Part four of a four-part series
World War I certainly altered the lives of those men enlisting or drafted into military service, but circumstances changed for many back at home as well. Two young women left the University of Minnesota, including Dyllone Hempstead of Houston, to volunteer for farm work. Specifically, Miss Hempstead was raising chickens for Dean A. F. Woods. She would be given credit for the remainder of her school year if she submitted an affidavit, recording how many chickens she succeeded in marketing and how many eggs she sold.
“Women in trousers are inevitable,” read an article in the Houston Signal (12 July, 1917), which chastised “a few senseless prudes” who evidently had criticized women in Europe for donning unconventional apparel while working in the “shops, factories and fields,” replacing men who had gone off to war. “The skirt is a serious obstacle to the proper performance of these duties hence, the skirt has been discarded and is replaced by the masculine trousers.” The author informs that if the war lasts for a year or two as expected, “then the women of our country will be performing the tasks of our own men who are sent to the trenches … prudes have not made the world, have been of little benefit to it, and they will not end it.”
In a letter from “somewhere in France” back home to his sisters in Houston, soldier Chris Blekum wrote that he liked the climate, the food and the conditions in France, but he complained about the French tobacco. “He says it doesn’t taste like the tobacco back home,” according to a notice in the Houston Signal (6 Sept. 1917).
To alleviate the situation, “a good sized box of tobacco and cigarettes were shipped him by friends last week. If it’s U. S. tobacco the boys over the seas want, they are going to be supplied, and a “tobacco fund”, to which those who desire can contribute, will be collected.”
Back in Houston County, letters from soldiers were as welcome as they were informative. Likewise, news from home was greatly appreciated by soldiers, even if it was just reading the hometown newspaper. Among others awaiting their deployment in Europe was William E. Kingsley, whose letter was published in the September 6, 1917 edition of the Houston Signal. Writing from naval training at Great Lakes, Ill.: “I received the Signal and that I am glad to get it, is putting it mild. It is like seeing someone from home, for it tells all about everything of the folks at home.”
Kingsley mentions his company receiving their new suits, “three suits of white and two of blue. They certainly make a man look altogether different, with little white hats that set on top of your head.” After a dress parade, the regiment commander was so impressed with their drills that he promoted them from Apprentice Seamen to 2nd Class Seamen, which meant $3.50 more per month. “We are all glad to get it, you bet!”
His name, William E. Kingsley, is now among 35 inscribed on the monument at the Houston County Courthouse, which honors those soldiers who gave their lives during World War I. The Arnet-Sheldon American Legion post in Houston was named after two soldiers from Mound Prairie Township, Philip Arnet and Frank Sheldon, who were killed in action in 1918.
As vital as was help from France to the American colonies winning their independence from England, so was the United States in helping save France and much of western Europe from German Kaiser Wilhelm. Americans had died after enlisting in foreign armies – English, French, Canadian – before the United States entered the war. France commemorated the first three casualties in American uniforms. A commander of a French Division spoke, “Of their own free will, they had left a prosperous and happy country to come over here.
“They ignored nothing of the circumstances and nothing had been concealed from them – neither the length and the hardships of the war, not the violence of battle, not the dreadfulness of new weapons, nor the perfidy of the foe. Nothing stopped them.
“They accepted the hard and strenuous life; they crossed the ocean at great peril; they took their places on the front by our side, and they have fallen facing the foe in a hard and desperate hand-to-hand fight. Honor to them.
“We will therefore ask that the mortal remains of these young men be left over here, left with us forever. We inscribe on their tombs, “Here lie the first soldiers of the republic of the United States to fall on the soil of France for liberty and justice.
“The passerby will stop and uncover his head. Travelers and men of heart will go out of their way to come here to pay their respective tributes. Private Enright! Private Gresham! Private Hay! In the name of France, I thank you. God receive your souls. Farewell!”
The war finally ended on November 11, 1918, and a year later, November 11 became a holiday known as Armistice Day. In 1954, the holiday became known as Veterans Day to honor veterans of all wars. Houston area historian Ingrid Julsrud was a college freshman in that autumn of 1918. “We awoke one dark, gloomy morning to hear church bells ringing and whistles blowing all over the city of Northfield. We ran into the dormitory to hear the good news that the war was really over. … Such screaming, laughing and talking was deafening. There was no school that day, but we went to chapel at the regular time for one of the most impressive services of thanks I have ever heard.”
Sources: Remembering Old Times by Ingrid Julsrud, 1993 and clippings from the Houston Signal during 1917 and 1918.
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