Evening Telegraph | June 28, 1918 Through the efforts of Mrs. Charles [Anna] Bogue, North Platte has been appointed as a Red Cross Canteen Service station. … Seventy women have enrolled, and the captains of the teams have been selected, so the plans are well under way and they hope to soon be in active service. The Union Pacific has donated the use of the old office building and given the local committee au- thority to use it as they please. It is being thoroughly cleaned, [with] gas installed and other fixtures that are necessary. Vice President [William] Jeffers has very generously said that he would do every thing in his power to make the Canteen Service a success. … Hendy & Ogier Auto Co. have given a Ford Sedan to the Sammy Girls to be auctioned off dur- ing the month of July. The girls have decided that the proceeds from the car shall be given to the Canteen work, thus enlarg- ing their field of labor for the boys. The U.P. “office building,” a former telegraph of- fice west of North Platte’s new brick depot, had been temporary depot since North Platte’s 1869 depot and hotel burned down Nov. 17, 1915. The new depot, dedicated March 15, 1918, would later house the World War II Canteen in its first- floor restaurant and 120-seat dining room. North Platte’s Red Cross chapter had donated $500 to launch the new Canteen, the Semi- Weekly Tribune reported June 28. Canteen fundraising became a significant mission of the
began to feel the strain of moving hundreds of thousands of troops, and trains began to be late, the inevitable emergencies arose: it was not enough to have Army dining-rooms at regular intervals along the route, but the Red Cross must be ready to feed and take care of the men at all stations. … And so it was that when the [1918] armistice was signed there were in the United States 781 canteens where 70,000 women with military organizations were doing yeoman service. They not only gave the soldier a lift when he needed it, but they themselves discovered a new meaning in service and came to the knowledge that life is real and that there is beauty in its reality. The first of Nebraska’s 16 Red Cross canteens opened at Fort Omaha in 1917. The first sugges- tion one might open in North Platte appeared in the Semi-Weekly Tribune on April 16, 1918, crediting U.P. executive C.F. Scharmann with recommending the community to the Red Cross. As the Evening Telegraph (which then also pub- lished a weekly edition) would report, it became reality with help from a North Platte-born U.P. ex- ecutive bound for greater prominence in another war and another Canteen. Telegraph | April 25, 1918 North Platte has been recommended as a station for canteen service for troops passing through. This service, which is in charge of the Red Cross, serves coffee and sandwiches to moving bodies of troops.
It took months to draft and train millions of sol- diers, sailors and Marines and ship them over- seas. The American Red Cross prepared to help doctors care for the wounded and boost morale of healthy and wounded servicemen alike. Henry P. Davison, The American Red Cross in the Great War (1920) Red Cross canteens became commonplace near the front lines in Europe and major U.S. cities. They emerged more slowly among U.S. railroads, includ- ing the vital mainline of the Union Pacific. During the early period of mobilization it was not realized that the services of the Red Cross would be needed at railroad stations. But when the railroads
Company D of North Platte’s World War I Red Cross Canteen volunteers included (front row, from left), Blanche Field, Harriet Hoxie, captain Daisy Hinman, Canteen Commander Anna Bogue and Carrie Barber and (back row, from left) Anna Church, Marion Evans, Pearl Shelver, Edith Gantt, Mary Patterson and Ellen Edwards. This group met as a club after the war until at least 1929, the Evening Telegraph reported.
10 CANTEEN: AS IT HAPPENED
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