Children at rally, City Hall, New York City, April 27, 1917

A Mid Week At Work Query: When you were a little kid, what did you want to be?

As a lawyer, I come in contact with a large number of people over time in lots of occupations.  Indeed, I've learned of occupations that I wouldn't even know existed otherwise.

 My father and his two sisters.  This must have been in the second half of the 1930s.  My father and one of his sisters are both wearing cowboy gear and are sitting on the dreaded packing house pony my grandfather kept, which had a reputation for being a mean pony.

For a long time, I've marveled on how people, particularly men, take on an occupational identify.  In spite of all the fluff about not becoming your career, at least depending upon the career, people very clearly do over time.  In noting that, I've often wondered who these adults were as children.

I've noted here before as Holscher's First Law of Behavior that "everyone's basic personality is set by the time they're about five years old."  And I think that's true.  But it can't be denied that, at least with some occupations and professions, maybe most, we are altered by them and become them to some degree.  That doesn't mean that other person is fully suppressed, however

Anyhow, I'll look out at adults and often marvel at the variety of occupations.  And how people, in particular men, become their occupations, as noted.  But when they were little kids, what were their dreams.

With some occupations, I know that these adults didn't wish to do these things as children, unless they're truly an exception to the rule. Whenever I hear "I always wanted to be a lawyer", for example, I think "bull, no you didn't".

What kind of a kid things being a lawyer is a fun thing to do?  For that matter, adults who aren't lawyers would be surprised to see how vastly our occupation departs from the public portrayal of it.  Is there any little kid who really wants to be an accountant?  Who wants to work in a convenience store when they're small. . . or at all?

Some occupations, I grant, are truly different. Firemen (which one of my uncles was), cowboys, soldiers, etc., I think are occupations which many really wish to do, and which when people grow up some become. 

So, here follows a question.

When you were a little kid. . . say twelve years of age and younger (not when you were a teenager), what did you want to be when you grew up?  Did you become that?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, mister annoying blogger, what about you?

No, I didn't want to be a lawyer when I was ten.  Or twelve.  Or, and we're not to those ages yet, even when I was sixteen.  That thought never occurred to me.

Looking back what I wanted to be was outdoors and things that seemed to be associated with the outdoors heavily appealed to me early on.  One of those things was being a soldier, as they were outdoors.

That's something I've actually done.  I was a National Guardsmen for six years.  Indeed, one of my real regrets is not staying in the National Guard.  So, I did partially become what I thought was a neat thing to do when I was a young boy, although I obviously didn't take it up as a career. Did it meet my expectations?  Well, as those expectations had evolved by the time I took it up, it pretty much did.

City College, April 26, 1917

Edwardina L. Lavoie, bugler, 1st Artillery, New York National Guard

Edwardina Lavoie, a female New York National  Guard bandsman, April 26, 1917. 

These photographs are interesting for a variety of reasons.

Unlike the Navy, which had just authorized regular female recruits, the Army had a longer history with women in service.  It's somewhat muddled, quite frankly, and its subject to misinterpretation, but as its muddled and subject to misinterpretation I won't go into it.  Be that as it may, what these photographs depict is definitely out of the norm.

Being a bugler was a combat role. 

And a vital one.

Radio had just made its appearance in the US Army in the field in the Punitive Expedition and field phones hadn't gotten too far as of yet, although they were definitely in use.  Buglers, therefore, going into the war, remained a critical field signaling role.

Not the only one, we might note.  Field phones, of course, have already been mentioned.  And dispatch runners, some mounted, some on foot, were very common.  But, at least in theory, it remained the case that a large variety of military signals were sent by assigned bugle calls.

It was a very dangerous combat role.

Maybe she was a bandsmen?

Well, the captions from the Library of Congress don't say that.  I trust, therefore, that she really was a bugler with the New York 1st Artillery.  But let's take a look at bandsmen for a second.

Being an Army bandsman wasn't the same a century ago as it is today, although being a National Guard bandsmen might have been, oddly enough.  In the 19th Century Army, much of the military culture of which remained at the start of World War One, being a bandsman was a field occupation.  That is units all had bands, at that time, they took them to the field.  The scene depicted in Little Big Man, for example, in which the 7th Cavalry Regiment's band plays Garryowen as the 7th charges at Washita is actually correct.  The 7th really did have the band strike up Garryowen in that frozen horror, which tells us a lot about how bands were treated at the time.

Not everything about them, however.  One thing that's commonly not noted about military bandsmen, except by some astute historians, is that they were used as stretcher bearers as soon as the need arose.  So they didn't just hang around and provide stirring music for the carnage.  They helped carry the wounded off, a job which we might note which was extremely hazardous.

I don't know when that practice ended.

Note, as we circle back to the bugler role, that she's dressed in a male uniform.  Artillery was a mounted service, along with cavalry, and she's wearing leather leggins and male breaches.  She's dress for riding, in other words.

