USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Winchester > History of Winchester, Massachusetts > Part 30
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The excitement of the war years, 1917-1918, and the financial
1 Maurice F. Brown, John Abbott, Robert Coit, Vincent Farnsworth and Fred- eric S. Snyder.
TOWN OF WINCHESTER
STREET
CALVARY
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MASSACHUSETTS 1936
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THE TOWN OF WINCHESTER IN 1936, SHOWING ITS DIVISION INTO ELECTORAL PRECINCTS
FREEI
32I
GRADE CROSSING CONTROVERSY
difficulties of the Boston and Maine Railroad, which now became acute, insomuch that it was impossible for it to consider such an expense as $600,000 for the correction of a single level crossing, postponed for some years any efforts toward abolition. In 1927 the matter was revived, and at this time another "plan" to avoid the crossing was submitted by Herbert J. Kellaway, the engineer who has been mentioned in connection with the improvement of the Whitney mill site. This plan proposed to close the crossing at the center as the Vinal plan had done, but to carry the highways across the tracks north of the center instead of south of it. A new road was to be constructed from the corner of Washington and Mt. Vernon streets through a portion of the Nelson Skillings estate, and behind the town fire house to meet Main Street near the corner of Elmwood Avenue. Two new bridges were required, one over the railway tracks and one over the Aberjona River. It was hoped by citizens who approved the Kellaway plan that it would offer a way out of the tangle on which all parties could agree; but it met the same opposition from those - a majority evidently - who did not want the center permanently divided by the railway tracks, and it would certainly be quite as expensive as any of the other plans suggested. The selectmen indeed estimated that it would cost $1,185,000 as against $1,065,700 for the original Guild or town plan.1 Both the selectmen and the Planning Board were inclined to insist on the town plan as the only one that was at all satisfactory. At the town meeting of March 21, 1929 it was voted to press the matter again, but to leave the manner of doing so to the discretion of the selectmen, Joseph W. Worthen, Vincent P. Clarke, Walter H. Dotten, Harris S. Richardson and Harry W. Stevens. The board accordingly began proceedings all over again before the Superior Court, petitioning for the appointment of another special commission.
Before the court could act the Commonwealth by statute changed the method of dealing with grade crossing abolition, which has now become a matter of state instead of local action. The Department of Public Works is now instructed to report to the Board of Public Utilities a list of crossings which ought to be removed for reasons of public safety and convenience, and that
1 See Special Report of the Selectmen issued February 1929.
322
HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
board is empowered to order abolition according to its own plans and in its own discretion. The Winchester crossing stands high on the list submitted by the Department of Public Works, but the financial condition not only of the railroad but (since 1931) of the Commonwealth has prevented the undertaking of so costly a project. Winchester people have taken a fatalistic attitude toward the whole matter, and begin to doubt whether the improvement, essential as it is, will ever be made. Fortunately there have been no serious accidents at the crossing for a number of years, for it is carefully and efficiently guarded by the gatemen of the railroad; but the obstruction to traffic is worse than ever. Investigation shows that the crossing is closed eight minutes out of every hour during the daytime hours, and during some hours as much as one fifth of the time. There is no remaining improvement which would add so much to the town as the abolition of this crossing.
