Cecil Barker was born July 31, 1899 to John and Josie Barker in Iuka, Kansas.  He seems to have had relatives in this area.  He attended the normal training to become a teacher in 1913.  Julia Britton who will be mentioned in my next blog was in his class.  In 1914, he was a teacher in District 4, sometimes called the Benish School, which was located close to Offerle in Hodgeman County.

The following letter was published in the March 21, 1918 issue of the Kinsley Graphic.  It was written to Lena Burkhart who was about 17 years old at this time.  Cecil does not mind showing a little homesickness in it for his friends and family back in Kansas.

The “chow” mentioned in the letter seems to be a new term for food or a meal as it is put in quotations.  It is Chinese pidgin English from the Chinese word  “chow-chow” meaning food.  It came into use when the Chinese were brought to the west to build the railroad.  Many of them settled in California.  The term was foreign to Kansas boys and will be seen again in quotations in other letters from the sailors and soldiers who spend time in California.

“Dear Friend and Pupil,

I was so surprised and so glad to get a letter from some friend in Kansas that I am going to answer your letter right away.  Lena, you don’t know what it meant to me to get a letter from one of my school pupils of long ago. And especially when I’m in the navy.  It shows that I am not entirely forgotten by those I am interested in.  It makes me feel good.  

I’m going to tell you all about what the sailor boys are doing here.  This is the old world’s exposition grounds in San Diego and has been turned into a training camp.

The sleeping rooms are very large.  Each one holding 1,500 men. We tie our hammocks to rafters and sleep that way.  Have had some good falls but so far have always been on top.  Couldn’t go to one of those barn dances back there and then come home and try to sleep in a hammock.  It would be a pretty rocky boat.  Ha, ha!  Every street is paved.  There are flower gardens, lawns, nice trees and bushes everywhere around us.  We have a big lily pond that has been turned into a swimming tank. 

Say, you should sure like to see the boys eat ‘chow’ meals; lots of people drive up every day.  We eat in the open, right in one of the streets on long table about two feet wide and sit on benches. Sailors wait table and all we have to do is to stick out our plates.  They feed us fine, butter every day, every now and then pie, cake, salads, cocoa.  Had a fine turkey dinner with shrimp salad, mashed spuds, gravy, celery, cake coffee walnuts and oranges for Washington’s birthday. 

I have been in the navy since April. Was in San Francisco bay a month.  Was then sent down here to a dental office and have been here since.  Like this place fine.  We have good weather all the time but even at that I wish I was back there walking across Mr. Domme’s and Lobel’s field in snow up to my knees, and carrying some books to my little school.  Sometime, Lena, I am coming back to good old Kansas and see you all once again.  Will everybody remember me, I wonder.  Have thought a great many times of all my good little pupils and friends.  I like them all.  Do you remember all the pictures we used to take.  I have a little book of them, and I look at them once in a while.  Write me a long letter soon, and tell what all our classmates are doing now.  Would like to get letters from them and I certainly will answer. 

Cecil Barker, Dental Officer”

At the end of February, 1918, the local newspapers announced that William Jennings Bryan would be speaking at the Harwood (Palace) Theater in Kinsley on March 21.  If his name sounds familiar, it may be because he ran on the Democratic ticket for the presidency three times, losing twice to William McKinley in 1896 and 1900 and once to William Howard Taft in 1908.As hard as it is to lose, these candidacies did give Bryan 100% name recognition, and along with his talent as a powerful orator, he would become the most popular speaker on the Chautauqua circuit for 25 years.  He was paid for delivering thousands of speeches in hundreds of towns and cities across the country.

Bryan campaigned for Woodrow Wilson in the election of 1912.  Wilson rewarded him by appointing him Secretary of State.  For the next two years he negotiated 28 treaties trying to arbitrate disputes before WWI broke out.  He made several unsuccessful attempts to negotiate a treaty with Germany.

After the Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine on May 7, 1915, Wilson made strong demands on Germany that Bryan disagreed with because he hoped that the U.S. would avoid entering WWI.  This disagreement led Bryan to resign from office on June 9, 1915.  Despite their differences, Bryan campaigned as a private citizen for Wilson’s reelection in 1916.  He spoke at the Chautauqua in Kinsley on August 31, 1916.

When war was declared in April 1917, Bryan wrote Wilson, “Believing it to be the duty of the citizen to bear his part of the burden of war and his share of the peril, I hereby tender my services to the Government.  Please enroll me as a private whenever I am needed and assign me to any work that I can do.”  Wilson, however, did not allow the 57-year-old Bryan to rejoin the military, and did not offer him any wartime role.

The Kinsley Graphic reported on March 28, 1918 that very few people attended Bryan’s speech advertised above.

