Five Caledonia High School students were celebrated with a dance in their honor, and the next day as they headed to the train station, they were accompanied by a throng of citizens with music provided by the community band. Why? Just five days earlier, on April 7, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson had signed a resolution of Congress, declaring war between the United States and Germany, making the nation an ally of England, France and Russia in World War I.
Those five students – Matthew Kennedy, Harold and Raymond Stevens, Arnold Edin and Bennie Qualy – were leaving school and going to war as new members of the Coast Artillery, a branch of the regular Army. At that community send-off, they were joined by two Navy recruits, Ralph Wheaton and 21-year-old Walter Grohman, all departing for training – the Army boys heading to St. Louis and the Navy lads to Chicago. The train arrived an hour late, but the throng was entertained during the wait by the band.
Four other students joined the National Guard – Thomas Till, Joseph Hundt, Earl Edin and Paul Williams. Within two weeks after the declaration of war, 19 Caledonia boys had left for military duty.
Local historian Ingrid Julsrud recalled her grandfather sitting on the front porch in Houston, waiting for the newspaper to be delivered. When it arrived, on the front page, were three-inch-high black letters announcing, “Austria Declares War on Serbia.” At age 14, she was puzzled when her grandfather “just moaned and said over and over again, “Now there’s a war. Now there’s a war.”
She thought, “How silly, who cares if there is a war way over on the other side of the world.” She asked her grandfather why he was so upset. “Because,” he said, “there has never been a war any place that didn’t affect all other nations.” She admitted that she would eventually learn that lesson, but this was 1914, three years before President Wilson finally declared the United States a combatant.
The war quickly expanded all over Europe with Kaiser Wilhelm and Germany overrunning Holland and Belgium. Ingrid and her Houston classmates called the Kaiser-Austrian armies, “The Huns,” but they were not much affected by the war. “Life as a freshman in high school was more important. Doing math with letters and signs instead of numbers, learning Latin, a new language which we thought was difficult, and reading Shakespeare for the first time occupied our minds.” But the teenagers were aware that the adults in town waited every afternoon for the evening newspaper and its updates on the war.
The United States remained neutral, but to protect American interests, negotiated with all major nations involved, primarily Germany on one side and England and France on the other. Meanwhile, German U-boats (underwater boats) were critical not only to warfare, but also to commercial and passenger shipping. On May 7, 1915, the Lusitania, England’s most renown passenger ship, was struck by two torpedoes off the Irish coast and sank within 18 minutes. More than 1,100 passengers and crew perished, including 124 American men, women and children on the voyage headed for the U. S.
Back in Houston County, Julsrud said, the intentional sinking of a vessel that was unmistakably a passenger ship “brought out anger, nationalism and patriotism never known before, and America saw that war was inevitable.”
Diplomats expected a United States war declaration, but it would not happen for nearly two more years.
Not all Americans waited. Caledonian Ray Sheehan enlisted in the regular Army just before war was declared in April. After training in Missouri, he was stationed in Douglas, Ariz., in May and would be in France by July, 1917. From Arizona, he wrote home, “We had a special train to bring us here from Jefferson Barracks, Missouri … We had all Pullman cars and didn’t stop for anything only coal, except Fort Worth and El Paso, Texas. We stopped at those places one hour for exercise … It surely is hot down here … We have to do a lot of drilling … I like it in the Army very well.”
Several days after departing from Caledonia, Navy recruit Ralph Wheaton in Chicago wrote to his parents, “We arrived here in good condition and are still feeling very well. After a tedious routine of registering, examinations, followed by a period of mess line shivering – for it is very chilly down here on account of the lake breeze – we were finally given our uniforms yesterday and transferred to the main barracks. As yet, there has been no time for long drills but we expect to get plenty tomorrow and thereafter.
“… Well, come what may, we are prepared, that is in determination if not in experience. It is surely an inspiring sight to witness thousands of bluejackets in columns or leaving on the trains for the east.
“You may say for me that the mess is much better than we expected and that everyone seems enthusiastic about our good “chuck.” In fact, we can eat all we can eat of well cooked substantial food, and the system regulating the transfer of raw food products to the hungry “jackies” is surely remarkable.
“At present the Southern lads, I believe, are in the majority and they surely are a fine lot of boys. Throughout the entire station there is but one idea and spirit, and though seldom mentioned, it is plainly expressed in the conduct of all. That does not predict “fair weather” for the Kaiser and autocracy.”
Three months after enlisting, Wheaton had been transferred to Boston and then to the naval yard in Norfolk, where he was made a chief gunner on the Battleship Michigan.
To be continued …
Sources: Remembering Old Times by Ingrid Julsrud, 1993 and clippings from the Caledonia Argus and the Houston Signal during 1917.
Photo courtesy of the Houston County Historical Society
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