York Town Square

The Little Courthouse, a replica of the first York County Court House, stands on York’s Centre Square during World War I. The courthouse served as a center for war bond sales and promoted the bonds in a way that today might be considered politically incorrect. An effigy of Kaiser Wilhelm II is seen in the left foreground. For a small sum, donors could drive nails into the German leader’s head. The Little Courthouse stands today in a pet resort in Conewago Township: From war bonds to pets and people. Also of interest: Driver invades Jefferson’s quiet square.

The York Daily Record/Sunday News’ Christmas Day editorial (see below) touted some of York County’s long overlooked accomplishments during World War I.
The editorial touched on one of those achievements: the ability of the heavily German York County to rally for American involvement even though we were fighting against Germans. It was brother against brother… .

One resident learned that his two sons, fighting on the German side, had been killed in fighting. And another learned that his brother earned Kaiser Wilhelm’s Iron Cross for bravery.
Still, some contended that German-American communities couldn’t be trusted.
In my book, “In the thick of the fight,” I wrote that Mayor E.S. Hugentugler bristled at such an anti-American suggestion and set to work to position the community behind the war.
He banned anti-war meetings, organized anti-spy groups, assigned guard to county industrial plants and prosecuted distributors of anti-war literature.
At the same time, he called for York residents to back a loyalty pledge showing support for the war. Three-quarters of city men eligible to vote signed the pledge.
But its most public move, the community set up a wooden carving of the kaiser’s helmeted dome in York’s main square and put a 10-cent-a-nail price on it. Donors lifted a hammer with a read, white and blue handle to drive the spikes into the German emperor’s head. At one point, eight pouds of nails protruded from the wooden figure’s noggin.
“This is one of the many hammers in the land that is helping to nail kaiserism,” The York Dispatch reported.
The editorial follows:

A few years ago, nine men traveled to Flanders to visit the site where the Christmas Truce of 1914 began.
That year on Christmas Eve – three years before America’s involvement in World War I – shooting stopped on Belgian battlefields. And elsewhere, it was all quiet on the western front.
Christmas trees appeared above trenches. Carols floated across no-man’s land between enemy trenches, followed by the tentative steps of warring men, who laid down their arms and shared food, smokes and conversation.
Eighty-five years after this moment, those nine visitors dug trenches in the mud and lived for several days akin to soldiers in the Great War.
And before departing, they stabbed a wooden cross deep in the mud in honor of those who died there. They scooped the dirt back into the trenches. They went home.
Afew years ago, nine men traveled to Flanders to visit the site where the Christmas Truce of 1914 began.
That year on Christmas Eve – three years before America’s involvement in World War I – shooting stopped on Belgian battlefields. And elsewhere, it was all quiet on the western front.
Christmas trees appeared above trenches. Carols floated across no-man’s land between enemy trenches, followed by the tentative steps of warring men, who laid down their arms and shared food, smokes and conversation.
Eighty-five years after this moment, those nine visitors dug trenches in the mud and lived for several days akin to soldiers in the Great War.
And before departing, they stabbed a wooden cross deep in the mud in honor of those who died there. They scooped the dirt back into the trenches. They went home.
Penn State professor emeritus Stanley Weintraub told this wonderful story of the Christmas Truce of 1914 in his book “Silent Night.”
It spotlighted a time and place far different from this season of anxious people jostling in long lines for a slim chance at a Wii.
The story highlights a true Christmas moment with themes of authentic peace and goodwill. This moment focuses, as Christians believe, on the celebration of the birth of Jesus, when God became to earth to save mankind.
Peace and goodwill are much- diluted themes these days.
This Christmas-inspired pause in the Great War raises the hope that such a truce today can be more lasting in this uneasy world and in our often-unsettled hearts.
In 1914, the impromptu cease-fire lasted just hours. Through threats of courts martial and firing squads, edicts from governments and orders from generals shattered that moment.
Soccer games broke up, the last box of special rations was swapped and the men reluctantly left the friendly no man’s land to re-enter their filthy trenches.
Subsequent trench warfare killed hundreds of thousands, and that was before Americans entered the war.
Once in, American suffered devastating numbers of casualties.
Just in York County, about 200 men lost their lives in less two years.
A single shell killed Harry and John Withers, two sons of a York County family.
Sixteen-year-old Pvt. William A. Myers was killed in front-line fighting. One woman, Jeannette Zinn, died from pneumonia in Britain on her way to do YMCA war relief work in France.
Brother fought against brother as Pennsylvania-Dutch-speaking York countians battled German relatives in distant trenches.
After returning home, those nine visitors learned that local folks in Flanders field covered their cross of crude wood with preservative and anchored it in concrete.
“In season,” Stanley Weintraub wrote, “poppies flower beneath it.”
The Great War is remembered in military monuments throughout Europe.
The only memorial to the Christmas Truce of 1914 is that lone cross – its meaning as oft forgotten as a wooden manger in that faraway stable.
Christmas brings hope, as suggested by the Scots poet whose work closed “Silent Night”:
O ye who read this truthful rime
From Flanders, kneel and say:
God speed the time when every day
Shall be as Christmas Day.