Honoring Sergeant Carter (4 page)

A
lthough I had not anticipated it, the Medal of Honor and reinterment ceremonies in January 1997 were only the beginning of a whirlwind of events that would continue through most of the year. From Valley Forge to Sacramento to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, we went out to black communities, civic organizations, and veterans groups to participate in ceremonies honoring the Medal of Honor recipients. We were called upon to be the stand-ins for the deceased husbands, fathers, grandfathers, and uncles whose belated recognition won them a prideful place in the hearts of many people.

Despite this demanding round of events, I had not forgotten the unanswered questions that remained in the back of my mind. Why had Eddie been barred from reenlisting in the Army? What did Woodfred Jordan mean when he said Eddie was being watched while he was in the National Guard? I couldn't get over the feeling that trouble might be brewing for us somewhere. A journalist acquaintance suggested that I could obtain government
records through the Freedom of Information Act that might shed light on any problems Eddie had had while in the Army. I submitted a request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Months later I got a form letter saying that the FBI had a tremendous backlog of requests, that they were understaffed, and that my request had not yet been assigned for initial review. “In view of our current workload,” the letter ended, “you may expect a delay of several months.” That did not sound very hopeful.

 

I
n the meantime, I was also piecing together the story of Eddie's rather unusual childhood.

Eddie was born in Los Angeles on May 26, 1916. His father, Edward A. Carter, a small, dark-skinned man with a searching gaze, was an evangelist and missionary with the Holiness Church. Though not a physically large man, the force of the elder Carter's personality and his powerful oratorical skills made his presence loom large to those who knew him. Eddie's mother was Mary Stuart Carter, a young Anglo-Indian woman from Calcutta. Her family had come to Los Angeles, where she met Carter. She was also a missionary with the Holiness Church. Two other children, William and Miriam, were born to the couple after Eddie. Through passport records, letters, and church documents I pieced together the story of this unusual family and its remarkable journey to India and, later, China.

Eddie's father was born in 1877 in Trinidad, Colorado.
He lived in Colorado Springs, Kansas City, and El Paso before arriving in Los Angeles. Mary Wilhelmina Stuart, Eddie's mother, was some twenty years younger than his father. She was variously described as “colored,” “East Indian,” or “Hindu.” Her father was an Englishman and her mother was from India.

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In Los Angeles, Eddie's father worked as a cook for wealthy families. A first marriage ended when his wife died in a traffic accident. At some point the elder Carter underwent a powerful conversion experience, which hit him with such intensity that he threw a pot of soup he was cooking into the air. The experience also launched him on a lifelong career as an evangelist. He soon devel
oped a reputation for his colorful and powerful rhetoric. One witness praised his thunderous sermons as a “wonderful combination of scriptural reference and great emotional enthusiasm…not expository preaching but more experiential preaching.”

His style was so effective that it even won him a blessing in the form of his marriage to Mary Stuart on May 2, 1915. Speaking in church years later, Mary described his effect on her. “When I first came to this country from Calcutta, East India, I joined the Catholic Church, intending to become a nun. Later I became a Seventh-Day Adventist, but still I never knew God in peace. I met Mr. Carter, and through his life and teaching I found Jesus in his saving power.”

Mary was only a girl when she married Evangelist Carter—and like many younger women who marry older men, she may have felt in awe of him—but over the next ten years of marriage she grew into a self-confident woman who was also a powerful speaker. She told of having a vision of “a vast body of water, and beyond were a great multitude of Hindus.” Her “vision” may have been the genesis of an irresistible calling that propelled them to India, where they hoped to “establish holiness.” They were not the only ones called. The Holiness Church had a program of establishing missions in foreign lands. Already it had missions in South America and Palestine.

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Whatever the genesis of the move, in early May 1925, some 235 people gathered at the church mission hall for
an emotional farewell service, and the Carter family set sail for India aboard the steamer
Korea Maru.
A passport photograph showed the family at that time. The elder Carter was dressed formally in a jacket, vest, and tie. Beside him stood Mary Carter, a lovely young woman in a modest dress with a wide collar, her hair pulled straight back. Eddie Jr., his eyes somewhat veiled, stood close to
her, just behind her left shoulder. Miriam, with a ribbon in her hair, was placed in front between her parents, while William stood behind his father's right shoulder.

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After a stopover in San Francisco, the ship arrived in Honolulu, where the Carters posted a letter to their church. They were thankful, they wrote, that none of them had gotten seasick “while others are sick all around us.” An appeal for divine help was promptly answered: “We had some very rough weather for a few days and nights so Sister Carter and I spoke to Father about it and
that settled it.” They also reported holding a service—“a good meeting,” they thought—on the boat the previous Sunday. Eddie would have just turned nine years old; William was seven and Miriam was four.

On June 25, 1925, some six weeks after their departure, following stops at Yokohama, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, the family finally walked down the gangplank in Calcutta, a congested city then under British colonial rule. They arrived with only 150 rupees to their name. They spent the first night at the Metropolitan Hotel at a cost of 20 rupees and registered with the American consul the next day. With the help of a friend they found rooms on Dhurrumtollah Street and a landlord willing to wait for payment of the 150-rupee rent until they received funds from home. On the following night they held their first meeting for potential converts. “We have fired the first gun for holiness, so our work and your work has begun in Calcutta,” they reported.

