Finding Billy Battles

Prologue: Ted Sayles-3

My last meeting with Great-Grandfather Battles was a few months before he passed away. I had just turned fourteen. It was late August in 1959, and I had made the drive to Leavenworth with my grandmother. Once again, she dropped me off. The visit was much the same as the earlier ones a year before, but I could tell Great-Grandfather was not feeling well. He seemed less energetic then, and even declined the walk over to the Dugout for refreshments. Grandmother returned after only about forty-five minutes.

"You know, I was only about four years older than you when my life got real complicated," he said. "At the time, I wished I could start over again. But as things worked out, I am kind of glad about the way things went."

I recall that I asked why at the time he wanted to start over.

"That's a long story, Ted. You'll learn all about that later on. But for now, just be content to know that I don't have many regrets about any of the paths I took during my time on this earth."

Great-Grandfather Battles died in 1960—not long after his one hundredth birthday. At the funeral were several of Great-Grandfather Battles' old cronies—most younger than him but all filled with anecdotes and yarns about the man they were laying to rest. At fourteen, I was still too young to comprehend the meaning or significance of the stories they told. But I remembered something that Tom Barkley said—the man we saw back in 1958 in the Dugout that my grandmother didn't want my great-grandfather to talk about.

"Your great-grand pappy was one hell of man," he told me. "Most folks have no idea what he did in his life. I can tell you one thing—he had hell in his neck, but he always measured a full sixteen hands high, and he had more guts than you could hang on a fence."

I had no idea what Barkley was talking about at the time. Later, I learned those words were high praise—meaning my great-grandfather was a determined, courageous, and honest man who had considerable ability at whatever he did.

Barkley was one of the men who had spent a lot of time with my great-grandfather after the turn of the century. He and one or two others were much younger than my great-grandfather, and I was able to talk to them many years later when they were in their eighties.

I never understood exactly why Great-Grandfather Battles was in the Wadsworth home. When I asked my grandmother, she said it was his choice, but I always felt there must have been some other reasons. Had I been a bit older, I might have understood why families tend to conceal certain events, and even people, from public view. I might also have appreciated the wealth of knowledge and experiences Great-Grandfather Battles had amassed during his long life.

I went through my teenage years hardly thinking of Great-Grandfather Battles—the stories he told me and the trunks filled with his possessions. At my great-grandfather's behest, my grandmother had stowed the trunks in the attic of her house in Troy, and everybody pretty much forgot about them. There they remained until my grandmother passed away in her mid-nineties in 1983. The trunks were specifically mentioned in my grandmother's will. They were to go to me, but at the time, I was working in Asia as a foreign correspondent, so I asked the family to keep them where they were. The house stayed in the family, and the trunks remained in the attic, tightly sealed and forgotten.

A widowed aunt moved into the house, and it wasn't until she passed away that the trunks were remembered. In the meantime, I had returned to the United States and taken an editing job at a magazine in Kansas City. About a year after my aunt's death in 1998, I got a call from my cousin Janet in Troy. She said she had been going through my grandmother's attic and had found the trunks.

A few weeks later, they arrived at my house via UPS. What I discovered in those old chests was a historian's treasure—firsthand accounts of some of the most significant events and people in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century history. There were dozens of black-and-white photos inside a shoebox, a rare .44 caliber Colt Navy Revolver and a .45 caliber Colt Peacemaker, three disassembled rifles (a Winchester model 1876 centerfire .44-40 caliber, a Krag-Jorgensen .30-40 caliber rifle, and a model 1866 Henry caliber 44-100 repeating rifle), an old slouch hat, a bundle of maps, a neatly folded khaki U.S. Army uniform with yellow captain's bars sewn on the shoulders and two lines of gold braid on its sleeves, some old reel-to-reel tapes that contained interviews with Great-Grandfather Battles conducted at the Wadsworth home and a large string-bound packet of letters written by an assortment of people over a sixty-year period, twelve journals, and a shoebox with my name on it.

The journals were bound together with twine into two bundles the size of large phonebooks, each about two inches thick. The yellowing pages were contained between heavy, stiff, cloth-covered jackets. Each cover had a large black number. The first entry in journal #1 was made September 6, 1878:

Mother has succeeded. She has seen to it that I am a student at the University of Kansas—much against my wishes. I want to go west, to see the world, to get away from Lawrence. That is not to be—at least not for the time being. But I will bide my time because I refuse to remain in this place while the world passes me by.

Subsequent entries talked about life at the university, which at the time was about twelve years old and still largely treeless, though a beautification project in spring 1878 resulted in the planting of some three hundred trees. The hill upon which the university would eventually be built was still known to most people as "Hogback Ridge."

Great-Grandfather Battles wrote:

But the faculty and town elders have renamed it "Mt Oread," which folks say sounds more fitting for a college. What a hoot that is! It will always be Hogback Ridge to me.

