Statesville Landmark Devotes Issue to Soldiers and Those at Home, July 1919

From The University of North Carolina News Letter, Chapel Hill, N.C., July 23, 1919

Iredell in the War

The Statesville Landmark of July 2 devotes its entire space to chronicles of Iredell County and her sons and daughters in the Great War.

It tells in detail what the home folks did. The little child who knitted a sweater for a soldier is honorably mentioned along with the selfless men who made the whole county ring with their fervor. 

It celebrates the hundreds who gave and gave and gave that Iredell’s quota of foodstuffs and of dollars might be raised and over-raised.

It gives a list full of the men who volunteered and the men who went to the colors no less cheerfully through the selective service draft—nearly 1,000 of them.

It gives a sorrowful paragraph to each the half hundred who laid down their lives in the service of their country.

It gives full accounts of the doings of the 105^th Engineers, the 115^th Machine Gun Battalion, the 30^th and the 81^st Divisions—of their valiant deeds as road builders, as Hindenburg line breakers, and their bravery on the Meuse and in the Argonne.

Iredell has here a definite record of her loyal devotion. When book history comes to be written there will be no room for doubt about the rightful place of Iredell people on the scroll of fame.

Iredell is gathering her war records together. So, too, is Wilson. What other Carolina counties have done as well? We should like to know in order to do homage to them in the News Letter.

It is work that should be done now. It is fitting work for the Daughters of the Confederacy and the Confederate Veterans. Or for women’s organizations, or for somebody. It should be done in every county in the state and it should be done at once.

--E.N.