Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years.
–––
When I was about seven or eight years old, I was looking through a trunk I found in the “storage room” of our house on West Fifth Street. The trunk was full of old clothes, hoop skirts and things like that. Underneath all those things, I found a cardboard box that was labeled “Max.” That was my dad’s name, so I figured it must be something that belonged to him.
I opened the box and looked inside. The first things that caught my eye were two small books, small enough to fit in my pocket. One was a copy of the “New Testament.” I don’t remember the title of the other book, but part of that book was in a foreign language.
As I was looking at those books, my mother came into the room, and I asked her what all those things were in the box. She told me they were things my dad had when he was in France during World War I. So after dinner that night, I got the box and went through it with my dad as we sat on our sofa.
He said both of the little books were issued to him when he arrived in France. The book with the foreign language was to help the American soldiers communicate with the French people. It was full of English phrases, things like, “how do I get to the bus station?” Then it gave the French version, along with a phonetic spelling.
He also showed me the canteen he used, plus a shallow metal pan he called a “mess kit.” He told me that most of the time he was in France, he was in the countryside and not in the cities. He said mess tents were often set up in a field, and each soldier carried his own mess kit through the “chow line.” I carried that canteen and mess kit myself on a few camping trips when I was a kid.
But my favorite things in the box are pictured here. They are my dad’s “dog tags” from World War I. They look a lot different than the ones I wore when I was in the Air Force in the early 1950s. They have my dad’s name on one side and his serial number on the other. That’s the only info on them.
I have kept the dog tags in a little box since he gave them to me around 80 years ago. But I am taking them out of the box today. I have decided to have them matted and framed and hang them on the wall of my office at home. Many years ago, I did the same thing with my great-grandfather’s Civil War discharge. I think it’s nice having things like that around me.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at bill@davidwboyd.com