november 2019 32
WBM
SERVING alongside Edward were friends
and acquaintances from Wilmington,
mention of them peppered his letters.
They included Hargrove “Hoggie” Bellamy
(future mayor of Wilmington), Arthur “Bluey”
Bluethenthal, (the first Wilmingtonian and
second North Carolinian killed in the war, and
for whom the Wilmington airport is named),
brothers Paul and Pete Cantwell, George Clark
Sr., Harry Hayden, Hugh Hines, Col. Thomas
J. Gause, J. Douglas “Duddie” Taylor, Walker
Taylor, and Frank Williamson. Others he en-countered
were Beulah Armstrong, Mrs. Nichols
(living in Paris), Tom Orrel, Sarah Storm and
Walter Storm.
SEPT. 17, 1917
This excerpt from a five-page typed letter was sent to
Edward’s family from Camp Sevier.
“We started in this morning with our regular camp
routine which includes eight hours of drilling each
day with ten minutes rest in each hour. … Our
company is to be recruited up to 150 men shortly,
or rather we will be filled up to that number with
“drafts,” and will have five commissioned officers
who will be sent to us from the training camps
(Sears, Roebuck officers, as they are called here).
There will be only seven men mounted on horses (the
five officers, the top sgt. and the line sgt.) and Lt.
Peck has already told me that (we) will be mounted
on mules, so I am just living for the day when I can
ride by Duddie on my horse (he be-mounted on one
of the mules) and yell at him to ‘buckle her down,
Uncle Duddie.’ I know that it will nearly kill him.”
Above, from top: Using humor to deal with difficult circumstances,
soldiers in the trenches on the Western Front created their own
newspapers called Trench Camp. The main topics were the soldiers
and news from their home regions. The newspapers were printed
when a press was available, or often handwritten and then mimeo-graphed.
Soldiers in a practice trench at Camp Sevier in Greenville,
S.C. The cavalry on scout duty at Camp Sevier. National Guardsmen
airing their cots at Camp Sevier.
FURMAN UNIVERSITY,/SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES FURMAN UNIVERSITY,/SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES FURMAN UNIVERSITY,/SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES