The Henry County weekly. (McDonough, GA.) 18??-1934, January 10, 1919, Image 1
The Henry County Weekly A Weekly Newspaper Devoted to the Interests of ;h and Henry County. VOL. XLV. Chamber of Commerce Has Big Interesting Day The meeting of the Henry Coun ty Chamber of Commerce at the court house Tuesday attracted a splendid attendance, and the day was full of interest from begin ning to end. A pleasant feature was the fine music of the 45th Infantry Band, which was much enjoyed before and throughout the proceedings. The speeches were excellent, en tertaining as well as instructing the large and attentive audience. Some new members were added and upon the adjustment of finan matters the following officers elected for the current year: E. L. Reagan, Chairman. S. C. McWilliams, Vice Chra’n. A. A. Lemon, Secretary. Homer J. Turner, Treas. W. M. Harris, A. G. Combs, A. C. Norman,'Members of the Gov erning Board. Regular meetings were appoint ed for every first Tuesday. Ladies of the Woman’s Club served a good dinner and realized a neat sum. Mr. J. W. Middlebrooks Dies at Locust Grove. By the passing away of Mr. J.W. Middlebrooks at 9:30 o’clock, at his home in Locust Grove last Fri day morning, that little city has lost another one of her best and most useful citizens. The death of Mr. Middlebrooks was unexpected, and quite a shock to his many friends in Henry county. For a number of years he had asthmatic trouble, and an attack of this'combined with cold and pleurisy, after an illness of about a week, resulted in his end ing. Mr. Middlebrooks had long been a citizen of Locust Grove, where he moved from Monroe county. He served many years as Notary Public for this district, and pos sibly a more popular official could not be found. Always genial, clever and accomodating, he had scores of friends by whom he will be greatly missed. Much sympa thy is extended his bereaved fam ily. First National Bank of Mc- Donough Appointed Treasurer of Henry County. On January Ist the First Na tional Bank of McDonough was appointed Treasurer of Henry ry county for the year nineteen hundred and nineteen, as provid ed in an Act of the General As sembly of Georgia, on August 19, 1916. This appointment is quite a compliment to this splendid in stitution, which stands as a bul wark in financial circles of Geor gia. Henry county is fortunate in having this strong institution to act as as its treasurer GOOD FARM For Sale. 50.6 acres of good land, 185 bu. corn, 2000 buidl°s fodder, 2 good mules 9 & 10 years old, weighing over 1000 pounds each, 1 new 1% horse waggon (White Hickory, wood skein. 1 Implements and all go with the place for quick sale. S3OOO cash. John J. Varner, at postoffice. MCDONOUGH, GEORGIA, FRIDAY. JANI AfU U, I >l9 Letter to Dad. Tours, France Nov. 24, 1918. Dear Dad: You have doubtless seen from the papers that this is the day when we are to write the Dad’s Vic tory Letter, and that Postmast !er Burleson has promised that they shall be delivered by Christ mas Eve. This letter, as has been explained, is to be a sort of love letter from the soldiers of the American E. F. to their fathers. However, since I'm not accustom 'ed to writing love letters, and see ing that the censorship lid is off for this particular letter, I will be able to tell you lots of little inci dents that have been under the ban so far. In the first place I may tell you the route we took in coming across, just about a year ago. We caught the good ship “Cedric,” a great big White Star Line English steamer. It wasn’t much more than half filled to capacity, so we had it pretty nice in that respect. We w r ent on board ship early in the morning and pulled out of New York harbor after the lights had gone on that exiling. - Right out by the Goddess we went with our sister ship, the “Celtic,” also a troop convoy, and when we woke up next morning no land was to be seen anywhere—there was nothing to be seen but the “Celtic” that was with us all the way across. That day all of us were assigned to a life boat and told exactly what to do in case we were torpe doed, and we were given drastic instructions about keeping our life belts with us no matter where we went. We carried them to the dining hall, on the deck with us, and slept with them under our heads at night. To get us per fectly acquainted with what was to be done in case of a submarine, we had boat drills daily and some times oftener than that. 1 re-- member our having one at night. Woe be to the man that didn’t snap into the boat drill formations promptly. He got the panning J out of his young life. Some of the rules were drastic, such as I smoking on deck after dark, which wasn’t allowed under any condi tion. None of the ships in the convoy of freighters and one j transformed merchantman carry-, ing guns carried any lights what-! ever at night except the leader, which carried one and guided the j other vessels by flashing signals with