It took me almost a week to get through all the journals. They were handwritten, and some of the ink and lead pencil used had faded over the years. Nevertheless, they were in remarkably good shape. At first, I thought I might have trouble reading them. Great-Grandfather Battles had a beautiful penmanship, but it was of a different era, and more ornate than I was used to. The journals were an extensive record of Great-Grandfather's life and the various adventures he lived—and he lived many. Some, as I was soon to find out, bordered on the ignominious; and a few were undeniably what today we would consider "outside the law."

I had assumed the journals would have dealt with my great-grandfather's life in Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and California. And many did. However, many mentioned places I would never have imagined he had been: the Philippines, French Indochina, Siam, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Germany, Mexico, and Central America, to name but a few.

By the time I finished, I felt as if I had been transported back in time; so vivid were my great-grandfather's descriptions. He definitely had a way with words—and for a good reason. Among his myriad occupations, Great-Grandfather Battles spent much of his life as an itinerant journalist working at assorted newspapers. It was his work for perhaps half a dozen or so newspapers that helped him develop impressive powers of observation and an effortless, crisp writing style.

It was about then that I began to feel a powerful connection to this man—a man I had met and talked with forty years ago, but who I didn't really know. Now, through the journals, I was beginning to discover just who William Battles was. If nothing else, I felt a professional kinship—we were both journalists, though he was much more of a participant in the events he wrote about than I had ever been.

Next, I opened a brown envelope addressed to "Ted Sayles." In it was a note saying that my great-grandfather had produced a 750-page manuscript. I looked through the trunk, but there was no manuscript anywhere. I checked the note again and found that I had not read far enough. The manuscript had been given to "some trusted individuals for safekeeping."

The note explained that the unpublished manuscript was provisionally entitled Hell to Pay: A True Account of My Life and Adventures, and that I would learn of its whereabouts after listening to a recording my great-grandfather had made specifically for me.

When I opened the shoebox, I found three six-inch reel-to-reel tapes. Each was fixed with a label. One read, "Wadsworth Oral History Project, Winter 1958," and another read "Anna Marie Sayles & W. F. R. Battles interviews, summer 1959." But it was the last one that grabbed my attention. The label on it read "For Theodore Sayles. Instructions and Remarks from W. F. R. Battles."

A small envelope addressed to me was lodged between the reels. Inside was a note in my grandmother's distinctive handwriting:

Dear Theodore,

These are the only recorded interviews Papa ever gave. If you are reading this note, then you have Papa's trunk, and I am dead and buried. He asked me to make sure it was you and nobody else who got his belongings, and he wanted me to promise to hold on to them until you were at least 25.

The trunk contains Papa's journals and some tape recordings that are meant to fill in some of the gaps in the journals. Papa called these "splinters of truth." They were accounts that he declined to put into his journals. I hope you will listen to them and use them as you write our family history.

As you will see, there are things in the journals and in the taped interviews that some people might find sensitive, and perhaps even libelous, but I know my father, and if he said these things happened, then they did. He was a stickler for the truth, and I know he wanted these things disclosed. I hope you will follow through with Papa's wishes.

You will notice that there are supposed to be nine journals, but there are only eight in the trunk. Papa left one journal with someone he trusted because it contained some very unflattering information about some very important people, and he was afraid someone might come after it. I have no idea what that journal contains or where it is.

One tape was made expressly for you by Papa. He made me promise on his deathbed to give it to you without listening to it. Against my better judgment, I am doing that. I hope you will find it useful.

Your loving Grandmother Sayles

I sat back in my chair, my grandmother's note in my hand. What had I done? Or better yet, what had I not done? The trunks sat in attics, basements, who knows where else for much of my life—forgotten, gathering dust—while an astounding window to a rich past remained closed, as well as the story of the person who had opened it.

I knew at once what my task was. It would be a challenge, but I had to blend my great-grandfather's journals; an unfinished autobiography he was apparently working on; and the stack of letters, photos, recordings, as well as the other materials concealed long ago in that old trunk into a compelling narrative.

In attempting to do that, I have allowed Great-Grandfather Battles to speak in his own voice, the way he intended when he penned his story so many decades ago. Where necessary, I have filled in the gaps using his journals, the tapes, and a few of the conversations I recall having with him and his contemporaries. What follows is a remarkable saga that I hope will do Great-Grandfather Battles and the often-astonishing and sometimes-inscrutable life he led justice.

Ted Sayles

INTRODUCTION

Kansas City, 1948

My full name is William Fitzroy Raglan Battles, but most folks call me Billy Battles. My good friends call me Billy "Rags" Battles. More on that later.

Let me begin by owning up to some pretty terrible things I did during my life. That way, you can make up your mind right now if you want to read further.