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120-410: William March (September 18, 1893 – May 15, 1954) was an American writer of psychological fiction and a highly decorated U.S. Marine . The author of six novels and four short-story collections, March was praised by critics but never attained great popularity. He has also been recently described by one prominent film historian as "a closeted, and tormented, gay man." March grew up in rural Alabama in

240-461: A sergeant in Co F, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines , 4th Brigade of Marines, Second Division of the U.S. Army Expeditionary Force. March's company took part in every major engagement in which American troops were involved, incurring heavy casualties. As a member of the 5th Marines , March saw his first action on the old Verdun battlefield near Les Éparges and shortly afterwards at Belleau Wood , where he

360-756: A March collection, Trial Balance: The Collected Short Stories of William March , in 1945, and according to Marjorie Farber, in The Kenyon Review , the stories pack "big ideas...elaborately in tiny anecdotal satires". March, she says, is "the dramatist of ideas, titles, puns--a comedian's Comedian, bearing perhaps the same relation to fiction as Stevens bears to poetry. But all the same it's astonishing what variety of quiet desperation and low misery and high comedy he manages to encompass in this book. Let's skip his defects, shall we? I haven't nearly room enough for all his virtues." This critical acclaim notwithstanding, in 1947, after years of depression from his experiences in

480-457: A Royal Navy destroyer, HMS  Wizard . The two vessels were pulled into contact with each other when Wizard tried to pass the much larger Kronprinz Wilhelm . Wizard sustained heavy damage, but Kronprinz Wilhelm escaped relatively unharmed. In September 1902, captained by August Richter, Kronprinz Wilhelm won the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing yet from Cherbourg to New York in

600-467: A bathroom, and 8 staterooms with an en-suite bathroom. In 1902, Prince Heinrich of Prussia (1862–1929) —brother of Kaiser Wilhelm II—made a state visit to New York, where he was received by President Theodore Roosevelt . Media-oriented, he sailed on the new, impressive Kronprinz Wilhelm , on which a huge number of reporters could accompany him, and not the imperial yacht. There were also 300 passengers and 700 steerage passengers aboard. This state visit

720-432: A boarding party, or by pretending to be a ship in distress or posing as a ship of a friendly nationality and luring unsuspecting prey to her in that way. The targeted ships were usually caught by surprise (some did not even yet know that war had been declared), and their captain had to make the quick decision of whether to run, fight, or surrender. Since the captured ships were no match in speed, and usually had few or no arms,

840-410: A control panel in the map room to close or open the 20 watertight doors. If a door was closed, this was shown by a lamp. This security system alone needed 3.2 km (2.0 mi) of special cables and 1.2 km (0.75 mi) of normal cables. At one point in 1907 the ship rammed an iceberg and suffered a crushed bow, but was still able to complete her voyage. On 18 September 1901 Kronprinz Wilhelm

960-677: A counterattack, the enemy having advanced to within 300 meters of the first aid station, he immediately entered the engagement and though wounded refused to be evacuated until the Germans were thrown back". As a result of his actions, March received the French Croix de Guerre with Palm and the Army Distinguished Service Cross for valor (the Distinguished Service Cross is the second highest Army decoration, next only to

1080-413: A crash course in their duties in a warship and in general naval discipline. A "prize crew" was selected and trained in the techniques of boarding captured vessels (prizes), inspecting cargo and ship's papers, and using explosive charges to sink captured ships. Finally, all members of the crew were outfitted in some semblance of a naval uniform. The crew worked at a feverish pace in order to be ready, and by

1200-399: A direct hit, either as exposition of a problem or as a work of art. Venturing a prediction and a glance over the shoulder: no more satisfactory novel will be written in 1954 or has turned up in recent memory." Although March lived long enough to see the critical praise bestowed upon the novel and hear of its commercial success, he died before the novel's full impact became apparent. Referring to

1320-456: A family so poor that he could not finish high school, and he did not earn a high school equivalency until he was 20. He later studied law but was again unable to afford to finish his studies. In 1917, while working in a Manhattan law office, he volunteered for the U.S. Marine Corps and saw action in World War I , for which he was decorated with some of the highest honors—the French Croix de Guerre ,

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1440-581: A greater choice of neutral ports in which to intern his ship if she should find herself unable to replenish her supplies from captured ships. On the voyage to the Azores and thence to the South American coast, Kronprinz Wilhelm had to avoid contact with all shipping since she was not ready to embark upon her mission raiding Allied commerce. The guns had to be emplaced and a target for gunnery practice constructed. The crew—mostly reservists and civilians—received

1560-631: A law firm in Mobile. Soon, however, he became the personal secretary of John B. Waterman, of whose newly founded and quickly growing shipping company, the Waterman Steamship Corporation , he eventually became vice-president. In 1924, he was promoted to traffic manager. In 1926, the company opened an office in Memphis, Tennessee , which March supervised; he spent two years in Memphis and became involved in

1680-412: A more pressing need—the transportation of troops and supplies to Europe. The ship completed preparations by 29 September and put to sea that same day for her first voyage. For the next four weeks, she remained close to American Eastern Seaboard , visiting Hampton Roads, Virginia and New York City in addition to Philadelphia. On 31 October, she stood out of New York for her first transatlantic voyage under

1800-660: A move to London, March finished his third novel, The Tallons , the second in his "Pearl County" series. Reviews in the UK were generally positive, more so than in the United States. Psychological problems that had already bothered him in Germany worsened in London, and he became a patient of psychoanalyst Edward Glover , who was able to cure March's throat paralysis, diagnosing it as a hysterical condition. (March dedicated The Tallons to him, "as

