11/04/2018
On the left, Meigs County Doughboys coming home from France after the Armistice on November 11, 1918 ended the "War to end all Wars". This photo was taken on the steps of the Courthouse in Pomeroy, Ohio. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, Germany surrendered, and our boys were able to come home.
A hundred years later, om November 11, 2018, we should all pay our respects to those gallant men who went “Over There" to do "their bit" to stop the Kaiser’s attempt to destroy freedom and conquer the world. You can't go up to one of these boys now and say, "Thanks for your service, how was things over there?" They are all gone. Not one American Doughboy is alive today. But we can still honor them by remembering what they went through and what they did to guarantee that you and I could live in freedom, for if they and the allies had been defeated, German would be our national language today.
The book on the right contains a journal kept by an American Doughboy, Private William J. Graham. This is the most detailed, firsthand account of what an American soldier went through ever found and published. Its contents will give the reader a real understanding of what it was like to be a Doughboy. Although against general orders to keep such a journal, Private Graham, a former Philadelphia Mounted Policeman, was in a position to be able to keep this journal and record daily, the events he witnessed as well as the stories of other soldiers he came across. After the war, the journal disappeared for over 80 years. Some parts were kept by his family, but the main part was tucked away in a box at the home of a newspaper reporter and author who apparently got it from Private Graham and it laid there until 2001 when it was found, put on an internet auction and purchased by Bruce Jarvis, a WW1 historian and collector. This book not only contains the remarkable journal of Private Graham but also has nearly 400 photographs from the Jarvis photo collection to give the reader a visual account of the events Private Graham writes about. This book, a true American treasure, is available at
https://www.amazon.com/Over-There-Private-Graham-Compelling/dp/0998804525/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1541350103&sr=8-1
