On November eleventh, nineteen hundred and eighteen, a message flashed along the Allied front and the order “Cease Firing” ended the monumental struggle of four years.
Six years have passed. Peace seems an accomplished fact. Those who gave their lives on the bloody fields of far away France have not died in vain.
Thin-faced boys and bearded men, the survivors who had faced the terrors of modern warfare with all of its murderous machinations; many torn in mind and body, came marching home.
Those others, too, came home. Those whom the earth of La Belle Frane had covered. Their bones today rest in a thousand American towns—and they sleeping in peace and forgetfulness.
Forgetfulness? Are we, too, so prone to forget that we cannot spare a day from our material affairs to commemorate the passing of the splendid spirits that dared the Breath of Hell that Democratic (line obscured)?
Do we not owe it to these boys who fought the good fight in a far away land, those boys who died for the Flag and all it may mean to Americans—do we not, I say, owe it to them, and to those others who came back shattered in health, shattered in mind, strong men broken on the wheel of a mad man’s making—do we not owe these men a single day out of the 365 which make the year?
Tryon is a typical American town. Armistice Day means as much to us as any town in the length and breadth of the land. Let us show our appreciation of the sacrifice and suffering of those boys who wore O.D. overseas and spend the day in commemoration of their splendid achievements.
Let’s close every place of business. Let’s have an appropriate program commemorating the signing of the Armistice which brought our boys back home. Let us prove that we REMEMBER.
The local post of the American Legion numbers a bare handful of men. They want to see Armistice day fitly commemorated. We owe it to them, and those others to do our share to prove that good Americans NEVER FORGET those who unselfishly gave their all in our behalf.
Will Tryon commemorate Armistice Day? We think it will!
From the front page of The Polk County News, Tryon, N.C., October 30, 1924
digitalnc.org/lccn/sn94058241/1924-10-30/ed-1/seq-1/
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