“The Bryan meeting last Thursday might be considered a frost, in the light of the past, when Bryan’s name has caused crowds to gather to hear him.  The Palace Theatre was only about half filled.  The people still resent the fact that he resigned from the cabinet and later exerted his powerful influence to keep this country from entering the war.  As a matter of fact, it is hardly right to view Mr. Bryan’s course with present-day criticism.  He was frankly against the war until it was accepted by this nation. Then he immediately offered his services to the president in any capacity where the president thought he could be of the greatest service.  Mr. Wilson told him that he could best serve his country by lecturing and making talks in support of the government’s position in this war, and that is what he is doing.”

William Jennings Bryan remained an active orator and advocated for the enactment of Prohibition.  He most famously opposed Darwinism on religious and humanitarian grounds at the Scopes “Monkey” Trial in 1925 in Tennessee.  As the prosecutor he argued for fundamental Christianity beliefs against the famed defense attorney, Clarence Darrow, who argued for modern science, evolution and Darwinism.  Bryan died 5 days after he won the Scopes trial.

If you are able to attend a movie or visit the historic Palace Theater in Kinsley, take a minute to imagine what it would have been like to sit in the audience and listen to this famous orator’s powerful voice one hundred years ago.

CLICK HERE to listen and read Bryan’s most famous “Cross of Gold” speech delivered at the National Democratic Convention in 1896 in Chicago.

On January 16, 1917 the Kinsley Mercury ran an article which began:

“To Launch Plans to Save Daylight

National Convention in New York This Month—Railroads Are Ready to Fall in Line with the Plan to Set Clocks Up May 1.

A movement is on foot to turn the clock forward one hour in every community in the United states next summer, and so obtain one more hour of daylight for everyone….”

It didn’t happen that summer, but in 1918 Daylight Saving Time was adopted by the Federal Fuel Administration.  In their effort to conserve energy during the war, the United States would follow Germany and Europe’s lead and established Daylight Saving Time (DST).  It was not a new idea in America.  In fact,

Ben Franklin first wrote about it during the country’s early days as a way to save money on candle wax.  However it was the passage of the Standard Time Act of 1918 which established both standard time zones and set summer DST to begin on March 19, 1918.

Though the rationale was to save fuel, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce backed the plan because when people get off work and it is still light, they are apt to go shopping in the evening.  Sports and recreational activities also profited.  Baseball fields were not artificially lit, and this allowed for more time in the evening to play games.  Golf also had a boost as people could hit the links after work in the daylight.

But many others did not like the idea.  Some warned it was “taking us off God’s time”.  Movie theaters were affected in that people did not want to go into a dark theater when it was still light outside.  But the farmers protested the most as they had less time in the morning to get their milk and harvested crop s to market.

Those against Daylight Saving Time won the argument when Congress did away with it by overriding President Woodrow Wilson’s veto that October, even before the Versailles Treaty was signed. DST became a local option and was observed in some states until World War II, when President Franklin Roosevelt instituted year-round DST, called “War Time,” on February 9, 1942 for everyone. That lasted until the last Sunday in September 1945.  The next year, many states and localities adopted summer DST.  But time remained confusing with different cities and states choosing and not choosing to adopt it.  President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the first peacetime Daylight Saving Time law which forced states to opt in or opt out.  In 1973, again worried about fuel during the oil embargo, President Richard M. Nixon called for year-round Daylight Saving Time.  It was unsuccessful partly because of the danger of children going to school in the dark. Today with the exception of Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Island, the states observe eight months of Daylight Saving Time.

The next letter from Private B. K Lesley is a month later with him still in France.  It is dated December 16, 1917 and was published February 7, 1918 in the Kinsley Mercury.  He has received a letter from his brother James asking him to describe France.  His vivid description is still difficult to read today.

“You ask me to give you a description of the country.  Would that I could comply.  Since that September dawn when the gentle fingers of the morning breeze drew the clinging curtain of mist and revealed to our eager gaze the gold crowned hills of sunny France,  I have seen sights which not only baffle description but hold the imagination enthralled to such an extent that the mind almost refuses to dwell upon common things.

According to ones spirits one is impressed.  The winding lanes, the verdantly green slopes.  The trim copse, the villages with their multi-colored houses and the red tile roofs at one time impress one, at  another it is only the filth and squalor one notices; but at no time can one get away from the awful realization that the country is bleeding, bleeding from the millions of wounds, and that a terrible combat is close at hand.

To the south it is true the roar of the guns is lost in the distance, but the once peaceful villages are peaceable no more; always there are moving troops, moving transports and moving wounded, moving north and south.  But the country retains its natural beauty, its hills and valleys, its brooks and streams, its woods and meadows playfully catch and reflect the passage of fleecy clouds across the azure sky as though war was the childish pastime of mortals but of no interest to them.  A few kilometers north and we see the same moving troops, transports and wounded moving north and south and the sound of the guns become audible, faint at first but with gradual increasing force and destruction until, when quite close, it sounds as though some angry God was striking with all his might upon the major chord of some titanic instrument and the ruins caused by looming on in Tritgies (German for Strategies) early onward rush become more numerous.  A few kilometers more and, thank god, you can’t see it.  It is desolation grim and terrible, even nature has not been able to stand against it.  For miles and miles, as far as the eye can reach there is nothing green, nothing living; trees, grass vegetation; all are gone.  There is only mud and interlacing shell holes.  The villages and farms which were, are only crumbled heaps of ruins, grim trophies of this awful game and always the disappearing army is moving, moving grandly, majestically, tragically to its predestined end.  Moving north into the vortex of war’s awful caldron and the wounded are moving south.

