Thursday, Aug. 30, 1917
The 111th U. S. Infantry, formerly Troy’s Second New York Infantry regiment, takes part in a massive military parade in New York City today, The Record reports. Troy mayor Cornelius F. Burns joins a delegation of local mayors at the Union League Club reviewing stand as the 27th Division, which now includes the 111th regiment, marches through Manhattan. “It was the most wonderful sight I ever saw,” the mayor tells our reporter, “It was inspiring and impressive and the Troy boys looked to be what everybody says they are – the crack regiment of the state. A finer appearing lot of men never paraded down Fifth Avenue. Everybody had a good word for the Second, and nobody referred to it as the One Hundred and Eleventh.” There are plenty of oldtime Trojans in the big city to cheer on the local troops. At 39th Street, “a group of wildly enthusiastic men” chant “T. C. C!, T. C. C!” for the Troy Citizens’ Corps, aka Company A, as the regiment marches past. At The Rocks on 89th Street, “there was a band of Trojans who cheered and cheered for Troy and the Second until – well, it’s a good thing that the beverage law did not apply to them, for they had a chance to recover in the old time- honored way.”
Overall, “Troy was as ever most loyal to its own. Every mother’s son of them in the line of onlookers never stopped cheering until breath left them, and then they took another deep one and went at it again. Warm- hearted Troy. Her sons, when they are beyond the sea, never will forget her.”
Our correspondent in New York pays nearly as much attention to the crowd as to the troops.
“Color, what a wealth of it there was. Most of the world’s flags were whipping in the breeze. There was one flag, that of Scotland, yellow and red, with a rampant lion in the center, that brought forth from one woman, ‘ I am glad china has joined the allies.’ Shades of Robert Bruce!”
While the mood of the march is “grim, stark war realism,” street hawkers give the occasion a carnival sound. Our writer tries to render their spiel in Noo Yawk dialect: “Get y’r shuv’neer program- ams, y’r shuv’neer cards…. Show yi’ colors … Get a flag, get Old Glory, all silk, only a nickel, only a jitney!”
One minor mishap mars the day. Private Joseph Burke of 367 Third Street gets poked in his right shoulder by a bayonet when the soldier in front of him stoops down to pick up one of “showers” of cigarette packs tossed to the troops.