December 17, 1918. No Booze for Soldiers. No Booze for Coloradans, No Booze for Montanans. Villa ponders attack

Up until at least the Korean War, if not the Vietnam War, a deficit of clothing meant that discharged soldiers often wore their uniforms after a time following their discharge.  That was very much the case after World War One and World War Two.  Here, the Federal Government was concerned about discharged soldiers drinking in uniform.

In the popular imagination, Prohibition was forced on an unwilling nation by a bunch of silly temperance women who didn't realize that America was a drinking nation.  That version of the story is very far from true.

The Cheyenne State Leader was reporting that Montana would go dry on December 30.  1918 was to be Montana's last "wet" year.  Villa, the paper also reported, was up to no good.

In reality, Prohibition was a hugely popular movement and was gaining ground in the states prior to it become Federal law.  By this date in 1918, Colorado had gone "bone dry" and Montana was about to.

Not all was bleak. One of the Casper papers was reporting that American soldiers still preferred American girls.  Those American soldiers would be bringing home quite a few French brides and even a few Russian ones.  Of course, the report here did contain some bad news for American women.  Some of the soldiers were reporting pretty favorably on les femmes Francais.

So Prohibition was really arriving in the individual states prior to the Volstead Act making it the law of the land and prior to any Constitutional amendment requiring it.  When Prohibition was repealed, it meant that each state that had laws on the books had to revisit those laws if it wanted to likewise repeal Prohibition in their state, which serves as a lesson in rushing to amend laws to comport with what seems to be a national development.  That allowed those states a breather to adapt to the new situation, which in the case of Wyoming it very much took, phasing drinking back in over a period of years.

The other Casper paper noted that "Arrests Halt Delivery of Denver Booze".   What an irony if compared to the Denver of today.

Well, on the not so boozy, presumably, high seas:

1918  The USS Cheyenne, formerly the USS Wyoming, but renamed due the later battleship being assigned that name, assigned to Division I, American Patrol Division. 

The Cheyenne, is to my eye, an exceedingly odd looking vessel.  It was a "monitor", a class of ship that recalled Civil War heritage, given the use of of "monitors" in that war. The more modern class of monitor was designed to pack a big bunch and present a low profile, thereby making it a potent naval weapon that was designed to be hard to hit.  By World War One, it was principally used as a rather odd submarine tender and was flagship of her flotilla in the Atlantic.