"The Price of Our Heritage"

 

In memory of the

Heroic Dead of the

168th Infantry

 

OUR RECEPTION IN IOWA

          We stayed a couple of weeks in Camp Upton where the regiment was divided and sent to different camps for mustering out and with the remainder of the regiment that had marched away so proudly, three thousand seven hundred strong, we started back to the old state with about twelve hundred men.

         We were divided into three trains, one coming into the state by the way of Keokuk, one by Davenport and Cedar Rapids and one by Dubuque and Waterloo. The thousands of people, wild with enthusiasm, that greeted our train all along the line, the warm welcome which they extended to us, made us forget the trials of the trip and to feel that we had been doubly paid for whatever service we may have rendered to the State and to the Nation.

         As long as I live I never shall forget our parade in Des Moines, People from all parts of the state came to pay homage to the Iowa regiment, which had had the privilege of helping to defeat the Huns and thus right the great wrongs that had been done to the small nations of Europe. They thronged the streets of the city, swarmed over the state house grounds and kept up a continual cheering as our boys, with eyes straight to the front, came swinging down Walnut street, back on Locust to the Capital, where they were reviewed by the Governor of the State. The next day the boys were mustered out at Camp Dodge and as the war clouds rolled back and the great storm, which had shaken the governments of the world to their very foundations, had come to a close,, the Rainbow disappeared with the clouds.

       But the Rainbow will come again if clouds arise.    

finis

Page 417

 

~ reference: "THE PRICE OF OUR HERITAGE", W. E. Robb,  1919 American Lithography and Printing Company, Des Moines, Iowa. Page 417.

~ contributed by Cay Merryman for Iowa in the Great War Special Project