1920-665: A number of different stories under different pseudonyms; the one that got published first decided his literary name. "The Holly Wreath" was his first publication; it appeared under the name of William March in The Forum , a literary magazine from New York, in September 1929. The Forum would publish more of his stories, as did Contempo: A Review of Books and Personalities , Prairie Schooner , and other literary magazines. His stories were included in two annual anthologies of short fiction, Edward O'Brien's The Best American Short Stories and

2040-451: A republication of the book in 1989, that March's "act of writing Company K , in effect reliving his very painful memories, was itself an act of tremendous courage, equal to or greater than whatever it was that earned him the Distinguished Service Cross, Navy Cross and French Croix de Guerre." Contemporary critics praised the powerful effect of March's novel technique of multiple points of view ; already in 1935 (in an essay on new techniques in

2160-674: A short repair period in late July and early August, the ship resumed duty transporting troops to Europe. On 8 September 1918, Captain Yates Stirling Jr. transferred command to Captain Cyrus R. Miller. Between late August and the Armistice on 11 November, Von Steuben made three more round-trip voyages carrying troops to France and returning the sick and wounded to the US. Though all three were peaceful passages by wartime standards, they were not uneventful. On

2280-461: A slight recompense for the gray hairs I have put in his head".) While in London March became acquainted with a number of literary characters, leaving more of his Waterman work to his subordinates. In 1937, he returned to the US and within two years resigned his position to concentrate more on his writing, which by then was a full-time occupation; he had been paid partly in stock and could live well off

2400-810: A small boarding house in Brooklyn, found work as a clerk in the Manhattan law firm of Nevins, Brett and Kellog, and attended plays. On June 5, 1917, March registered for military service, a little over a month after the U.S. entered World War I. He volunteered for the U.S. Marines on July 25, and after completing his training on Parris Island was shipped to France in February 1918. Along with two other future World War I literary figures, John W. Thomason and Laurence Stallings ), March embarked on USS Von Steuben at Philadelphia . He reached France in March 1918 and served as

2520-529: A social hall, a music room, smoking room, and library. The dining room could seat 414 and was topped by a glass skylight set within a cupola. The walls consisted of green and bronze panels, while the ceilings were painted with allegories of the four seasons, day and night, etc. The library and smoking room were both decorated in the Renaissance style . The Smoking Room was crowned by a glass dome and paneled and furnished in blue-stained oak, with oak beams supporting

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2640-539: A steady acquisition of works by Soutine, Joseph Glasco , Picasso, and Georges Rouault . He continued this friendship with routine visits to New York between 1949 and 1953, until ailing health prevented him from further travels. In late 1950, March permanently left Mobile and purchased a Creole cottage on Dumaine Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was here that he composed his last two novels, October Island (1952) and The Bad Seed (1954). March viewed

2760-486: A succession of bright days that go on forever. Sometimes the knowledge comes with the repudiation and quick revolt that such injustice awaits us, sometimes with fear that dries the mouth and closes the eyes for an instant, sometimes with servile weariness, an acquiescence more dreadful than fear. The knowledge that my own end was near came with pain, and afterwards astonishment, with the conventional heart attack, from which, I've been told, I've made an excellent recovery. March

2880-466: A sunken Allied ship. About 20 minutes later, her lookouts reported the wake of a torpedo approaching her bow from abaft the port beam. The gun crews manned their stations and began firing at the torpedo while Captain Stirling ordered the wheel hard to starboard and all engines full astern in an effort to avoid the torpedo. Meanwhile, some of the gunners had shifted their attention to what they thought to be

3000-538: A time of five days, 11 hours, 57 minutes, with an average speed of 23.09  kn (42.76 km/h; 26.57 mph). In her time as a passenger liner, many famous international personalities sailed on Kronprinz Wilhelm . These included the lawyer and politician Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler (1903), the opera singer Lillian Blauvelt (1903), the theatrical manager and producer Charles Frohman (1904) who died in 1915 aboard RMS  Lusitania ; businessman John Jacob Astor (1906) who died in 1912 aboard RMS  Titanic ;

3120-489: A tragic accident occurred. The shell from one of her 5-inch guns exploded immediately upon leaving the barrel, and fragments struck three sailors. One died instantly, and the other two succumbed to their wounds later that night. Von Steuben coaled at Bermuda on 12–13 March and arrived at Norfolk on 16 March. After repairs and coaling, she moved on to Philadelphia to load troops and cargo for her third voyage to France. Her next two voyages to France and back were uneventful, as

3240-464: A trap, steamed away without attacking the severely damaged Carmania . Late in March 1915, the auxiliary cruiser headed north to rendezvous with another German supply ship at the equator. She arrived at the meeting point on the morning of 28 March and cruised in the neighborhood all day. That evening, she sighted a steamship in company with two British warships 20  mi (17  nmi ; 32  km ) distant. Though Kronprinz Wilhelm did not know it at

3360-475: A way March had not experienced since his days of therapy in London. Through Perls, March was able to talk openly about his creative process, using Perls as a sounding board for his ideas. Perls also introduced March to a world of other artists. In the works of Pablo Picasso and particularly those of Chaïm Soutine , March found a kinship and connection, as March and Soutine both displayed paranoid and schizophrenic tendencies. March returned Perls' friendship with

3480-490: Is a judicious record of March's life and a fine tribute to his literary achievement", and closes on a note of praise: The cruel irony of his death, coming at the moment it did, deprived him of the immense satisfaction of the worldwide recognition he would have enjoyed following the success of The Bad Seed . Now March has been almost forgotten. His reputation, however, if little known at present, remains established and secure. Those of us who know, love, and admire his work live in

3600-543: Is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Tuscaloosa, Alabama along with his parents, John Leonard Campbell and Susan March Campbell. The inscription on his tombstone reads: AUTHOR, SOLDIER WORLD WAR I, INDIVIDUALIST, BELOVED CITIZEN OF ALABAMA. March's novels are psychological character studies that intertwine his own personal torment—deriving presumably from childhood trauma as well as from his war experiences—with

