Col. J. W. Cavendar, a Casualty of the Great War. Who was he?

The September 28, 1918 Casper Daily Press in which we learn a fair amount about Joseph J. Cavendar.  What we don't actually learn from this paper is the true circumstances of his death.

From the Wyoming newspapers of September 27, 1918, we learned that Col. J. W. Cavendar had become a casualty of the fighting on the Meuse Argonne.  He was the commander of the 148th Field Artillery, one of the units formed out of Wyoming National Guard infantrymen (as well as the Guardsmen of other regional states, or at least the state of Utah.

But who was he?

It's pretty hard to tell.

What we know, or thought we knew, from the Cheyenne papers of the day is that he was an attorney, and they report him as a local attorney, and hence the problem.

Lawyers may rise to the heights of great fame during their lifetimes, and certainly the ascendancy to high positions has been common, including in a prior era to the command of Federalized National Guard units.  But after they are dead, they are almost always completely forgotten.  The fame of lawyers follows them into the grave.

From what we can tell, the Cheyenne papers that reported him as "local" were a bit in error.  He was a Georgia born attorney who had originally apparently been a shopkeeper. According to the Casper paper set out above, he came to Wyoming at first to enter ranching, but that must not have worked otu as he returned to Georgia and entered the law. After that, he came back to Wyoming, was admitted to the bar here, and then practiced for a time in Carbon County before relocating to Park County.  In 1912, as the newspaper above notes, he was elected as Park County Attorney.

The old part of the Park County Courthouse, which was built in 1912, the year Cavendar became the Park County Attorney.

A little additional digging reveals that he'd been in the National Guard for awhile.  In 1911 he'd been elected, as that's how they did it, as the Captain of the infantry unit in  Cody.  His wife was asked to speak for Spanish American War pensioners as late as 1921, in hopes they'd claim their pensions, so his memory remained that strong at least to that point.  Perhaps more interestingly, given that he was born in 1878, that raises some question of whether he'd served in the Army during the Spanish American War.  He would have been old enough to do so.

He was in command, at least for a time, of the Wyoming National Guard troops that were mobilized for the crisis on the Mexican Border and was a Major in the National Guard by that time.

So we know that Col. Joseph W. Cavendar was a Georgia born lawyer who had relocated to Wyoming twice.  He'd started life as a merchant, and then switched to ranching, then went back to Georgia and became a lawyer.  After that, he came back to Wyoming and ultimately ended up the Park County Attorney.  At some point he'd entered the Wyoming National Guard.  Given his age, he was old enough to have been a Spanish American War veteran and it would be somewhat odd, given his obvious affinity for military life, if he had not been.

At the time of his death he was fifty years old.  Not a young man.  And there's a ting, maybe, of failure to his life.  It's subtle, but it's sort of there.  The law was his third career and Wyoming was his second state of practice.

But perhaps that's emphasized by what we later learn.

Cavendar killed himself.

Indeed, what we learn is that on the very first day of the Meuse Argonne Offensive the Army found the fifty year old Park County Attorney, former rancher, former merchant, wanting and informed him that it was relieving him of his command and giving him the choice of returning to the United States to be mustered out of service or to be reduced in rank to Captain and return to service in that capacity.  Instead he walked over to the hotel where he was staying and killed himself with a pistol.  The Army, no doubt wanting to save his reputation, or perhaps worried that the relief of a National Guard officer (from a state in which powerful U.S. Senator F. E. Warren was. . . Gen. Pershing's father in law, was from) reported him killed in action.

Cavendar had been in front of a board that was reviewing National Guard officers and finding more than a few of them wanting.  Some were higher ranking that Cavendar.  By the time the true story broke, following the war, the sympathies were clearly on the relieved National Guard officers side and the action regarded as an outrage.

Was it?  That's pretty hard to say. Cavendar had been in command of his unit for a good five months at the time he was relieved. But that doesn't mean that his service had been perfect or that there weren't better officers, and potentially younger ones, coming up behind him.  On the other hand, the Regular Army was legendary for containing officer that had a strong, largely unwarranted, animosity towards the National Guard.  Indeed, elements of the Army had openly opposed making the Guard the official reserve of the Army in 1903, an action which if they had been successful in would have lead to absolute disaster during World War One.  Nonetheless, as late as World War Two the Army seemed to retain a strong animosity in some quarters towards National Guard officers and relieved many of them with no clear indication as to why.  No doubt some, perhaps many, warranted removal, but the Army seemed more zealous in its actions than facts warranted.

Whatever happened, apparently Cavendar couldn't bare what he regarded as the shame of it, or perhaps other things combined to push him over the edge. Whatever it was, he shouldn't have done what he did.  Indeed, followers of the blog on Canadian colones in the Great War would note that many of them were relieved and went on to be highly regarded.  Relieving officers in wartime isn't unusual, it's part of the service.  

Well, anyhow, now we know more about Cavendar than we did, sad story though it is.

