposition–/the-child-welfare-exposition

“294 War Orphans Taken By A.E.F. In Banner Week of Campaign,” Stars and Stripes, Image 3, Edition 1, Library of Congress, accessed November 19, 2015, http://www.loc.gov/resource/sn88075768/1918-11-29/ed-1/?sp=3

“33 More War Waifs Adopted As Mascots By American Units,” Stars and Stripes, Image 3, Edition 1, Library of Congress, accessed November 19, 2015, http://www.loc.gov/resource/sn88075768/1918-04-12/ed-1/?sp=1

 

 

“French War Orphans To Be Made Good Citizens,” New York Times, Feb. 6, 1916, v, p. 10.