PIECES OF OUR PAST - PEACE AT LAST!

 PEACE AT LAST! 

    They went over there to save the world in the “War To End All Wars.”  Several thousand Laurens County men joined or were inducted into the Armed Forces.  Forty-three men did not come home.  Many others came back sick, broken and wounded.  Some four years after the war they used to call “The Great One” began,  Laurens Countians began to see action in the death-dealing, exceedingly gruesome trenches in France.    Several Dublin physicians, including Sidney Walker, Thomas J. Blackshear, ton, and C.A. Hodges left early in 1917 to treat British casualties in English hospitals.  Red Cross chapters formed quickly, first in Dublin, and then in every town and hamlet throughout the county.  Thousands of Laurens Countians, including children, came forth with cash donations and purchases of war bonds.  

    Once the Americans went into battle, the war was over in virtually four months.  Local citizens suffered through shortages of food, coal, electricity, and gasoline.  They were constantly confused as the clocks kept changing because of governmental edicts to win the war.

    It was four o’clock on a cold, clear Monday morning of November 11, 1918 (106 years to the day on this Veteran’s Day) when the word came by telegraph into Dublin that the armistice was going to be signed by Supreme Allied Commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch.   As the sun rose, “every bell whistle and horn in town was turned wide-open,” a reporter from Dublin wrote.  Train whistles screamed through the autumn air all day long and well into the night.  Pandemonium was the watchword of the day.

    At 6:00 o’clock that morning, a proud patriot sent in a false fire alarm.  The crew managing the firehouse jumped up and began ringing the bell in the tower of the old City Hall on the northwest side of the Courthouse Square.  Instantly a squad of men rushed to the firehouse to bang the bell with hammers.   A group of young boys raced in and rang the bell in excess of a full hour. 

    A bystander claimed that half of the male population of the city covered the courthouse square.  An official read the telegraph to Dublin Mayor Izzie Bashinski stating the war was over.  The massive crowd erupted into a deafening roar of hoorays, prayers, and tears of joy.  The day was filled with patriotic singing, dancing, and uncontrollable laughter. When the clock struck eleven, the courthouse bells rang even louder to signal the wonderful moment when the armistice took effect and the killing stopped. 

    Businessmen closed their stores at noon to participate in the unbridled jubilee, the likes of which had never been seen in  Dublin before.  Throngs of men, women, and children covered the streets and sidewalks.  School students were overjoyed because when they arrived at the schools, the principals told them to go downtown to celebrate.  Hundreds of cars paraded through the downtown streets, sporting American flags and beautiful waving lasses.  Before the celebration ceased, Red Cross and War Bond workers were soliciting the joyous crowds to put the county over the top in its wartime fundraising war work goals.

    After sunset, more than five hundred folks assembled inside the county courthouse.  This time, the lights were turned on after many months of complete darkness in the town in order to save fuel.  The fuel situation was so tight that county officials sent out prisoners and volunteers to bring firewood to replace the coal-burning heaters.

    The Dublin Guards, who had been training all spring and summer, turned out in mass to show off their new mausser Russian guns which they had received after the fall of the Russian Empire.

    In surrounding areas, an effigy of the Germain Kaiser Wilhelm was placed in the saddle of a mule and led the defeated dictator through a gauntlet of roaring,  shameful laughter.  In Louisville,  a bonfire and day-long celebration filled the ancient Georgia capital.  In Eatonton, not one, but two peace parades brought the citizens to joyous laughter and tears.  In the capital of Middle Georgia, residents staged the largest parade ever held in Macon.

    Up in Jeffersonville, city and county officials staged an impromptu parade in the afternoon.  Thousands of men, women, and children gathered at the Government Depot, a mile away from the courthouse, and rode in military vehicles and marched a mile into the city.  One observer said that the celebrants were so numerous that ‘The streets became black with people.” In Milledgeville, the citizens and the students of Georgia Normal & Industrial College gathered on the campus.  Singing and laughter filled the army as the cadets at Georgia Military College staged a cannonade signalling the country’s greatest victory to date. Firecrackers, Roman candles, and blank cannon fire were launched into the cold half-moon night to bring the day-long celebration to its zenith. 

    In January 1919, soldiers and sailors began to return home.  Sgt. Berner Williams decided to stay in England, where he was granted a scholarship to the prestigious Oxford University in gratitude for leaving his collegiate studies to defend England.  

    As peace sat in, many locals remembered some of the outstanding feats of the men and boys of Laurens including Corporal Walter Warren of Dexter, who was the first American aviator to be wounded in France in early December 1917.  Early Miller was the first to be drafted.  Among the first Negroes in Georgia to be drafted into the Army were a contingent of Laurens County men.   Even Dublin's mayor, Peter S. Twitty, enlisted in the U.S. Army.  Both Twitty and his successor, Izzie Bashinski, donated their salaries to the Red Cross and the Y.M.C.A..  Cecil Preston Perry became the first Laurens Countian to die in action in the summer of 1918.  James Mason was the first Dubliner to die in action. He died in France on July 29, 1918.  Sgt. James L. Weddington, Jr., of the 6th Marine Corps Regiment, was awarded the French Croix de Guerre and a Silver Star for his heroism in carrying many wounded men off the battlefield to field hospitals for several hours, risking his own safety in the process.  Lt. Col. Pat Stevens was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre for extraordinary heroism in action south of Spitaal Bosschen, Belgium, on October 31, 1918.  Lt. Ossie F. Keen was awarded the Silver Star.    Sgt. Bill Brown of Dexter was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and was one of only 34 Americans to be awarded the French Cross with a Star for his heroism on October 14, 1918, at the battle of Cote de Chattelon.   Coley B. White survived the sinking of HMS Otranto.   Four hundred thirty-one other American and British soldiers and sailors did not.  Oscar K. Jolly survived a stint as a prisoner in a German P.O.W. camp.