By Richard O Jones
Through the years, Hamilton had many brave men join the military and fight for the America cause on foreign soil, but few war stories include ticker tape parades and national headlines for their heroic acts.
The story of Corliss Hooven Griffis, a veteran of World War I, exceeds includes a daring adventure back to Germany after the war that made national headlines.
Griffis’s father was the president of the American Frog and Switch Co. of Hamilton and his mother was of the Hooven family, reflected by his first and middle names. But his pedigree from industrial Hamilton didn’t deter him from doing his duty and going beyond. “Griffis saw real service overseas,” reported the Hamilton Daily News, “and was gassed. In severe fighting at the front as a Sergeant in the Eightythird Division, the outfit he trained and went across with from Camp Sherman, he fell victim to the fumes of the poisonous vapor launched by the enemy and before he could recover and rejoin the division the armistice ended his chance to retaliate. Returning to Hamilton, Griffis was the first Adjutant of the Durwin Post of the American Legion formed there. He was also a First Lieutenant in the Adjutant General’s Office of the Ohio National Guard.”
After defeating “the Hun,” Griffis found another nemesis in the body of one Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, who was also the scion of American industry. His grandfather founded the Louis Bergdoll & Sons Brewing Company of Philadelphia, from whom “Groff” inherited a million dollars while in his 20s. Rather than join the family business or put his money to good use, Groff became somewhat famous as an amateur aviator and record-setting race car driver. He was also a first-class rich brat and world-class slacker. Before the war, his reckless driving caused an accident that injured six people in an incident that ended with Groff knocking down a policeman. He was acquitted.
And when it came time for him to serve his country in the war, he decided to go to Mexico instead and avoid the draft. Two years later, after the war in May 1920, Groff was arrested at his family’s mansion in Philadelphia when federal officials found him hiding in a bay window box, covered with blankets. He was to face a court martial and a possible death penalty, but his family connections earned him a chance to await trial from the comfort of home instead of prison. He left the disciplinary barracks at Fort Jay on Governors Island, New York, in a jolly mood and without handcuffs, regaling his guards with stories of his exploits. The guards were to remain with him at the family estate and they were, the papers said, “entertained royally” playing billiards, guffawing at his Shakespeare parodies, and generally being lulled into enough complacency that no one followed him when he left the room to answer a phone call. He didn’t come back, and was next seen in the town of Eberbach, living the high life on the lam in a hotel owned by his uncle and a hero to the locals for refusing to take up arms against the Germans.
Meanwhile, the true war hero Griffis took a job with a newspaper syndicate to cover the post-war situation there, although there are some vague indications in newspaper accounts of what followed that the newspaper job was just a cover and Griffis was in the employ of the government or perhaps the American Legion. To the end, Griffis claimed his mission was self-financed and inspired by his visit to the battlefields. “The sight of those white crosses made me decide to bring Bergdoll back to the country he dishonored in order that he might be punished,” he said later. “It angered me to know that Bergdoll was living on the fat of the land while hundreds of American soldiers were lying under those crosses.”
On August 11, 1923, Griffis led a corps of six hired men, including a Russian prince and a French detective, armed with “revolvers, ropes, lead clubs and chloroform” in an assault on Groff Bergdoll’s hotel room in Eberbach. Two of the men hid in the room and emerged from a closet while Bergdoll was undressing. Bergdoll was armed and both men were shot, one fatally. From there, the mission turned to chaos and four of the remaining men, including Griffis, were arrested by German police. Bergdoll, he claimed, suffered a severe beating at their hands. In their possession was an American automobile formerly owned by the U.S. Army, rope ladders, blackjacks, and a supply of opiates. Because Bergdoll had been spending lavishly in Eberbach and was popular with the locals, even overtures from the State Department could not get Griffis and his cohorts out of jail. The plan had been to kidnap the deserter, transport him to more friendly soil in Paris, and from there bring him to justice in a court martial.
Nothing was heard from Griffis for two weeks after his arrest, until an American journalist tracked his party down in a prison in Wurzburg and was granted an interview in the presence of German officers. When asked if he had anything to say to the folks back home, Griffis said, “Tell them that I love my country better than life.” The prisoners were served soup three times a day and one sausage a week. Griffis was facing a trial and a possible 20 year sentence for attempted kidnapping and other charges.
In January 1924, a committee based in Chicago organized a petition drive containing 2,086,764 signatures–including 19 governors, 17 Congressmen and 208 mayors–that was presented to the German government asking for Griffis’s release. He said it was because of this and other gestures of support from the United States that he received a relatively light sentence of the time he had already spent in jail and a lifetime banishment from Germany. He was deported as “undesirable.”
When he returned to the United States in February 1924, he was received a hero. No fewer than 15 movie cameras and 35 still photographers greeted him as he stepped from the boat in New York harbor. The cameras and accolades followed him on a sort of victory tour that took him to Chicago before he arrived in Hamilton on February 15. A parade that included a marching band followed him to the family home on B Street, and the Chamber of Commerce held a banquet in his honor that evening.
Griffis remained humbled and low-key by the entire experience. “I intend to be as good an American as I can be and live quietly in my own country.”