100 years ago in The Saratogian
Saturday, Nov. 23, 1918. With a few communities yet to report, The Saratogian reports today that Saratoga County has gone “over the top” in the final major fundraising campaign of the world war.
United War Work campaign director John H. Irons announces that the county actually hit its $100,000 goal last Wednesday, and now has a total of $104,200. Saratoga Springs and vicinity contributed $37,000 toward the goal. Fundraising in northern Saratoga County has been delayed due to the persistence there of the Spanish flu epidemic.
The United War Work campaign raised money for the Y.M.C.A., Knights of Columbus and other organizations providing recreation and moral support to American troops abroad. While the war ended on November 11, many troops are expected to remain in Europe for months to come. It’s unclear when the local troops of Company L, 105th U.S. Infantry regiment, will return home. They were not included in today’s list of units designated for shipment home by U.S. supreme commander Gen. John J. Pershing.
“In spite of the fact that news of the armistice was signed on the very day that the campaign opened the workers for the drive in every township in the county were determined that Saratoga should be one of the banner counties of the state and one of the first to reach its goal,” Irons says today.
Corp. Finley Was Wounded in Foot
Nearly two weeks after the armistice, government casualty lists and letters from soldiers continue to report deaths and injuries to U.S. troops during the final weeks of the war.
Today’s front page prints an October 27 letter from Corporal Colin G. Finley of the 105th’s headquarters company. Writing from an English military hospital to his father, P. A. Finley of South Broadway, Finley reports that he was wounded in action on October 18.
“I am not badly wounded, however,” Finley insists, “A piece of shell fragment hit me in the ankle, tearing my shoe off. It was painful for a few days. But I walk around pretty well now with the aid of a cane.”
If all went according to his expectations, Finley will now be in a convalescent camp after three weeks in the hospital. What’s Happening “Kultur,” playing at the Broadway Theatre, is a highly fictionalized account of the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. An ad calls it “A daring expose of scandals and crimes in the Royal Courts of Berlin and Vienna.”
Carlyle Blackwell and Evelyn Greeley star in “The Golden Wall” at the Palace, while Junita Hansen stars in “The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson” at the Lyric.