The part that Winchester bore in the World War was worthy of the town. It was of a kind quite different from that it played in the conduct of the Revolution or even of the Civil War. In the former the duty of raising and equipping men and the chief respon- sibility for their payment had lain squarely on the shoulders of the towns, and in the latter the towns were still obliged to enlist their own quotas and were put to no little expense in doing so. In the World War the Federal Government assumed all those respon- sibilities. It filled the ranks by general conscription, and it equipped and paid the men without any help whatever from local communi- ties. Winchester had of course its own draft board for the regis- tration of all male citizens between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one; Robert B. Metcalf was its chairman, and George H. Carter, for many years the town clerk, was its recording officer; Howard S. Cosgrove, Bernard F. Matthews and Arthur E. San- ford were the other members. The war activities of the citizens were under the general direction of a committee of public safety, appointed by the selectmen on March 20, 1917. Of this committee Lewis Parkhurst was the able chairman and T. Price Wilson was the secretary. The committee otherwise consisted of Howard F. Bidwell, Fred Clark, Maurice Dineen, Samuel J. Elder, James J. Fitzgerald, James Hinds, F. Manley Ives, George B. Kimball,
323
THE WORLD WAR
William A. Kneeland, Jonas A. Laraway, Wilbur S. Locke, Robert B. Metcalf, Frank Nowell, James Nowell, Frank W. Reynolds, Dr. Richard W. Sheehy and Roland H. Sherman. Each member was assigned to a particular duty, such as transportation, food pro- duction and conservation, emergency help and equipment, coördi- nation of aid societies, recruiting, protection of the town, welfare of enlisted men, supply of motor cars and trucks, sanitation, survey of dependents, organization of a home guard, and so on.
The committee was active and efficient. Fortunately no occa- sion arose for any armed protection of the town; but the committee maintained guards at the reservoirs throughout the war, equipped an emergency hospital -which was never used -and superintended the enlistment of a home guard composed of citizens beyond the draft age. Maurice C. Tompkins was elected captain of this com- pany, Flavel Shurtleff its first lieutenant and Dr. J. Churchill Hindes and Charles I. Lampee its second lieutenants. It included about à hundred representative Winchester men from every walk of life, it drilled faithfully and well, and was in July 1917 mustered into the service of the state as a company of the State Guard. In Jan- uary 1918 it became the Machine Gun Company of the Twelfth Infantry Regiment. It was not called upon for any active service; but it encamped with the Fourth Brigade, Massachusetts State Guard at Framingham in July 1918. Since it was purely an emer- gency unit, it was disbanded at the close of the war.
When the government undertook to help finance the war by the sale of bonds direct to its citizens, the Winchester Liberty Loan Committee was organized, with Ralph E. Joslin as chairman, James Nowell vice-chairman, Arthur A. Kidder secretary, and Mrs. Daniel C. Dennett chairman of the Women's Committee. More than one hundred and fifty canvassers offered themselves, and every home in town was visited. The committee reported loan subscriptions of no less than $4,813,350 to the four Liberty Loans; an amount $1,615,100 in excess of the "quota" allotted to Win- chester. The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of the town gave loyal service in this campaign and in the later one for the sale of "Thrift Stamps" throughout the community, and are credited with having secured subscriptions of $211,398 and $107,800 respectively to the Liberty Loans. Another committee for the sale of War Savings
324
HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
Certificates and Thrift Stamps, of which Preston Pond was chair- man, sold $171,207 of these little securities in Winchester. Many were bought by the school children of the town. Mr. Pond was also chairman of a United War Work Committee which raised $50,017.95, more than $5,000 above the quota assigned to the town. The Fuel Committee, Jere A. Downs chairman, was active in con- trolling the price of coal and the conservation of fuel.
Those who lived through the war will well remember the earn- estness with which the production and conservation of food was preached and practised. James Hinds was the chairman of a spe- cial committee in charge of this phase of war work. More than eighty acres of land in Winchester were either offered free of charge to whoever would work upon it, or were cultivated by the owners themselves. Little vegetable gardens or potato patches sprang up all over town, and middle-aged citizens who had never - or not for many years - thought of tilling the soil, bent their backs enthusiastically over their "war gardens." The amount of edible food produced must have been considerable, and probably even more was "saved" for the use of the army by the economies prac- tised in almost all homes at the call of Mr. Hoover's Food Con- servation Administration.
The women of Winchester had their own useful organizations. There were several units organized early in the war for the supply of surgical dressings, and all of them became associated with the Winchester Red Cross branch after its organization in the fall of 1917. Almost four thousand people of Winchester became members of the Red Cross at this time, and some $36,000 was raised for the work of the society. Mr. Fred Joy was the first chairman of the branch, A. Miles Holbrook its treasurer, and Miss Edith J. Swett its secretary. It is difficult to say exactly how many surgical dressings and other useful articles were prepared by the busy fingers of the women. There must have been more than five hundred thousand pieces, however, mostly dressings, but with a great many knitted articles of clothing included. The Mysticbank Unit alone, of which Mrs. Elizabeth W. Marston was chairman, which met in rooms of St. Mary's School, reported some two hundred and forty thousand pieces.
