Charles Gordon Heyd

Rank:

Captain

Unit at enlistment:

American Army Medical Corps, Base Hospital No. 8

Force:

A.E.F.

Volunteered or conscripted:

Volunteered

Survived the war:

Yes

Cemetery:

Greenwood Cemetery, Brantford, Ontario

Birth country:

Canada

Birth county:

Brant

Birth city:

Brantford, Ontario

Address at enlistment:

8 West 51st Street, New York, U.S.A.

Next of kin address:

Toronto, Ontario

Trade or calling:

Physician

Religious denominations:

Presbyterian

Marital status:

Single

Age at enlistment:

Letters and documents

BX December 20, 1918

With U.S. Army When Armistice was Approved – Dr. Gordon Heyd Gives His Impressions of the Celebration Near Metz – Hope for the Future

The reception of the news of the armistice by the U.S. forces is told of in an interesting letter received by Mr. and Mrs. Lou. F. Heyd from their son Gordon, who was with a hospital near Metz on Nov. 11. He writes:

November 18, 1918
Near Metz

On Sunday night Nov. 10 at 11 p.m. in the rain and darkness, we unloaded our hospital ten miles from Metz. The ---- army had gone over the top earlier in the day, and on Monday, Nov. 11 we were to move to ---- and erect your hospital as an initial step on the way to the Rhine. Monday came. At 11 a.m. the bells began to ring, carillons sounded faintly in the distance, rifle fire punctuated the stillness. French pollus shouted “viva la France, “viva les Americans” from the passing camions; Negro labor battalions stopped work; regimental bands began to play; doughboys began to chant:

“Damn the Hun,
Damn the Boche,
To hell with the Kaiser,
Kill the son-of-a-gun.”

The armistice was signed. Soon “holding orders” arrived, and since then we have camped like squatters alongside of a “jerk-water,” railhead. Then the inevitable reaction set in. The evening darkness came on every rifle; revolver and machine gun in our neighborhood began to fire. Sky-rockets pierced the darkened sky with their luminous streak. Singing came from isolated troops in billets, and in the streets. The falling metal became alarmingly frequent, and finally in self-protection the same element in the camp sought safety from the mischance of the celebrating fire.

Fini le guerre; C’est fini, and the terrible business of killing and maiming was over. In the reflective sobriety of the next day we read the terms of the armistice. We were all satisfied. They seemed to give concrete expression to our aims and aspirations. Then the conflicting opinion as to what was to become of us. Who were going home? Who first? Who and what elements would comprise the army of occupation. In the half lit light of the early morning the outer forts of Metz beckoned us onward. The valley of the Rhine seemed and impelling invitation to carry on. Shortly we learned that the American army of occupation was being formed. There were those who wanted to enter Hunland, those who wanted to return to their bases, others who longingly looked westward to the realms of their “homely joys and destinies obscure, others whose time of service begat a philosophy and who remained impassive to the shifting emotions of change and transition. So we acquitted alongside of the railway track at B. The months of service, of big things, of small things, the months of high ideals and large aspirations, the months of petty officialdom and narrow vision, the months of active service and interims of laziness, the borne home in retrospective survey. One could hardly refrain from recalling a similar episode narrated by Cresy in his description of the battle of Valmy, recognized as one of the decisive battles in history. In 1792 the French Revolutionist succeeded in throwing back an Austro-Prussia invasion at Valmy, near St. Menehould – not far from here. Goethe was a witness of the battle. At evening after the battle the defeated chiefs gathered together and one of them enquired of Goethe what he thought of it. “From this place and from time forward begins a new era in human affairs, and you can all say that you were present at its beginning,” was his reply. What a happy circumstance of fate has given me the opportunity to be here. The Somme retreat; the Montdidier-Noyon offensive, when the Hun launched his grand offensives against Paris; Chateau Thierry; the Marne counter-offensive; the Saint Mihiel sector; the fourth French army before Vouziers; the Argonne-Meuse and finally the ---- army before Metz. Surely a splendid inspiration for national justice and world-wide democracy. And now, to pick up the broken ends, the things men worked for, twisted, destroyed and vanished, the re-building the reconstruction the limbless soldiers, the maimed and injured, all to be succored and made useful – the waste and the void of four years of war, the problem is larger and bigger than the war itself. One hopes:

“When the war drum sounds no longer
And the battle flag is furled,
In the parliament of man,
The federation of the world.”

May surely come about.

Gordon

BX January 29, 1919

Nostalgia As Seen Among the U.S. Soldiers – Capt. Dr. Gordon Heyd Writes Interestingly of the Feeling Now Prevalent – Many Gone West

The following letter has been sent by Capt. Dr. Gordon Heyd to his mother, now wintering in Los Angeles California.

December 20, 1918
Toul

My Dear Mother,

I presume Ulysses must have desired to return home with all a soul’s anguish. You remember in one of Goldsmith’s poems, the traveler is sitting along a mountain ridge and sees the sun go down over his native land – England – and he thus speaks: “Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see, my heart, heart untraveled, fondly turns to thee.” For me no birds carol in the tree the air so solemn stillness holds, the sun shines not in all its glory, even the stars have lost their incandescence.

