Reading Idaho Sentiment during the Great War

The experience of war differs from person to person. National policies change, and young men and women are sent into the battlefield. Attempting to maintain some semblance of ordinary daily life is vital. The impact war has on an individual is in many ways correlated to one’s proximity to the front. The First World War impacted Idaho in various ways. Idahoans experienced the war differently than many Americans. Some hardly noticed war was occurring.

The United States enter the Great War in April 1917, nearly three years after it began. That summer, D. P. Woodruff wrote from Weiser, Idaho, to his niece in Salt Lake City.[1] In this letter, his primary concern was not about troops in the fields of war, but the ailing condition of his wife. The couple had decided to settle in Weiser in the hopes that the lower elevation and mild weather would prove beneficial to her condition. To this effect, Woodruff had purchased a Buick automobile, reporting that taking his ailing spouse for a drive every evening seemed to be doing her some good. On the previous day, he noted the total eclipse of the sun, further illustrating how far the war was from his mind. To D. P. Woodruff, settling in to a new house and tending to his wife was more than enough to fill the contents of a letter. Things were different for those on the front lines.

Floyd M. and Benjamin F. Nave – brothers in arms and in blood – sent several letters from training camp to their parents back home in Lewiston.[2] Floyd wrote frequently, and had gone as far as to state he had been growing fat on the army meals. Making certain his parents didn’t worry about him was a priority. He gave his regards to family, friends, and sweetheart, Harlene, before being shipped out in September of 1917. The war meant a great deal to this family. Each passing day for this family was likely to have been occupied in some manner or another with the progress of the war, with constant concerns for the well-being of those loved ones fighting far from home in foreign lands. For each family, the experience of the war was different.

Idaho played its part in the war just as much as any other state. For some families, life continued with scarcely a mention of the affair. For other families, the topic of the war was a daily discussion, as deeply entrenched in their minds as the men they hoped to see returned to them were in the ground. The important distinction in levels of patriotism displayed by the average citizen often had much to do with what they had at stake, and what the national press presented as patriotic. Those families with no relatives in the war tended to be more reserved in the amount of attention they paid to it. The families with brothers, fathers, uncles, or cousins on the field tended to be much more observant of the goings on. Both sides are important.

The soldiers fought with the hopes of returning to a country that would be in much the same condition as it was when they had left. Day-to-day activities didn’t stop. While the man driving his ailing wife around town on evenings in the hopes of improving her constitution might not seem as patriotic as the man fighting on the front lines hoping to return home to sweetheart, he was doing what he felt important. The men and women left behind pulled together to maintain a degree of normality in chaotic times.

– Creighton Davis

[1] J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=847274 accessed on 04/11/2017

[2] Nave Brothers Letters, MG 5772. Special Collections and Archives, University of Idaho Library, Moscow, Idaho.