100 years ago in The Record
Wednesday, May 16, 1917
The headquarters and supply companies for the Second New York Infantry regiment will soon be on the move from one “Somewhere in New York State” to another, The Record reports. The Second regiment was called to federal service shortly before the U.S. declaration of war against Germany last month. The Troybased unit was assigned police protective duty guarding bridges, canals and railroads in northeastern New York State. The exact location of each company is a military secret. The headquarters and supply companies “will be away from this vicinity inside of another week,” our correspondent writes, “and a picturesque camp will be eliminated – that is, from this sector. “The men have spent the time under canvas during the past disagreeable weather and were rather looking forward to enjoying the environment under better conditions when, for instance, the sun would shine on both sides of the street and the shades of the big trees in the big park would be most inviting. “But there are other trees and other shady spots where they will be going some twenty miles to the west, and a camp is a camp, after all, when everything is said and done and the last tent peg has been hammered home.” Our writer reports on the work of some camp “humorists” that probably won’t seem as funny a century later.
“The mess tables now are under canvas and the humorists of the outfit have been busy. There are three long tables and suspended from, or rather nailed to a pole at a dividing line in the center is a big shingle where the boy with the marking brush has been on the job. The sign reads: ‘ White men THIS side.’”
Methodist missions
The Troy District Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Church holds its annual session at Grace Methodist Church today with “a large number of delegates assembled.”
While war rages in Europe and Americans prepare to join the action, Mrs. F. C. Winans gives a talk on “The Ammunition We Use,” drawing what our reporter calls “a clever contrast … between the weapons now being used in the great world war and the ammunition used for mission work.”
Winans points out that the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society acronym, W.F.M.S., could also stand for “Weapons For the Master’s Use, these being used to kill and maim not men and women but vice and evil of all kinds.”
“Missionary intelligence, study books, leaflet, contributions were compared to shrapnel, hand grenades, machine guns,” our writer notes, “Hymns and anthems were compared with the drums, fifes and trumpets of the military band.”