Your Affectionate Brother, Ben
                                Australian troops om the Ypres area, October 29, 1917

I think that Private Lesley went across the channel to France sometime in September, 1917 because he wrote the following in a letter that will be the topic of my next post:  “Since that September dawn when the gentle fingers of the morning breeze drew the clinging curtain of mist and revealed to our eager gaze the gold crowned hills of sunny France”. But before that letter, there was this one, dated “France, November 12, 1917” (Kinsley Mercury on December 6, 1917).  The 47^th Battalion was participating in the Third Battle of Ypres in West Flanders from July to November.  It is also known as the Battle of the Mud.  The campaign ended in November, when the Canadian Corps captured Passchendaele.  This offensive remains quite controversial because of the 700,000 casualties to both German and Allied troops which resulted in a gain of just five miles of Allied land.

Dear brother and folks at home:

I will drop you a few lines to let you know that I am all right and getting along fine.  I have been in the hospital for about nine days with a mild case of blood poison in my heel, but am about well now.  Am in a convalescent home now but will be going up the line again in a few weeks.  The hospital is the best place out here.  Up the line at the front the mud is something fierce and our friend Heinie was also some fierce, too.  It is sometimes warm but not so bad as you might think by reading some of the newspapers. 

The shells are like the snags in the Mississippi river; they don’t hurt you so long as they don’t hit you. We are blessed with lots of rain here.  Today is the first fine day I have seen for a dog’s age.

I was in the toughest spot I have been in so far from the 20^th to the 30 of last month, but don’t suppose there will be much more hard fighting this winter.  I see there is an American section on the line now, but don’t know where it is as I have not seen many of the troops and they don’t seem to know much about it but might run across some of them later on.

Well how are you getting along anyway?  Gertie and Fern tell me that there was a failure out there this year from drought.  It is a pity you could not have had some of this rain.”  Ben

According to his army records record, Ben’s heel was treated by a field ambulance on November 1 and then was treated in the hospital in Rouen, France.  He convalesced in Buchy, France until he was discharged back to the base on November 29.

47th Battalion Patch

Private Bennett Lesley arrived in England on the HMS Olympia.  The June 16, 1917 letter published in the Hutchinson News goes on to describe his impressions of England and how different the country was from the wide spaces of Kansas and British Columbia.

“England is a great country.  It looks like a big park.  Everything here is just as green as can be, that is everything but the inhabitants and they would skin a flea for his skin and tallow.”  (Note: This is an old expression meaning stingy).

There is quite a food shortage here now.  You can’t get any white bread in the country.  It is all whole wheat flour that is used and that is not over plentiful, but it is all right at that.

I am in a military camp in the south of England right close to the seashore.  They have the most comical railroad trains in the country that you ever saw.  The cars are small and divided up into compartments that hold about eight to twelve persons each, depending on the size of the person.  They are fitted up about as comfortable as a “box” car.  The doors are on the side and the windows are small and cannot be opened.  Why an alleged civilized people will ride in such trains is more that I can see.  They don’t even carry a water tank in the passenger cars but they certainly run like a scared rabbit.  We made about fifty miles per hour from where we disembarked to here.  There is no use telling where we landed as the censor would blot the name out.  That is to keep any information concerning the movements of the troops reaching the Germans.

(Note:  The military records show they disembarked at Liverpool.  William Arthur Smy wrote about a transport a year earlier and recorded that the battalion “travelled by rail to the West Sandling Training Area in Kent, England, which it reached the next day. This training area stretched along the English Channel on a plateau overlooking the sea.”  Soldiers trained in trench construction there could make the short hop over the channel and be fighting in France the next day.  For pictures and more information about the Sandling camps visit this very interesting website https://www.saltwoodkent.co.uk/discovery-of-ww1-practice-trenches  .)

Private Lesley continues: 

“England is a pretty country and is laid out just like a big park.  You would laugh at the farms.  The land is divided up into small plots of all sizes and shapes with hedge fences dividing each field and none of the fields are square with the world.  They are all three, five or six cornered and the hedge fences take up more land that the fields so that out of a forty-acre field there are about thirty acres of useless hedge fences and ten acres of tillage land.  No wonder there is a food shortage here.  I was just watching a man plow.  He used one horse and a little dinky plow about four inches wide. He might cultivate an acre a week.  His plow was about the size that Doukhobor rancher (Spiritual Christian religious group from Russia) in Saskatchewan would harness his wife up to.

There are all kinds of airplanes here.  You can see them flying around all the time and they sure can travel  I am going to London next week for a few days and will let you know what the town looks like the next time I write.  I am going to France in five months or more.

To be continued….