3720-555: Is it caused by environmental conditions such as an overbearing mother and an absent father?" March was an accomplished short story writer and published four collections of stories. The Filipino poet and critic José García Villa regarded March as "the greatest short story writer America has produced." He won four O. Henry Awards for his short stories, tied for the most wins by any author up until that time. Trial Balance: The Collected Short Stories of William March collects many of March's short stories from his entire career. The book

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3840-411: Is not the exoticism — the horrible word — but rather the human passions of the novel. Such interest is just: Murasaki's work is what one would quite precisely call a psychological novel. ... I dare to recommend this book to those who read me. The English translation that has inspired this brief insufficient note is called The Tale of Genji . SS Kronprinz Wilhelm Kronprinz Wilhelm

3960-414: Is presented to William E. Campbell, Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism while serving with the 43d Company, 5th Regiment (Marines), 2d Division, A.E.F. in action near Blanc Mont, France, October 3–5, 1918. On October 3 and 4, while detailed on statistical work, Sergeant Campbell voluntarily assisted in giving first aid to the wounded. On October 5, when the enemy advanced within 300 yards of

4080-546: Is recounted in Company K and is there attributed to Private Manuel Burt; March suffered hysterical attacks at different moments in his life related to the throat and the eyes. He rarely spoke of his own war experiences or awards, though people noted that he was in the habit of always taking his medals with him, and on occasion he told war stories. March stayed for a few weeks with his family in Tuscaloosa, Alabama , then found work at

4200-540: The O. Henry Prize Stories , in 1930, 1931, and 1932. In all, he published some twenty stories; four of them were vignettes that were to be included in his first novel. March finished his first novel, Company K , while living in New York; it was published in January 1933 by Harrison Smith & Robert Haas. Encompassing much of his war time experience, it was an instant success and went through three printings. By this time March

4320-622: The Croix de Guerre reads as follows: During the operations in Blanc Mont region, October 3–4, 1918, he left a shelter to rescue the wounded. On October 5, during a counter-attack, the enemy having advanced to within 300 meters of the first aid station, he immediately entered the engagement and though wounded refused to be evacuated until the Germans were thrown back. The citation for March's Distinguished Service Cross (under his birthname William E. Campbell) reads as follows: The Distinguished Service Cross

4440-532: The Delaware River with another convoy . She reached her destination, Brest, without incident on 24 February, unloaded her troops and cargo, and set out on the return voyage five days later. At about 16:20 on 5 March, a lookout spotted an object to port which resembled a submarine periscope . The alarm brought gun crews scurrying to their action stations, and they opened fire immediately. Before anyone realized that they were firing upon an innocuous piece of flotsam,

4560-532: The Imperial German Navy , and ordered to rendezvous with SMS  Karlsruhe to take on two 88 mm (3.46 in) rapid-firing guns , 290 rounds of 88 mm ammunition, a machine gun, and 36 rifles as well as one officer, two non-commissioned officers, and 13 ratings. She was commissioned as an auxiliary cruiser . Lieutenant Commander ( Kapitanleutnant ) Paul Thierfelder—formerly Karlsruhe ' s navigation officer—became her commander, and Grahn

4680-477: The Imperial German Navy , sailing as a commerce raider for a year, and then interned in the United States when she ran out of supplies. When the US entered World War I, she was seized and renamed USS Von Steuben , and served as a United States Navy troop transport until she was decommissioned. She was then turned over to the United States Shipping Board , where she remained in service until she

4800-481: The Medal of Honor ). A curious detail emerges from the account of his war experiences that would find its way into his fiction: though it appears he was never gassed badly enough to be hospitalized for it, upon his return from the war he told people that he was and that he only had a short time to live; a number of characters in Company K suffer and die after mustard gas attacks. Roy Simmonds, March's biographer, locates

4920-518: The Morse Dry Dock & Repair Company , Brooklyn , New York. The next day, Germany signed the armistice which ended hostilities. The former commerce raider completed repairs on 2 March 1919 and put to sea to begin bringing troops home from France. She continued to serve the Navy until 13 October 1919 when she was decommissioned and turned over to the United States Shipping Board (USSB). Although her name

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5040-577: The Nazi regime and wrote a prophetic short story, "Personal Letter", which expressed anxiety over the political future of Germany and the world. March was fearful of publishing the story, as he was already well-established as an anti-militarist author and was afraid to place his German friends and associates in undue peril. It was later published in Trial Balance: The Collected Short Stories of William March . Two years later, following

5160-418: The horror and psychological novel genres that relies on the psychological, emotional and mental states of characters to generate horror. On occasions, it overlaps with the psychological thriller subgenre to enhance the story suspensefully. A subgenre of the drama and psychological novel genres, focuses upon the emotional, mental, and psychological development of characters in a dramatic work. One Flew Over

5280-541: The "most picturesque woman in America," Rita de Acosta Lydig , and her second husband, Captain Philip M. Lydig (1907); the author Lloyd Osbourne (1907); the star conductor Alfred Hertz (1909); the ballerina Adeline Genée (1908); the theatrical and opera producer Oscar Hammerstein together with the conductor Cleofonte Campanini and the opera singers Mario Sammarco , Giuseppe Taccani and Fernando Gianoli-Galetti (1909); and

5400-498: The American Distinguished Service Cross , and the U.S. Navy Cross . After the war he again worked in a law office before embarking on a financially successful business career. While working in business he began writing, first short stories, then in 1933 a novel based on his war experiences, Company K . His follow-up work was the "Pearl County" series, novels and short fiction set in his native south Alabama,

