The Life and Times of a World War I Soldier: The Julius Holthaus Story

By Clyde Cremer

Julius Holthaus, a humble American farm boy, went to France to help fill the depleted ranks of the Allies in America’s largest battle of World War I, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. He had no idea what he was getting into. The fight would involve more than a million American doughboys, span forty-seven days, and result in the deaths of tens of thousands of people in one of the bloodiest battle in American military history.

Countless books focus on great military leaders, war heroes, and battle tactics, but one must look at war on a human scale to truly understand its toll. That understanding comes through examining the life and diary of Holthaus. Author Clyde Cremer explores them in detail, supplementing the diary’s information with the insights he gleaned during six years of research. This history follows a single soldier from rural Idaho and Iowa through his enlistment, training, and final trauma in the dark, disenchanted forest of the Argonne.

Filled with facts and historical anecdotes, this could be the story of many of the members of the American Expeditionary Forces sent overseas in World War I. Their names are not listed in the history books, but they all answered their country’s call and should be remembered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491729786

Clyde Cremer

Clyde Cremer was born and raised in northeastern Iowa. He served in the US Army and earned a bachelor’s degree in forestry from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, and a master’s degree from the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is self-employed as the president of American Log Homes and lives with his family in Colorado.

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Copyright © 2014 Clyde Cremer.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-2979-3 (sc)

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1—War Beckons

Chapter 2—The Holthaus Family

Chapter 3—The New Land—Idaho

Chapter 4—Onward Christian Soldier

Chapter 5—Camp Lewis, Washington

Chapter 6—California, Here I Come

Chapter 7—From Sea to Shining Sea!

Chapter 8—Camp Mill, Port of Embarkation

Chapter 9—Port Call

Chapter 10—The Trans-Atlantic Crossing

Chapter 11—The Road to War

Chapter 12—The Argonne Forest

Chapter 13—The Combatants

Chapter 14—The Final Battle Begins

Images:

Chapter 15—Day One—The Argonne Forest

Chapter 16—Day Two—The Argonne Forest

Chapter 17—Julius Holthaus—Rest in Peace

Chapter 18—Thoughts About the Great War

Chapter 19—Valor Remembered

Chapter 20—The Killing Continues

Chapter 21—Killed In Action—Fact & Fiction

Chapter 22—Epilogue

Appendix

Wheat Saving During The WWI Period

DEMANDS FOR FOOD DURING THE WAR MAKE FARMING A PROSPEROUS BUSINESS

STATEMENT ON WHEAT FLOUR

SLUMGULLION

War Statistics

WAR EXPENDITURES

MANPOWER

THE WAR IN EUROPE

BATTLE DEATHS AND CASUALTIES

SHIPPING

PRODUCTION AND PROCUREMENT

WAR DEAD

POST-WAR TRAINING

AUTOMOBILES

MAINTAINING AN INTEGRAL U.S. ARMY IN EUROPE

Bibliography

About the Author

Credits

Endnotes

DEDICATED TO

ALOIS AND JOSEPHINE HOLTHAUS

WHO GAVE THEIR SON

Julius

TO SERVE THEIR COUNTRY’S CALL

MAY THEIR SOULS NOW BE ENTWINED IN HEAVEN,

AS THEIR HEARTS WERE ENTWINED ON EARTH

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Acknowledgements

The writing of this book was not a solo undertaking but rather I had the help and encouragement of many people over the years of research and writing. To these individuals, I want to express my gratitude.

First, I want to thank my wife, Gail, and our children, Jeff and Kellie, for helping me with the computer in typing this book and for putting up with the sheer volume of documents filling every available space of the house for these many years of research and writing.

Peanut, my best friend who sat by my side for the many hours as research and writing and accompanied me on many trips over the years. You were a great part of the family and will be sorely missed.

Harold Powell, Professor of History at Lassen Junior College taught his students how to enjoy history by grabbing onto the interesting tidbits of history rather than just names and dates. This made history a pleasure rather than a memorization process that makes history a dull pursuit to most students. One never knows how someone can influence their future and I hope that readers of this book can see that I learned well under his tutelage.