The funds they hoped to receive would not be great. In June, the church treasurer reported that only $6.25 had been collected to support the Carters' missionary work. The monthly donation fluctuated, reaching a peak of $89.46 in March 1926. It was apparent that the Carters would have to find support among their new converts in India.

Shortly after the Carters arrived, Calcutta was drenched with monsoon rains, heavy downpours that often caused flooding. The rains would be followed by a
dry season that all too often resulted in drought and famine. As if the contrasts of flood and drought were not enough, India was beset by frequent epidemics. The most recent one, in 1924, had killed over 300,000 people. Calcutta was a city of extremes of wealth and social circumstance, where many lived in hovels while others lived in palaces. It offered fertile ground for missionaries. Hunger, disease, and despair made thousands of Indians ready to welcome any message of hope.

After only a month in Calcutta the Carters were having great success in winning converts. “The rain does not stop us or the people from coming out to meetings,” Evangelist Carter wrote. Mary preached at one meeting at which eight souls were converted. In all some sixty-five converts to Christianity had been gained. The meetings were sometimes held at the Thornborn Methodist Episcopal Church, but this was only temporary. “We are hoping to have a place soon which will be the First Holiness Church of Calcutta,” Carter reported. “Don't you feel like shouting?”

All was going well. The family had moved into new housing that was made available free of charge. The children were also well. William had suffered from some kind of infection in his legs, but this cleared up. “Sister Carter and I got right down on our knees and prayed through on his healing.” Evangelist Carter's sole complaint was that they had gotten only one letter from home since arriving. “News from home is scarce and you will never know how
lonesome a person can get in India in a city of a million inhabitants, until you have been here.”

Received into the homes of several Indian families, Carter reported observations he thought would interest the folks back home and give them a sense of the great work required in India.

It is interesting that Evangelist Carter focused on the “great problem” posed by race mixing and color consciousness among Indians. Perhaps this was an expression
of his sensibility as a black man (or, as he preferred, an “Ethiopian”) raised in racially segregated and color-conscious America. Because they were a mixed couple, and because Mary Carter herself was Anglo-Indian, Evangelist Carter may have felt that they were well suited to oppose separation based on color and caste, that they could succeed in bringing people together.

In any case, their missionary work was phenomenally successful, reportedly gaining a thousand converts within a matter of months. They also secured a building in which to house their Holiness Church mission. A photograph of it, along with the Carters and some of their converts, appeared in the
Pentecost,
the church newspaper.

Through 1926 their work grew and their household arrangement became more complex and costly. The children were enrolled in the mission school, and the family had hired a man and a woman to help with domestic chores and the children. Eddie was very close to his mother, but his relationship with his father was difficult. Years later, Eddie said that as a child in India he couldn't get along with his father, that sometimes his father beat him, and twice Eddie ran away from home. Eddie dreamed of escaping to another kind of life. His family lived near a military post, and it was here that Eddie's lifelong fascination with the military took root. He said he once had a vision of a visit by a spirit that told him he would become a great warrior, that he would be wounded many times, but that he would survive so long as he protected his chest.

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While Eddie entertained thoughts of being a soldier, both Edward and Mary Carter were busy with the nightly meetings of their missionary work. Though not always well herself, Mary helped heal a sick woman through prayer, Carter Sr., reported. Aside from health problems and ever-present financial worries, there was no hint of any other difficulties in the letters and reports they sent back home to Los Angeles. Then, suddenly it seems, their household was disrupted.

In the April 20, 1927, edition of the
Pentecost,
among the committee and board notes, in small type at the back of the issue, I found a brief report to the Board of Elders. “Letters were read from Brother Carter stating that his wife had eloped with Irwin H. James, taking their little girl with them; and stating in a heartbreaking way his desire to find and forgive her, and his surprise at what his wife and friend had done. Also letters from the American Consul of Calcutta, India, and the Government at Washington. Prayers offered for Brother Carter.” Carter wired for financial help when he learned that not only had the church's general secretary and treasurer run off with his wife, he had also absconded with the church's funds. Mary didn't return, although Carter subsequently gained custody of Miriam.

Because William and Miriam were so young, they were probably less affected by this turn of events, but the loss of his mother devastated Eddie. Further, the relationship between Eddie and his father, strained during the best of times, was now irreversibly damaged. In fact, I think Eddie tried to be the opposite of his father. Missionaries, in Eddie's view, weren't hardworking or courageous men. His dreams of being a soldier only grew. There would never be a reconciliation between Eddie and the elder Carter.

Meanwhile, though his father may have been devastated by the loss of his wife as well, he had to carry on. By the middle of the summer of 1927, Evangelist Carter
had planned to return to the United States. He applied for a second passport. This passport, issued on August 12, included his three children, but not Mary Carter, and tellingly depicts, in its photograph, Eddie standing farthest away from his father. On the application the elder Carter stated that he intended to return to the United States within one month. He secured passage on the
Korea Maru,
the same ship that brought his family from the United States to India, but unexpectedly, on September 9, he found himself and his three children cast off the boat in Shanghai, China.

 

D
uring what was to be the journey home, young William suddenly took ill with a high fever. The ship's doctor suspected it was typhoid fever. Dismayed, Evangelist Carter prayed fervently for William's recovery, but the fever only got worse. When the ship reached Shanghai, the family was required to disembark or be forcibly removed.