OLD NEWS: Wet, cold, sick and no booties to pawn

The Royal theater in Little Rock showed  For the Freedom of the World in January 1918.
The Royal theater in Little Rock showed For the Freedom of the World in January 1918.

Maybe Arkansans are such famously friendly people because our weather's so stupid.

Last week's meteorological midweek teeter-totter (43 degrees to 64 to 23? Really?) is the sort of miserable nonsense that affronts Arkansans of every education and income level, uniting us in a shared desire to complain about it, to somebody, anybody.

Something similar was happening a century ago today during the harsh winter of 1917/18 (the weather ups and downs, I mean, although we can assume the complaining as well). Under the headline "From Snowbound to Waterlogged," a front-page story in the Jan. 15, 1918, Arkansas Gazette ticked off the day's complaints:

Item, no street car service, and no one knowing when it will be resumed.

Item, no rubber boots or overshoes to be had at any price.

Item, streets turned into rivers that flowed between banks of slush and snow.

Item, shortage of fuel.

Item, more snow and sleet.

These were some of the things that helped to make things cheerful in Little Rock yesterday.

The streetcars were sidelined because, as general manager C.J. Griffith explained, "We run street cars, not submarines."

A story headlined "Boots! Boots! Boots!" reported that stores had sold out of "knee boots, bootees, overshoes, rubbers and even hip boots," and that pawnbrokers and secondhand shops had, too. (People used to pawn their boots!)

In Little Rock, Capitol Avenue between Center and Louisiana streets was a foot deep in water.

And in North Little Rock's Camp Pike, where more than 30,000 soldiers were training to join the Great War, the Arkansas Democrat of Jan. 15 reported that Camp Pike Road had become a one-way rut through ice and slush, where "the right of way was keenly contested by automobile drivers meeting each other."

Meanwhile, to visit the barracks, you had to drive over mountains of snow.

But that's how one had to go to get to Camp ... which is where we are headed today, for a human-interest item related to the disease burden there in the early days of 1918.

From the Gazette of Dec. 9:

Death Beats Discharge

Only 30 minutes after he had received his discharge from the Eighty-seventh Division and before his brother could reach him with the news, Private Sam Patterson of Fabius, Ala., died of pneumonia at the base hospital yesterday. Private Patterson's discharge on account of dependent relatives was pending when he was taken to the base hospital, ill of pneumonia, and his brother, G.T. Patterson, had come from Fabius to assist in looking after the detail. Mr. Patterson received the discharge to be handed to his brother at 11:30 yesterday morning, and immediately made arrangements to have the discharged soldier transferred to a local civil hospital, as the soldier seemed strong enough to be moved. After completing arrangements, Mr. Patterson started to the base hospital with the discharge, but before he could reach here his brother died. The body will be taken to Fabius for burial today.

As we noticed last week, in early January, Little Rock newspapers were publishing four to eight obits out of Camp Pike every day. The numbers dropped a bit in the second half of the month, but reports of local men dying in other states crept in.

Many soldiers did volunteer, but most participated via the Selective Service draft. Parents and families back home were horrified by the thought their loved ones were headed, eventually, to the battlefronts in Europe, and that was bad enough. Fear that men would die before they even got there, that the training camps might be mires of contagion, could have inspired even more draft evasion than there was.

And so, as we read through the early papers of 1918, we see little items like this, from the Jan. 15 Gazette:

Reports Misleading

Trifling Ailments Figure in Report of Men Sick

That reports concerning the sick in army camps are likely to be misleading to the general public, is the opinion of army medical officers. At sick call every day all men in each organization requiring medical attention report to the regimental infirmaries and these make daily reports. Frequently the patients are suffering with such minor ills as a cut finger, headache, slight biliousness and the like, but reports are made on these also. A report carried in a recent communication from Charles [Stewart] Davidson, member of the Executive Committee of the American Defense Society, shows the deaths from all causes for the week ending December 7 to be 264. During this period there were 174 deaths from pneumonia in the National Guard and 47 in the Army. The figures are based on reports from 30 divisions now in camp, representing an aggregate of 600,000 men, a death rate of less than one man in 2,500.

BRINGING THE HEAT

Movie theaters offered an escape from troubles, a heated room -- and persuasion. That same Jan. 15, the Royal on Main Street in Little Rock (not the historic theater in Benton) was showing For the Freedom of the World, a silent "summing-up of the aims of the World War."

IMDB attributes this now-lost film to "Capt. Edward Bower Hesser"; but in the ads published by the Gazette and Democrat in 1918, the author is "Capt. Edwin Bower Hesser," and Edwin is accurate.

Before his success with For the Freedom, Hesser (1893-1962) managed some of New York's fanciest, failed movie theaters, a failed acting school, and he shot a failed movie. In 1915 he joined the American Legion of the Canadian Army as a captain. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, he transferred to the U.S. Army Signal Reserve Corps. He wrote the movie while on active duty. (Read more about his failures here: bit.ly/2D1ZnkZ.)

The film, according to IMDB.com, is a "gigantic war panorama of human courage and heroism: of brave men and patient, daring women." A comment posted on IMDB adds a plot:

"Gordon Harvey, a wealthy American, enlists in the American Legion of the Canadian Army to fight with the Allies even before his own country has entered World War I. He woos and weds Betty Milburn, and then, because the young bride cannot bear to be parted from her new husband, she disguises herself as a Red Cross nurse and accompanies him to France. Ralph Perry, a spurned suitor, reveals her presence to the authorities, knowing that the young couple will be sentenced to death for breaking military rules. Rather than send Betty to the firing squad, Gordon shoots her and then embarks on a suicidal combat mission. He is saved by Perry, however, and awarded a Victoria Cross for heroism. Betty, only wounded by the shot, recovers and is reunited with her husband."

In other words, an unlikely scenario of up and down and up again -- just like winter in Arkansas.

Next week: Plucky Lad Recovering

photo

Patriotism was the come-on for many ad campaigns in 1918, witness this ad from the Jan. 16, 1918, Arkansas Democrat.

ActiveStyle on 01/15/2018

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