Colonel Edgecombe

Colonel Edgecombe is a senior officer in France who heads the Post Despatch Service. His role in the novel is defined by practical authority and professional patronage: he can reshape the assignments of Richard Ellsworth Savage and Henry Savage, and he puts his service at the disposal of the American delegation preparing for the peace conference in Paris.

Command in Tours

While Richard Ellsworth Savage is stationed in Tours, Edgecombe heads the Post Despatch Service. Richard’s ease in the company of officers has already made him useful in military social settings, but Edgecombe gives that usefulness an official direction. When the Post Despatch Service is organized as a separate outfit, Edgecombe takes Richard away from his previous work and makes him one of his assistants, with the rank of captain.

Edgecombe’s command also gives Richard room to act on behalf of his family. Richard had been trying to secure a transfer for Henry Savage from the infantry; after joining Edgecombe’s staff, he succeeds in bringing Henry to Tours. The move comes too late for Henry to receive more than a first lieutenancy, a limit that marks the difference between improving a soldier’s position and undoing the constraints of the military system.

Patronage and Professional Loyalty

Edgecombe’s relationship with Richard is both hierarchical and supportive. He selects him for a responsible staff role and enables him to pursue Henry’s transfer, making his authority consequential beyond the routine management of couriers. Richard, in turn, accepts the appointment readily. His work under Edgecombe offers travel and a continuing place in Europe, while also sparing him the immediate prospect of returning home to look for a job.

Edgecombe does not present the Paris assignment simply as an adventure. When he tells Richard that the service has been ordered to support the American delegation, he cautions him that service should come first and that the arrangement is confidential. Richard is eager to go, but Edgecombe’s reminder establishes the official terms of the opportunity: personal benefit is available within a military duty, not in place of it.

The Armistice and the Paris Assignment

Tours responds exuberantly to a rumor that the armistice has been signed, with officers and enlisted men drinking and dancing through the headquarters buildings. When the report proves false, Richard feels almost relieved. On the night of the actual armistice, Edgecombe tells him that President Woodrow Wilson will attend a peace conference in Paris and that the Post Despatch Service will become the delegation’s courier service.

The news turns Edgecombe’s staff from a wartime communications outfit toward the work of the postwar negotiations. He offers Richard the possibility of going home instead, but Richard quickly chooses to remain in service and travel to Paris. Edgecombe’s decision thus links the end of the fighting to Richard’s next professional opening: the armistice does not immediately return him to civilian life, but carries him into the machinery surrounding the peace conference.