I want to thank Adeline (Holthaus) Henning for encouraging me to write this book on Julius. It was just a five second suggestion but it kept me busy for over five years. Adeline also provided the author with photos from the family archives which were so helpful in depicting the complete story of Julius.

Richard Holthaus, Julius’ youngest brother, was invaluable in giving me insights into the family, the war and especially Julius. He is now deceased and I have so many questions still unanswered. My conversations with Richard will always be remembered.

To Ted Holthaus who provided me with written materials concerning Julius’ life as well as his recollections of the Holthaus family. Needless to say, I have to give Ted credit for walking through the battlefields of the Argonne Forest as we steered clear of unexploded shells and other detritus of war!

To Nancy (Holthaus) Brackett for her recollections about the family and providing materials that she provided concerning their life and times.

To Michael Clodfelter, historian and author of various books on military history for his review of the various manuscripts of this book. His encouragement and suggestions all along the way were very much appreciated. He gave me and my book so much of his time without knowing if it would ever reach fruition.

To Joe Holtey (Ph.D., History), a long-time friend, for his intellect and his knowledge of history and writing. His ideas and constructive criticism were well-taken and this book is better for his input.

To Gene Berry, longtime friend from tank training at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, the Arctic Test Center, Ft. Greely, Alaska, and the 1st Armored Division at Ft. Hood, Texas to the present, for his review of my draft. His insights and attention to detail were greatly appreciated.

Special thanks to Robert Laplander, author of In Search of the Lost Battalion, for his encouragement, photos, and knowledge of the Argonne Forest of France.

Gille Lagin, historian and curator of the private Marine Corps Museum at Bellieu Wood, France, for his invaluable help in locating the exact spot where Julius Holthaus died on September 27, 1918.

To my longtime friend, Milo Mendenhall, who accompanied the author through old shell-scarred battlefields of France following a ghost from a long forgotten war.

To Rachelle and Trent Turner and the staff of PostNet in Pueblo West, for their work in printing and reprinting a multitude of drafts for this book in their well-appointed and efficient business. They gave to me things that money can’t buy: perennial patience!

To Peggy Schroll for allowing the author use of her lengthy dissertation on the history of the Holthaus family as well as providing snippets of information that I requested.

To Ron Goldfeder, Collections Assistant at the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, who was of such great help in tracing the train routes traveled by the Holthaus family to Idaho and by Julius on his way from Cottonwood, Idaho, to the various camps across the United States.

Special thanks to the staff of research assistants at the National Archives and Records Administration for their help in my struggles through the mountains of information stored at this repository.

To the people at the U.S. Army Military History Institute located at Carlisle, PA, in aiding me in ferreting out maps and photos from the huge collections located there.

To the librarians at Luther College (Decorah, Iowa) and the Pueblo Library (Pueblo, Colorado) who aided the author in finding period newspapers which lent so much substance to this book

Foreword

The Battle of the Meuse-Argonne might as well have taken place, geographically as well as metaphysically, on the dark side of the moon, given the extent that the average American is aware of it. Iconic American battles such as Bunker Hill, the Alamo, and the Little Bighorn are familiar to at least a dimly aware minority of American public, but such contests were mere skirmishes compared to the awfulness of the Argonne.

Though World War I was not the Great War for the United States, as it was for France, the British Empire, Germany, Russia, Italy, and Austria-Hungry, the Meuse-Argonne was America’s greatest battle during World War I. No single clash of arms in America’s Civil War can even remotely compare to the Meuse-Argonne in its size, scope and sacrifice. Not even the massive mayhem of the Second World War’s largest battles involving U.S. units can compare to the numbers of American servicemen engaged and the numbers of American soldiers slaughtered in the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne. And yet this statistical summit of American combat—the U.S. equivalent to France’s Verdun, Britain’s Somme, and Russia’s Stalingrad—has fallen into the vast historical void where so much of our national memory languishes.