It feels like the early 1970s.

We've said it before, but . .

And not in a good way.  Of course, if you lived through the 70s, you probably wouldn't have thought if it in that way anyhow.

The other day an old friend of mine called and told me how the smoke was so thick from forest fires that people in Laramie were driving with their headlights on.  I stated "it's been a weird year".  He replied "it's the begging of the end".  He's always dour, but not to that extent.

The news has become so odd and weird that its surreal.  I didn't watch the Kavanaugh hearing the other day, but lots of professionals I knew speant the whole day watching them.  They all were rather dour about it.  One lawyer friend of mine simply noted how tragic the entire feel of it has become, and I can't dispute that.

The 1970s felt that way too, or at least the early part of them.  And that's not a pleasant thought either.

Eternal Standards. Changing Times.

High school couple, 1940s.

First, let me note that I don't know who is telling the truth in the whole Kavanaugh matter (and I didn't watch the testimony that was given the other day), but as I"m going to state later, I think that I've formulated an opinion on how such things should be handled in the public sphere.

You don't know who is telling the truth either.  How the heck would we?*

And I'm not commenting on that.  What I'm commenting on are two comments that I've heard from women who; 1) don't believe Kavanaugh's accusers, and 2) made statements that are pretty similar, I'm pretty sure, to what a lot of high school graduates who went to high school in the 1970s, 80s, and very early 90s, are thinking.

And that leads me to the Atlantic magazine.

The Atlantic is running an article under this headline:

My Rapist Apologized

The Kavanaugh allegations led me to reach out to the man who had assaulted me decades before.

Included in that article is this paragraph:

Let me tell you what life was like as a girl in Montgomery County, Maryland, in the early 1980s. I am a year older than Christine Blasey Ford and a year younger than Brett Kavanaugh. I grew up in Potomac, Maryland, a few miles from both Holton Arms, Ford’s school, and Georgetown Prep, which Kavanaugh attended, but I went to my local public high school, Churchill. Never mind that any girl who was in high school in Potomac during that era knew, through the whisper network, not to go to a Georgetown Prep party alone. That was a given. What was also a given is that “date rape,” as a term, was in its infancy. Most of us thought getting our bodies groped at a high-school party—or anywhere—was the unfortunate price we paid for having them, not something we would ever go to the police to report.

Not just Montgomery County, Maryland.  I think that applied to every high school and every high school party in that era.

I'm not saying that's a good thing.  Indeed, I'm saying the opposite.  And I'm not commenting about anything at all past the very early 1990s, as I think things changed at the high school level.**  I am saying a lot, however, about the 1940s through the 1960s, and that era's impact on the 70s and 80s.

And let's go just a bit further from that article:

Even in junior high school, this was true. I have a vivid memory of my friend Marcia having her skirt ripped off her body in the middle of a bar mitzvah dance floor. It had snaps down the middle. I actually heard one boy say, as she was weeping in a corner, trying to refasten her skirt, “I mean, duh. If you’re going to wear snaps on your skirt, what do you think will happen?” I made a mental note: Never wear snaps to a dance party.

Horrible?  Yes.  Beyond the pale then?  Yes.  But hugely uncommon in that era.  Not so much.

Thank you Hugh Hefner.

This is an aspect of this entire conversation that is very interesting.

For most of us, the Maryland prep school atmosphere and the Yale atmosphere of the time cited is a vague cultural reference. We didn't go to prep schools and we didn't go to Yale.  Indeed, I've argued here more than once that the time for the Ivy League grasp on the Supreme Court, and frankly the Presidency, should go.  Deep down, frankly, most Americans are a lot more pedestrian, small town, rural, or blue collar than that, and frankly that's a really good thing.

The reason I mention that is that I’m continually amazed by how the fallout of the Sexual Revolution is really coming down on our society now.  The whole Me Too movement is really a highly confused cry for the return of the standard that we started abandoning in the early 1950s.  In 1953 Playboy came out and urged men to believe something different about women that what had been the standard for the prior millennia. By the early 60s pharmaceutical advances had come in which meant that the new standard urged by Hefner and his followers, that women were dumb, eager to please any man in bed, and completely sterile, made the sterile part of that potentially true and increased pressure on women to accommodate the eager to please part.***  Standards fell and illicit male expectations rose.  Now we have the natural fallout and the strong argument is to return to the prior standard which was natural and which worked, but the cry is divorced from the philosophical underpinning for that standard, Christianity, which those making the cry otherwise reject.  A cry with no solid underpinning is never effective or even fully understood.

Anyhow, while I’m rambling, I’ll note that I know nothing about these accusers at all, but I will note that the standards towards decent conduct had fallen so far that during the time I was in high school all of this would have seemed perfectly credible as a local story and people would have talked, but not that much.  At the time, to be a male with standards marked you in an odd way in that in certain situations you’d attract female company that you normally wouldn’t, simply because you were “safe”.  Having been a “safe” male in that earlier era, I can attest to it being a status that at least had some sort of honor, if only that.  It did mean that the pretty girls would hang out with you at parties and dances, however.