the lamp from its masthead. But I’m getting ahead of my story. Naturally we all thought we were headed for France and we were no little surprised to see land the next day hove into view, but it did and we soon learned that we were entering the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia. So you see I’ve been to ’Halifax” all right. By the way, Halifax has the pret tiest land locked harbor that I have ever seen. We lay there for two days and nights waiting for the rest of the vessels that were to come across in our convoy, and about 1:00 p. m. on Sunday, we sailed out of Halifax harbor bound for unknown destination, eight ships in all. One armed convoy ship, three troop ships and the rest of us freighters. We were seventeen days on the water from the time we sailed out of New York harbor until • foot on solid ground again at Liv erpool, England, and during that time there wasn’t much \< •- ment. Our course was a ending zig-zag. You know subs were pretty thick those d « so no vessel sailed straight ah 1 for over fifteen minutes at a h ; \ It was a pretty sight to see all the convoys change direction at the signal of the leader, for we all stuck pretty closely together. We had cold weather, snow, ruin and heavy seas for part of the voyage, with waves breaking over the vessel’s sides, but I rather liked it. And then we had some very good, nice warm weather. We were constantly on the look out for the “devil-boats” of the Germans —lookouts posted day and night. And daily we expect ed to meet our convoys of armed vessels, for we knew that we were getting well into what was called the “danger zone,” but the convoy sent out to meet us, missed us, and we sighted the coast of Ire land before we ever met a convoy, which consisted pf some very diminutive (six I think) destroy ers. These little boats aren’t much larger than good sized mosqui toes, but they are the fastest things you ever saw, and go through the water like a streak with a gun mounted on the front. I never will forget a rumor that was nicked up one night by wire less that the German fleet had broken through and was on the high neas. Thai was aboiit the time of the sea battle in the Catte gat, so that is doubtless where the rumor got started. During the next few days we hardly knew whether we were going to get sunk by the German fleet or taken prisoner. Our convoy took the extreme northern route, which carried us around the north end of Ireland. One foggy morning, when you couldn’t see three feet from your nose, we were cruising along pretty slowly and were just about where the Empress of Ireland had been sunk by a torpedo, when fir ing broke out over on our right. Everybody was keyed up to the highest pitch of excitement, but everybody knew just what to do, so there wasn’t any confusion. Then our ship went ahead full steam and a few hours later we were in Belfast harbor with our other troop ships along with us. Our armed convoy wasn’t to be seen nor the freighters. We had run into a nest of subs, and had cut and run for it. The subs got one of our freighters and crippled another. We lav in Belfast har bor two days and a night, and late one afternoon pulled out for our final destination. We were much more heavily convoyed than pre viously, for the last lap of our race with the submarines was the most dangerous. I think every body was nervous that night, for there was a heavy sea and for the first time we were going at full speed. Nothing happened, how ever, and about midnight that night we made Liverpool. We had all stayed up until Liv erpool was sighted running close in along the English coast so close in places that we could hear the roar of the surf, and we were al ways being signalled by rockets from the coast. The Irish sea is one of the prettiest bodies of wat er that I have ever seen. We s-.-. iho Isle of Man, in fact we skirted it so close that it seemed almost us it you could have talked t 1 c e ople on the shore. On the morning that the subs run us in : t Belt’ ist we also had skirted Hi Sc Kish coast, one of the wild est looking I ever hope to see. The morning following our ar rival in Liverpool we disembarked a d were hurried on to one of those queer little English trains for our tide across the country of Good Queen Bess—and now we beg in to realize that there really was a war on. We saw women trucking stuff in the stations and working on the tracks all along, and we began to see wounded Tommies and Canucks and a few Aussies. About ten o’clock that night we arrived at Winchester, in the land of King Arthur, and after a long, weary march under heavy pack, arrived at Morn Hill, the English Rest Camp, where we spent a week. It wasn’t bad there, but we were on English rations, which is, I think, 8 cents a day, so you may judge that we didn’t have much to eat, which didn’t go very well with our American appetites whetted especially sharp by sev enteen days at sea. Then