Perhaps the battle’s obscurity can be explained, at least in part, by its very vastness. How do you get a handle on a battle involving more than a million American doughboys, fighting for forty-seven days, and sacrificing 26,000 of their comrades for a victory in a war that would lead inexorably within two decades, to totalitarianism, genocide and an even ghastlier armed conflict? Maybe the best way to grasp a beginning of an understanding of such a battle on such a gargantuan level is to present it on a human scale—to take a single one of those one million doughboys and trace this khakied pilgrim’s progress from his rural Idaho (and Iowa) origins through to his enlistment, training, and final trauma in the dark, disenchanted forest of the Argonne.

Clyde Cremer’s book provides, insightfully, just such a journey by one of those soldiers in their long trek from home to hell (but not, in this doughboys case, back again). In a battle rich with more famous names in American military history than in any other—Pershing, MacArthur, Patton, Rickenbacker, Billy Mitchell, George C. Marshall, Sergeant York and Major Whittlesey of the Lost Battalion, even Harry Truman—the name of Julius Holthaus is one of those legions of the lost—lost to history and largely lost to memory. His name is no diamond in the dust (or more likely, mud) of the Argonne. His life, his experiences, and even his death were far from unique, but were greatly instructive and greatly required if we are to secure any meaning from our countless crusades to make a better world at the point of a bayonet.

In tracing the steps that his ancestor took that led him from the wide-open camas prairie of his farmstead to the claustrophobic cataclysm of the Argonne woods, Cremer has given us an up close and personal funk hole view shared by hundreds of thousands engaged in our First Crusade, launched by the original nation-builder—Woodrow Wilson. Nearly a century later, the heirs of Julius Holthaus, having served through shot and shell in and on European forests, Asian hills and jungles, and Middle Eastern deserts and mountains, we are still at it.

Michael Clodfelter

Lawrence, Kansas

Preface

Battles are the punctuation marks in history.

—Winston Churchill

For a number of years I had been researching a large amount of diverse information on Julius Holthaus which would eventually be brought together as the Life and Times of a World War I soldier. One day I needed a break from the tedium of making a living, so I switched to focus on a project that I came to enjoy… researching the long forgotten fragments of Julius’ life. As my research progressed, there had been a nagging questions as to just where and when Julius met his fate. Of course the exact spot where he was killed still existed somewhere in the Argonne Forest… as did the cartridge case and the 8 mm rifle projectile that brought his life to a premature end. Once again I went through Julius’ disinterment records looking for some clue which I may have overlooked. On the Grave Location Blank which listed all of the specifics regarding the recovery of Julius’ body from the battlefield, I found a set of grid coordinates; E295.2 / N 272.8. On a hunch I unrolled a copy of a World War I French map of the Argonne region. I took the first three sets of digits from the grid coordinates and moved my fingers along the map to the right; then I took the last set of digits and moved up the map. Where these two points crossed was the spot where Julius’ body was recovered. I now knew where he had fallen in this shell pocked forest!

Introduction

In peace sons bury fathers, but war violates the order of nature, and fathers bury sons.—Herodotus

As one travels through northern France and Flanders, the images that become imprinted in one’s mind are the vast cemeteries with their thousands of white marble headstones. These silent monuments of stone represent the fallen warriors of the First World War who came from a multitude of various countries and military units. As you walk among the graves of the dead, you begin to realize that each grave contains a body of a once living person; a soldier. Each one contains a now muffled tale of life… and death. It is reminiscent of the haunting lyrics in the song Green Fields of France/No Man’s Land by Eric Bogle:

Well, how do you do Private William McBride?

Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?

And rest for awhile neath the warm summer sun

I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done

And I see by your gravestone, you’re only nineteen

When you joined the great fallen in nineteen sixteen

Well I hope you died quickly, I hope you died clean

Or poor Willy McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they beat the drums slowly?

Did they play the pipes lowly?

Did the bugles carry you over as they lowered you down?

And did the band play ‘The Last Post’ in chorus?

Did the pipes play ‘The Flowers of the Forest’?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?

In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?

And though you died back in nineteen-sixteen

In that faithful heart are you always nineteen?

Or are you a stranger without a name?

Forever enshrined behind some glass pane

In an old photograph, torn and tattered, and stained.