Which is not to suggest in any fashion that the lurid bizarre oddities stated by Swetnick were ever tolerated anywhere, in any society.  I'm not suggesting that.  Indeed, her claims sound, both descriptively and even linguistically, like something out of the period piece The Warriors more than anything in reality.****I'm not suggesting, therefore, that rape was sanctioned ever.  But to suggest that a girl going to a high school party, wearing a swimsuit even with clothes over it, was not risking getting groped?  Not so much.  That doesn't make it right, but frankly that wouldn't have surprised anyone and it likely would not have lead the victim of it to lasting trauma nor would anyone have expected it to follow a perpetrator into his adult years.

Indeed, I know a real gentleman who truly goes out of his way to help people who perfected, in his high school years, the ability to unhook a bra of a female student in the highway before she could catch which of course, in the case of chesty girls, has an impact.  He and his fellows didn't get into trouble for that, and had the girls complained to school authorities, which they uniformly did not (which doesn't mean that they cared for that), it really wouldn't have lead to much discipline of any kind.

Things have improved hugely here since that time, and stuff people tolerated when we were that age at that time now would not be at all locally, for which I’m hugely grateful.  Be that as it may, for those of us with no familiarity with how things worked elsewhere, it’s interesting to know how things worked.  My friends, and I now have some, who attended prep schools in the 1960s claim that nothing of the sort would ever have happened in them at the time, and that they were characterized by rigorous academics and proper behavior.  Perhaps so, but standards in everything fell since the 1960s and perhaps the service academies, which have had some really bad behavior exposed in this area, shows how that is the case.  In the 60s they didn't admit women, of course, but it's well known that rape has been a problem at the Air Force Academy and sexual misconduct a problem at West Point.  If it happens there, believing that standards amongst the prep school crowed in the late 70s and early 80s were as poor as they were in Western high schools isn't too hard to imagine. 

But assuming they are, what are we to make of the cry now?

Well, again, its an interesting cry to return to that earlier era. But when you do that, you have to return to the overall standard as well.  You can't have a standard that's purely built on human wishes, as the wishes tend to run toward the base.  Indeed, the dismantling of a standard that was underpinned by a deep philosophical understanding of the world and human nature is what lead us to the point where things like that being discussed could have occurred, and beyond that to confusion to what the standard is today.

But when you do that, you have to accept everything that philosophy brings to you, at least as being true or the underpinning of the standard. And that's what those most vigorously arguing for the return to the standard, in the guise of it being a "new" standard, are arguing for.

And perhaps most interesting of it all, the old standard had its peaks and valleys in the degree to which certain conduct was expected.  There was always a common set of standards that applied to it, but the vigor and ancillary rules that applied did vary.  And they varied the most in terms of being extremely strict, interestingly, in the Georgian through the Victorian Era.  At that time, among the educated, the standard was so strict that women were basically regarded as being highly vulnerable to any advance and to be protected from anything, even if they were receptive to it, at all costs.  Folks familiar with literature of the period may recall the side drama in Pride And Prejudice of the young maiden who runs off with the despicable Mr. Wickham, and the terrible scandal that ensues.  That she would be vulnerable to his improper advances is not questioned, and society's duty to address it clear.

It's interesting that this is essentially the standard now urged again.  Not at first.  At first the Me Too movement simply called out hte really reprehensible.  But it evolved pretty quickly to calling out those who had advanced and whose advances had been well received, but shouldn't have been offered in the first place. That's very Victorian.  And its now sort of been kicked around that the decayed standard of the 1970s was not only decayed, but that women, or rather girls, who strayed into situations that they would have best avoided should have been treated much more chivalrously.

And indeed, they should have.

And they should now.

But that means the restoration of a societal conduct that would protect them in other ways, and whose values run not only deep, but deeply counter to what many would wish for.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*Having said all of that, I frankly find the claims by the third accuser, Julie Swetnick to be completely fantastical.  And I have questions at this point about Ramierez's (the second accuser's) statement as well.

**Indeed, since I first wrote those words, I've read an article, written by a woman who is the same collective 50s demographic I am and all of these people are, noting the exact same things I've noted in this one, so its not just me. I.e, there was a vast amount of misbehavior going on at that time amongst this generation to the point it was pretty common, unfortunately, and standards have since much improved.

***You'll note that none of Hefner's chesty dimbulbs appeared nine months later with a baby sucking on one of those big breasts, looking tired, worn out, and being presented in the centerfolds meeting with a lawyer for a paternity case. Weird.

****While I'm an attorney in my day job, I've done other things including working on drilling rigs, working in ranch work, and serving in the armed forces.  I have, therefore, a pretty broad exposure to interesting vocabulary.  The only place I've ever heard the phrase "train" used to describe gang rape is in the film The Warriors. Train?  Did people really use that term ever?  Hmmm

The 100 Days: Fifth Battle of Ypres. September 28 to October 2, 1918.

