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Note: Daddy served with Company C, 155th Mississippi Infantry Regiment from 1916 to 1919. In the spring of 1916, Galla Paxton from Greenville and several others were hitch-hiking to Vicksburg to join the army. They stopped at Egremont and talked Daddy into going with them. At that time, one had to have a guardian sign if you were under 21. Daddy was 19 at the time. The colonel of the regiment was Col. Hogaboom, one of Uncle Green Baggett's poker-playing cronies at the Elks Club in Vicksburg. In later years, the Elks Club was converted to the Vicksburg Police Station on Clay Street.
Daddy was involved in the last reunion of the Blue and Grey in Vicksburg in 1916. In fact, his company had to camp between the lines to keep those old codgers from going to war again. It seems that some enterprising soul had distributed some home-made corn whiskey, for a fee of course, and those old gentlemen were using their canes on one another! His company was the last to leave for Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. When they got there, they were attached to Gen. Pershing's command and were to help chase down Pancho Villa. Daddy never made it to the Rio Grand Valley; he went to cooking school, along with Dwight Eisenhower. The record is at Fort Sam Houston, in their museum.
His unit returned to Mississippi on April 16, 1917. Daddy and Wallace Sturgis, later Lt. Gov. of Florida and a great and good friend from Nitta Yuma, stepped out of the train on the right side instead of following orders to exit on the left, where the company was being sworn in to Federal service. He and Wallace went on to Winona, to Greenwood, visiting friends and finally showing up in Rolling Fork the next week. Uncle Green was furious and only his friendship with Col. Hogaboom kept Daddy and Wallace from spending the rest of their lives in prison. They were taken to Vicksburg and were promptly sworn into national service, and spent LONG time on KP.
The 155th was sent to Camp Beauregard, below Fort Polk. Daddy said it was the backside of nowhere. He and Wallace had decided that there must be an easier way to get along in the army and volunteered for the bugle corps. It was easier. In later years when Mr. Dave Hawkins, in Indianola, related his experiences with Daddy, he said he'd be out there drilling the troops, for Mr. Hawkins was a top sergeant, and as they would pass Daddy and Wallace under a shade tree practicing, Mr. Dave would be given a toot or two very derisively. And Mr. Dave couldn't touch them, either, which really angered him!
The officers and NCOs were kept at Camp Beauregard as the enlisted personnel was sent on to France in the first shipment. The second or third group that went through the training in south Louisiana also included the Mississippi NCOs and officers when they were sent over in August of 1918. They were just in time for the American offensive in the Argonne Forest. Somehow, Daddy was transferred to an pioneer battalion which used white NCOs and officers from the South and black enlisted men to lay the miles and miles of wire needed for communication behind the lines. This group was also used for burial detail after the Argonne offensive. The first year I was to teach World War I, I asked Daddy to tell me about his experiences. It was the only time he ever told me about it. And after he finished, I could understand why he never referred to it. His unit was sent in days after the fighting. Gas pockets remained so the men had to wear gas masks. The bodies were so intermingled one never knew German from American; some bodies had burst fro the gas, and just from decomposition. They were buried in mass graves if the nationality were not discernable. After that experience, Daddy asked to be transferred to a combat unit. By this time he was a First Sergeant. He was transferred, trained for a short while, and was on his way to the front on Nov. 11, 1918. He said the silence of the guns and the sound of church bells at 11 AM was the most welcome sound he ever heard.
He was offered a position in the group that was to be part of the invasion of Russia, going in at Vladivostok. He turned that down. He was on occupation duty in Nancy for several months. But he was mighty glad to get home in the summer of 1919, having somehow missed falling victim to the flu epidemic that raged not only in the United States but also world wide.
When he got out of the Army in 1919, being discharged at Camp Shelby, south of Hattisburg, he returned to Egremont. Aunt Frances and Earl were married in 1916 and were living there with Uncle Green Baggett. Uncle Green offered Daddy a college education, just as he had Will and was providing at the time for Green. Daddy felt that as the eldest son, it was up to him to begin real work. Also, his experiences in the army had certainly removed him from the care-free days of college. He attended a business school in New Orleans and returned to Rolling Fork to farm. He also began playing semi-pro baseball, as did Will, Green, and cousin Fielding Wright (later governor of MS). The team on which they all played was based in Vicksburg, the forerunner of the Vicksburg Hillbillies of the Cotton States League, a double A organization. One of the exhibition games they played was against the New York Yankees. These were the years of Babe Ruth and Murderer's Row. Daddy was a left-handed pitcher and went up against the Yankees about the third inning. When asked how he did, he guffawed and reported that he was quickly knocked out of the box. However, he must have been doing something right as his next team was on the West Coast, a farm team for the Dodgers in Los Angeles. Daddy played there several years and had gotten the call to be brought up to the Brooklyn Dodgers. He had hurt his shoulder, an injury that today could be easily remedied and his professional career was over. He had learned a great deal about the lumber business while he spent those three years out west but decided to return to Rolling Fork in 1926 and farm. He was just in time for the worst flood in modern times in the Mississippi Delta.
In the late days of August, there was a dance on the Courthouse lawn in Rolling Fork. In those days, a huge canvass was placed on the ground so people could dance outside. Mama had a date with Green, whom she had known when he was a student at Alabama and she was at the W. He wanted to introduce her to his brother who had just returned from California. Well, that was it for them both. They courted during the rains, which began in October and never seemed to let up. Mama taught in the little town just south of Egremont. Her original plans were to teach for a year, fulfilling her contract with the Federated Music Clubs of Mississippi, then leave for New York and be an accompanist on the concert tour. She also had a verbal agreement with Miss Pohl to be part of her dance troupe in the summer of 1927 that was to train with and then tour with Ruth St. Denis, whose studio was in Virginia.
The levee broke at Scott, MS, in the early morning hours on April 21, 1927. Within 24 hours the break was over a mile in length and Greenville had 20 feet of water. Mama evacuated south on the last train to Vicksburg for six months, along with Aunt Frances, Earl, and most of Daddy's relatives. Daddy said the hardest part was getting his field hands to leave and get to higher ground. What little they had they did not want to lose. Most of Mama's things were stored in the attic of Uncle Green's home at Egremont and on several occasions Mama traveled up the river from Vicksburg with Daddy as he did his Red Cross work. They rode the motor boat right in to the house at Egremont, being sure not to create waves and do more damage. Little life was lost but the economic devastation was beyond comprehension.
Mama and Daddy took a steamboat to Memphis and married there 7 June, 1927. They then took the train to West Point to meet all of Mama's relatives. Mamaw said her first sight of him, with the shock of bright auburn hair, did not fit the description of "Greek God" that Mama had attributed to him in all her letters! They returned to Rolling Fork and in the early months of 1928, Daddy was employed by Virden Lumber Company, headquartered in Greenville. His first, and last, assignment was Indianola. He managed yards in Belzoni, Drew, Rosedale, Greenville, then back to Indianola after the war. After Mr. Matt Virden died, his son Joe became the CEO. He and Daddy disagreed about the direction in which Virden's should go so Daddy switched to the wholesale lumber business. He traveled 4 days a week and loved it. However, a series of heart attacks beginning in 1962 and a devastating stroke in 1969 ended his employment days. With his customary spirit he enjoyed what he could. My parents were devoted to one another. I never heard them exchange a cross word; their life was not blessed economically but they survived a flood, the Great Depression, educated two children, were life-long Methodists, owned their own home, had so many friends, and owed no one when they died. Their great legacy was love, laughter, music for the soul, and they set Tutter and me free to be ourselves.
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