And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.

Did they beat the drums slowly?

Did they play the pipes lowly?

Did the bugles carry you over as they lowered you down?

And did the band play ‘The Last Post’ in chorus?

Did the pipes play ‘The Flowers of the Forest’?

Well the sun’s shining down on these green fields of France

The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance

The trenches have vanished long under the plow

There’s no gas, no barb wire, there’s no guns firing now

But here in this graveyard that’s still no-man’s land

The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand

To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man

The whole generation was butchered and damned

Did they beat the drums slowly?

Did they play the pipes lowly?

Did the bugles carry you over as they lowered you down?

And did the band play ‘The Last Post’ in chorus?

Did the pipes play ‘The Flowers of the Forest’?

And I can’t help but wonder young Willy McBride

Do those that lie here know why that they died?

And did they really believe you when you told them the cause

Did they really believe that this war would end wars?

Well the suffering, and the sorrow, the glory of pain

The killing and dying they were all done in vain

For young Willy McBride it’s all happened again,

And again, and again, and again, and again…

Did they beat the drums slowly?

Did they play the pipes lowly?

Did they bugles carry you over as they lowered you down?

And did the band play ‘The Last Post’ in chorus?

Did the pipes play ‘The Flowers of the Forest’?

What inspired Eric Bogle to write this song was his visit to the WWI military cemeteries of France. Only those with a heart completely devoid of any human feelings could make this pilgrimage without being visibly moved by the suffering that ensued here in 1914-1918. To say that this is hallowed ground would be an understatement bordering on the mundane. The information etched on each headstone usually offers only basic data. Far too often it gives the stark statement: KNOWN BUT TO GOD—nothing more! What stories these graves hold if only one could research the lives and deaths of these long departed souls. How they came to serve their country, what they witnessed in battle and how they died. To tell all their stories is beyond the realm of possibility, though it is possible to compile the data about one such soldier. By exercising untiring diligence, the soldier’s life and death can be brought back to the forefront for his relatives, historians and future generations. This soldier will no longer be a mere name etched on a lonely slab of marble in a foreign land, but someone whose life and sacrifices will remain in print for the future. King George V visited the war cemeteries in 1922, at which time he expressed these feelings: I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace… than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.¹

It has been said many times that if we don’t remember the past we are sure to repeat it.

As a youngster I would listen to my parents and relatives as they would sift through old photographs that had been relegated to an old shoe box many decades earlier. One of the photos that piqued my interest was that of my paternal grandmother’s cousin, who was killed in France in World War I. He had served his country honorably, died at an early age and that was it. A few decades after his death, his life was virtually forgotten. Move on to the next photo!

In the 1990s, a longtime friend (Milo Mendenhall) and I took a trip to France to visit the battlefields. While paying homage to the fallen at the American Cemetery at Belleau Wood, I asked the curator if he had any information on my long deceased cousin from Idaho. It was then that I obtained Julius’ date of death, rank, unit and his final resting place.

He had been interred in the American Cemetery near Romagne, France a few years after the war. As the saying goes, A little information can be dangerous. I was on a mission to reconstruct the life and times of Julius Holthaus. This research has now lasted a number of years and has taken me from his birth place in Iowa, to his home in Cottonwood, Idaho, to the final dangerous paths that he walked in the Argonne Forest of France and finally the site of his violent death.

With the memory of Julius Holthaus rapidly fading into the mists of time, I felt that it was imperative to put his life into print. There are many adages that we use to make the death of a soldier honorable and memorable: They shall not have died in vain or as Rudyard Kipling (member of the Imperial War Graves Commission) stated, Their Name Liveth for Evermore. In reality, though, time moves on. The deceased soldier’s friends and relatives die and the memory of their life and death is lost to time or lies forgotten as bits and pieces in a musty archive. To quote a few lines from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, A poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more.