5520-452: The American flag with 1,223 troops and passengers bound for Brest , France. At about 06:05 on the morning of 9 November, Von Steuben received some damage in a collision with the troop ship USS  Agamemnon . Both ships lost men overboard, and a few received injuries. In addition, two of her 5 in (130 mm) guns and one of her 3 in (76 mm) guns were damaged. Though her bow

5640-567: The Azores, while transferring coal from Walhalla to Kronprinz Wilhelm . She then learned from German representatives at Las Palmas in the Canary Islands that no further coal would be available in the neighborhood of the Azores and the Canaries. Consequently, her commanding officer decided to head for the Brazilian coast, where he hoped to find sources of coal more friendly to Germany or at least

5760-623: The Collector of the Port of Philadelphia seized the former German raider for the US on 22 May, President Woodrow Wilson issued the executive order which empowered the United States Navy to take possession of the ship and to begin to repair her. The internees became prisoners of war and were transferred to Fort McPherson , Georgia. On 9 June, Kronprinz Wilhelm was renamed Von Steuben (ID-3017) in honor of Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben ,

5880-515: The Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Requiem for a Dream (2000), both based on novels, are notable examples of this subgenre. Psychological science fiction refers to works that focus is on the character's inner struggle dealing with political or technological forces. A Clockwork Orange (1971) is a notable example of this genre. [ The Tale of Genji , as translated by Arthur Waley ,] is written with an almost miraculous naturalness, and what interests us

6000-508: The Door , The Tallons , and The Looking-Glass . Company K , published in 1933, was hailed as a masterpiece by critics and writers alike and has often been compared to Erich Maria Remarque 's classic anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front for its hopeless view of war. University of Alabama professor of American literature and author Philip Beidler wrote, in his introduction to

6120-721: The German hero of the American Revolution , and commissioned in the United States Navy at Philadelphia. The name Kronprinz Wilhelm was reclaimed by the German navy in 1918 when it renamed its battleship SMS Kronprinz as SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm . This ship was scuttled in June 1919 with the remainder of the High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow . The newly named Von Steuben began her American Navy career as an auxiliary cruiser. Through

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6240-709: The Navy Cross for the same action). March's citation for the Navy Cross reads similar to that for the Army Distinguished Service Cross. The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Sergeant William E. Campbell (MCSN: 89685), United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism while serving with the 43d Company, 5th Regiment (Marines), 2d Division, A.E.F. in action near Blanc Mont, France, October 3–5, 1918. On October 3 and 4, while detailed on statistical work, Sergeant Campbell voluntarily assisted in giving first aid to

6360-661: The Panama canal. However this is doubtful as any gold bound for France would have been offloaded in France rather than England, and the Kronprinz Wilhelm was not moored off Plymouth long enough for this quantity of gold to have been unloaded. When Germany entered World War I , Kronprinz Wilhelm was on the western side of the Atlantic, under the command of Captain Grahn. She was commissioned into

6480-690: The Story of the Grail as early examples of the style of the psychological novel. Stendhal 's The Red and the Black and Madame de La Fayette 's The Princess of Cleves are considered the first precursors of the psychological novel. The modern psychological novel originated, according to The Encyclopedia of the Novel , primarily in the works of Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun – in particular, Hunger (1890), Mysteries (1892), Pan (1894) and Victoria (1898). One of

6600-623: The University of Alabama Press. March's fables follow those of Aesop : according to a review in The New York Times Book Review , "Mr. March ... has picked up where Aesop and Don Marquis left off." Allen King, however, reviewing the book for the South Atlantic Bulletin , said the fables are "platitudinous" and offer no new insights into the nature of man. The cover won an award at the 1960 Southern Books Competition;

6720-514: The additional guns aft, where they were used for gun drills and to fire warning shots with modified, blank salute cartridges. She continued coaling and provisioning operations from La Correntina until 11 October, when bad weather forced a postponement. On 14 October, she resumed the transfer of fuel but broke off again when she intercepted a wireless message indicating that her captive's sister ship La Rosarina had departed Montevideo two days earlier and would soon pass nearby. The prize crew placed

6840-423: The author's repressed homosexuality, cultural historian Foster Hirsch opines that in this novel's "incendiary melodrama, March transferred his own hidden sexuality into the story of the bad seed...a child who kills and who has inherited her evil nature from her grandmother, a serial murderer." Hirsch goes on to observe that March's story raises the question--in the mid-1950s: "is homosexuality determined at birth, or

6960-466: The author's unique style as "classic modern" and stating that March was "the unrecognized genius of our time." Cooke himself championed the anthology A William March Omnibus , which was published two years after March died. In 2009, only The Bad Seed and Company K were still in print. In 2015, the University of Alabama Press returned to print the three novels in the Pearl County series: Come in at

7080-539: The belief that one day March will be recognized as one of the most remarkable, talented, and shamefully neglected writers that America has produced in this or in any other century. Complementing the biography, Simmonds also published William March: An Annotated Checklist , an annotated bibliography of primary and secondary documents pertaining to March's life and work. Robert Clem's documentary film on March, entitled William March/Company K (2004), includes excerpts from Clem's feature adaptation of Company K and focuses on

7200-459: The book is not currently in print. Of paramount importance to scholars is Roy S. Simmonds 's 1984 "definitive biography of March", The Two Worlds of William March . Simmonds continued the work of his friend Lawrence William Jones, who had been working on a March biography but died in a car accident. Simmonds had only a passing knowledge of March's writing, but became increasingly interested in finishing Jones' work after having read through many of

7320-536: The ceiling. Paintings showing episodes from the history of the House of Hohenzollern were placed along the walls. The Scientific American Supplement noted that "the accommodations are finished on the same rich scale of decoration which obtains on the "Kaiser Wilhelm:" but with the difference that the color scheme is more subdued and, therefore, more restful to the eye." The finest accommodation aboard were 4 "cabines de luxe" consisting of sitting room, several bedrooms and