A very interesting photograph.

I'm certain she didn't deploy with the New York National Guard to Europe.  But by this date she would have been mobilized (she likely wasn't yet Federalized, that oddly took quite a bit more time to occur in World War One than it would in later call ups requiring Federalization).  I suspect, but don't know, that her role with the Guard ended with Federalization.  She wouldn't be the only one, I'd note.  Federalization of Guard units, pretty much up to the World War Two call up (but not much after that) entailed a weeding out and reassignment process.  Men unsuitable for military service in the opinion of the U.S. Army were weeded out at that point, units that were one thing in their state assignments became another in the Army.  I don't know what happened to Pvt. Lavoie, but I suspect her role with the New York National Guard ended at that point.

The Cheyenne State Leader for April 26, 1917: 30,000 Acres "Offered" on the Reservation

I've pretty much halted the daily newspaper updates from a century ago, while still posting some directly to the 100 Years Ago Today Subreddit.  This one is one I ran across that I'm posting here, as some thing linger and linger and linger.

The story, of course, to which I refer is the one noting that 30,000 acres were being opened up on the Reservation. 

Things like this happened all the time, and into the mid 20th Century, but the problems this has created have been endless.  It's shocking to read about now, but at the time, wasn't thought of as a problem by most.

British Officers' Luncheon in Wrecked Village, April 25, 1917

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Saint Mary's Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Denver Colorado

Churches of the West: Saint Mary's Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Denver Colorado

This is Saint Mary's Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in Denver Colorado. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is a non-Chalcedonian (Oriental Orthodox) church. This church is located in north eastern Denver.

Launch of the USS New Mexico, April 23, 1917

John Walter Wilcox, Jr., U.S. Navy, and Margaret Cabeza DeBaca, daughter of Ezequiel Cabeza De Baca, governor of New Mexico. Margaret christened the battleship New Mexico.

Distributism at work . . .

Patrons lining up about two hours early for record store on Independent Record Store Day.

Quite a few more would be there before the store opened.

The Fallen of World War Two.

Best Post of the Week for the Week of April 10, 2017

Best Post of the Week for the week of April 10, 2017:

Wake Up America Day

 

Sunday Morning Scene: Ελληνορθόδοξοι Ύμνοι Μεγάλης Σαρακοστής στην αραβική από τη Χορωδία Επαρχίας Τριπόλεως του Λιβάνου.

French wounded

Published in the Sunday Oregonian on April 27, 1917.  The troops with the berets are Chasseurs Alpine, French mountain troops.

Loading boats with ammunition.

British Royal Artillery loading pontoon boats on the River Scarpe with shells near Saint-Laurent-Blangy, France, April 22, 1917 during the Battle of Arras.

British Cavalry, Surrey Yeomanry, at Vermand, April 21, 1917

British cavalry at Caulaincourt, April 21, 1917

Ruins of Caulaincourt Chateau, April 21, 1917

Goose Creek, Texas. April 20, 1917

Copyrighted on this day, 1917.

American Flag Day in London, April 20, 1917

The H3 Relaunched

Back on December 14 we ran this item about the 1916 beaching of the H3:

The Submarine H3 runs aground, leading to the ultimate loss of the USS Milwaukee. The U.S. submarine the H3, operating off of Eureka California with the H1 and H2, and their tender the USS Cheyenne, went off course in heavy fog and ran aground on this date (although some sources say it was December 16, this seems the better date however).

The H3 during one of the recovery attempts.

On this day in 1917 she was relaunched into Humboldt Bay.  She'd been taken overland to that location, supported by log rollers.  An earlier attempt to tow her back out to sea had resulted in the USS Milwaukee being wrecked.

 The H3 in 1922.

She'd serve until 1922 and was struck in 1930.  Her active service life was only nine years.

Wake Up America Day

Poster for, or maybe recalling, Wake Up American Patriot's Day in New York City. 

A lot of cities and towns across the nation were having patriotic rallies in April 1917.  New York had one that occurred on April 19th, the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775.  April 19 is celebrated as Lexington Day in some locations on the East Coast, or at least it was so celebrated.

The woman dressed as Paul Revere is likely Jean Earl Moehle who portrayed Revere in the event.  In some accounts she's cited as being an actress, but in others a suffragette. Whether or not she ever worked as an actress I don't know, but she was definitely a suffragette and therefore I think the citations to her being an actress are in error.

 

Moehle got a fair amount of camera time due to the event, although she'd been in the public eye before, including appearing with Inez Milholland Boissevain at an event in which she worked on a Maxwell car in 1914.  She wasn't the only feature of the event, of course.

Other riders at the Wake Up America Day event in New York.

 

Moehle, it might be noted, was working in France for the YMCA at some point during World War One and continued employment with the YMCA at least as late as 1920.

A feature of the event was the participation of various ethnic societies, which turned out to show their loyalty to the United States.