On this day in 1918 the Groupe d'Armees des Flanders, a combined British, Belgian and French command, launched an assault at 05:30 after a three hour artillery bombardment, oer a wide front near Ypres.

The assault yielded immediate successes.  Many well known locations that featured heavy fighting earlier in the war, such as Passchendaele, were regained.  The advance continued on through October 2 when the Germans brought up reinforcements and the Allies outran their supplies, and therefore halted.

Showing the direction of things to come, the British and Belgian forces received 15,000 rations by air. That is, air drop.  They were parachuted in.

The battle, like the earlier one at Passchendaele, freakishly featured a lot of rain.

Villa rides again and the Spanish Flu marches through American camps. The Cheyenne State Leader, September 28, 1918

Death in various forms figured prominently on the front page of the Cheyenne State Leader for September 28, 1918.

Including in that was the resurgent Pancho Villa. . . whom only two years prior was the prim military concern of the United States.

The Altar of Liberty at 5th Avenue, Madison Square Park, New York City, dedicated on September 28, 1918 as part of the the celebrations in honor of the beginning of the fourth Liberty Loan campaign.

Ranch Wife:. "There's just one mistake"

Laramie range homestead, circa 1910.

Lawyer: "What is that?"

Ranch Wife.  "On page 5 it says the date is 1918."

Lawyer:  "Oh gee, I'm sorry"

Ranch Wife: "That's okay, that's the year we wish it was."

Lawyer:  "I know what you mean."

Mothers of McLennan County Texas., whose hearts and hopes are in France, assembled for the 4th Liberty Loan Parade, Sept. 27th, 1918

George F. Will: In today’s politics, there’s no such thing as rock bottom

Eighty days having passed since Kavanaugh's nomination was announced, this is a suitable time to put in perspective the charge that his confirmation is being rushed. Here are the number of days between the announcement of the nomination and the confirmation of some important justices: Hugo Black, 5; Felix Frankfurter, 12; William Douglas, 15; Harlan Fisk Stone, 15; Robert Jackson, 25; Byron White, 8; Warren Burger, 17; John Paul Stevens, 19.

George F. Will,  In today’s politics, there’s no such thing as rock bottom

Montfaucon France, captured by the American Army, Sept. 27, 1918

The 100 Days. Battle of St. Quentin Canal. The American 27th and 30th Divisions go into action. September 27, 1918.

Infantryman of the U.S. 30th Division with German prisoners on September 30, 1918.  Note that they are equipped with British SMLE rifles.  American soldiers assigned to British commands were equipped with British small arms.

St. Quentin as a place name has featured prominently in the newspaper headlines that have appeared here in the past couple of weeks.  Obviously it was a strategic point on the line that the British were hoping to crack.

Most histories of this battle have it commencing on October 29, 1918, but in reality it started today when the U.S. II Corps, which was attached to the British forces, commenced an assault on the northern section of the Hindenburg Line in order to attempt to position the British forces for the assault that was scheduled for two days later.  The II Corps remained part of the British forces and while made up of two divisions was the numerical equivalent of four British or Empire Divisions..

The overall assault had been assigned to Australian Genral Monash, whose earlier efforts in recent weeks had been uniformly successful and indeed quite inventive.  Monash was not happy with the assignment however as the Australians felt that they were being overused and there was serious dissension in Australian ranks.  Monash's feelings on the matter, however, were addressed by the assignment of the U.S. II Corps, made up of two large divisions (the equivalent of four British divisions) to his command.  Field Marshall Haig had opposed the use of the U.S. troops for the assault on the northern part of the line as he felt that they were too green, but British Gen. Rawlinson convinced him to give it a go on the basis that the Germans in the area, which had previously been the subject of an unsuccessful British attack, were now weakened and likely to collapse.

Haig's misgivings proved correct and the American assault failed.  This resulted in a request from Monash to postpone the September 29 planned attack but the request was refused.  We'll rejoin this story, accordingly, on the 29th.

The Meuse Argonne, the Sacrifice of Col. Cavendar and the Spanish Flu. The news of September 27, 1918.

Death in various forms had front and center position on the newspapers of September 27.

Of course, the big offensive on the Meuse Argonne, the second really major American offensive and the one that would carry the American effort through to the end of the war, took front and center position.  In that readers of the various major Wyoming newspapers learned that a Col. J. W. Cavendar, a Wyoming attorney in peacetime life, had been reported killed in action while leading the 148th Field Artillery, which was a unit made up of Wyoming National Guardsmen in part, together with other National Guardsmen from the Rocky Mountain Region.

Col Cavendar's loss also appeared on the front page of the Laramie Boomerang.

Manpower shortages also did with the news that the government wanted men out of jobs that women could do.

So much for the claim that Rosey the Riveter first appeared in World War Two.

