MILLERTON — The tragedy and triumph that was World War I will be on display at the final Dutchess County 2018 Historic Tavern Trail “Year of the Veteran” event at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 21, at the American Legion Post 178 in Millerton.
The tale will be told thru war-time images and discussions of three North East residents: one who survived and two who did not. The last were killed some 10 miles apart on the same day, November 1, 1918, only 10 days before the end of the war.
Millerton Historical Society President Ed Downey will discuss experiences of soldiers as seen through the eyes of the survivor, his uncle, James P. Downey, who wrote the majority of 119 post cards and letters sent to his parents as he fought his way through France in The War to End All Wars.
Downey had been aware of the letters when he was younger and rediscovered them when he was clearing out the family home when his aunt, the youngest of the siblings, moved out.
He will use the information they contained to “describe what most people who were in that situation would have experienced, so people who are in the audience can hopefully come away with a sense of what it was like.”
The war zone letters “were all censored, and a lot of what would be sent by my uncle would be very general and very positive,” perhaps attempting to comfort his mother who was dealing with four sons in the war. His uncle “would talk about his day, which could be very mundane or could be more exciting.”
Downey noted, however, that although the inside addresses of the almost daily letters were just “somewhere in France,” sometimes they were “fairly specific.”
As a result, Downey was able to use that information along with more from a Library of Congress website about his uncle’s battalion, to flesh out details of movements and coordinate those locations with an online map.
He could determine “How far they would move in a day” as they were constantly “marching — hiking — walking — some days from one position to another.” They ended up in “the final battle of the final drive” in the vicinity of the Argonne Forest and Meuse River, where “the enemy was dug in,” in an action that “led to the surrender.”
He speculated that his uncle would have been close to the location where the two others were killed shortly after he wrote an Oct. 30 letter that said, “We just heard that the Austrians have given up, so it’s just a matter of time before we can force the Germans to surrender.”
Downey credits his fellow speaker, American Legion Historian Sean Klay, with a good deal of help thanks to his “ability to mine military information,” which he then shared with Downey. Among other things, Klay used his research to create a detailed data base spread-sheet about Dutchess County World War I veterans, which they hope to display at Friday’s event.
Klay will discuss the two lost soldiers whose lives and actions he has researched extensively.
The first, William McLaughlin Jr., was a Marine who had enlisted about six months before the United States became involved in the war. He was part of “the very early contingent that went to France with the American Expeditionary Force and served in just about every major battle and campaign that the AEF was involved with in WW I.”
The other, Tivoli-born John Smith, came to live with and work for his Millerton uncle in 1915. After war was declared on April 17, 1917, he registered for the draft and was called up in May, 1918.
Klay said, “through a confluence of events, their units ended up being right next to each other on the battlefield.” McLaughlin had gone “over the top many times before, but this was Smith’s first day of going over the top” when both were killed within hours of each other.
Downey said the evening will also feature some artifacts, including his grandmother’s traditional “Mother Flag,” on which she sewed stars in honor of her sons; a video; and an 11-panel traveling exhibition of Poughkeepsie photographer Reuben Van Vlack’s work, which “tells the story of Dutchess County’s citizens from 1917-1919.” The panels are also on display at the NorthEast-Millerton Library where they will remain until the dinner.
The event, “Remembering the Great War: From the Western Front to the Home Front,” is co-sponsored by the North East Historical Society, American Legion Post 178, the Dutchess County Historical Society and Dutchess County Historian Will Tatum. Reservations for the $20 dinner may be made by calling 845-486-2381.
