March 30, 1917, Friday
The Bay City Times Tribune, Bay City, Michigan
ROLLING ALONG TO THE NORTH WITH OUR SOLDIER BOYS
(Special to The Times Tribune.)
Somewhere on router from New Orleans, March 27.—Tuesday afternoon. Our train is rolling along the Gulf of Mexico and the men from Michigan are seeing novel sights every minute. We reached New Orleans at 6 o’clock this morning. No breakfast. Ran out of rations. Somebody blundered, in Co. B, for we drew grub enough for five days at El Paso and now, three days out, it is all gone. The men have ravenous appetities [sic], which accounts for this situation in part. Wired Board of Commerce. Advanced payment for supplies bought in New Orleans. Prompt reply from Capt. Beckwith: $100 will reach you at Nashville, Tenn. Now breathe easier.
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Our men had six hours in New Orleans for sightseeing. With southern hospitality natives used their autos to show the men from the far north around. The officers went in two parties by hired cars. Saw the national cemetery, where sleep hundreds of men from Michigan who answered Lincoln’s call. The old post office where Gen. Butler had his headquarters. During the parade of the Bay City battalion we gave the escort to the colors in front of this historic place, with hundreds of citizens looking on and applauding again emphasizing the changes 50 years have brought.
Statues of Gen. Lee, Gen. Albert Sydney Johnson, Gen. Beauregard, the Confederate monument, home of Gen. Jackson just before he won the battle of New Orleans, the oldest church and mission of the south, the Italian quarter whose feuds nearly led to war with Italy 20 years ago, the old French quarter with all its art and historic associations, the 30 miles of open drainage canals, and 92 miles of boulevard covering old drainage canals, the immense dykes to prevent flooding of New Orleans by the fickle Mississippi river; handsome homes, whose owners made millions out of sugar and cotton; old plantation owners’ city homes with slave quarters in rear just as they were left after the civil war; the old slave market; the Catholic cathedral, orphanages, nunneries, school and college; the new post office and customs building; new public library; the John McDonoch schools, all built out of the money the old miser left New Orleans and Baltimore, 33 primary schools and four high schools costing $100,000 each, and so well invested that today there is more money in the original fund of $5,000,000 than at the beginning and yet New Orleans pays no school tax whatever; Loyala [sic] college and Tulane university; immense cemeteries where all the dead sleep in mausoleums, even the poor going into little vaults ten tiers high, then when another death occurs the remains of the first are gathered in the rear and another replaces the first; the old oak trees with their age old moss trailers; the haunted house where a French witch tortured her slaves, with implements of torture now in the state museum; the suicide oak where 16 have ended their lives in the last ten years; the orphanage and statue to “Margaret” the rich old maid who mothered the orphan children of New Orleans and mourned by 30,000 at her death; the busy river wharves; the modern business section; the flora and fern and vine of the far south in full spring tide; the absinthe house built in 1798; the art museums, theaters and playgrounds; these and many more were sights the boys from Bay City saw in six busy hours of the morning. Since then they have passed along the Gulf of Mexico, through Gulfport, Mississippi, where they are building handsome exposition buildings for the opening next December; summer resorts busy in March; miles and miles of cottages and groves and rivers, creeks, bayous and land locked bays, a new and fascinating country, after the mountains and arid plains and dust and wind of El Paso.
All of which undoubtedly has served to keep our men’s minds off the truly important information of the day; for despatches from Washington tell us the 33rd Michigan is not to be mustered out, and with the 3rd and 6th Ohio and two battalions of Colorado national guard are the only regiments who will have served contnuously through nearly ten months of Mexican border service and continued on into the new and greater service made necessary by the events across the waters.
All of which changes our prospects entirely. We are still under orders to go to Fort Wayne, Detroit, to be mustered out. If any changes are made in this program, we are in duty bound not to tell about it. We shall ovserve the president’s voluntary censorship desires. Suffice it to say that all our men are still with us and in splendid spirits, despite the meagre fare of the last 24 hours. We will parade Mobile, Alabama, this evening on arrival. New Orleans and Mobile on the same day. Going some, surely.
GANSSER.
Bay City, Michigan: The Way It Was 