The more sedate Cheyenne State Leader apparently didn't have the news about Col Cavendar when it went to press.  It featured the largest headline on the looming flu crisis, which really says something about it given that this was day two of the largest American offensive of the war.  The Leader also informed readers that if they died, they better not expect a fancy casket.

In Casper, readers of the Casper Daily Press received a lot of war news, and other news, on its busy front page, but it also learned that the flu was now in New Mexico's military camps, contrary to the news that generally had it only on the East Coast.  And it received the most prominent position on front page here as well.

The Casper Daily Tribune didn't worry about being sedate, and apparently it wasn't as worried as the other Casper paper about the flu.  The advance of the American effort, which in truth was already meeting with problems, brought out banner headlines.

Readers were also informed that Chile was getting into action against the Huns, rather late in the day frankly, which is how such things tend to go.  And the pipe dream of a return of the Russians to the Allied side also showed up in large form.

The 100 Days: The Meuse-Agronne Offensive. September 26, 1918-November 11, 1918. Phase I (September 26 through October 3, 1918).

On this day in 1918 the U.S. Army launched its most significant, and final, offensive of the Great War.  The action would last from this day until the last day of the war.

Troops of the 23d Infantry firing a 37 mm trench gun during the Meuse Argonne Offensive.

The stage had been set for the effort in the argument that Gen. Pershing and Field Marshall Foch had some weeks back, which we earlier detailed here.  At that time, Foch had wanted Pershing to abandon the planned assault on St. Mihiel in favor of an attack upon Metz.  Pershing had resisted as this would have made the U.S. Army subordinate to a French effort, but he did agree, and indeed developed, an alternative plan which called for a rapid redeployment of US forces in a new direction. That change in direction required the U.S. to redirect its forces at a right angle and cover 60 miles in short order, which was amazingly accomplished.  The resulting offensive was massive in scale, involving 1,200,000 men on the US side, including French and Siamese troops, and it remains the costliest battle in American history.

D Day for the offensive started with a massive artillery bombardment which expended more ordnance in three hours than the U.S. had expended during the entire Civil War.  The cost of the bombardment amounted to an expenditure of $1,000,000 per minute.   The ground assault commenced at 05:30 on this day with the V and III Corps making their objectives but the with those assigned to the 79th and 28th Divisions failing to meet theirs, and the 91st division being compelled to withdraw from Epionville.  On the following day, the 27th, most of the 1st Army was stalled, although the 79th did manage to capture its objective of Montfaucon d'Agronne.

On the 29th the Germans committed an additional six divisions and they staged a local counter attack.  The 35th Division was so strongly countered that it was effectively destroyed and had to be withdrawn from combat although certainly elements would be redeployed.  Adjacent French units also faced stiff opposition but managed to make greater gains, in part due to the terrain.

First Use of the M1917 Browning Machine Gun

On this day in 1917 the M1917 Browning machine gun was used in action for the first time.  The occasion was the American offensive on the Meuse Argonne.

Val Browning, whom we recently saw demonstrating his father's Automatic Rifle, is demonstrating his father's heavy machine gun here.  Val, one of eight surviving children of John Browning, would go on to head the Browning Arms Company following his father's death.

John Moses Browning entered the heavy machine gun field in 1900, with this gun.  That was the era of the Maxim, and even though the Browning gun was lighter, and Browning had a proven track record of firearms design (mostly civilian, however, at that time), the Army showed little interest in it.  He improved the design in 1910, but again the Army, which was equipped with a Maxim gun, like nearly every Army in the world, wasn't really interested.  By that time, the Army had equipped itself with the heavy, originally Vicker's made, Model M1904 Maxim.

Model M1904, a great, but very heavy, gun.  As not water source is connected in this photo, it's clearly staged.

Then came World War One.

It's commonly asserted that the US lacked arms for a modern war and even lacked the capacity to make them, but this is really not completely true.  The US certainly had adopted some very fine small arms prior to the Great War, including the M1904. But the demands to equip an Army the size of that which the Great War required but everything in new light. And that put the Browning design back into consideration. After all, if the Army and Marine Corps were going to be buying thousands of machine guns, why not get an American design that was as good, if not better, than what they were then using . . .particularly if they only had 1,100 of the thing they were then using.

The spotlight came on to the M1917 due to an Army requirement that resulted in the testing of several guns, with the M1917 not surprisingly being the best.  Remington, Westinghouse and Colt were assigned contracts, but by June of 1918 less than 5,000 had been built.  Production would increase in earnest after that, but the gun was arriving late in the war.  Given this, the gun would see only limited use in the war, with less than 2,000 arriving in time to be put into action. For the most part, therefore, the United States relied upon French machine guns, with forces serving under the British relying upon British guns.  The US did not deploy its existing Maxim guns to France, which would have made little difference in any event, given the small numbers.

