Uphill Both Ways

Soldier Boy & the Living Uncle Sam

Roy Perkins was inducted into the armed service on August 21, 1918. He received his boot training at Camp Fremont in California, then was sent to New York where they remained in camp about one month before they shipped out for active duty and headed for France.

They were on the ocean only a day or two when, on November 11, a wireless message reached their ship informing them that an armistice had been signed - the Great War was over!

As it says in Roy's life story, "they turned back, a shipload of disappointed kids."

They landed at Camp Lee, Virginia, where they remained until spring. While at Camp Lee, Roy was one of the soldiers who gathered for a photo called The Living Uncle Sam.

There are 19,000 soldiers forming this image of Uncle Sam - Roy is standing in the white collar. His original picture hung in their home throughout his life - he and Lillian were very proud of it, and it has always been one of our family treasures.

I got curious about this photo - wouldn't something like this be well-known?

So I did what any researcher with my skill and training (none) would do...I Googled it!

And this is what I found...

Arthur Mole was an English born photographer and commercial artist who became famous for his series of "living photographs" made during World War I.  For these photographs, Mole and his partner, John Thomas, used tens of thousands of soldiers, reservists, and nurses - and arranged them in various patriotic symbols.

From the ground, the soldiers' formations looked meaningless. But from the 80 foot high viewing tower where Mole stood, you could see his intricately arranged artistic shapes and portraits.

The blog Dark Roasted Blend has a great article called "People as Pixels in Monumental Art" that tells about these photographs

In that article, Avi Abrams tells how Mole would stand on his viewing tower and shout into a megaphone or use a long pole with a white flag to arrange the tens of thousands of soldiers into position. He had to figure out the exact number of soldiers needed for each pattern, and every project took many weeks of meticulous preparation.

Mole and Thomas visited many military camps throughout the country, creating these wonderful works of art.  They donated all their income from this project to the families of the returning soldiers and to the government's efforts to rebuild their lives.

The most well-known of Mole's photographs was the Living Portrait of Woodrow Wilson. For this photo, he used 21,000 troops at Camp Sherman in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1918.

Do you have an ancestor who was part of this project? Maybe one of these photos is among your family treasures!

 

You can read more about this project here.

And you can see more images at the

Library of Congress gallery, not copyrighted.

Courtesy of Dark Roasted Blend, Chicago Historical Society, and Library of Congress.

Two Wrongs Never Made One Right

Roy and Lillian Perkins were Idaho farmers. Their children have wonderful memories of growing up on the farm.

They said: "Dad was a skilled farmer. His crops were always good. The sugar beets from our farm were always high in tonnage and the hay was top quality and had good production."

"Our parents taught us many of the things that are important to us by their example. They weren't satisfied with doing something halfway, it was always the best that they could do."

Walene remembered "how straight Dad made his beet rows, always using the horses to pull the planter. He was so patient with his children as well as with his animals."

In 1946, there was a group of German prisoners encamped in tents at the Franklin County Sugar Factory at Whitney, Idaho, near Preston. They were used by the Sugar company for hand labor in the sugar beet fields.

One day, Roy had a group of the prisoners come and help him on the farm. In Lillian's life story, she tells what happened:

One day Roy brought six of them over to hoe beets for us and I was quite unhappy with the kind of lunch which the sugar company had provided for their noon time meal. They came onto the lawn in the shade of the trees to eat and when I saw that each of them had only two thin slices of bakery bread without butter and one thin slice of minced ham plus a canteen of water after working for hours in the field, I really felt sorry for them.

Maybe our American boys who were prisoners of the Germans were treated much worse, but two wrongs never made one right.

Anyway, we made a lot of sandwiches of home made bread, opened a two quart jar of peaches and took out to them along with a large pitcher of cold milk.

Later that afternoon, before Roy had to return them to the prison camp, we prepared a fried chicken supper for them and invited them in to eat. One was only a boy, 15 or 16 and when they sat down to eat he began to cry. I asked the one who could speak a little English and acted as interpreter for the group, what was the matter with the boy and he said, "He's homesick and this meal reminds him of home."