There were also active women's organizations working for the
325
THE WORLD WAR
relief of the Belgian war sufferers, and a branch of the Special Aid for American Preparedness, of which Mrs. W. L. Dunning was chair- man, which was at work as early as March 1916 and which made and distributed a great quantity of knitted garments, hospital bags, sewing outfits and the like. All these organizations were especially useful during the influenza epidemic of 1918, when there was urgent need for all sorts of hospital and convalescent supplies, not only in the army camps but in communities all over the country.
A number of Winchester men served in important adminis- trative capacities beyond the limits of the town. Charles T. Main was consulting engineer to the Construction Division at Washington and a member of the Engineering Committee of the Massachusetts Fuel Administration. Frederic S. Snyder was a member of the Massachusetts Committee of Public Safety and of the Milk Com- mission of New England under the Federal Food Administration. He held almost a dozen important posts in connection with that administration, including those of the chief of the Coordination of Food Purchase and chief of the Meat Division. He was also a member of the Commission for the Relief of Belgium.
Maurice F. Brown gave important service to the work of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, Walter E. Chamberlain was one of the Lumber Committee of the War Industries Board, Richard B. Derby was a project supervisor for housing and transportation under the Emergency Fleet Corporation, Dwight P. Thompson was a supervisor at the Hog Island Ship Construction yards, John A. Lowe was supervisor of Camp Libraries in Massachusetts, Dr. G. N. P. Mead was a member of the Draft Board for Division 30 in Massachusetts, and John A. Tarbell was in the liaison office of the Construction Division of the War Department in Washington. Elbridge K. Jewett, who was at the time a selectman of the town, rendered important service as a member of the State Draft Board.
So much then for the war work that went on at home. Now for the military side of the picture. The list of Winchester men and women who saw service in uniform contains 648 names, 22 of whom were enlisted in Y. M. C. A. or in Red Cross work, as war nurses or "yeowomen." Most of the remaining 626 were enlisted men, though Rev. Murray W. Dewart, Rev. Charles A. Donahue, Rev. Timothy A. Donovan and Rev. N. L. Tibbetts went as chaplains,
326
HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
and Dr. Arthur L. Brown, Dr. Irving T. Cutter, Dr. Daniel C. Dennett, Dr. George S. Foley, Dr. Richard W. Sheehy, Dr. Herbert E. Maynard, Dr. Victor Amoine, Dr. R. J. Carpenter, Dr. E. Russell Murphy and Dr. Stanley B. Weld were in medical or dental service. The greater part of the Winchester contingent was of course to be found in the ranks of the Twenty-Sixth or Yankee Division, New England's special contribution to the fighting forces of the nation. Many of the later enlistments, however, were in the Seventy-Sixth Division, which, when it went to France, became a depot division, furnishing replacements for the battle divisions at the front. Others of course were still in training when the armistice ended the fighting.
In all some two hundred and seventy Winchester men went overseas, either in military or naval service. Eighty-nine names appear on the rolls as attached to the navy, and fourteen were in the Marine Corps. At least thirty were in aviation either as pilots or as ground service men. Fifty-four bore commissions from ensign or second lieutenant to lieutenant colonel. The detailed record of service for every man or woman who gave active war time service as officer, private, aviator, sailor, marine, yeoman or yeowoman, nurse, or Red Cross and Y. M. C. A. worker is to be found in a volume prepared and published by the town in 1925. It is entitled "Winchester's War Records" and contains as well similar informa- tion concerning the Winchester men who served in the Civil and the Spanish wars.