We have military cemeteries scattered across the world’s battlefields, but unfortunately, the individual soldiers and their exploits have been largely forgotten. How many family members from the United States visit the meticulously manicured cemeteries in these foreign lands? The Ancient Greeks believed that if one person remembered your name after you died, then you had not really died. This does not seem to be the case with so many that died for the United States in World War I. When I talk about Julius and his war the first reaction from the listener(s) is to pose the question: Did he land at Normandy on D-Day or did he fight during the Battle of the Bulge? No! We are talking about World War 1!! That is when I see a blank of confusion on their face. What a waste of a life and a valuable personal history for someone who gave his life for his country and then his life and death (if not the war) are forgotten. A case in point is Armistice Day which is now called Veteran’s Day in the United States. In those countries that fought on the side of the allies, most of the normal routine of daily life comes to a halt; in the United States, government workers and banks close for the day and merchants hawk Veteran’s Day sales at the car lots and the malls!! How soon we forget.

Countless military books have been written about great military leaders, war heroes who were awarded the Medal of Honor, or the great battles that shaped our civilization… for better or worse. Mine is not such a book, but rather one about a humble farm lad, not trained in the art of war, but who went to France to shore up the depleted ranks of the Allies and then died quickly in battle. No medals, no parades, no great oratory followed his passing. He was just a simple American who knew nothing about international politics or the political intrigue of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His country called and he left home to serve in the war. This could be the story of most of the members of the AEF (the American Expeditionary Force or as some soldiers referred to it, After England Failed). Not great heroes, but just average men (and women) answering their country’s call, most of them with the prodding of the draft!

Much of my research was done through libraries and historical archives in the United States and France. The information is scattered and one must be tenacious and resolute in order to find and sort out the pertinent data from the vast amounts of material available. Where and when was he born, when was he drafted, where did he go to training, how did he get to France, and under what circumstances did he die? Luck can play a key role in the search. You may read reams of documents in order to get one pertinent piece of information, but this one snippet of historical fact can be just what is needed to make an event meaningful.

I now present the life and times of so many WWI soldiers through the short life of Julius Holthaus and those around him in the 40th and 77th Divisions. It is the purpose of this book to honor and immortalize the life of this rifleman, and all those in the Great War, so that they will be remembered by future generations as more than mere headstones over a grave. Nothing is more eternal than the written word, from the letters of a soldier writing home to the thoughts of ancient sages on copper scrolls. With this in mind, it is my hope that I can do justice to Julius’ life as well as the lives and sacrifices of all those who served with him in the Great War. This story is also a microcosm of life in America during the war years and not just about that of the average soldier in the American Expeditionary Force. It is also about an immigrant nation and how ones past heritage could be a burden during a time of war hysteria.

The extensive research into Julius’ life became a constant metamorphous as time went on. From his birth and baptism to his induction into the army and his premature death, I bonded with him as I never expected. I now feel that he is more like a brother and not a somewhat distant relative who died nearly a quarter of a century before I was born. If I were soldier such as him, who gave so much for his country, we might meet in Valhalla, but that will not happen so I can only hope that I have done justice to your life my good friend. `

Chapter 1—

War Beckons

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

-Lao Tzu

June 27, 1918—Left Home

On this day in France, the Avenue Trocadero is named Rue Wilson (Wilson Street) as a testimonial of French gratitude for President Wilson joining the allied war effort.

The Associated Press reports that Pershing’s Army Moves Like Clockwork in Attack in Verdun Sector—Prisoner Horde Grows—Much Booty Also Taken.

It was early morning on the Camas prairie, in central Idaho, and the sun was just coming up on the horizon. The sky was a beautiful dark blue punctuated with streaks of red and yellow. A sunrise can be a thing of beauty if conditions are right. It was late June and although it was officially summer, the early morning freshness, coupled with the smells of dampness across the fields of hay, wheat and corn, made it feel more like spring. A welcomed rain fell over the Camas prairie the previous Saturday and Sunday and there was hope that the dry spell had ended and crops would still flourish. The early spring flowers had long since lost their blooms, but the flowers planted around the yard still added a fragrance to the early morning air as a woodpecker pounded on an aging tree east of the house. The cooing of the pigeons on the barn roof was an early morning ritual as were the two roosters who were playing dueling banjos on a fence.