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7440-443: The conflicts spawned by class, family, sexual, and racial matters. March's characters, through no fault of their own, tend to be victims of chance. He writes that freedom can only be obtained by being true to one's nature and humanity. Commenting on March's complete body of work, British-American journalist and broadcaster Alistair Cooke wrote that March was "the most underrated of all contemporary American writers of fiction", citing

7560-407: The crew, passengers, and their baggage and other valuable cargo from the captured ship to their own, including coal and other supplies. Then they would usually scuttle the captured vessel by opening up the seacocks (valves in the hull below the waterline), thereby causing the captured ship to fill with water after small charges were detonated, and sink. Throughout the entire journey, not a single life

7680-403: The dinner table. His mother, whose maiden name was Susan March, was probably better educated and taught the children to read and write; in the eyes of her family, she had married beneath herself. Neither parent seemed to have supported young March's literary efforts; he later stated he had composed a 10,000 line poem at the age of 12 but had burned the manuscript. Having 8 other siblings, March

7800-472: The dividends. 1937, Simmonds notes, was an important year: it marked the high point of his productivity as a short-story writer, and the magazine The American Mercury took up Company K for a reprinting. In 1943, he completed his most ambitious and critically acclaimed novel, The Looking-Glass , the final book in his "Pearl County" series; Bert Hitchcock, literature professor at Auburn , called it March's "finest literary achievement". Harcourt published

7920-496: The dock and then retransited the canal. After coaling at Colón, Panama , she departed the Canal Zone and headed back to the east coast. From 28–31 January, Von Steuben stopped at Newport News where she took on two new 5-inch guns and a 3-inch gun to replace those damaged in the collision with Agamemnon . On 1 February, she returned to Philadelphia to resume duty transporting troops to France. On 10 February, Von Steuben stood down

8040-611: The dressing station, he took up a position in the lines, helping in defense. Although twice wounded, he remained in action under heavy fire until the enemy had been repulsed. When the Navy Cross , the United States Navy 's second highest award for valor after the Medal of Honor, was established in 1919, March received that award as well (326 Marines who had previously received the Army Distinguished Service Cross in World War ;I would receive

8160-551: The effects of March's painful war experience on his later life. The documentary was shown at Birmingham, Alabama 's Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival and aired on PBS in 2004. Psychological fiction The psychological novel has a rich past in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century works of Mme de Lafayette , the Abbé Prévost , Samuel Richardson , Jean-Jacques Rousseau and many others, but it goes on being disinvented by ideologues and reinvented by their opponents because

8280-641: The epidemic broke out. We had superficial wounds, cuts, to deal with. They usually refused to heal for a long time. We had much hemorrhage. There were a number of accidents aboard, fractures, and dislocations. The broken bones were slow to mend." Slow healing is an early symptom of scurvy . Early in the morning of 11 April 1915, she stopped off Cape Henry, Virginia , and took on a pilot. At 10:12 that morning, she dropped anchor off Newport News , and ended her cruise, during which she steamed 37,666 mi (32,731 nmi; 60,618 km) and destroyed just under 56000 tons of Allied shipping. She and her crew were interned,

8400-490: The following morning. The prize crew found a cargo composed largely of contraband, but before sinking the ship, Commander Thierfelder wanted to salvage as much of her supplies and fuel as he could. Continued heavy seas precluded the transfer until the afternoon of 8 September. Indian Prince ' s crew and passengers were brought over to Kronprinz Wilhelm at around 14:00, and the two ships moved alongside each other immediately thereafter. Coaling started and continued throughout

8520-428: The greatest writers of the genre was Fyodor Dostoyevsky . His novels deal strongly with ideas, and characters who embody these ideas, how they play out in real world circumstances, and the value of them, most notably The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment . In the literature of the United States, Henry James , Patrick McGrath , Arthur Miller , and Edith Wharton are considered "major contributor[s] to

8640-863: The harbor at about 14:30 that afternoon. A portion of the city had been devastated by the explosion and the tsunami which followed causing the death of 2,000 in the Halifax Explosion (the largest man-made accidental explosion up to that time). The ship responded to the emergency by landing officers and men to patrol the city and assist in rescue efforts. The transport remained at Halifax until 10 December, and then continued her voyage back to Philadelphia where she arrived on 13 December. After debarking her passengers, Von Steuben got underway from Philadelphia again on 15 December. She coaled at Newport News on 16 December and remained there until 20 December. On 20 December, Captain Yates Stirling Jr. assumed command of

8760-419: The illness was malnutrition from their diet consisting mainly of beef, white bread, boiled potatoes, canned vegetables, and oleomargarine. The few fresh vegetables they seized from the captured vessels were reserved for the officers' mess. Dr. Perrenon—the ship's surgeon—is reported to have said, "We had many cases of pneumonia, pleurisy and rheumatism among the men. They seemed to lose all resistance long before

8880-477: The latter novel as a meager accomplishment, but it gained the most praise and success of any of his novels, selling more than a million copies in one year, launching a long-running Broadway hit penned by the Pulitzer Prize -winning playwright Maxwell Anderson and an eponymous 1956 movie directed by Mervyn LeRoy . On March 25, 1954, March suffered a mild heart attack and was still recovering when The Bad Seed

9000-538: The local theater scene. All the while he traveled the country on business trips, often accompanied by his friend and business associate J.P. Case. This associate recalls that March's rooms were usually littered with papers and books, many of them on psychology : March was reading Alfred Adler , Sigmund Freud , and Carl Jung intensively. In 1928, March moved again, to New York, where he took creative writing classes at Columbia University and began writing short stories. March settled on his nom de plume after sending out

