Lex Anteinternet: July 4, 1920. Remembrance and Forgetting

Lex Anteinternet: July 4, 1920. Remembrance and Forgetting:

July 4, 1920. Remembrance and Forgetting

On this day in 1920, the coal mining town of Hanna, Wyoming dedicated its memorial to its World War One Veterans.  

The monument before it was damaged.

An item about that appears in one of our companion blogs here:



Today In Wyoming's History: July 4: Today is Independence Day



1920  Veterans memorial to World War One veterans dedicated in Hanna, Wyoming.



The Hanna Museum's website has an article about the dedication here.



The monument is still present, and it looked like this 2012 when I photographed it.  However, since that time the actual plaque on the monument was stolen in 2015.  It was found damaged in a nearby ditch. The town was working to raise funds to repair the monument and buy a new plaque, which was apparently still the case at least as of 2019.

World War One Service Memorial, Hanna Wyoming

This is a memorial in Hanna Wyoming dedicated to all from the region who served in World War One.  Hanna is a very small town today, and the number of names on this memorial is evidence of the town once being significantly more substantially sized than it presently is.



The memorial is located on what was the Lincoln Highway at the time, but which is now a Carbon County Highway.  This was likely a central town location at the time the memorial was placed.

Hanna also is the location of the Carbon County Veterans Park which contains a substantial number of additional monuments.

I'd note that this entire item is nearly symbolic of where we are at, in some ways, as a nation today.  In 1920 the town, heavily made up of immigrants from Eastern Europe, proudly dedicated a memorial to its sons who had served in the recent war.  The Town had, at that time, barely recovered from two prior major disasters, the mine collapses at its Number One Mine. Those events had resulted in massive loss of life, and yet the town survived it.

The names of Hanna's men who served in World War One.

A century later its monument to its men who served in the Great War was damaged by would be thieves and the town is a mere shadow of its former self.



This is, of course, the second memorial I've written about this week that was damaged in acts that are acts of vandalism, not social justice.  The word "vandalism", of course, comes from the name of one of the Germanic tribes that invaded Rome in its late period who became famous for acts of destruction due to their ignorance.  The name has been used ever since for people who commit similar acts, the difference in our case is that our own failings have lead to the ignorance and the modern vandal is part of us, not an invading army from the north.



Even the monument to the huge loss of life at the Number One Mine bears a scar from a bullet.

It's pretty hard to be really optimistic on July 4, 2020.



On the same day, in the same region, Lewistown Montana endured a major flood.

Hanna Wyoming VFW Memorial Park

Hanna Wyoming, somewhat unusually for a small town, features a variety of memorials in different locations, including two different locations with war memorials. The other war memorial is featured just below, and is specific for World War One.  This memorial is an all war memorial.  It's additionally surprising as Hanna is a very small town.

The memorial features a M110 8in. howitzer, surplus form the Wyoming Army National Guard.  Carbon County Wyoming, where Hanna is located, was the situs of the Service Battery of the 3d Bn 49th FA, an 8in howitzer unit that was headquartered in Casper.

An unusual feature of this memorial is the helmeted rifle feature, symbolic of the battlefield method of marking the location of the dead.  The rifle, bayonet attached, is bayoneted to the ground with the soldier's helmet on the butt.  Here, in an oddity, the rifle used for the memorial is a World War Two era Japanese Ariska rifle, which was presumably used because it was available.

Here the markings on the Arisaka's receiver are visible.

By way of some added information, Mike Lewis, who viewed these photographs, informed me that the interesting cloud that appears in the last several photographs "is an altcumulus stqnding lenticular (ACSL)."  Additionally, the cloud type "is usually caused by moutain waves nad is an indicator of potentially bad turbulence."  For weather observers, because of the risk to flight, observation of this type of cloud requires mandatory recordation in a weather observer's log.  On the day I took these photographs, ground conditions were appalling, with winds gusting up to 60 mph on a regular basis.  Indeed, dust from a reclamation site is visible in the background.

World War One Service Memorial, Hanna Wyoming

This is a memorial in Hanna Wyoming dedicated to all from the region who served in World War One.  Hanna is a very small town today, and the number of names on this memorial is evidence of the town once being significantly more substantially sized than it presently is.

The memorial is located on what was the Lincoln Highway at the time, but which is now a Carbon County Highway.  This was likely a central town location at the time the memorial was placed.

Carbon County Miners' Memorial, Hanna Wyoming

This Miners' Memorial commemorates all Carbon County Wyoming miners who have lost their lives in the mines. This is one of two memorials to miners near Hanna which I am aware of.

Number One Mine Memorial, Hanna Wyoming.

 

A memorial to the men who lost their lives in the Number One Mine at Hanna, Wyoming.

The 1903 and 1908 Mine No. 1 explosions claimed 169 and 59 lives respectively, with the majority of the 59 killed in the 1908 disaster being men who were killed in an explosion that occurred after the first 1908 explosion.  The bodies of 201 men from the 1903 and 1908 disaster remain buried in the underground mine.