Standing on the front porch of the Holthaus home, with cups of coffee in hand, a halcyon feeling came over Julius and his father, Alois. The long, cold winter of 1917-1918 was behind the residents of the prairie; ahead were the warm days of summer with the bountiful harvest well on its way to fruition. The night before the temperature dipped to 44 degrees but today it would be a very pleasant 70 degrees.² What a great day to be alive and to look out over the verdant plains, which hard work had made into a prosperous farming operation. It must have been a morning such as this that Beethoven received the inspiration for the 5th movement of his Symphony No. 6, F Major, Pastoral.

From the time that Paleo Man stopped being hunter-gatherers; man has always been tied to the land. The innate love for the private ownership of land and for farming had brought the Holthaus family to Idaho to start a new life on the rolling plains. It took this special attachment to the land, love of farming and its crops to transform men into farmers, and it is what always attracted this family to agriculture. To have to leave this little piece of heaven would be tantamount to tearing a piece of the soul from their bodies. This farm was the epicenter of their world and the core of their total being. Farm, family, and their neighbors were their world. In this close-knit, bucolic farming community, they were seldom accustomed to the serenity of their lives being subjected to any type of outside trauma. Yes, occasionally a death of a friend or neighbor would lead to shock and sadness, but then life would have to proceed with only the memory of the person left to ponder. The smallpox epidemic of the winter 1917-1918 was one such event. The outside world did not reach into the lives of these rural families as it does today as they were protected, for the most part, by the insulation derived by their seclusion on the vast prairie. It would take a very traumatic event in the world to disrupt their serene, sheltered life in early 20th century rural America. The unfolding of the Great War in Europe was one such event that was out of their control and would bring heartbreak and sadness to many families across Idaho County and the United States.

The Holthaus’ were early risers, which was a custom with farm families, then as well as now. Josephine was busy with the breakfast meal, aided by her five daughters. When the wood-fired cook stove was putting out plenty of heat and the cast-iron frying pan was hot, a copious wad of lard was added to the pan. This resultant mix of heat and grease created a cloud of smoke reminiscent of the 1910 burn which blackened the forests across large parts of northern Idaho and northwestern Montana. Alois talked to Julius about the crops and how the family would have to get by without his help. There was also the matter of the 160 acres that Alois had just purchased, which more than doubled the farming operation. The weather had been good and there was no reason why this should not be a banner year for grain crops. The future looked great with the war demands resulting in high prices for all agricultural products. They would have to make the best of Julius’ leaving for the Army.a

The meal commenced with bowed heads and a saying of grace. The Holthaus’ were devout Catholics and they started all meals with bowed heads as they paid homage to the Lord. Then, and only then, was a high caloric meal of eggs, bacon, potatoes, and home-made bread enjoyed. This morning the conversation was quite subdued, different from the usual lively banter that started each day. Their oldest son, Julius, draft number 581, had been inductedb into the U.S. Army and this was his call-up date. With 4,600 draft boards across the United States, there would be few men of draft age that would not pass the boards scrutiny. It wasn’t so much that he was going into the military, but that he was going off to a war that had been devouring the wealth and youth of the warring nations since August, 1914. Even in Cottonwood, Idaho, the word had spread about the carnage that was being wrought between warring nations. The Cottonwood Chronicle had little or no coverage of the Great War until the United States put its hat into the ring in April, 1917.

There were not many options after your number came up to be drafted. When war was declared on the Central Powers there was a rush of men taking out marriage licenses, but marriage alone was soon overruled as a reason for a draft deferment. Then some of the married men began adopting babies to get a deferment! An article appeared in the Lewiston Morning Tribune on June 11 with the headline reading: LIFE SENTENCES GIVEN—45 conscientious objectors of Mennonite faith so decreed, but reduced in review to 25 years. Two conscientious objectors of a faith that did not embrace war, died during confinement at Camp Funston, Kansas. When their family came to accept the coffins containing their bodies… they lay in the coffins dressed in army uniforms!! This was one final act of disrespect on the part of the U.S. Army.