The M1917 would go on to be heavily used by the Unites States thereafter, even though production ceased upon 68,000 having been made. At that point, the gun was basically replaced by an updated version termed the M1919, which had a quick detachable barrel.  That gun was mechanically identical, but the quick detachable barrel designed for the M1919 dispensed with the need for the water jacket and the extremely heavy quantities of water that had to be transported along with it.  For that reason, the M1919 was termed a "light machine gun" and the M1917 was a "heavy machine gun".  Use did vary after the introduction of the M1919 with the M1917 being assigned out at the battalion level.

Marine Court heavy machine gun crew, Cape Gloucester, 1944.  The Marine in the foreground is armed with a M1 Thompson submachine gun and the one in the bacground with a M1 carbine.

In spite of the M1917 being an extremely good gun its weight put it at a disadvantage as compared to the its mechanically identical sibling the M1919, so those guns that remained in service after the first production run were primarily suitable for the static defense role that they were assigned and, therefore, its somewhat surprising that they remained in service as long as they did. They last saw active service during the Korean War, where their requirement for water proved to be a problem in the winter months.  They were phased out of service in the late 1950s as the M60 General Purpose Machine Gun came into use, ultimately replacing the M1917, the M1919 and the BAR in some of its roles.  The last ones actively used by the U.S. Army were used at Ft. Benning in the 1960s for training, with their role being that of the gun that fired over the heads of trainees as they advanced under barbed wire.

M1917 in Korea.

Of course, stopping the story of the M1917 with the M1917 is a bit unfair and incomplete.  The M1919, which basically replaced it in production, was a M1917 action with a quick detachable barrel, with quick detachable coming in the context of 1919.  The replacement barrel screwed in and was headspaced with a series of "go/no go" keys.  This system allowed for the water jacket to be completely dispensed with making the gun much lighter.  The advantages of this conversion were obvious and after the M1919 was adopted in the year of its nomenclature, production of the M1917 ceased.  The designation of light was accordingly applied to the M1919, although the M1917 was "heavy" and the M1919 "light" mostly in context.  Having said that, the M1919 was issued further down the organizational chain leaving the M1917 for more of a sustained fire role, for which it was truly more suited.

M1919 in action in Aachen, Germany, during World War Two. The gun looks smaller than the M1917, but the action is exactly  the same.

The M1919 was made in much greater numbers, in more than one cartridge over the years, and served seemingly forever.  The gun remained the main American "light" machine gun through the Korean War and was officially slated for replacement with the adoption of the M60. Even at that, it continued to see active deployment as a light machine gun in the Vietnam War and saw additional use mounted to vehicles well through the Vietnam War.  The gun was adopted to armored vehicle use and helicopter use late in its service life, extending it out for many years.  7.62 NATO versions served in various armies, including the Canadian and Israeli armies, for many years.  I saw a U.S. Army tracked vehicle sporting one in the mid 1980s.

The basic M1919 design was additionally developed by John Browning into the giant M2 .50 caliber machine gun which has never been replaced in some roles in the U.S. Army.  Browning started working on the adaption of the M1917 in July 1917 pursuant to a request from Gen. Pershing.  Basing the cartridge for the weapon on the anti tank cartridge developed by the Germans for their large anti tank rifle, the gun was adopted in a water cooled fashion in 1921 as the M1921.  The gun had some functioning problems that were not fixed prior to Browning's death in 1926 and thereafter further work was undertaken by S. H. Green which lead to the M2.  Made in several varieties for a variety of roles, the M2 has proven so highly adaptable and effective that its never been replaced in its basic heavy barreled role, that of the M2HB.

M2HB on anti aircraft mount in Normandy, 1944.

And so the basic Browning design that first saw action on this day in 1919, in its later developments, really carries on to this day.  Just recently the U.S. contracted, for the first time since World War Two, for newly manufactured M2HBs.  And its certainly not impossible that a M1917 carries on somewhere.

M2HB mounted to an armored vehicle in Marine Corps use, November 2002.

French Legion in St. Louis, Missouri., Sept. 26, 1918

Motor Corps on Minnesota, September 26, 1918

Western Newspaper Union: Pittsburg, Pa. Pupils of no. 1 grade, Miller School snipping up waste cloth from the Domestic Science Department for fracture pillows. September 25, 1918.

Note that this grade school class is integrated.  Note too how short of resources things really were during World War One.

September 25, 1918. The Passing of Archbishop John Ireland

Archibishop John Ireland in his later years.

On this day in 1918, a towering figure in North American religion died, Catholic Archbishop John Ireland.  He had just turned 80 years of age.

The Irish born prelate is universally regarded as having been born and possessed of a great intellect.  It's been said of him, when he was right, he was very right, and conversely, as is the case with towering intellects, when he was wrong, he was very wrong.