9120-523: The morning of 6 December, she was about 40 mi (35 nmi; 64 km) from Halifax when the ship was rocked by a concussion so severe that many thought she had struck a mine or been torpedoed. Lookouts spied a great flame and a high column of smoke in the direction of the port where the French ammunition ship Mont-Blanc had exploded in Halifax Harbour . Von Steuben learned the facts when she entered

9240-495: The most successful of which is the novel The Looking-Glass . However, literary success eluded him. His last novel, The Bad Seed , was published in 1954, the year March died. It became a bestseller, but he never saw his story adapted first for the stage in 1954, and then for film in 1956 , 1985 , and 2018 . March was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame on June 8, 2015. William March

9360-655: The multi-millionaire, politician and lawyer Samuel Untermyer (1910). The interiors of Kronprinz Wilhelm were designed by Johann Poppe , the chief interior designer for Norddeutscher Lloyd's liners between 1881 and 1907. Cunard executives who visited the Kronprinz and the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse in 1903 described Poppe's interiors as "bizarre, extravagant and crude, loud in colour and restless in form, obviously costly, and showy to an extreme degree." Kronprinz Wilhelm offered its First Class passengers such public rooms as

9480-437: The next day formed up with a convoy for the Atlantic crossing. At about noon on the third day out, a fire broke out in the forward cargo hold of USS  Henderson . As the blaze grew in intensity, the transfer of the troops embarked became a necessary precaution, and Von Steuben approached the burning ship. Silhouetted by the flames, she would have made a perfect target for any U-boat in the vicinity, but she worked throughout

9600-627: The next month coaling from four such auxiliaries before she even contacted her next victim. That event occurred on 7 October, when she hailed the British steamship La Correntina well off the Brazilian coast at about the same latitude as Rio de Janeiro . The next day, the raider went alongside the captured ship to seize the prize's coal and cargo of frozen meat before sinking her. She took La Correntina ' s two ammunition-less 4.7 in (120 mm) guns and their splinter shields. The raider later mounted

9720-491: The night and, by morning, had succeeded in embarking Henderson ' s more than 2,000 troops. Henderson came about and made it safely back to the US, while Von Steuben completed a somewhat cramped voyage at Brest on 9 July. Three days later, she headed back across the Atlantic with civilians and wounded soldiers returning to the US after service in Europe. After a peaceful voyage, the transport reached New York on 21 July. After

9840-597: The night of 8/9 September. The following morning, the German prize crew detonated three explosive charges which sank Indian Prince . Kronprinz Wilhelm then headed south to rendezvous with several German supply ships. Coal, more than any other factor, proved to be the key to the success of Kronprinz Wilhelm ' s cruise. The hope of finding that commodity had brought her to the coast of South America , and her success in locating sources of it kept her there. Initially, she replenished from German steamships sent out of South American ports specifically for that purpose. She spent

9960-548: The novel), John Frederick wrote in The English Journal , "The cumulative effect... is one of the most powerful and memorable to be found in the whole range of writing about the war." In 2004, Alabama filmmaker Robert Clem made a feature adaptation of the novel; the movie attracted local interest. The novel has garnered attention as a World War I classic in other languages also: in 1967 it was translated into Italian for editor Longanesi as " Fuoco! " (" Fire! ") and in 2008, it

10080-554: The office of a lumber mill. Two years later March had returned to Mobile and found employment in a local law office. By 1913, he had saved enough money to take a high school course at Valparaiso University in Indiana , which allowed him to enroll at the University of Alabama to study law. He thrived as a student but could not afford the necessary tuition to complete his law degree. In the fall of 1916, he moved to New York. There he lived in

10200-515: The origin of what he calls the "two worlds of William March" (the title of his biography) in this period: throughout his life, March appears to have mixed reality with imagined memory, telling supposedly historical anecdotes that may not have been true. An experience March told a number of times included his jumping into a bomb crater to take shelter and coming face to face with a young German soldier, whom he instantly bayoneted; this anecdote also found its way into Company K . The official citation to

10320-455: The papers that Jones had left behind, notably the 43-page memoir "Bill March" by New Orleans journalist Clint Bolton. Although March had intimated that he wished for no biography to be written, the Campbell family, after having read the completed manuscript, gave their approval, though grudgingly, it seems. The biography received positive reviews, with one reviewer calling it "a critical study that

10440-509: The passenger contract) to see who would be the first to get the mail/passengers to London. The race was won by the GWR, whose locomotive City of Truro was recorded at 102.3 mph during the descent of Wellington Bank in Somerset. It was claimed by recorder Charles Rous-Marten that gold was transferred from the Kronprinz Wilhelm to the GWR train, as a payment to the French for the construction costs of

10560-438: The periscope of U-151 , the source of the torpedo bearing down upon Von Steuben . The ship's efforts to slow down and turn away from the torpedo were successful. It passed a few yards ahead of the ship, and Von Steuben delivered a depth-charge barrage which subjected the submarine to a severe shaking. Stirling's evasive maneuver was considered unorthodox and conventional practice at the time would have been to attempt to outrun

10680-471: The practice of psychological realism." A subgenre of the thriller and psychological novel genres, emphasizing the inner mind and mentality of characters in a creative work. Because of its complexity, the genre often overlaps and/or incorporates elements of mystery, drama, action, slasher, and horror — often psychological horror. It bears similarities to the Gothic and detective fiction genres. A subgenre of

10800-537: The return voyage from the first of the three, she weathered a severe hurricane in which three of her complement were washed overboard and lost at sea, while several others received injuries. On the New York-to-Brest leg of the second, the influenza epidemic of 1918 struck the 2,700 troops she had embarked and resulted in 400 stretcher cases and 34 deaths. Von Steuben returned to New York from her ninth wartime voyage on 8 November. On 10 November, she began repairs at

