Canteen Team Services Wounded Soldiers at Monroe Depot, Jan. 7, 1919

From The Monroe Journal, January 7, 1919

Wounded Soldiers Spend Half Hour at Depot. . . Served by Miss Elizabeth Sikes’ Canteen Team

A train load of wounded soldiers, numbering 175 men and two officers, stopped for half an hour at the passenger depot here Sunday night and were served many good things by the canteen team captained by Miss Elizabeth Sikes. The canteen commandants at Raleigh and Hamlet wired Mrs. Monroe that the soldiers were en route here, and the citizens of the town, learning of it, sent cake, sweet milk, fruits of all kinds, cigarettes and other things too numerous to mention to the hut at the station.

The train was composed of 12 coaches, one of the coaches given entirely to “stretcher patients,” those who were unable to be up. Army doctors accompanied by the train and the soldiers who needed medical attention wore blue arm bands. The majority of the soldiers had been attached to the 30^th Division, and were wounded during the drive from October 8 to 29. They landed in the States from the transport Cedric, about two weeks ago.

All of the solders had been wounded in a greater or lesser degree and had a story worth listening to.

One had been in an ammunition dump near the front lines when a Boche shell dropped on top of it. The dump caved in from the explosion above, burying the soldier under the debris. Comrades dug him out and found that only an ankle had been broken. He was sent to the hospital and in a few weeks was able to rejoin his company in the trenches. Again he was wounded severely. A piece of flying steel passed through his leg near the knee. The soldier said that he distinctly saw it when it struck on one side of the leg and came out on the other.

Another soldier had left all but the heel of one foot somewhere on the battle front. A falling shell struck him on the foot, completely mashing it off. Luckily it proved to be a “dud”—a shell which fails to explode—or all that would have been left of the soldier and the place where he had stood would have been a hole in the ground.

The soldiers all seemed proud of the part they had played in the war but were anxious to be mustered out of the service in order that they might return to their homes. They were being taken to the hospital at Forts McPherson and Oglethorpe.