Ireland was born in County Kilkenny in 1838 and came to the United States at age 10 with his family. This put him in the midst of the horrible Irish potatoe famine and the accompanying waive of immigration into the U.S., Canada and Australia that accompanied it, with his family, like so many others, choosing the United States for their second home.  This meant that he arrived in the country at the depths of Irish despair and the height of prejudice against the Irish in the United States, whom were regarded as an "alien race" at the time.  But it also meant, even though hew would have grown up in the "Catholic Ghetto" era, that he came to the country sufficiently young to effectively grow up as an American.  These various factors would define his views in profound ways throughout his life.

Ireland was sent to France by the French born Bishop Joseph Cretin at age 14, at which time he'd only been in the United States for a mere ten years.  He was ordained in 1861 at age 23 and became a chaplain to the Fifth Minnesota at that time, during the American Civil War.  He served in that role until 1863 when poor health forced his resignation.  Following that he became a pastor at Saint Paul's Cathedral in Minnesota, Cathedrals having pastors who serve as the Cathedral's priest, a role quite different than that of the Bishop of course.  He became a coadjuter Bishop at St. Paul's in 1875, at the fairly young age of 37.  He became the Bishop Ordinary in 1884 and an Archbishop in 1888.

As a bishop he was a towering figure and a uniquely original one in many ways.  He would become a central figure in American Catholicism as a result, and take positions that some would regard as contradictory but which, at their best, showed his independence in thought.

As an Irish ex-patriot he was deeply concerned about the fate of the Irish in America and encouraged direct colonization of areas in the West and Midwest, taking the view that settling the Irish in rural areas took them out of the vice of the crowded Eastern slums in which many found themselves.  Several towns in the Midwest were directly founded by Ireland for this purpose and his concern over what was occurring in Eastern ghettos was not misplaced.

Perhaps almost paradoxically, however, Ireland was an extremely strong proponent of Americanization of American Catholics and he actively worked to prevent the formation of "national",  i.e., ethnic, churches.  His view left a heavy imprint on the Catholic Church in the United States and this may in some ways be his lasting legacy, although what he was working for had not been fully achieved at the time of his death in 1918.  He did not want Irish Catholics or German Catholics to be that, but rather wanted them to be American Catholics.  He urged and foresaw an American society in which Catholics were fully part of it, a dream never fully realized but perhaps principally realized (and maybe even in some ways over realized) after World War Two when American Catholics did in fact fully enter the American mainstream.  Ireland feared that if this did not happen Catholics in the United States would remain marginalized and the faith would loose adherents to Protestant denominations that were in fact mainstream.  His fears were well placed and his efforts would ultimately be successful to a large degree, indeed to such a large degree that some Catholics holding romantic views of the Catholic Ghetto of old essentially lament them even if they do not themselves recall Archbishop Ireland.

As part of this, he was a strong supporter of education but paradoxically, especially for a man who had benefited from a Catholic education himself, he supported state support of Catholic schools in some instances and even supported the municipal takeover of distressed Catholic schools even when it resulted in those schools retaining Priests and Nuns but found them unable to teach religion.  This was a phenomenal position to take at the time and it would be very unlikely to receive much Catholic support today.  Indeed, he had to travel to the Vatican to explain it at the time.  Ireland, additionally, was such a proponent of Americanization of Catholics i the United States that he opposed the use of foreign languages to instruct students, something that was common in immigrant Catholic schools at the time.

Perhaps as part and parcel of this, and perhaps reflecting his Civil War service, he was a Republican and friends with several Republican Presidents.  He was an outspoken proponent of the rights of blacks at a time when that was not a fully popular view by any means.

Conversely, these same doctrines made him a dedicated opponent of "national" or ethnic churches to such an extent that he's also remembered today for inexcusably alienating Ruthenian Catholic followers of Alexis Toth.  Toth, an immigrant Ruthian (Eastern Rite) priest received a cold shoulder from Ireland upon making a courtesy visit to him upon first arriving in his diocese. As an Eastern Priest with his own Bishop, he was not subject to Ireland's jurisdiction, but Ireland was open in his opposition to the Eastern Rite having a place in the United States and took the view, rather bluntly, that Eastern Rite Catholics should switch to the Latin Rite, which he was working to make non ethnic.  This view is completely contrary to the view of the Church today and at the time it lead to Toth, who is regarded now as an Orthodox saint, going into schism and taking his followers and taking a large number of them into the Russian Orthodox Church, to which additional adherents would later follow.  Ireland is sometimes jokingly called the father of the Orthodox Church in America as a result.

Ireland was a towering figure and more successful than not.  His impact on the Catholic Church in the United States was very large, and because of its nature, lasting.  Ironically, his impact upon the Orthodox in American proved to be very large as well, but for a different reason, and perhaps in some ways both churches owe their modern nature to Ireland.

The Flu shares pride of place with the Great War and Villa, September 25, 1918.

The Spanish Flu, which would kill more Americans in 1918/19 than combat in Europe would, was now sufficiently newsworthy that it was making the front page day after day.  On this day, readers of the Casper paper woke up to find that as many as 30,000 cases of the particularly deadly and virulent flu strain had run through Army camps.

