Eating German Ice Cream

 

Mid Week At Work: American trucks arriving in Kyllburg, Germany. December 4, 1918.

1st Battalion, 148th Field Artillery, mustered out of service and discharged at Ft. D. A. Russell.

Wyoming and Colorado National Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion, 148th Field Artillery, those being the Wyoming and Colorado Guardsmen assigned to the 148th, were mustered out of service and discharged on this date in 1919.  The were civilians once again.

The 148th Field Artillery musters out of service at Camp Mills, New York.

On this date the 148th Field Artillery mustered out of service at Camp Mills, New York.

That brought to an end the Great War service of the 148th, but it did not mean that the Guardsmen who were in the unit were now civilians. Rather, they were released from service with the unit and sent on to their home states for discharge or to military establishments near their home states.  In the case of Wyoming National Guardsmen, that meant a trip to Ft. D. A. Russell at Cheyenne.  Colorado Guardsmen in the unit likewise were discharged at Ft. D. A. Russell.

Their service was nearly over, however, as that wouldn't take long.  With that discharge they came to the end of three years of service, with a brief interruption, at least in the case of men who had first been activated for border service in the Punitive Expedition.

The 148th Field Artillery would come back into existence on  September 16, 1940 as part of the build up prior to World War Two.  It would serve in the Pacific during World War Two and would go on to serve, as part of the Oregon National Guard, in the Korean War.  It was one of the National Guard units that saw service during the Vietnam War.  It's currently party of the Idaho National Guard.

Camp Mills no longer exists.  It was located in what is now Garden City, New York, a community on Long Island.

June 3, 1919: Anarchists bombings and The 148th Field Artillery boards the USS Peerless. . .

bringing their service in the Great War and the following Army of Occupation to an end.

The USS Peerless was the former Steamship Eagle which had been brought into U.S. service as a transport during World War One.  In that capacity, she brought the troops of the 148th FA home to the U.S., including the Wyoming National Guardsmen that served in that unit, their role in the Great War now complete.

In September she'd be returned to her civilian owner, who once again returned her to her civilian name of Eagle.  She'd remain in service as a civilian transport until 1949, when she was scrapped.

The return of the 148th was big long awaited news for Wyomingites as it meant the return of the last of Wyoming's serving National Guardsmen. The news made the front page in Cheyenne, as did the proclamation of Boy Scout Week, if inaccurately, but another big event, a series of anarchist bombings the prior day, not surprisingly became the big headline.

The 1919 anarchist bombings would fuel the Red Scare of 1919 and lead to a rapid crack down on left wing activities in the United States.  Some date the event to the bombings, but it was already ongoing and the strikes of 1919 had already begun to fuel, along with other events, national and international.

May 28, 1919. Russian POWs, Stargard Germany.

Prisoners of War were not immediately repatriated after World War One.

The Allies generally repatriated their men held in Germany within a month or so, while they themselves held on to German prisoners into 1920. While that sounds cruel, in fact Germany was aflame and returning discharged German soldiers to what was already a state of slow revolution involving discharged servicemen would have not been wise, nor would it have been particularly kind to the POWs, who were at least housed and fed.

An exception for Allied POWs was that of Russian POWs.  I don't know what became of them, but they continued to be housed in Germany following the end of the war.  The country that had sent them into war no longer existed in the form it had.  Imperial Russia was gone.  Men like this probably had no strong desire to fight for the Whites or the Reds but that would have been their fate had they been immediately repatriated.  Neither Germany nor the Allies wanted them in Red arms, and there was no way to guarantee that they'd end up as loyal combatants for the Whites.

May 22, 1919. Mixed Signals, Suffrage, and Ireland.

The Casper paper was warning, on this May 22, 1919, that the Germans were about to "invade" the occupied zone and resume the prosecution of the war.  The US was ready for them, however.

At the same time the news was also reporting that the size of the army of occupation was about to be reduced.

Mixed signal?

The 126th Infantry, which had been part of that body of men in Germany until recently, was on parade in Kalamazoo Michigan.

In Laramie, the Boomerang reported that German maneuvers were just a bluff, perhaps reading the wind more accurately.

All the way around the papers were reporting on the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution bringing in Women's suffrage.  It wasn't there yet, but it was making its way out of Congress.

The same issue ran an article on Sir Henry W. Thornton condemning the departure of American citizens to Ireland in aid of that country's Republicans.  Thornton was an American businessman whose expertise in transportation and railroads had lead him to Canada.  In 1919 he became a British subject and returned to Canada where he lived until shortly prior to his death.  He was a prominent figure in the British war effort, while still an American.

While Sir Thornton was condemning Americans departing for the Irish cause, also in Laramie poetry in celebration of that cause was being heard on campus.

