War stories

For our friends in Prescott

“I can truthfully say I would not trade one acre of the worst swamp land in Arkansas for the whole darn country.” — Lt. Virginius W. Alexander, letter home from France, First World War

WE WOULD not have found this treasure of American history if not for the treasurer of Arkansas history, our own Tom Dillard, who can be found in the Perspective section on Sundays. His weekly column is always a must- read for those who are fascinated by the past. We would consider Tom Dillard’s column a public service— every time his column publishes, it’s a gift to the generations to come— except that calling something a Public Service might imply that it’s no fun.

In his latest column, Mr. Dillard tells of the Museum of American History at . . . Cabot High School.

Who knew Cabot High School had a museum of American history up and running for decades? Answer: Tom Dillard. ( Researchers in the future are going to bemoan that every state didn’t have a Tom Dillard putting such things in the print and digital archive.)

The museum, which we hope to visit soonest, has started the Arkansas Great War Letter Project, which has modern- day folks transcribe letters sent home from the front during the First World War. ( See the letters at www. chs arkansas great war. weebly. com .) It’s been 100 years since these letters were sent, then passed on to local newspapers to update the entire community about how Jimmy Jones or Johnny Johnson were doing Over There. Now the rest of us can read them all these years later.

Roy Hale of Nevada County sent his mother a frightful account dated April 14, 1918. He told of joining the French to hold back a German advance. He was in charge of 60 men, and would you believe it, he was up to nearly 100 pounds! “Believe I am in fighting trim,” he told his mother. With this: “Understand the British are having a hot time on their sector. Tell Mr. Stegar and Adam Guthrie about my being in the big fight and tell them I put in some good shots for my friends in Prescott.”

Then there was Edward Scott, who wrote to his sister in Bayou Meto. He was in the Navy, and he sometimes didn’t see the enemy coming: “Believe me, when you are down in those fire rooms, and all watertight doors shut, you have not one chance. When they would drop one of those depth charges on those ‘ subs’ it was worse than dynamiting fish; it would shake the ‘ stuffing’ out of us, and there is no telling what it did to them. When that torpedo struck the Mount Vernon we knew it— we knew she was hit; it shook us off our feet.”

They called it The Great War, not knowing that a greater one would come a few years later. Their letters home were at times humorous, at times overwhelmingly sad, many times simply CENSORED. Thanks to the museum at Cabot High, it’s available to anybody, any time. And, with the Internet, anywhere.

Enjoy.

ALSO IN Sunday’s paper was the Style blowout on the war poster campaigns now exhibited at the MacArthur Museum in downtown Little Rock. On the first floor, the First World War. On the second, the Second.

We moseyed over there the other day. ( The older we get, the more moseying we do.) Halt the Hun! Remember Belgium! Fight or buy bonds! Bundles for Britain! It was enough to keep a history buff interested for most of a morning. That, and the museum has fine air conditioning. These days, that ain’t nothing.

So don’t let the kids tell you there’s nothing to do this week. There are plenty of opportunities to show them what it was like in the old days.