I want to return home. Not being entirely alone in the sympomalic (scientific for homesick) makes it even more poignant. I believe there are 2,133,762 other Americans in exactly a similar frame of mind. Talking of home, a “darky” said” “Say Boy, if the Goddess of Liberty ever wants to see me after I get back, she will sure have to turn around.” All of which brings my mind back to the days we sat and waited on Governors Island previous to proceeding to France. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Over 2,000,000 men left home to travel through submarine zones to make the world safe for democracy. Over 80,000 lie buried over here – a sacrifice to that belief – many nurses have died, and considerable of the medical men have “gone west.” “The old order changes, giving place to the new, and God fulfils Himself in many ways.” – Women have entered into man-held activities, almost universal suffrage, prohibition a fact – surely the old order changes. I recall the story of a man staying at a home in England. After being seated the hostess asked: “Have you heard about the new honor that has come to us?” “No.” “Why Jack was called upon to die for England, Jack her son.
I wonder what our communal viewpoint will be when it is all over and we have been redistributed again in civil life. Will we begin anew under changed conditions of living and commercial advancement? I wonder.

They say over 10,000 of our men have married French women. Certainly, this will have a marked affect on France as I believe most of these men will remain in France. The husbands vary from simple soldiers to those in high places – certainly an army infiltrates through a civilian population.

About my return, one only waits. “They also help who wait.” But with all due allowance I should get started before the New Year, which would put me home some time before the end of January.

From where I sit I see a ridge of hills. Over the distant one is Mount Sec. In 1916 the French took and held that hill for about thirty minutes and buried 10,000 men – surely a world’s cemetery has been created in France. Over the Rhineland 8,000,000 men were killed or injured or missing and now to discuss it at a peace table; England alone lost 353,000 officers. Can we ever eradicate the terribleness of its cost?

Am well, your loving son,

Gordon

P.S. – I had just finished putting this letter in the envelope, but had not addressed it when orders came in to proceed to Savenay. This is, I take the beginning of the trip to the boat. A week ago I had picked out Friday or Saturday (today) as the probable time of arrival of orders. It’s a good thing to have faith in your “hunch” as the boys say.

BX July 17, 1917

Brantfordite with U.S. Unit – Dr. Charles Gordon Heyd Has Sailed With a Base Hospital

Dr. Charles Gordon Heyd, professor of anatomy at the Post-Graduate hospital, New York City, son of Mr. Louis F. Heyd, K.C., Toronto, formerly of this city, has left for overseas with a base hospital organized by the Post-Graduate hospital, according to a telegram which his father received yesterday. Dr. Heyd is a graduate of the University of Toronto and went to New York City to complete his training six years ago. The unit sent overseas by the United States army from the New York City hospital is a fully equipped base hospital staff.

BX June 15, 1918

A Promotion

Dr. Charles Gordon Heyd, son of Mr. and Mrs. L.F. Heyd, and a former well-known B.C.I. boy, has in recent months received well-merited and swift promotion in the American medical service in France. Dr. Heyd went overseas with an American unit as captain; he was very soon after promoted to the rank of major, and lately made director of medical services in charge of a base hospital with 2500 beds in it. Before going into service Dr. Heyd had won a continental reputation as a surgeon in New York City.

New York Times, February 6, 1970

Dr. Charles Gordon Heyd, president of the American Medical Association in 1936–37, died Wednesday in Doctors Hospital. He was 85 years old and lived at 157 East 57th Street.
A distinguished surgeon who retired in 1955, Dr. Heyd had opposed compulsory health insurance and socialized medicine but advocated voluntary medical insurance and public health testing.

He urged free state medical service for those who required it but were unable to pay.
“Every practitioner,” he said some years ago, “believes that the valid indigent is entitled to medical service free of all charges and that the cost for this service should be paid for by taxes levied on the general population.

“The maintenance of this service is a responsibility of the state and not of the Federal Government, although the Federal Government might remit sufficient funds if and when necessary to make up the deficit.”

Taught at Columbia

Dr. Heyd was a former director of surgery at New York Post Graduate Hospital and Medical School, and a professor of clinical surgery at Columbia University. He had also served as president of United Medical Service, a prepaid medical insurance service, from 1948 to 1951.
A native of Brantford, Ontario, he became a United States citizen in 1917. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1905, received his medical degree from the University of Buffalo in 1909, and took post‐graduate work at Harvard and in London, Berlin and Vienna.
In World War I as a major, he commanded a hospital unit in France.

He was president of the County Medical Society in 1932 and the state society in 1933 and was vice president of the American College of Surgeons in 1932–33.

He received the Legion of Honor of France in 1932, and was the author of “Liver and Its Relation to Chronic Abdomi nal Infection” and about 200 monographs on surgery.

A sister, Mrs. Frank Hancock of Toronto, survives.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete last night.

BX February 20, 1970

HEYD, Dr. Charles Gordon – A private service will take place at the Beckett Funeral Home, 88 Brant Avenue on Saturday morning for the late. Dr. Charles Gordon Heyd, who passed away in New York City, on Thursday, February 5, 1970, in his 86th year. Interment will be in Greenwood Cemetery. Archdeacon F.C. McRitchie will officiate.