Iowa In the Great War

Source: Postville Herald, Friday, November 22, 1918, pg. 1

To One Who Died In France, And To All

It makes no difference whether he is your son or your friend, when the news comes of another death in France and when he is, you feel the sorrow of death before you think of the glory of dying for one's country. We are thinking of a young man whom we have known from childhood, Hewitt L. Williams, son of Mr. and Mrs. Fred L. Williams of Grand Meadow Farm, near Postville, who died on October 15, in France of wounds received in action. He was not called to the colors until last winter. He was taken to France in August, a member of the 352nd infantry, Company L, 88th Division. They must have been transferred almost immediately to the front and the young man from an Iowa farm must have been one of the first to pay the great price. How he was wounded or how he died even is not known yet - it was only the message of his death that came through.

And we speak of him not only because we know him so well and admired him so much - fine fellow that he was, more than six feet in height, strong, clean, upright physically and morally - but because he was so typical of the young manhood that we need in Iowa and in the world, men who can and who are willing to do the work that must be done. Born on a farm, unlike many others, he chose to stay on the farm, and to make farming a business. He went to Ames where he excelled in many ways. Returning to his home he applied to the old farm of his father and his grandfather the principles of modern science. He rebuilt barns and rejuvenated herds. He is credited with having established one of the finest dairy herds in northeastern Iowa. And when he had done that he heard the call of his country and answered it. He might have claimed and he would no doubt have been granted an exemption, because of his occupation. But he did not ask it and he did not want it. He was all American and his Americanism began in the bleak shores of New England centuries ago and blossomed in the rich soils of the Mississippi valley. His life was given for a great and a fine cause, but he had so much to live for if that had been his happier fate.

And it is not of Hewitt Williams alone that we are writing. We are writing of fifteen hundred others from Iowa who have given their lives to this war - and we are thinking of their fathers and their mothers and their friends. May heaven grant to them all the visions of the sunlight that touches the clouds of sorrow with the glory of hope. And may there abide with them the remembrance of lives finely lived and deaths nobly died. -- Cedar Rapids Daily Republican.