Old Missoula

One of Missoula’s First Novels – The Pine Tree Shield by Elizabeth Canfield Flint (1943)

Local Matron’s Book to Be Off Press in March – Missoulian 11/22/1942

“The Pine Tree Shield” Is Novel Based on Life of Forester.

A small boy working in the broad fields of his father’s farm paused frequently during his weary labors to gaze longingly at the wild geese flying. The boy’s greatest fancy was to ride with them high above the work-a-day world. When he grew to manhood, he realized his dream of flying with the wild geese and that very realization ultimately brought him to death.

The man was Howard R. Flint, who put the United States Forest Service on wings. The story of Mr. Flint, for 10 years fire chief of the Rocky Mountain forest region with headquarters in Missoula, is told in a novel, “The Pine Tree Shield,” written by his widow. The book will be published in March by Doubleday, Doran & Co.

For many years a resident of Missoula, Mrs. Flint began her book about 10 years ago in a creative writing class taught by Dr. H. G. Merriam, head of the English department of Montana State University. Mr. Flint died a few years ago as a result of an illness contracted on a trip up the Salmon river. The National Geographic Society had invited him to accompany its representative in exploring the “River of No Return” as a result of his maps of the river area. A Forest Service airplane, one of the fancied “wild geese flying” of his childhood, brought him home to die.

Most of the action of “The Pine Tree Shield” centers around Missoula; many of the characters are Missoula people. Not alone the story of Mr. Flint (Hugh Kent in the book), it is also a chronicle of the growth of the United States Forest Service. Action begins in the Great Lakes states where the Forest Service had its first big job – that of cutting timber without slaughtering it. It follows through a series of incidents which tell the story of the Forest Service fight to reclaim burnt-over areas, to prevent forest destruction and still provide the nation’s timber need and to insure adequate forests for posterity.

The book tells how the Forest Service began using airplanes because of the blood, sweat and dreams of one man. He it was who insisted that planes could be used in fighting forest fires. He it was also who initiated the use of airplanes in mapping of forest areas, having mapped from the air over 18,000 square miles of some of the roughest country in the United States.

Interwoven skillfully into this exciting, authentic tale of the Forest Service is the human side of official orders.

The book also chronicles the rise of the Johnson Flying Service from the days when “Bob and Dick” took the wings from their “big bird” and trundled it behind a truck to a garage for repairs, to the time when they became the foresters’ first aid when fires run.

Eight full pages of half-tone illustrations of regions known to all Western Montanans will be included in the published book. Forest Service officials who have read it say it is an accurate interpretation of the aims and ideals of the Forest Service.

Mrs. Flint, the reporter of these pioneer years of the Forest Service, says, “I owe much to the encouragement and critical assistance of Dr. Merriam in the completion of my book. I have thought that this story might provide a pattern for men of initiative during the expansion of government control which is taking place. “You’re not the man for government service; you’ve got to get things done. Stay with U. S. Steel and we’ll make a name for you. Go to the Forest Service and you’ll starve to death,” a prominent captain of industry challenged young Hugh Kent. “The Pine Tree Shield” is Hugh Kent’s answer to that challenge.

Mrs. Andre Ferret, who, with her husband, Dr. Ferret, moved to Missoula last May and who has done foreign correspondence work for two large American daily papers in Madrid and Paris, believes Mrs. Flint’s book has national significance in the present era.

In Mrs. Ferret’s words, “Although the book deals with only one of the government agencies, one of the earliest of them, it should have a wide significance in this day of expansion of governmental agencies, for all the conflicts and problems of the development of the Forest Service will have their counterparts in the new agencies. We hope the book’s message is true, because more and more of the young people are going into government service both because private enterprise is becoming less exciting and because the need for cooperation becomes more obvious and vital.” Betty Alff.

The above article appeared in The Sunday Missoulian on November 22, 1942.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/349340337

 

A link to the online novel ‘The Pine Tree Shield ‘ appears below:

The Pine Tree Shield – Elizabeth Canfield Flint (1943).

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015059722192;view=1up;seq=6