Damon Runyon

San Francisco Examiner/January 22, 1923

IN noting a few fleeting memories of Coblenz on the Rhine yesterday, we made mention of the “Raspberry Club,” and several inquiries as to the nature of that once celebrated organization leads us on today to details.

The “Raspberry Club” was organized about the first night the advance guard of the American Third Army of Occupation reached Coblenz, when the German soldiers were still in the city.

The process of organization was quite simple. The newspaper correspondents with the army merely took over a big room on the ground floor of the Reichfurstenhof Hotel, overlooking the Rhine, told the blond proprietor to bring on a few bottles of whatever he had, opened a poker game and thus the club was founded.

The additional details, such as the election of officers, the adoption of a constitution and by-laws and the raising of funds came from time to time as they were thought out. The name “Raspberry Club” was derived from the interesting fact that the best the correspondents usually got from the headquarters of the A.E.F. and the Third Army, loo, was the dear old “razz.”

THE writer was the first president of the “Raspberry Club.” The duties of the office were quite simple. The president levied upon the members then and there assembled for enough German marks to pay for the next bottle of Steinhager, and filled in at all poker games.

This Steinhager—if that’s the correct name—was an insidious white liquid substance which came in stone jugs. In a state of normalcy it wasn’t particularly inviting, but Major Bozeman Bulger, then in charge of the correspondents, discovered a way of mixing it with other liquids that made it most palatable.

It carried a terrible kick, however. Once a little of it knocked four English officers who had come down from Cologne to visit the Americans clear back to their station before anyone learned their names.

On another occasion it slugged a detachment of officers from the Rainbow Division, who were making a party call on the club, with such desperate malevolence that they never returned.

THE Rainbow Divisioners were great patrons of the “Raspberry Club.” In fact, Capt. Billy McKenna of the Sixty-ninth Regiment of that division was an honorary member, a distinction conferred upon few members of the Third Army.

The “Raspberry Club” was primarily for correspondents and officers attached to the press division, as active members, but never were the doors closed to any wayfarer who looked as if he might be a good customer.

Early in the evening, when the day’s work was done, and the news dispatched over the wires, or not dispatched, according to the mood of the censor—the club members gathered in their little clubroom.

At the table in the corner you could always find Capt. Gerald Morgan, the censor, smoking his faithful pipe, and invitingly fingering the cards. With him would be Captain Fernbach of the Intelligence Department at headquarters, now back on the San Francisco “Examiner.”

One by one the customers would arrive from all over the bridgehead, from the gallant First Division across the Rhine, from the Forty-second, from the Third, and sometimes from way back toward Luxembourg. The fame of the “Raspberry Club” traveled far and wide, and everybody seemed anxious to learn for themselves if those newspaper eggs could play poker as well as people said, and if their Steinhager could outshoot a French .73.

AT the doorway they would be greeted with easy Southern chivalry, and aplomb and all that truck, by Major Bulger and introduced in turn to Eddie James, to Bill McKutt, to Burge McFall, to General Forrest, to Webb Miller and to all the individual members of that galaxy of artistic souls who gave Coblenz such a good name in the days of the empire.

They might meet, too, if the seemed deserving, Henry Noble Hall, of the Lunnon Times, and ‘erbert Bailey, of the Lunnon Daily Mail, whose accents lent tone to the atmosphere of the “Raspberry Club.”

It was ‘Erbert Bailey who brought the English officers down from Cologne to teach them the famous American game of “craps.” It was ‘Erbert Bailey who was generally mistaken throughout the American zone tor the Prince of Wales when the Prince came to look over the Third army and when ‘Erbert pursued him in his capacity of news-gatherer.

That was a proud day tor ‘Erbert Bailev. You may be sure not everyone can be mistaken for the Prince of Wales, though once Major Bulger was mistaken for General Liggett.

OFFICERS of high and low degree passed through the portals of the “Raspberry Club” in its day. Sergeant Lankus Hankus Pankus Gowdy was entertained there in due form one time to the great horror of some stern should-strap wearers, who did not understand the singular merit of this enlisted man.

William Alien White stood on our carpets many a night, smoking and listening. John T. McCutcheon, Bill Irwin, and scores of other distinguished writers and artists partook of the hospitality of the club. Charles M. Schwab sat in on the poker game one night, and carried away our money by the sheer might of his intellect.

One woman, Maud Radford Warren, the magazine writer, was permitted the privilege of sacred precincts of the Raspberry Club. An English general, whose name has escaped us, but who was of tremendous importance in the eyes of the Messrs. Hall and Bailey, once passed the evening in the club.

There were few other places in Coblenz in which to pass evenings in those days. If a man could do a lot of passing in the “Raspberry Club,” his visit was not without profit. Students of cubical metaphysics will grasp the allusion.

MEANTIME, as the visitors came and went, Captain Morgan and Captain Fernbach would sit at the table, idly fingering the cards.

You did not have to play cards, but if you wished to play cards, if, indeed, the urge to play cards was well-nigh irresistible within you, then, of course, Captain Morgan and Captain Fernbach would accommodate you.

That was their purpose at the table. They were the house players. Such was the hospitality of the “Raspberry Club” in the days when the Third Army occupied Coblenz that we even provided playmates for the visitors. It was certainly a great club.

If you ever go to Coblenz, drop into the Reichfurstenhof and ask the proprietor to show you the old club room of the “Raspberry Club.” He will remember, just say, those men who made all that racket during the occupation.

And yonder you may see the identical table over which this writer one memorable evening called a bet of one hundred francs in a stud game on the chance of making a third six against a palpable pair of Aces—and MADE IT!

That’s historic ground, men.