NORTHFIELD — Almost exactly two years after efforts to honor a local World War I hero began, renovations for the Charles Preston Plaque in the Northfield Town Hall have been scheduled for this December.
Stephen Seredynski, a Northfield resident and current town Planning Board Chair, shared the news that the restoration was scheduled to be completed by the Williamstown Art Conservation Group on Dec. 7 and 8. During a June 2020 Annual Town Meeting, voters appropriated $7,000 to fund this renovation and install a light to illuminate the renovated plaque in the main town hall lobby.
“Charles Preston was a Northfield native, a well-documented civilian hero of World War I, and a nominee for the Distinguished Service Medal,” Seredynski said.
The journey to restore the plaque began over 10 years ago, Seredynski said, when the Town Hall Master Planning Committee was formed to identify needed repairs and improvements for the building and grounds. The plaque was noted to be in poor condition, having deteriorated after nearly a century. In researching Preston, who was born in Northfield on July 22, 1878, Seredynski and other volunteers unearthed a story rich with history and heroism.
During the height of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, Preston was chosen to travel to Russia and assist the American Red Cross in setting up hospitals — all while conducting a secret mission for the War Department — and he volunteered to serve his duties without pay. While in Russia during the winter of 1918, Preston clandestinely collected $2.5 million worth (equal to $28 million today) of platinum for the War Department, to be used in the manufacture of explosives to support the United States’ war effort. At the time, Japanese and Russian Governments had made buying or selling platinum a capital offense.
Preston’s mission lasted 11 weeks and was one that “required remarkable business ability, tact (and) unflinching courage,” and was “performed at great and constant personal risk and hardship.” He died just six hours after returning home from “one of the most daring missions ever undertaken,” reads the plaque. It is unclear if he died from a stroke of apoplexy, as stated in a letter from his widow, Virgina Preston, or from a heart attack, as stated in other documentation.
Following the war, Northfield residents recognized Preston’s accomplishments and commissioned the cast stone plaque in the then-new Town Hall in 1928. The plaque was created and installed for $300 at the time, by the renowned Art Stone Company, which operated in Millers Falls between 1906 and 1933.
Detailed information on the Northfield native’s heroic exploits have been compiled and organized into binders, copies of which can be accessed by the public at Town Hall or the Dickinson Memorial Library and online through Northfieldma.gov.
Documents include copies of original, handwritten and transcribed copies of pages from Preston’s personal diary covering his mission in Siberia, letters of correspondence between his wife, Virginia Preston, and military officials, and newspaper clippings — including one from the New York Times in 1921 — recounting the story.
“James Bond had his Goldfinger, but Northfield residents can claim a Platinum-hand, though few people know of it,” reads the lead of an article written by Ralph Gordon, which was published in the Springfield Republican.
Preston’s quest for platinum and travels through Siberia by rail reads like a Bond novel, wrote Gordon, who said friends reportedly described Preston as someone who “at one time could be a dashing and handsome young man driving a sports motor car at a seaside resort, and at another time a man who could negotiate relentlessly for a business advantage with the keenest commercial minds in Russia.”
Preston was an employee of the U.S. Department of Commerce and, as fate would have it, he had lived in Russia for 12 years, spoke the language, and was familiar with customs from his earlier work buying hides for a shoe manufacturer. He went undercover as a Red Cross agent, and actually helped to set up three hospitals during his trip.
By Nov. 11, 1918, Preston had spent all the money intended for the purchase of platinum. He wrote that he “had too much cash and too much valuable material in possession to take chances,” and at times he “slept with the platinum under the mattress.”
A copy of “The Diary of Charles Leroy Presley Covering His Mission in Siberia,” was first given to the Northfield Historical Society in 1929. In his diary, Preston wrote he “had the responsibility and worry of having a large sum of money and very valuable material” in his possession for 11 weeks. After successfully delivering the platinum, he wrote he felt “as though someone had taken off my shoulders more care and worry than I hope to be obliged to carry in the future.”
After concluding his business in Russia, he began his travel home and stopped in Yokohama, Japan before sailing to the United States. At this time, he said he felt “tired and rather under the weather,” but a doctor at a U.S. Naval hospital in Yokohama assured him he was “disgustingly healthy” and that his headaches came from “slight nervous strain or tension from overeating.”
“He put me on a diet and now for a month I have not had the slightest sign of a headache and I feel fine,” Preston wrote in December 1919.
Unfortunately, this did not last. He arrived home to his family in apparent good health, but within hours he suffered a medical emergency from which he never regained consciousness and died that day — Feb. 17, 1919.
Much of the historical records about Preston’s exploits were provided from the archives of the Northfield Historical Society. Local researcher Joel Fowler also assisted in gathering and assembling the materials.
Preston was nominated for the Distinguished Service Medal after his service in 1919, but was denied by the secretary of war “on a technicality,” said Seredynski.
In a letter to Preston’s wife, written in support of the Distinguished Service Medal nomination on July 31, 1919, Major General C.C. Williams said Preston’s mission was of great value, and noted that “if, as I understand, he contracted the malady from which he died while so serving the government, he as truly and unselfishly gave his life for his country, as did the soldiers who were killed on the battlefield.”
However, a May 17, 1921 letter from then Secretary of War John W. Weeks states that Preston “was not a part of the Army at the time of performance of the services for which the award in his case has been recommended.” Weeks said he did “not favor giving either a Distinguished Service Cross or a Distinguished Service Medal to persons who are not a part of the Army.”
“If civilians are to be recognized, as they well may be, it should be done in some other way,” Weeks wrote.
Sure enough, Northfield residents took their own steps to honor Preston and commissioned the plaque in 1928.
“Words are quite inadequate to express my appreciation and I can only hope you will understand how much it means to his family. My husband was indeed worthy of the honor the town of Northfield is paying him,” Virginia Preston wrote in a letter after being advised the tablet would be commissioned. “I regret to write that the War Department has never recognized his services in any way. I am enclosing three letters — one from Major General C.C. Williams, one from the late John W. Weeks, Secretary of War in 1921 and one from the Red Cross …”
“Although Mr. Preston was very much occupied at the time with work he was doing for the United States Government, he most patriotically and generously consented to act for the American Red Cross as well,” reads a letter from Red Cross Vice Chairman Willoughby G. Walling to Virginia Preston, dated March 11, 1919. “The judgement and ability which he showed at this trying time in aiding the cause of humanity and the Red Cross was very much appreciated by all of us, and I take this opportunity to express to you our sincere appreciation of his aid and the shock and regret which his death has been to both myself and my associates.”
In August 2019, Seredynski and other volunteers submitted over 130 pages documenting Preston’s efforts during World War I to Congressman Jim McGovern’s office with a letter to the Department of Defense requesting Preston be awarded the Distinguished Service Medal posthumously.
Unfortunately, “after working with McGovern’s office and contacting various levels of federal government,” he was notified in September that these new efforts to honor Preston have “reached a dead end.”
“Records from the 1920s are hard to come by,” Seredynski said. “We were able to locate endorsements, and supporting documentation, but we were not able to locate the original nomination papers for the medal. The powers that be commended our efforts but without that documentation, consideration for the award could not go forward.”
Zack DeLuca can be reached at zdeluca@recorder.com or 413-930-4579.