100 YEARS AGO IN THE SARATOGIAN

Friday, April 5, 1918. “There were no cheers when the special train bearing the thirty-five boys from this district of Saratoga county and the contingents from the north who have been summoned to report for duty at Camp Dix, N.J. pulled out of the local station this morning,” The Saratogian reports.

The local draftees are part of an emergency callup to make up for troops who’ve been transferred or discharged since last summer’s military draft. It comes at an ominous moment in the world war, as American troops in France are facing their first major German offensive. Most Saratoga County soldiers are still in U.S. training camps.

“The conditions in France and the demands for conservation and economy at home have brought a greater sense of the gravity of the situation to the minds of the public at large and this sense expresses itself in a grim determination to see the thing through to the end rather than in the cheers that marked the going away of the first contingents,” a reporter writes.

“No attempt was made to have a parade. The boys left the armory and walked to the station where they boarded a car which was being held to be picked up by the special train.”

Despite the lack of fanfare, “There was a large crowd at the station to bid the boys ‘so long’ and wish them luck. From 10:30 o’clock until the train pulled from the station music was furnished by the Saratoga City Band which had volunteered its services for the occasion.”

Only thirty of the 35 men called up this week report to the depot this morning. Two others are sick while one, George Coffinger of Victory Mills, was recently kicked in the kneecap by a horse. The five places are filled by three designated substitutes and two men, Charles G. French of Saratoga Springs and C. A. Henry of Ballston Spa, who volunteered to go to Fort Dix.