LATER TEEN AGE AND EARLY TWENTIES Part 7 - Greetings from the President

  Its 1918 and Alfred Moehlmann at age 21 is working at the Ogle Land Co. while the US has entered into the "Great War".  He is thinking he still had at least until the fall before he might be called into the service.  His story continues:

"Then came the month of June; the company asked me to check the draft board as to when I would be called for military service.  They wanted me to try for a deferment account of farm work.  Wheat harvest had already started.  I balked on deferment but Mr. Martin and I went to Bloomfield and checked my status.  With my low number I was informed that I wouldn’t be called until late fall.  That was on a Wednesday.  I wrote the company and told them how I stood.  But lo and behold I got, Greetings from the President of the U.S. on Friday informing me to go to Bloomfield on the following Sunday, June 30, 1918 and be sworn into the Army at 2:30 P.M. by Sheriff Greeley Wines, and be ready to catch a train at Bloomfield on Monday morning at 7:30 am.  I had a lot to do, check out my accounts (The Vandalia sent a Mr. Thompson down from Terre Haute to do that) had to pack my grip and seemed like a thousand and one things to do.  I had to work until noon on Sunday to clear everything up.  Then I drove to Moms, picked her, Aunt Grace and Russell Pope up and made a flying trip in a cloud of dust to Bloomfield.  We only had 30 minutes to get there and that meant a fast trip with a Model T Ford and the kind of roads we had (all gravel).  But we got here with a few minutes to spare.  We went back to Linton and I bid all my folks and friends I saw Good-By.  Mom kept me close to midnight for what we expected to be a long time apart.

Mr. Martin took me to Bloomfield the next morning and we got our orders; we changed trains at Bloomington.  We took the Monon to Chicago and the Nickel Plate to Valparaiso, Ind.  I hope I never see the sad scenes of grief that I saw that day at every stop of parents seeing their sons off.  I was glad that nobody saw me off but Mr. Martin, for I had seen enough at Bloomfield when the Baughman family saw Earl leave and the Haseman family to see Emil leave.  We arrived at Valparaiso about midnight and taken directly to camp and to the dining hall for our first army meal.

Befor I relate my army experience I want to tell of one more incident while I was at the Ogle Land Co.  Everything was done in a formal way, especially meals.  One person did all the serving and Mr. Martin attended to that.  He was an expert when it came to carving meats & fowl.  But on this particular day, Alfred Ogle and his wife and Thomas D. Sherin and his wife were at the farm and when dinner time came Mr. Martin was out on some business.  Miss Mary Hewitt, an old spinstress, and also mistress of the home told me I would have to do the serving.  Of all the things to have to carve she had duck.  Every place I tried to stick a fork I hit bone, I was so embarrassed I didn’t know what to do or say.  Sweat was pouring down my face and then Mr. Ogle said “Alf, I don’t believe you know how to carve duck.”  I said not only duck but that this was the first time I ever even served.  He told me where to place the fork and finally got a little meat off the carcass.  I was scared stiff that they would ask for a second helping and I had no idea where I could find anymore meat on that duck.  I guess that is the only time in my life that I served to a couple of millionaires.

I also want to mention a sad experience I had while on the farm to give a sort of example of the many things I had to do.  I don’t mean that I was over worked but the various things that would have to be looked after.  The wife of Oliver Goad, our Barn Boss who looked after the cattle & hogs, gave birth to a baby that was “still born.”  I had to go to Linton to The James Humphrey Funeral home (now Welch & Cornett) which was located over what is now Baxley Furniture Store and buy a casket for the infant and take it to their house.   The weather was bad, rain and Black Creek was out of its banks and water over part of the roads we would have to travel to a small country cemetery.  Some of the ladies of the neighborhood prepared the corpse and placed it in the casket.  I got a good layman to perform a simple ceremony.  We hitched up a team of mules to the company surrey, placed the coffin in the floor of the front seat.  I drove the team and good deacon sat in the front seat with me and Mr. Goad & sister-in-law sat in the back seat.  Only one vehicle made the funeral procession.

