By Jim Heffernan
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| George Henry Heffernan in WWI Uniform, circa 1918 |
On a bright, beautiful garbage pickup day a
few years ago, I watched as the truck lifted our bin, dumped the contents into
its box, and drove away. I don't always pay that much attention to garbage
pickup, but on this day our refuse included a plastic bag with very special
contents: My father's World War I U.S. Army uniform, sans buttons and
insignia.
Reflecting on it as the truck disappeared, a
lump formed in my throat. It meant so much to my father to have served, in many
ways defining his life. But after almost a century, the uniform couldn't be
saved.
Much has been made recently marking the 100th
anniversary of the entry of the United States into the conflict roiling Europe
since the guns of August were loosed by Germany on its neighbors three years
earlier.
On April 6, 1917, the U.S. Congress, at the
behest of President Woodrow Wilson, declared war on Germany. The action was
felt in every community in the nation, certainly including Duluth.
Tens of thousands of American young men were
conscripted or joined on their own to go off to France to fight in "the
war to end all wars," as it was optimistically and naively billed at the
time. Along with scores of other Duluthians, George Heffernan, 23, was among
them. He wasn't my father yet -- he married late and I was born 22 years later.
The Duluth contingent marched to the train on
Dec. 17, 1917, heading for the "Pacific Coast," as the Duluth News
Tribune put it the morning after the departure. George was employed as a photo
engraver for a firm that provided the plates that produced the photos in the
News Tribune. He worked in the Tribune building, then on Superior Street
between Lake Avenue and First Avenue East. The building is still standing, long
since put to other uses.
The paper on Dec. 18 ran a photo of my father
with the words "Leaves For Camp" above it and featuring the following
caption: "Among the soldiers who left Duluth for the Pacific Coast last
night was George Heffernan, for many years a valued employee of the Duluth
Photo Engraving company. He was enrolled in the contingent from the second
Duluth district. His fellow employees gave him a wrist watch and a fine
jackknife."
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| Photo and story of soldier George H. Heffernan leaving Duluth for camp Duluth News Tribune, December 18, 1918 |
So off he went to California, where he was
issued his uniform and inducted into the American Expeditionary Force made up
of men who were called Doughboys. All I know about his service came out in
dribs and drabs over the years in conversations with him as I was growing up.
Upon arriving in San Francisco, the inductees
were stationed at the Presidio, hard by San Francisco Bay's Golden Gate (long
before the famous bridge was built), a facility that still exists but is no
longer a military base. It's never been clear to me how he happened to be
promoted so rapidly from buck private to sergeant, but that's what transpired.
He was a man of some bearing, and I assume that was why he was quickly named a
training sergeant for inductees who followed him into the service.
He took great pride in that, and it possibly
saved his life. While the trainees were sent off to France to fight in the
trenches, George stayed in San Francisco as a training sergeant. But not until
the end of the war. Not quite.
Finally, his unit was mobilized to join other
Doughboys in France. They were put on a troop train and transported from San
Francisco to the east coast, arriving there just in time for the end of the
war. On Nov. 11, 1918, at 11 o'clock in the morning the guns were silenced, and
armistice was declared. The war that didn't end all wars had ended.
No France for George. Rather, a sojourn into
New York City with Army buddies as tourists (the only time he was ever there),
and mustering out of the Army some time later followed by a return to Duluth
and civilian life. America was only actively involved in "The Great
War" for about a year-and-a-half, but some 117,000 American service men
had been killed, and tens of thousands more injured, many with what we now
refer to as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
For my father, it meant returning to Duluth
and his job, and some years later marrying my mother and having two sons, the
youngest being me, born at the outbreak of World War II. By then, George was
too old to serve again. In our home in Duluth's West End he placed his old
uniform on a sturdy hanger and hung it on a nail in a dark corner of our
basement.
There it remained all my early life and later,
until we broke up the old homestead after my mother died in 1983. George had
died in 1971 and was buried beneath a government headstone honoring his
military service.
When we emptied out the house, I took his
uniform to my home, and later to two subsequent residences. Then, cleaning out
the garage of our current home a couple of years ago, I found it, packed away
in a box, a deteriorating, moth-eaten garment unsalvageable for any use such as
in a museum.
So on that day, I took a scissors and cut off
his sergeant stripes and the metal buttons, stowed them with other family
memorabilia, stuffed the tattered tunic and trousers into a plastic bag and put
it in our garbage bin to be hauled away with the rest of our trash.
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| By James Montgomery Flagg, 1917 Source: Wikipedia |
But not quite all of that century-old uniform
was hauled off that day. I have the hat, the Smoky Bear-style hat (seen in the
picture of young George accompanying this column), part of the standard Army
uniform in that era. I'll never part with that. Or these memories.
