College archives reveal war hero

by SID COMINGS

News-Tribune columnist

The little boy plays with his cars and trucks in the sandy soil and pine needles in front of the cottage his family rents for a two-week summer vacation. But, happy as he is playing there, little boys need to explore.

He wonders what Mr. Gove is doing, so he looks next door and sees the elderly man standing on his dock studying the water. He walks to the dock and asks Mr. Gove what he is sprinkling on the water.

Mr. Gove answers, saying, "Why, Sidney, these are oatmeal flakes. I use them to attract minnows; then I use this net to catch them so I can go fishing."

Perhaps 15 years later, my father and father-in-law visit at a family picnic, and the name Floyd Gove comes up. They talk of Floyd Gove's service in the First World War.

Many years later, I took the time to search through a box of Floyd Gove's papers at the Oberlin College archives. There are quite a few papers, as he taught education at Oberlin College for more than 30 years. When I found a copy of Gove's "Armistice Day 1933" assembly address, my eyes lit up. It is a four-page speech, typed, single-spaced.

In it Gove describes his life in the trenches during the First World War. It is an eye-opening speech for those who have never found themselves in harm's way, and that includes me as well as my writing-review students. Every semester I ask them to write a paper comparing their civilian life to Gove's military life.

On the subject of food, for instance, Gove tells of eating half-cooked goat meat as he crosses the Atlantic on an Australian refrigerator boat, a journey that takes 14 days and 14 nights. Gove was one of 3,600 soldiers crowded below deck in one large compartment with no portholes and just two hatchways. Incidentally, those same benches they ate on during the day, they slept on at night.

So far as footwear is concerned, he was issued only one pair of hobnail boots, which he was required to wear 24/7. Soldiers who removed their boots were subject to court martial. As Gove describes it, marching 10 hours a day in hobnail shoes gave real significance to the term "tenderfoot."

Gove also mentions that he saved a bit of his coffee each morning with which to shave so that his gas mask would fit snugly. On other matters of personal hygiene, my students were amazed to learn that Gove once went six weeks without bathing.

While Gove does not speak directly of actual combat, he touches upon it by mentioning barrages, snipers, gas attacks, hand grenades, machine gunners, and "the deafening roar of artillery shells." He also describes taking part in the final assault on the Germans' vaunted Hindenberg Line.

When I was a youngster, Mr. Gove was my friend for two weeks each summer at beautiful Walloon Lake, Mich. His eyes sparkled when he showed me his collection of Petoskey stones, and he would usually find something to chuckle about.

Mr. Gove valued tranquility, so he used an old-fashioned row boat to get around the lake. His son, Don, used a sailboat. For a period of a year and a half, he heard enough noise to last him a lifetime. He was one of just 29 survivors in his company. As Mr. Gove remembered his fallen friends, perhaps he found solace in lines such as these from the Robert Service poem, "Young Fellow My Lad":

So you'll live, you'll live, Young Fellow My Lad

In the gleam of the evening star,

In the wood-note wild and the laugh of a child

In all sweet things that are.

And you'll never die, my wonderful boy

While life is noble and true;

For all our beauty and hope and joy

We will owe to our lads like you.