Now back to the Army – From one desk to another – sign my name at every turn, finally assigned to a barracks, bed was a canvas folding cot, two wool blankets, got to bed at 2 am July 2^nd, 1918.  At 6 am bugle call, reveille, shrill whistles, voices yelling, fall in – well I guess I fell in – herded out into the street – line up – how, what for – Two lines were formed – an acting sergeant (designated by a white band around his hat) stuck his arm in the ranks and gave an order – “From here, right face”- Everybody stood still; the order didn’t mean anything (I was in this bunch) for we just didn’t know any Army procedure.  Well, we finally got squared around and we were marched to the mess hall.  Some of us were assigned to the kitchen, some to a cellar to peel potatoes, and some to the dining hall and a man was assigned a table.  I was assigned a table, the last one in the hall.  We were ordered to set the tables, plates, cups, silverware and finally salt & pepper shakers.  There was a young chap, an acting corporal, asked me why I didn’t have the shaker on the table and I told him there were no more.  He said, “You’re a liar” and I hauled off and hit him and knocked him sprawling on the table, upsetting it.  Well I was escorted to some officer, charged with hitting a superior, had a bunch of orders dictated to me I suppose from the Army manual.  Well after thinking I was going to be shot at sun rise, I was ordered to report to the cellar every morning at 6 am until further notice.  They had some kind of machine that scraped the peel off the potatoes but we had to punch the eyes out.  I didn’t think there were so many potatoes in the world.  Sometimes I was there to 9 pm.  I got called out on occasions for medical exams, shots, army clothing issues, etc.  Finally called out and said I was to be shipped out in five days.  I wrote a letter to my folks and also to Mom. The night befor we left, Mom, Uncle John & Aunt Gertie Cerar drove into camp in a Model T Ford Roadster.  The sergeant on duty called me out of the cellar and gave me a pass until midnight.  They must have got in about 7 pm.  We found a place for them to stay, drove out of town and ate a supper they had brought along in a picnic basket.  The next morning was mostly confusion – turning in and checking out blankets etc.  We found out we would leave Valparaiso via the Nickel Plate Rail Road for the University of Vermont, located at Burlington, Vt. at 2:30 pm.  I bade Mom and the folks good-by and it was all over in a very short time. 

I did a little research on the draft during World War I and found the following information on the Encyclopedia of Genealogy website: 

On May 18, 1917, Congress passed the Selective Service Act authorizing the President to draft men into military service. During World War I, there were three registrations. The first was on June 5, 1917, registering men between the ages of 21 and 31. The second was on June 5, 1918, registering men who had turned 21 since June 5, 1917.  The third registration was held on September 12, 1918, and registered men 18 through 45. So, all men born between 1872 and September 1900 who were not in active military service by June 1917 filled out draft registration cards, whether they were native born, naturalized, or alien. There were five World War I draft classifications, but they were not the straightforward arrangement that we all remember from later wars, such as 1A or 4F. Every registrant was considered belonging to Class 1 until his status giving him the right of deferred classification was fully established. Each draft board used a set of standard "principles" to place men in the deferred classes, including dependency, sundry specific vocations, necessary agricultural and industrial workers, or moral disqualification. In class 2 was placed a registrant found by his district board to be a necessary skilled farm laborer in a necessary agricultural enterprise or a necessary skilled industrial laborer in a necessary industrial enterprise.

Alfred registered in the first June 5, 1917 registration. There was a category of deferment for agricultural worker that Alfred's employer wanted him to apply for.  But it was also up to each individual county board to determine these deferments. It had been a year since he registered and since he had been advised by his board that he would not be called for several months he declined. What a surprise to be called up just days later.

Having to get his business and personal life in order on such short notice must have been unsettling. Before he knew what was happening he was in the Army in Valparaiso, Indiana, 210 miles from home.  Just think, he had been carving duck and dining with millionaires not too long before and now he is peeling potatoes in the cellar after hitting an officer. What a surprise to have visitors before he is sent to Vermont.

Alfred is about to depart on the Nickel Plate.  This is the railroad running from Chicago to Buffalo. The control of the railroads had been assumed by the government for the war effort.