one day we got orders to go. While we were waiting at the station there a huge Red Cross train rushed through absolutely loaded to the gills with wounded, and then we began to get glad that we had come over, tor we began to see just how badly we were needed in this Big War over here. Up until then I’m afraid that I had been a very lukewarm soldier, but after that we didn’t much care, for we felt that we had our woi’k to do over here. Well, we took train to South Hampton, and spent the rest of the day there, and late that night caught a packet for Le Havre. This boat was loaded, oh, how it was loaded down; solemn Tom mies, Scots in kilts, lively Canucks like our own fellows, and Aussies with their hats turned up very de bonairly on the side. That night I almost froze. I tried to sleep rolled up in my overcoat under a table in a kind of a mess hall there, but there wasn’t much room, and it was too cold to get much sleep. This was a cattle boat and below we would hear the stamping of the horses. The Channel was rough, but nothing happened and we were at Le Havre when the sun rose, and got out: first view of la belle France. We stayed on board ship all day with nothing to eat except cold corn willie and hard tack, waiting for the tide to come in so we could make shore. (Continued next week.) Lee’s Birthday. Program. Prayer —Rev. Gilmore. Song, by audience —America. Solo —Miss Rosa Lee Brown. Duette —Rev. and Mrs. Liddell. Reading —Mrs. Adam Sloan. Introduction of Speaker—Rev. Emory. Address —Rev. Ashby Jones. Solo —Mrs. Weyman Sloan. Solo —Miss Annie G. Thompson. Prayer—Rev. Liddell. Friday evening, Jan. 17th, 1919, at the Baptist church. Ex-President Roosevelt’s death at his home at Oyster Bay this week attracts world-wide regret. MOUNT BETHEL NEWS. One thing I am thankful for, F didn’t resolve on* new year’s day that 1 wouldn’t say what 1 felt like saying the first cold blizzard that came along, for just imagine ris ing one of those hard frozen mor nings, with the back out of the chimney in the living room, the stove pipe full of sutt and can’t get a tire to burn anywhere—or if you do, you “burn on one side and freeze on ’tothei.” You' try to prepare breakfast for a starv ing family of nine, milk frozen to ice, eggs all bursted, even the cream and salt frozen hard. And while you are trying ts thaw things out, you stand and pat the floor with frozen feet, and so on and so forth. Well after all, I have not said anything that would cause you to throw up your hands in holy horror. 1 expected it, you know I said some time ago if it didn’t come would miss my guess. And then too of course we could ’nt fret about such a little matter as the weather when we think they are not fighting now over seas. s Miss Fannie Lou Wynn of At lanta spent Xmas with relatives in this vicinity. Messrs. Greer Lumrnus Byron Marston are home from training camps. Loy and Nina Strawn spent the holiday week end in Atlanta. Miss Pearl Paden, one of the teachers in Sandy Ridge School, spent Ntnas at her home in Law renceville. Mrs. W. H. Condrey of Atlanta, who was visiting the family of Mr. and Mrs. F. B. Stralm during the holidays, returned to her home last Tuesday. And all these holiday items re mind me of a large Xmas bell hanging in a window in July, but I didn’t write last week and noth ing much has happened since, or if I have been too frozen up to get it. Will try to do better next time, and give news not so stale. Lots of fine porkers are being called upon to sacrifice their liv< s now. Our hearts were saddened by news of the death of Mrs. Rosie Lee Freeman, who died at her home two weeks ago. Her death was quite sudden and unexpected. Mrs. Freeman leaves a little babe of only one month, a devoted young husband and many rela tives and friends to mourn her loss. She was a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. A. T. Polk. We deeply sympathize with those who loved her best. F. B. and Loy Strahn are thresh ing peas for the pulic this week. Rev. Mcßrayer of the Locust Grove charge will preach at Mt. Bethel Sunday at 11 o’clock. Come out and hear him. Mis’ Franc. SIOO Reward, SIOO The readers of this paper will be pleased to learn that there is at least one dreaded disease that science has been able to cure in all its stages, and that is catarrh. Catarrh being greatly influenced by constitutional conditions requires constitutional treatment. Hall’s Catarrh Cure is taken internally and acts thru the Blood on the Mucous Surfaces of the System thereby de stroying the foundation of the disease, giving the patient strength by building up the constitution and assisting na ture in doing its work. The proprie tors have so much faith in the curative powers of Hall’s Catarrh Cure that they offer One Hundred Dollars for any case that it fails to cure. Send for list of testimonials. Address: F. J. CHENEY A CO., Toledo, Ohio. Sold by all Druggists. 75c. $1.50 A YEAR