10920-523: The ship to continue on without further investigation. That decision was further reinforced by the fact that the boats appeared empty. Credit for this must go to Dwinsk ' s master, who ordered his people to lie low in their craft so that other Allied ships would not be drawn into the waiting U-boat's trap. Fortunately, he and his men were saved eventually. Von Steuben arrived in New York on 20 June and began preparations for another voyage to France. On 29 June, she embarked troops for passage to Europe, and

11040-584: The ship was laid up at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth , and her crew lived in a camp nearby, as "guests". In their internment, the crews of these vessels — numbering about 1,000 officers and men — built in the yard — from scrap materials — a typical German village named "Eitel Wilhelm", which attracted many visitors. On 6 April 1917, the United States declared war upon the German Empire . That same day,

11160-495: The subtleties of psychology defy most ideologies. The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki , written in 11th-century Japan, was considered by Jorge Luis Borges to be a psychological novel. French theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari , in A Thousand Plateaus , evaluated the 12th-century Arthurian author Chrétien de Troyes ' Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart and Perceval,

11280-745: The summer of 1917, her crew and workers at the Philadelphia Navy Yard prepared her to resume that role against her former masters. However, since the Allied and associated Powers already maintained virtual control of the seas, their need for that type of ship was minimal. Accordingly, on 21 September, the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations telegraphed an order to the Commandant , Philadelphia Navy Yard, to assign her to transport duty upon completion of repairs to meet

11400-415: The time Kronprinz Wilhelm met Karlsruhe ' s tender—SS Asuncion —near Rocas Reef north of Cape San Roque on 3 September, preparations were nearly complete. At 20:30 the following evening, the auxiliary cruiser encountered a target, the British steamship Indian Prince . The merchantman stopped without the raider's firing a shot. Heavy seas, however, postponed the boarding until shortly after 06:00

11520-432: The time, she had just witnessed the capture of her supply ship — Macedonia — by two British cruisers. The raider steamed around in the general vicinity for several days, but the passage of each succeeding day further diminished her hopes of a successful rendezvous. Finally, a dwindling coal supply and an alarming increase in the sick list forced Kronprinz Wilhelm to make for the nearest neutral port. The apparent cause of

11640-569: The torpedo. For his actions in saving the ship and the lives aboard, he was subsequently awarded the Navy Cross and the French Legion of Honor . The real losers in that brief, but sharp, exchange were the survivors of the British steamship Dwinsk adrift in seven small boats. U-151 had sunk their ship earlier and remained in the area to use them as bait for other Allied ships such as Von Steuben . The possibility that they were simply decoys and that other submarines might be lurking about forced

11760-469: The transport from Commander Moses and she returned to sea, bound for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba , where she disembarked marines . On 27 December, she got underway for the Panama Canal Zone . The ship transited the canal on 29 December and entered the drydock at Balboa, Panama that afternoon. Over the next three weeks, she received repairs of the damage to her bow. On 20 January 1918, the ship floated out of

11880-458: The unpleasant but expedient choice was to surrender. Kronprinz Wilhelm would send over a boarding party to search the captured vessel. If it appeared to have nothing of value or military significance, it was released and sent on its way. If it did have valuable (or contraband) cargo, or was a warship or a ship that might someday be converted to military use, the crew of Kronprinz Wilhelm would then systematically (and quite politely) transfer all of

12000-479: The usual three explosive charges, and sank La Correntina that same day. Survivors of La Correntina and the French barque Union were landed at Montevideo by the German liner Sierra Cordoba on 23 November 1914. For the next five months, Kronprinz Wilhelm cruised the waters off the coast of Brazil and Argentina . Allied newspapers often reported that Kronprinz Wilhelm had been sunk, torpedoed, or interned, but between 4 September 1914 and 28 March 1915, she

12120-418: The war and a continuing bout of writer's block, March suffered a nervous breakdown . He briefly returned to Mobile to recuperate and made many return visits to New York to settle his affairs. On one such visit in 1949, March happened upon the gallery of New York art dealer Klaus Perls , which proved to be a turning point in March's life. Perls, accustomed to dealing with creative personalities, accepted March in

12240-422: The wounded. On October 5 when the enemy advanced within 300 yards of the dressing station, he took up a position in the lines, helping in defense. Although twice wounded, he remained in action under heavy fire until the enemy had been repulsed. In 1919, March returned to civilian life but experienced bouts of anxiety and depression . The aforementioned experience, of having bayoneted a young, blond German soldier,

12360-643: Was a German ocean liner built for Norddeutscher Lloyd , a shipping company now part of Hapag-Lloyd , by the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin , Germany (now Szczecin , Poland), in 1901. She was named after Crown Prince Wilhelm , son of the German Emperor Wilhelm II , and was a sister ship of SS  Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse . She had a varied career, starting off as a world-record-holding passenger liner, then becoming an auxiliary warship from 1914–1915 for

12480-413: Was afforded no privileges, and by the time he was 14 the family moved to Lockhart, Alabama , preventing him from going to high school. (Lockhart would later become the imaginary Hodgetown, Pearl County, in March's novels Come in at the Door (1934) and The Tallons (1936).) Instead, March received occasional schooling, probably in one-room edifices then common in sawmill towns . He found employment in

12600-562: Was already living in Hamburg , Germany; he was now Waterman's senior traffic manager and was sent to Germany to help open up the European market. In Hamburg he finished his second novel, Come in at the Door , his first novel of the "Pearl County" series of novels and short stories, set in the mythical towns of Hodgetown, Baycity, and Reedyville. Also in Hamburg he witnessed the rise of Adolf Hitler and

12720-577: Was also an early example of film reporting. This was also the ship's first voyage under Captain August Richter, who was the captain until August 1907. On 9 May 1904, the Kronprinz Wilhelm anchored off Plymouth for passengers and mail to be put ashore by tender, sparking a race between the Great Western Railway (who had the contract to carry the mail) and the London and South Western Railway (who had