However, the larger newspapers, such as the Lewiston Morning Tribune and the Idaho Free Press (Grangeville), did report major events as they unfolded across the various battlefronts of the world. Since autumn of 1914, reports on the invasion of Belgium and France by five German army groups had left the people of Idaho County shaking their heads over these European nations once again being embroiled in a major war. However, this time the war was of such magnitude and the events unfolding in Europe were so numbing in their viciousness that they were beginning to affect the peace and tranquility on farms and in hamlets across isolationist America. Never had the systematic killing of one’s fellow man progressed on such a wide scale and with such ruthless efficiency. The massive use of modern artillery, airplanes, tanks, machine guns, poison gas and submarine warfare were leaving their mark on the landscape, with desolate fields of white crosses and entombed bodies at sea. A few months after hostilities ensued in Europe in 1914 the front lines had already expanded to 466 miles. By the time that the United States entered the war, nearly two-thirds of the world’s population was at war. The world’s population in 1917 was 1,691,751,000 and the population of the warring counties was 1,144,400,000!

It was hard to imagine that it was just slightly over 42 years ago (June 25, 1876) that General Armstrong Custer and his men had died at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana Territory. Gathered on a grass covered hillside, his men resisted the repeated onslaught of the Indians with their single shot Springfield carbines and Colt single action revolvers as their antagonists fired on them with rifle and arrow. Even an occasional stone club, which heralds back to the Neolithic, was used to dispatch a wounded soldier in close combat. Now some four decades later the art of war had reached new heights of brutality and efficiency. This was the dangerous world that Julius was about to enter.

The talk this morning went from highs to lows. First there was talk about the good chances of the war being over before Julius even left the United States or certainly before he got to France, and then the next moment the reality would set in that he was going to war. There were good indications in the newspapers that the war would soon be over, if you could believe these optimistic accounts that came back from the front. On Friday, June 7, the Cottonwood Chronicle published this story:

BETTER NEWS FROM THE FRONT

As we go to press, the good news is received

by wire that the allies have just won a great

battle in France… the greatest of the war… and

captured nearly 100,000 Germans within the last

couple of days, besides killing several times that

number. At last the enemy is on the run in the

right direction.

Again on June 14, The Chronicle published an even more optimistic report about the course of the war:

The allies still continue to slaughter the Germans

in France by the tens of thousands even though the Huns

regardless of the tremendous

loss of life, continue their mad drive toward Paris

and occasionally gain a mile or two of new ground.

Americans are taking an active part in this… the

greatest battle of the war… and are proving

themselves the greatest and bravest fighters ever

seen on a battlefield.

Captured Germans say that their soldiers would

rather see a drove of tigers after them than to have the

whistling, laughing Americans chasing them in a

bayonet charge. In every charge of this kind the

Germans drop their guns and run like a dog with a

can on its tail.c

The action that the newspaper was referring to was the Second Battle of the Marne, in which the Germans tried to make a decisive break-through to Paris before the Americans got to France in large numbers. Much of the bravado and fighting ability attributed to the American soldier can be traced to the Sedition Act passed in May, 1918. This made it a crime for anyone to portray the war in a bad light or show any signs of defeatism in speech or in print. If you were found guilty of the crime of defeatism, jail terms were meted out with the vigor of a kangaroo court so you could thus take with a grain of salt what was printed or said in public about the war. Father Boniface, a Catholic priest from Ferdinand, Idaho, was brought before the Grangeville Committee of Defense on charges of preaching anti-Americanism from the pulpit. Originally from Switzerland, he apologized for remarks that were taken out of context and signed a statement prepared by the committee.

The following is a typical example of what would happen to anyone who had loose lips concerning the conduct of the war or national policy. It is a statement signed by one deemed unpatriotic near Julius’ birthplace in northeast Iowa:

I, the undersigned, do hereby state and claim that I am a loyal and patriotic citizen; that I am and always have been in favor of the United States Government and the vigorous… prosecution of this war; that, if I have made any statements which may be imputed to the contrary, the same has not been intentional.

I hereby subscribe $750 to the Fourth Liberty Loan; $125 to the