The list of those who gave their lives to their country contains eighteen names as follows:
Andrea Barbieri
Frederick Whidden Grant
Fred Nichols Brown
Joseph Hubbard Hefflon
Bartley Clancy
Frank Dana Kendall
John Corbi
Stuart Gardiner Lane
Mahlon W. Dennett
Augustus M. Leonard
William F. Donahue
Charles H. Lynch
Mario Figlioli
Edward McFeeley
William Michael Glendon
William J. Noonan
John Gironda
Chester Robinson Tutein
Joseph H. Hefflon was the beloved principal of the town gram- mar school, who at the age of fifty insisted on going overseas to
327
THE WORLD WAR
offer faithful and devoted service to the Y. M. C. A. in its work among the soldiers. He contracted pneumonia and died at the hospital at Neuilly January 6, 1919.
Lieutenant Chester Tutein was an air pilot. He, too, died after the armistice in a plane crash at Bar-le-Duc, France.
Captain Fred N. Brown was killed at the head of his company - Company H, Twenty-Third Regiment, Second Division - dur- ing the fighting at St. Etienne-a-Arnes in the Argonne October 6, 1918. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre with a personal citation for bravery signed by Field Marshal Petain.
Not a few Winchester soldiers won similar decorations of honor on the battlefield. Joseph R. Huntley was awarded both the French Croix de Guerre and the Distinguished Service Cross, the highest American distinction, for his heroism at Verdun, where with a single comrade he captured two German machine guns and killed or captured the twelve men who were serving them "while under constant fire."
Lieutenant Wilbert E. Kinsley, who entered the flying service from Cornell University, was also decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross for his exploit of October 7, 1918. "He was attacked simultaneously by eight enemy planes," says the citation, "but manoeuvred his plane so skilfully that his observer Lieutenant W. O. Lord was able to shoot down two of them. Later he was attacked by five enemy scout planes, and in a running fight drove them off and successfully completed his mission."
Ettore Caser was awarded the Italian War Cross for his serv- ices on that front. Divisional or regimental citations for distin- guished conduct were received by Dwight W. Cooke, Dwight L. Fiske, Theodore Main, and Charles J. Quigley (who served for three years with the Expeditionary Force from Canada). Arthur E. H. Chamberlain received a letter of commendation from the Secretary of the United States Navy for his coolness and courage in extinguishing an oil fire on the U.S.S. Paulding.
On the third and fourth of July 1919 Winchester welcomed home its service men and women with a celebration that will long be remembered by those who witnessed it. The arrangements were in the hands of a large committee of which Selectman Arthur A. Kidder was chairman and James J. Fitzgerald secretary. A victory
328
HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
arch was built at the northern end of the Common, which bore the inscription "Winchester Welcomes Her Boys." At night it was effectively illuminated by electric lights. On the evening of the third there was a dinner in the town hall at which the returned service men were present. Lieutenant-Governor Channing Cox delivered the address of the evening.
The following afternoon came the parade - the most elabo- rate affair of the kind the town had ever seen. Business buildings and residences were lavishly decorated, and the procession moved through the principal streets over a route three and half miles long. The heat was intense, but there were no casualties among the marchers. Arthur A. Kidder was chief marshal, and the marshals of the three divisions of the parade were James Hinds, James J. Fitzgerald and C. Herbert Symmes. It would occupy six pages of this volume to present the complete roster of the procession.1 Suffice it to say that it was played on its way by eight bands or fife and drum corps, that the surviving members of the G. A. R., the Sons of Veterans, the Winchester Home Guard and more than four hundred men in the olive-khaki of the World War were in line, and that there were twenty patriotic floats designed and decorated by the school children, the Catholic societies of the town, the Methodist church, the Fortnightly Club, the W. C. T. U., the Winchester Grange, the Italian and the colored citizens of Win- chester, the Red Cross, the Equal Suffrage Club, the Odd Fellows and other organizations. The procession was full of color and beauty, and a tribute to the taste as well as the patriotic enthusi- asm of the town. In the evening a fine show of fireworks closed the celebration.