12840-424: Was born William Edward Campbell. His father worked as a "timber cruiser", estimating which stands of trees were big enough to warrant lumber companies investing in a saw mill in the area. He was the eldest son of eleven children (two of whom died in infancy) and grew up in and around Mobile, Alabama . His father was an occasional heavy drinker who had a fondness for reciting poetry (especially Edgar Allan Poe 's) at

12960-433: Was damaged on its maiden voyage from Cherbourg to New York by a huge rogue wave . The wave struck the ship head-on. In 1902, she was involved in two different collisions in the waters off Southampton . In the first, she collided with the cargo vessel Robert Ingham in foggy weather. The cargo ship sank, with two fatalities, but Kronprinz Wilhelm sustained little damage. On October 8, 1902, Kronprinz Wilhelm collided with

13080-447: Was lost. In this way she took the following: She missed one potential success, when on 14 September 1914 she came across the British armed merchant cruiser RMS  Carmania , already badly crippled following a battle with the German auxiliary cruiser SMS  Cap Trafalgar , which had sunk shortly before Kronprinz Wilhelm ' s arrival. However, Kronprinz Wilhelm ' s commander chose to be cautious, and believing it to be

13200-478: Was made 1st Officer. The close proximity of the British cruiser HMS  Suffolk abbreviated the rendezvous, forcing the two German ships to cast off hastily and speed away in different directions. Kronprinz Wilhelm took a meandering course towards the Azores , arriving on 17 August and rendezvousing with the German steamship Walhalla off São Miguel Island . Walhalla and Kronprinz Wilhelm headed south from

13320-564: Was one of the fastest and most luxurious liners on the North Atlantic and stayed on that run until 1914. Her total cost in 1901 was approximately $ 3.2 million, half a million more than her predecessor Kaiser Wilhelm der Große . The ship had a Marconi wireless telegraph , and by 1913 her call sign was DKP. She had electric central heating, and 1,900 electric lamps. About 60 electric motors worked bridge cranes, fans, elevators, refrigerators and auxiliary machinery. Kronprinz Wilhelm had

13440-478: Was opened to the sea, Von Steuben maintained 12 kn (14 mph; 22 km/h) while the damage control party made repairs. The ship continued on with the convoy and arrived in Brest three days later. She disembarked passengers and unloaded cargo between 14 and 19 November, but she did not depart until 28 November. On her way back to the US, Von Steuben diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia for coal. At about 09:14 on

13560-418: Was presumably written after his discharge from the hospital (his biographer Simmonds surmises it might have been from a book March was working on), and reads: The time comes in the life of each of us when we realize that death awaits us as it awaits others, that we will receive at the end neither preference nor exemption. It is then, in that disturbed moment, that we know life is an adventure with an ending, not

13680-405: Was published in 1987 by the University of Alabama Press , with an introduction by Rosemary Canfield-Reisman. None of March's story collections is currently in print. A little book with a March story, "The First Sunset", was printed in a limited edition of 150 copies by Cincinnati printer and writer Robert Lowry 's Little Man Press. Six years after March's death, his 99 Fables were published by

13800-399: Was published on April 8; he was able to read many of the book's positive reviews. He was discharged from the hospital on April 24, but after only three weeks, on the night of May 15, 1954, he died in his sleep of a second and more severe heart attack, at age 60. On the morning of March's death, the following paragraph was discovered in his typewriter. Entitled "Poor Pilgrim, Poor Stranger", it

13920-593: Was responsible for the capture (and often sinking) of 15 ships—10 British, four French, and one Norwegian—off the east coast of South America . Thirteen of them sank from direct actions of Kronprinz Wilhelm ; another she damaged severely by ramming, and she probably sank later. The remaining ship served as a lumpensammler , transporting into port what had become an unbearable number of detainees aboard after her 12th capture. Ships were usually captured either by Kronprinz Wilhelm simply overtaking them with superior speed and size, ordering them to stop, and then sending over

14040-555: Was scrapped in 1923. Kronprinz Wilhelm was launched on 30 March 1901. Her registered length was 637.3 ft (194.2 m), her beam was 66.3 ft (20.2 m) and her depth was 39.3 ft (12.0 m). Her tonnages were 14,908  GRT and 6,162  NRT . She had two screws , each driven by a six-cylinder quadruple expansion engine . Between them her twin engines were rated at 3,534 NHP . She started her transatlantic maiden voyage on 17 September 1901 from Bremerhaven via Southampton and Cherbourg to New York . She

14160-430: Was the New York-to-Brest leg of the following one. However, on the return voyage, she encountered a U-boat . At about 12:30 on the afternoon of 18 June, one of her lookouts reported wreckage ahead. As she steamed closer, seven small boats under sail came into sight on the port bow about 5 mi (4.3 nmi; 8.0 km) away. Von Steuben began a zigzag approach to pick up what appeared to be boatloads of survivors from

14280-575: Was translated into Dutch and published in a series called "The Library of the First World War." The Bad Seed , published in April 1954, was a critical and commercial success, and introduced Rhoda Penmark , an eight-year-old sociopath and burgeoning serial killer . The novel became an instant bestseller and was widely praised by critics for its use of suspense and horror. James Kelley writes, for The New York Times Book Review , " The Bad Seed scores

14400-469: Was wounded in the head and shoulder. He returned to the front in time for the offensive at the battles of Soissons and Saint-Mihiel . March was twice promoted and had attained the rank of sergeant when he was assigned to French troops in the Blanc Mont area, on "statistical duties". During the assault on Blanc Mont, which started on 3 October, March "left a shelter to rescue wounded". The next day, "during

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