The paper in Jackson remained more primitive.  It apparently hadn't updated its press during the war and from this issue it didn't appear to have joined any of the wire services that contributed to up to date news in Casper and Cheyenne.

Of interest here is the advertisement for Levi products.  Levis didn't become the big deal they later would become until World War Two, as we've discussed on this blog previously.  Here their overalls and coveralls are receiving higher billing than their trousers.  And I didn't know that they'd ever made "Rombers for Children".

May 12, 1919. The draft Versailles Treaty is discussed in the German National Assembly, workers and Michigan Parks.

On this Monday, May 12, 1919, the German National Assembly met in horrified protest over the treaty that German delegates has been presented in Paris and indicated that they would not sign it.  Indeed, the Chancellor, Philipp Scheidemann indicated that the hand that would sign it would "wither".

Things didn't seem to be going well in Paris, now that that the German delegates were there.

Scheidemann had been the German politician who actually declared Germany to be a republic in November 1919, seeking to get in front of the Spartacist who were moving towards declaring the country a soviet.  The move was brilliant, but it ironically angered Ebert, who would soon be involved in trying to save that republic, as he felt it usurped the rights of the German people to declare their own form of government.  Those people would soon be embroiled in a civil war during the months in which the Allies worked on the treaty that was to formally resolve the war.

Scheiemann declaring Germany to be a republic in November 1919.

That the German government found the proposed treaty abhorrent was clear.  But what they could really do about it was not.  Southern Germany, about the only region of the country that wasn't a mess at the time, wasn't a mess as the Allies occupied it. Those occupied areas were de facto beach heads into Germany should the war resume.  The Allies were quixotically busy demobilizing, which made their military presence in Germany somewhat debatable, but they were there.

The German army itself was much reduced due to the armistice and what army there was was either fighting the Red Army in the Baltic's, where the Allies had required it to remain until it could be relieved from that tasks by Allied forces (again, a real irony), or engaged in suppressing Communist uprisings.  In that latter role, it had been forced to reply upon the Freikorps, unofficial, but well armed, militia units that sprung up and which were being illegally supplied and equipped by the government.  So while the Allies were demobilizing, and would have had a difficult time resuming the war if they had to, the Germans would have had no allies at all, and had little army with which to counter any resumed hostilities. The government also had a massive political mess on its hands.

In the US returning soldiers were resuming prior occupations as the American economy started to slow, but not everyone who had taken up a wartime job was ready to relinquish it.

Woman welder, May 12, 1919.

The state of Michigan, with its eye's on more peaceful things, created its State Parks Commission on this day a century ago.

May 10, 1919. Homecomings, Mourning, Occupations, and Race Riots

A J. C. Leyendecker illustration was on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post this day in 1919, with a veteran recounting his service to two youngsters.

It's a bit odd to see an illustration of this type now, although they were common in the World War One and World War Two time frame.  The celebration of military service still occurs, but it tends to occur in movie form much more now, as opposed to illustrations, which was very common then.

Service went on, of course, for troops on occupation duty in Germany.

Germany itself declared a national week of mourning over the terms of the proposed treaty to officially end World War One.  The Germans were shocked by the terms.  Even some of the press in the United States was a bit shocked for that matter, and acknowledged the terms as severe.

In Charleston, South Carolina, a horrible race riot occurred when sailors from the Charleston Navy Yard went on a rampage directed against blacks in the town. The initial cause was that five sailors felt that they'd been cheated by a single black man, which developed to an all out assault by sailors, and then some white residents, of the town against blacks.  The Navy was forced to send in Marines and blue jacket Sailors to put down the riot, which involved over 1,000 sailors and some white civilians.  While there were some criminal charges that were filed shortly after the event, they came to nothing as the event had so overwhelmed the police that they were unable to treat the event as a conventional criminal one in their effort to address it.

The Charleston riot was the first of a series of race riots across the United States that year, contributing to the summer of 1919 being called the Red Summer.  The country was slipping into a recession which was in turn causing racial tension to rise.

May 6, 1919: Getting the news, and unhappy with the news.

Muriel Wright, Librarian of the American Library Association, delivers magazine to sea plane pilot who will take them to Marines, May 6, 1919.

Marines were getting magazines a new way on this May 6, 1919.

In Wyoming, part of that news was that Governor Carey wasn't very happy about the 148th Field Artillery staying in Europe on occupation duty.

May 2, 1919. At Ease, In Distress, Distressing news in Central America, and in the United States

The day after the Red May Day, things were more normal, and not.

