Walter Moravsky Was In Action Before His Real Age Was Discovered
YONKERS, N. Y., July 3. (AP) – Walter Moravsky, 15-year-old Yonkers schoolboy with eight months’ Navy service and an honorable discharge is worried now. He’s afraid he won’t be promoted in school.
His service included five months on an aircraft carrier before his commanding officer finally found out he was 15 instead of the required 18.
Worrying Walter was the thought that he might be put back in the eighth grade. Torpedoes, Machine gun fire and bomb bursts – including one that gave him a nasty shrapnel wound – didn’t bother him much, he said.
He is six feet tall and husky for his age.
During his service he advanced to seaman first class. Until battle stations was sounded, he was a baker. Then he was a gunner. He was on deck firing at the Japs when he got the shrapnel wound.
Source:The Plain Speaker (Hazleton, Pennsylvania) – Saturday, July 3, 1943
An Incident Which Shows That
One Should Not Talk Too Much.
Here is an incident which, to be appreciated, needs a glance at the sweet womanly face of the young Mrs. Stanton.
Mrs. Stanton was summering at Saratoga, eagerly enjoying the delights of that fascinating young watering place half a century ago – a merry young mother, in great demand for her agreeable manners and sparkling conversation, as well as for her talented performances upon the guitar.
Chatting with a friend one day, the woman question – that bugbear of the moment – was brought up.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“Isn’t it dreadful,” he remarked, “to think of a woman so unsexing herself as actually to appear before the legislature at Albany?”
Naturally enough, the heroine of this very shocking procedure protested against this interpretation of woman’s sphere; yet, amused by her friend’s faux pas, mischievously she led him on.
“What kind of a woman is this Mrs. Stanton?” she inquired.
“Oh, a dreadful kind of a woman!” was the reply. “Just the kind of woman one would expect would do such a thing.”
“Do describe her,” pleaded his tormentor. “Tell me more about her.”
And he, nothing loath, went on: “Well, she’s a large, masculine-looking woman, with high cheek-bones and a loud, harsh voice don’t you know just one of those regular woman’s rights women.” (more…)
Wonderful Work Being Done to Hide Hideous and Shattered Features the Surgeons Cannot Help
“Camouflage of Mercy” is the term by which many describe the work being carried on by Anna C. Ladd, the sculptor, under the auspices of the American Red Cross. It is a wonderful work for soldiers whose faces have been hideously mutilated by German shells. Mrs. Ladd is the wife of Dr. Maynard Ladd, medical adviser of the American Red Cross, but her work has nothing to do with medicine.
In many hospitals, of course, plastic surgery is doing much to build up shattered faces. Mrs. Ladd, however, finds her subjects among those whom the surgeons cannot help. They are soldiers whose faces have been so shot to pieces that they present a hideous spectacle, one which their friends and relatives prepare to shun. The sufferers realize this and become very unhappy and sensitive and are inclined to hide themselves away from their fellow-beings. Mrs. Ladd has become greatly interested in the work of Captain Dervent, who improved on the gelatine and rubber formerly used and made metal masks. To make these masks, Mrs. Ladd takes a plaster cast of the mutile’s face, and then from pre-war photographs or descriptions furnished by friends, builds up in clay or plaster the missing parts until the cast is a good likeness of the man as he was.
From this cast, a thin copper mask is made and then plated with silver. This is fitted perfectly and the camouflage is held in place by a pair of spectacles. The final stage is to paint the mask so that it is practically indistinguishable.
In the accompanying illustration, it will be noted that the mutilation has not been so general and the pair of spectacle with eyes painted in disks behind the glasses serve to change this man from a fearsome evidence of war into a pleasant-looking Poilu whose friends easily recognize him. Of course, when painting the eyes on the disks great care was used to get the exact color and to get a natural appearance.
The masks, of course, do not restore the functions, they only camouflage these poor faces so that their owners will not hesitate to go about among their friends.
Source:The Monroe Journal (Claiborne, Alabama) – Thursday, November 21, 1918
Photos of Anna Ladd's Work
The Red Cross kept this photo library to share the work being done in Mrs. Ladd's studio - Click a photo to start the slide show.
This essay by John Harvey Kellogg appeared in Association Men, the official publication for Y.M.C.A. leaders during World War I. The piece caught my eye because so many people I encounter have an almost unreasonably nostalgic view of the past that does not make sense when looking at the world through the words of people living at the time. “People are people” and that has always been true.
The Decay of American Manhood
By J.H. Kellogg, M.D.,
Battle Creek, Michigan
History records nothing so wonderful as the development and progress of this great nation in the last hundred years.
But a blight has struck us.
American manhood is decaying.
We are going morally at a terrifying rate.
We have foes at home more deadly and destructive than our European enemies.
Davenport has shown that one in every hundred men is mentally defective, insane, epileptic, habitually criminal, or feeble-minded.
Recent military examinations have brought out most appalling facts.
Major Orr, a medical officer of the regular army, tells us that two to three out of every four applicants for the army are rejected as physically unfit.
Draft examinations show more than half our young men unfit for military training.
The examinations of the Life Extension Institute show only one man in a hundred wholly free from disease and physically fit. (more…)
The 1954 Christmas episode of “The Liberace Show.” The episode contains him mostly playing the piano with a handful of singing moments. There is more clips and episodes at the Moving Image Archive.
The wonderful work of archivists have preserved far more material than we usually see. Our goal here is to unearth and present some of the stuff we never saw in school.
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YONKERS, N. Y., July 3. (AP) – Walter Moravsky, 15-year-old Yonkers schoolboy with eight months’ Navy service and an honorable discharge is worried now. He’s afraid he won’t be promoted in school.
The wonderful work of archivists have preserved far more material than we usually see. Our goal here is to unearth and present some of the stuff we never saw in school.