During the war the town had erected a substantial and dig- nified "Honor Roll" containing the names of all Winchester men or women who were in any kind of service. It still stands today on the lawn directly in front of the town hall. When the war was over, it was immediately proposed to provide a suitable and permanent memorial; that gave occasion for a long and sometimes heated difference of opinion such as the independent freemen of Win- chester have always been wont to indulge in when any matter of moment is presented to them.
1 Printed in the Winchester Star of July 11, 1919.
THE WAR MEMORIAL
329
THE WORLD WAR
The original committee appointed by the town meeting of 1919 reported in favor of a memorial building suitable for athletic or recreational purposes, to be erected on Manchester Field, and a second committee, of which Roland H. Sherman was chairman, presented to the town meeting of 1921 plans for such a building. It was to provide an auditorium, rooms for the American Legion, a field house for athletic purposes and a concrete stand -- incorrectly called a "stadium" by the committee - capable of seating eight thousand persons.
Meanwhile warm opposition to the whole plan had appeared. There were many who wanted a monumental and not a "utili- tarian" memorial, and the athletic building was criticized as want- ing in dignity - as too frivolous in short for a war memorial. When the matter was put to a referendum vote in connection with the annual election of town officers the town, by a vote of 2,056 to 768, reversed itself and decided against the athletic building alto- gether.
A new committee of five was appointed - George C. Willey was its chairman - to consider the matter further. It took two years to do so, and ended by rejecting proposals to erect a public library or a handsome school building as a war memorial and report- ing in favor of a monument - the nature of which it cannily left to the voters of the town. On motion of Mr. Parkhurst the town voted to instruct the committee to prepare a plan for a suitable monument, to cost approximately $50,000.1 The committee recom- mended that Mr. Herbert Adams, a sculptor of taste and distinc- tion, be engaged to prepare a design for a statuary memorial. There was still some reluctance on the part of many voters to commit the town to the expense required, but when Mr. Park- hurst moved that the money be raised by voluntary subscription all opposition vanished, and the town voted to approve such a memorial to be erected at the corner of the spacious high school lot where Main Street and the Mystic Valley Parkway meet.
In due time Mr. Adams presented his design, a piece of bronze upon a pedestal of polished granite, suitably inscribed. The mon- ument shows two gracefully draped female figures, representing Humanity and Justice, carrying in their hands a wreath of laurel
1 Winchester Star, March 23, 1923; Town Clerk's Report for the year 1923.
330
HISTORY OF WINCHESTER
and a sheathed sword, while behind them a battle standard floats. The group possesses dignity and grace; it was praised by many, and criticized by some who desired a conception more striking and unusual.
The memorial, be it remembered, was to be paid for by volun- tary subscription. It was an unfortunate moment to undertake the raising of money, for the citizens of the town had just passed through a "drive" in which they had subscribed $240,000 for the Winchester Hospital. The results of the campaign which began in November 1924 were disappointing. Only $8,500 were raised, including the sums subscribed by the school children of the town. The project might have failed entirely had it not been for the gen- erosity of Mr. Parkhurst. He had taken a deep and personal inter- est in the erection of a worthy war memorial in Winchester, and rather than see the thing miscarry he agreed to give whatever money was necessary over and above the subscriptions of other citizens.
That assured the completion of Mr. Adams's design. The group was cast, the pedestal provided, and on October 3, 1926 it was dedicated with impressive ceremonies. No less than thirteen American Legion posts marched in the parade, and massed their colors about the base of the monument. Mrs. George A. Neiley, who had had five sons in service during the war, was chosen to unveil the statuary, while the guns of a firing squad rang out a salute. Lieutenant-Governor Frank G. Allen delivered a brief address, and Robert F. Whitney, chairman of the selectmen, accepted the memorial on behalf of the town. Mr. John J. Murphy, State Commissioner for Soldiers' Relief, was the orator of the day. Mr. Adams, the sculptor, was present, but modestly declined to speak.1
The memorial acquired with so much difficulty, and in the face of so many discouragements, is now generally admired. Its effect is greatly heightened by the artistic planting of evergreen trees and shrubs behind it, which form a beautiful background for the ruddy masses of the bronze.
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