Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Respect Not Shown When Flag-Draped Soldier's Coffin Is Carried Through Hendersonville Station, 1918

“Improper Respect Shown Flag and Soldier’s Corpse,“ from the French Broad Hustler, Hendersonville, Thursday, Oct. 24, 1918.

A party of women while recently passing through the Hendersonville station at the time when a train from the South rolled in bearing all that was left of a soldier who had given his life for his country, was much surprised and not a little shocked to notice that when the box enveloped in the folds of our country’s flag was borne through the station no head was uncovered, nor was any sign of respect either to the flag or dead soldier shown. The curious crowd gathered as usual at train time, accorded to this hero and to its country’s flag only a cursory glance and went about its business.

Should such things happen? Should such an apparent lack of patriotic feeling and understanding be permitted? With no desire to criticize but rather with the wish to call attention to the fact in the belief that in a patriotic community where so much is being done in every way to add to the comfort and welfare of the boys who have gone across, such apparent indifference to one who was denied that privilege must come only from thoughtlessness, and with the hope of preventing a recurrence in the future. Surely one moment for respect could be spared!

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