American officers posed for a portrait in Germany:

Commanding officer staff, 42nd Division.  Maj. Gen. C. A. F. Flagler, Lt. Col. Stanley M. Rambaugh. Col William N. Hughes, Jr., Cpt. James M. Boyd, Maj. E. H. Bertram, Maj. Robert J. Gill and Lt. H. W. Fletcher.  New York Tribune, May 2, 1919. Taken at headquarters at Ahrweiler.

Elsewhere in Germany, or more particularly in Munich, the Freikorps advanced riding with Death's Head, a symbol that dated back to German military antiquity, but which became increasingly associated with Germany's right wing.

The Freikorps had, of course, crushed the nascent Bavarian Soviet, a Communist state that exhibited typical Communist brutality in going down in defeat.  In Russia, however, the Whites were exhibiting some problematic behavior of their own.

The families of Bolshevik prisoners outside of the prison at Ekaterinburg with food for their relatives. North Platte Semi Weekly Tribune, May 2, 1919.

While that was going on, the United States was supporting the Whites against the Reds, or not, or was, or was not.  We really couldn't make up our minds.

J. K. Caldwell looking studious and calm as Russia disintegrated.  He was the American counsel in Vladivostok.  May 2, 1919.

Meanwhile, in Costa Rica, today a vacation haven, Gen. Manuel Choa, late of Pancho Villas' forces, and former Catholic Priest, the Belgian educated Jorge Volio Jimenez, stumbled into rebellion against the country's leadership.

The Cheyenne State Leader couldn't help but note the events of May 1.

The reference to Lenin in Denver was surprising, but then Denver has always had some oddities. At the start of the Civil War a party tried to declare Denver for the Confederacy.

The Laramie Boomerang had given up on peace, it seemed.  It would prove correct in that view.

The Wyoming State Tribune was more optimistic.

Sunday, April 27, 1919. Movie releases, Marching Americans in Russia, Disbanding Reds in Limerick, Wyoming National Guardsmen to Remain In Germany

It was a car racing movie.

As we've noted here before, in the teens it was common to release movies on Sunday, taking advantage of the fact that most people had the day off.  The Roaring Road was an exciting car racing movie, in which the protagonist pursued his love interest and auto racing with equal vigor, showing how automobiles were really coming in.

If car racing wasn't your thing, on the same day Select Pictures released "Redhead".

I suspect that this is a lost film as details on the film are really sketchy, but movie taglines for it are really odd.  Alice Brady's character is described as such a tantalizing beauty that men "didn't care what color her hair was".  Eh?  And an alternative poster states "This is the girl he found himself married to".

I suppose a person would have to see it to figure that one out.

Other romances were also released to the sliver screen on this day.

Wow.  What a turgid plot.

Comedies were also in the offering, including a short featuring a wealthy man whose is a victim of mistaken identity.

Well, while people back in the states were seeing the latest pictures, soldiers were doing what they have for time immemorial.  Marching.

31st Infantry marching near Vladivostok.

The area around Vladivostok in this photo looks a lot, quite frankly, like winter scenes in Wyoming.

Those same troops had recently been fighting.  And fighting was still going on most definately, including between the Estonians and the Reds.

Anton Irv

Estonian officer, and former Imperial Russian enlisted man and then officer, was killed in action on this day in 1919 in that conflict.  He'd been one of the organizer of Estonia's armored trains, something that featured prominently in that war and in the Russian Civil War.  In the East, armored trains would continue to be a feature of conflict into World War Two.

Elsewhere some other Reds or proto Reds went home.

Members of the Limerick Soviet

The goofball Limerick Soviet came to an end after a little over week of being in existence when the local mayor and the local Bishop asked them to knock it off. They then voluntarily closed up shop.

Readers of the Cheyenne papers learned that Wyoming artillerymen would not be coming home soon.

Among other things they also read that Carranza could not hold out much longer.  The author of that article suggested American help to keep him in office would be required, which was a shockingly bad suggestion.

Chicago had its selection of Sunday cartoons of course, including ones that were not really intended to be funny.

I's interesting that even in 1919, gas mileage was a topic.

And some folks in Alaska had their portrait taken.

April 18, 1919. Speaking secretaries, new post office.

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels addressing the 2nd Division near Vallendar, Germany. April 18, 1919.

1919  Apostol post office established.  Apostol would become Osage in 1920.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Library.

March 29, 1919. Illustrations.

The Saturday news magazines hit, as always, on this day in 1919, with a slate of war related images on their cover.  The Saturday Evening Post went to the stand with a Norman Rockwell item called "The Little Model", featuring a Salvation Army woman with a tambourine.

Judge, a popular magazine of the day, went full sappy.

Leslie's, in comparison, went full martial.

The Stanley Cup finals ended this year due to the Spanish Flu.  Too many players became ill to carry on.

And Marines on occupation duty in Germany gathered for a photograph.