World War One cut a swath across life on the edge of new frontier. Young men, like Ray Mooney, left their gear and went off to war. I said good-bye to my homsteading uncles – Lee and Al. They had become like brothers. I would never see them again. Charlie Sherod and I volunteered our services and were shipped to the west coast.

    I had helped Fred back in Oklahoma on his job as a telegraph operator. The army found it out and wanted me to be a Morse Code instructor. I asked for something more involved. Soon I was attached to the 65^th Field Artillery in wireless communications. There was a troop ship on the west coast that they wanted in the Atlantic. They loaded our outfit on it and we left from Seattle. The ship stopped at San Francisco and then went on down through the Panama Canal, up to New York and across to France. It was a long, long ride.

    Going through the canal was a memorable experience. We stopped while waiting to go through the locks. Men and boys lined the docks beside us. There were great bunches of bananas. I gave a dark skinned boy fifty cents and asked him to get me some bananas. He brought half a stalk. It must have been a bushel or more.

    The American Artillery played a big part in the war. Not only did we fire at German positions, we were also within firing range of the German artillery. One of the prime targets was the observation posts manned by the wireless operators. And I was a wireless operator. The operators played a part in ordering and controlling artillery fire. We also received communications from the higher command.

    Horse meat was a part of the army diet in the First World War. All the beef cattle had been eaten out of France and England. At rest camp in France, the cook had some fifty gallon barrels of meat cooking. He claimed it was beef. "Are you sure?" someone asked. "Are you certain it is beef?" "Try it and see."

    The fellow took a deep dip and brought up a chunk of meat with gray hair on it – horse hair. The cook shrugged it off. "It just proves that what you were eating was live meat at one time."

    The horse meat wasn’t bad until the boney part went into the fifty gallon barrels for stew.

    Don’t eat the fat. We’d come in from Le Harve. After eating all the cows and half the horses in France, the army had finished their job. They moved us to Brest to the staging area for going home.

    In those days the army walked even if they might sing, "They say this is a mechanized war." The Second Lieutenants may have been winning the war with a fountain pen, like the army song said, but they had to walk too. Some of the other officers likely found motor transportation. We had some two hundred miles or so of walking powered by horse meat and potato stew.