The Home Front, 1918

By John Hassell Yeatts © 1987

Issue: May, 1987

Back Row, Left to Right: Forrest Scott, Volney Reynolds and Ceph Scott. Second Row: Alma Scott Reynolds, Gentry Irene Scott, Mildred Scott, Delma Scott. Front Row: Doris Reynolds Wood, Agnes Reynolds Pendleton, Maggie Reynolds Wood, Dorothy Scott Reynolds, Hampton Reynolds. Infant William Scott, son of Lane and Delma Scott. Photograph courtesy of Ruby Scott Thomas.For most Americans the summer of 1918 was not a happy time. Near the French-German border, the Hindenburg line still held. General Ludendorff, leader of the enemy high command, had been unable to convince Kaiser Wilhelm II that the war was already lost as young men from both sides fell like grain before the sickle.

In Mayberry and Meadows of Dan, Virginia sadness and the fear of bad news, undoubtedly, was reflected in the faces of the folks at home. Already, Ruffin Lynch, Edwin Pendleton, and "Little Frank" Spangler had been slain in battle. Cecil Wood lay wounded in a hospital somewhere in France. Alvin and Justin Barnard, Elroy and Posey Shelor; Major Boyd, Emmet Howell, Carl Spence, Lewis Vipperman and others were fighting somewhere in France or Germany. There was hardly a family who didn't have sons preparing to go: Guy Barnard, Burton and Forrest Scott; Lawrence Cox; Allen and Coy Yeatts' classification numbers were up or soon to come.

This scribbler believes that some of the sadness of the times was showing in the adult faces of S.C. Scott and his family as they posed for the above picture in Volney Reynolds' yard in Mayberry sometime during that melancholy summer of 1918...