Harry A. Franck

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Harry A. Franck (19 June, 1881 - 18 April, 1962) was a popular travel author during the first half of the 20th century.

As a University of Michigan student he bet a fellow student that he could travel around the world without money, and proceeded to do so when he graduated in 1903. His book, A Vagabond Journey Around the World, was published by the Century Company in 1910, and sold well enough to encourage him to continue his travels. Franck had many adventures, not all of them pleasant. A list of his writings can be found at http://harryafranck.com. All his books except Winter Journey Through the Ninth, which was privately published in 2001, are out of print, but readily available at http://abe.com and other used-book sites.

His books intimately recorded life as it was lived in the societies he visited, at a time when many of them were changing rapidly. Some may find it hard to believe the soceties he describes existed less than a century ago. His strong belief in the work ethic sometimes colored his impressions; in some of the societies he visited, he pointed out, idleness was a sign of rank and prosperity.

For instance, in Wandering in Northern China (Century, 1923), he visited Korea, which had been a Japanese colony since 1910. The first thing he noted was that Korea was virtually devoid of trees. ^[1] The aristocracay had been stripped of their duties but were allowed to wear the unique attire of their rank, although many were living in poverty. Franck reported that a Korean noblewoman's formal dress "displayed to the public gaze exactly that portion of the torso which the women of most nations take pains to conceal." ^[2]

In the same book he reported on a visit to the northern Chinese city of Harbin, which at the time of writing (1923) contained a large population of refugee Russian aristocracy. He reported that the refugees held balls every Saturday night, complete with formal dress, although most of them were destitute.^[3] A former Russian aristocrat approached the director of the YMCA whom Franck was visiting to ask for some food; the director told him he would be welcome to lunch in exchange for cutting the grass. The Russian apologized but said he was unable to comply - manual labor was declasse - and departed, unfed.^[4]

In Zone Policeman 88 (1913), Franck worked as a police officer in the Panama Canal Zone. In Vagabonding Down the Andes (1917), he traveled thousands of miles on foot. Vagabonding Through Changing Germany (1920) reported on life in a Germany that was still recovering from World War I. He even traveled through the Soviet Union in 1935, not without difficulty, and recorded his impressions in A Vagabond in Sovietland (1935).

Franck married Rachel Latta Franck (b1893, d1986) in 1919. They had five children. In 1938 Franck was 57 and began to travel by air, which was still a novelty at that time. He wrote Sky Roaming Above Two Continents in 1938, (Frederick Stokes Publishing) and The Lure of Alaska in 1939.

When he was almost 60 years old, Franck obtained a commission as a Major in the Army Air Force and served with the Ninth Air Force in France in the closing days of World War II, where the fighting was still going on. He reported vividly on the devastated conditions in eastern France. A nearby fortress had been bypassed by the Americans but was still manned by a German garrison. The Germans fired the same number of rounds from their cannon every night at the same time; the Germans, he was told, weren't aiming at anything, they were just following orders not to surrender. ^[5] Winter Journey Through the Ninth was not accepted for publication at the time because publishers felt the market for war memoirs was glutted. It was privately printed by the Franck family in 2000.