Then he said, "Lady, we didn't want this war any more than you did but were forced into it the same as your boys were. It was only our leaders who wanted war, but when your boys return home they will be so much better off than we will because they will have homes and loved ones to return to, while we may have nothing. We don't know if our loved ones are living or dead, whether our homes are still standing or destroyed by bombs and fire. We don't even have a country anymore."

They thanked us over and over for the meal and I was very glad we had treated them kindly and have often wished I had asked them to write to us after they were returned to Germany.

I love this story about Grandma and Grandpa. The story behind the story tells so much about them - it's a window into their character. I can tell that they dealt with people kindly and fairly, even the "enemy." And doing the right thing always came first.

I sure hope I would do the same....I guess it gives me a good question to ask when I'm faced with a moral dilemma. "What would Grandma and Grandpa do?" Hopefully, I will have the courage to do the right things, just like they did.

What characteristics do you love about your ancestors? Do you ever find yourself doing the right thing because that's what they would have done?

Comments Imported from Blogger:

6 comments:

Becky Jamison said...

JoLyn, this story brought me to tears! Thank you for sharing it. My grandparents were Germans in this country and worked in the sugar beet fields here in Colorado--not from war camps, but much of hte conditions were the same. Their whole family of 6 lived in a hay loft of a family's barn (4 kids under 8). I've always said too that "you can't go wrong by doing right". Wonderful story, JoLyn.

Debbie said...

JoLyn, that was a great story! It shows such great insight into how most people feel about war. I, too, heard the saying, "Two wrongs don't make a right," all my life from my mother and grandmother.

LVP said...

JoLyn, I was there and followed Dad around that day. It's a long time ago - I was 14 at the time. I well remember those men, especially the young man not much older than me. Dad and I were with them much of the day. There were no guards or such; they were just left in the farmers care, and I don't remember any words of caution or such from either Dad or Mother.

They seemed to be good men. They treated each other kindly, responded with respect to Dad when he instructed them in what they were to do, and were very respectful to Mother.

They ate with us at our dining room table. Mother loved to cook meals for large groups and the food was delicious - a full course fried chicken dinner. I killed and prepared the chickens for her. That was my job for Sunday dinner each week, as well. And I believe Walene, my sister 4 years older than me, was there helping and serving and such.

It was an experience we all remembered and talked about often. We were all very pleased and thankful for our parents that day, and we loved to relate the story to anyone who would listen.

I too have often wished that we had maintained contact somehow after they went home.

Thanks very much for this blog post. You've left me with a flood of pleasant memories.

Dawn said...

I loved reading this. Such good people. I remember her telling this story and she seemed to feel so good about what they did that day.

Greta Koehl said...

How wonderful to have such fine grandparents for role models. And how lucky they were to have children and grandchildren who will never forget them and their good deeds. Great post!

Jenny said...

Thanks for sharing this JoLyn, a wonderful story and a good reminder of how to treat people no matter where they are or where they come from.

Tipper said...

JoLyn-loved this post! The part about the young boy crying-made me tear up. To know he was so grateful for the food that reminded him of home is just so precious and touching. Your grandparents sound like 2 amazing people. I have used the "what would Papaw do?" thought process in my own life-and it always makes me do the right thing no matter how hard or awkward it seemd.

Grandma's Big Black Book

Grandma was a story teller.

She told stories in songs, she told stories in poetry. But most of all she told her family stories - about the people and places and things that make us all who we are.

Many years ago, she decided she needed to put these family stories down on paper. Grandpa spent many hours driving her around their Idaho valley, interviewing family - and people who knew family who had passed on - so that she could learn their stories. She learned everything she could about anything that had to do with their family heritage. She had a wonderful memory and was an excellent historian and record keeper.

On the long cold winter nights, she sat at a little card table with pen and paper - and a Q-tip dipped in hydrogen peroxide to erase any mistakes. She wrote out the stories by hand, and sometimes if the pages weren't perfect, she threw them away and started all over. Eventually she filled a big black Book of Remembrance that was a few inches thick.




On the title page she wrote: “My family, My record books and histories are my ‘Footprints in the Sands of Time’. Lillian V. Perkins”. That book is now in the possession of her son, Larry, my dad.

Grandma would be amazed by computers. She would be thrilled that - with the touch of a button - we can type a history, erase a mistake, and even share our stories with the world.

This blog is meant to carry on where she left off . . . to continue telling our family stories.