Chapter 2.  Kink’s War

One of Clifford’s friends, Arthur Bradshaw, went to Ohio to enlist in the Army on April 17, 1918. On April 25, 1918, Clifford enlisted in Ohio as a member of Battery C of the 134^th Field Artillery Regiment, 37^th Division. Two months later, he and Arthur, who was in the same regiment, Battery D, shipped out as privates from Brooklyn, New York, to Brest, France, on the USS Nestor along with 117 other men in the 134^th FA.

Whatever his motivations and aspirations had been in enlisting, Clifford found unrelenting horror and devastation in Europe that made Fontanet’s tragedy pale in comparison. He and Arthur fought in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive along with a million American soldiers—a 47-day campaign that ended a war that killed tens of thousands and devastated the towns, homes, and farms in its path.

The Meuse-Argonne Offensive was the largest operation of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. It is still the deadliest campaign in American history, resulting in over 26,000 soldiers being killed-in-action. The number of graves in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial in Romagne, France, is far larger than the number in the much better-known World War II Normandy American Cemetery in France, where Clifford’s nephew Frank Bouillez would be buried 25 years later in 1943.

The war ended on November 11, 1918, and Clifford’s unit deployed to Germany, giving him a few months to make a personal assessment of his mother’s parents’ homeland—the country he had helped drive out of his father’s homeland. On Mar 20, 1919, Kink, Arthur, and their comrades departed Brest on the USS President Grant to return to Camp Sherman in Ohio, where the 134^th disbanded on April 10, 1919.

Clifford’s experiences were not unusual for American men who served in World War I—the war to end all wars—and who came home to their old lives. He returned to Indiana, and like his brothers and many other men in the Fontanet area, Kink liked to drink. Maybe his time at war had even increased his appreciation of the numbing effect alcohol can have on the human brain.

Fontanet’s Civil War veterans originally organized and ran a picnic in 1890 that featured soup beans and cornbread that the veterans cooked onsite and served to family, friends, and neighbors. Initially the event was held near the DuPont Powder Mill but after the mill exploded, the picnic moved to a site known as Holloway Grove. Crowds of spectators would gather around a row of sweating veterans stirring huge kettles of beans cooking over woodfires. As the years went by, other men from the town, such as Clifford’s nephew Herschel, would take over the cooking at the event.

The picnic evolved into a three-day festival called the Bean Dinner that brought people from throughout the area together over the last weekend in August to meet up with friends and family, eat beans and cornbread still prepared onsite, dance to a live band, enjoy carnival rides, lose money at rigged games of "skill," and drink. On Saturday night of the event, the crowd would grow so large that it would be hard to move without bumping into someone.

The Bouillez family and everyone they knew looked forward to and attended the Bean Dinner year after year. The event was such a highlight in Fontanet that kids there and nearby thought of it as summer’s answer to winter’s Christmas. Adults would look forward to it as an opportunity to reunite with friends and family that they hadn’t seen since the previous year.

No doubt that in August 1919 Kink, who had only been home a few months, was particularly eager to head up to the Bean Dinner to reacquaint himself with old friends and dance with a pretty girl or two. What a change it was for him compared to what he had been doing in Europe the previous year!