TRANSCRIBED FROM THE BATESVILLE DAILY GUARD SEPTEMBER 4, 1917 P. 3
Seattle, Aug. 26, 1917.
Dear Father:
I have stopped work in the naval yard at Bremerton and will be back home to take examination for some branch of military service.
I don’t think I acted hastily as sooner or later I would be called in the drafted army.
The very thought of having to be drafted into service seems unpatriotic to me.
Before leaving the employ of the yard I went to Mr. Luxon, information clerk of the station. He told me that there was very little chance of registered men getting exempt unless they had some other reason than being in government service. The drafted men, so he said, can be replaced by men too old for service or boys too young. He gave me an honorable discharge, recommendations from the government and placed my name on the books to be permanently employed in the yards at any time I wished without reinstatement, after my term of service or after I had been exempted should I not pass the examination. The men who wait to be drafted simply get a discharge.
Should I fail to pass examination, and I think there is very little doubt but what I will be accepted, I having passed yard examinations three times with excellent ratings, I shall take your advice as to what to do, as there is not any thing to this “floating” around.
I shall come over the Canadian Pacific via Chicago and St. Louis.
Your son,
Tom McCaleb
NOTES: Thomas Loudon McCaleb was writing from Washington state to his father, Judge John Bell McCaleb. At the time he was working in a government naval yard. He was born in Evening Shade, Arkansas on February 20, 1896 and died in Carroll County Arkansas on March 5, 1949. He is buried in the Oaklawn Cemetery in Batesville, Arkansas. He registered for the military in Washington and later served during World War I.
TRANSCRIBED BY MIKE POLSTON
Seattle, Aug. 26, 1917.
Dear Father:
I have stopped work in the naval yard at Bremerton and will be back home to take examination for some branch of military service.
I don’t think I acted hastily as sooner or later I would be called in the drafted army.
The very thought of having to be drafted into service seems unpatriotic to me.
Before leaving the employ of the yard I went to Mr. Luxon, information clerk of the station. He told me that there was very little chance of registered men getting exempt unless they had some other reason than being in government service. The drafted men, so he said, can be replaced by men too old for service or boys too young. He gave me an honorable discharge, recommendations from the government and placed my name on the books to be permanently employed in the yards at any time I wished without reinstatement, after my term of service or after I had been exempted should I not pass the examination. The men who wait to be drafted simply get a discharge.
Should I fail to pass examination, and I think there is very little doubt but what I will be accepted, I having passed yard examinations three times with excellent ratings, I shall take your advice as to what to do, as there is not any thing to this “floating” around.
I shall come over the Canadian Pacific via Chicago and St. Louis.
Your son,
Tom McCaleb
NOTES: Thomas Loudon McCaleb was writing from Washington state to his father, Judge John Bell McCaleb. At the time he was working in a government naval yard. He was born in Evening Shade, Arkansas on February 20, 1896 and died in Carroll County Arkansas on March 5, 1949. He is buried in the Oaklawn Cemetery in Batesville, Arkansas. He registered for the military in Washington and later served during World War I.
TRANSCRIBED BY MIKE POLSTON