They also learned that Villa had returned to full violence in his war against Carranza.

In more positive news, Germany appeared to be collapsing.

Cheyenne's readers had equally disturbing news, including a claim that the Germans had returned to worshiping pagan gods in their desperation, a rather extreme claim to say the least.

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: A New Wind River Tribal Judicial Center?

Courthouses of the West: A New Wind River Tribal Judicial Center?:

A New Wind River Tribal Judicial Center?

 The current Wind River Tribal Court.

We wrote about this courthouse quite some time ago, here:

Courthouses of the West: Wind River Indian Reservation Tribal Court: This is the Wind River Indian Reservation Tribal Court, which also houses various other law related facilities. The court is located in F...

An interesting article in the Star Tribune reports that  representatives of the Tribal judicial system appeared in front of a committee of the Wyoming legislature this past week to seek support, which they received, for a new judicial center.  The Federal government will have to provide the funding, but state support can't hurt.



The jail is grossly overcrowded and apparently the new three judge panel for the Court is enforcing the criminal law much more rigorously than in the past.  The deficiencies of the courthouse, which includes the jail and the headquarters for the police department, are showing themselves.  About three times as many prisoners are housed there on a daily basis than it was built for.



I can attest personally that the courtroom is quite inadequate.  I hope they receive the funding they're seeking, and soon.

The Influenza Epedemic Abating? The Casper Daily Tribune, September 24, 1918.

The horrible disaster of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic was just starting to hit the front pages of Wyoming newspapers and here it's reported as abating.

Technically, it might have been. The flu had valleys and peaks, the epidemic rose and fell and then rose again.  It might actually have been in a declining state, but far from gone, in September 1918.

And a call went out for fruit pits to help counter poison gas. . .

Monday At The Bar: Courthouses of the West: Town of Mills, Wyoming Municipal Court.

Courthouses of the West: Town of Mills, Wyoming Municipal Court.:

This is the Town of Mills Municipal Court in Mills, Wyoming.  Mills is a city adjacent to the City of Casper, so I should have added this additional Natrona County municipal court some time ago.

The Big Picture: 5th Co., 161st Depot Brigade, Camp Grant, Ill., Lieut. C.A. Geers commanding., Sept. 24, 1918

The Global Collapse of the Central Powers. The news of September 23, 1918

Because we've been dealing mostly with the American effort in France, we've ceased keeping readers here up to date on other theatres.  If we did, this would read as an even lengthier treatise than it already risks becoming.

But there was a lot going on.  Specifically, in the Macedonian Front the Central Powers were going into a headlong collapse. . . as were the Turks in the Middle East where some pronounced mounted warfare was gaining significant advances.

One of Cheyenne's papers, remarkably up to date (as many of these World War One papers were, they were on time and pretty close to being on target, frequently), was reporting the Serbs gaining ground against the Austro Hungarians and the collapse of the Turks.  It also noted that the Russian Whites had exhumed the bodies of the Czar and his family and reinterred them.

William Jennings Bryan, received the cold shoulder in Cheyenne.

And, yes, once again, there was a clash on the Mexican border.

In Laramie readers of one of the town's two local papers also learned about the events in the Middle East.  In spite of what would seem to have been the obvious signs of a complete Central Powers collapse, the paper noted that the planning was for the war to go on into 1919, which was universally believed among the Allies.

And snow was coming to high altitude Laramie. . .

Casper readers of one of Casper's two papers found a really busy front page.  Events in Macedonia lead the headlines but the Turk's fate figured prominently as well.

The clash on the Mexican border and the exhumation of the Czar and his family also figured prominently and Casperites were informed that men were going to be released from non essential industries so that they could go into the Army.  Their place would be taken by women.

And the Casper paper reported that Catholic Archbishop John Ireland was in failing health and likely to pass away.  Ireland was a towering figure at the time.

From the Liberty Theatre, Camp Sevier, S.C. September 23, 1918.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Anthony's of Padua Catholic Church, Cody Wyoming:

Churches of the West: St. Anthony's of Padua Catholic Church, Cody Wyoming:

This is St. Anthony's of Padua Catholic Church in Cody Wyoming. This Catholic Church is the largest parish in the United States, in geographic extent, as it covers over 6,000 square miles of territory.  The Romanesque style church was built in 1954, replacing an earlier church.  It's one of two Catholic Churches named for St. Anthony's of Padua, the other church so dedicated being located in Casper.

Poster Saturday: Post World War Two National Guard advertisement.

An advertisement appealing to veterans of World War Two shortly after it had ended.  The copy writer was obviously trying to speak GI.

Best Post of the Week of September 16, 2018

The best post of the week of September

American Service Organizations During the Great War

The German Government Complains about Shotguns. 

September 19, 1918.Mid Week at Work: “Girls deliver ice. Heavy work that formerly belonged to men only is being done by girls. The ice girls are delivering ice on a route and their work requires brawn as well as the patriotic ambition to help.” 9/16/1918