VALDOSTA — Private John Guy Coppage of Hahira had entered military service a few months earlier in July 1918.

His brother, Private Joe B. Coppage, had entered the service in December 1917. Joe went overseas in June with Company M, 325th Infantry, 82nd Division.

Now, at the end of September, John Guy was heading “over there” to fight the Germans in the Great War. John Guy was attached to the Coast Artillery Corps.

He was on a ship with several other South Georgia boys going to war.

The British Royal Navy had requisitioned the Otranto, an armed merchant cruiser, in 1914. The Brits used the ship primarily to seek German ships at the start of a war that had embroiled nations around the world.

The Otranto was being used by early 1918 to transport troops from overseas.

By 1917, the war had tapped into American hometowns. President Woodrow Wilson had sent young men overseas to help the Allies of Britain, France, Russia and Italy against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.

And, as the popular song “Over There” proclaimed, the “Yanks are coming.” They came from the big cities and the small towns such as Valdosta and Nashville, Ga., and Hahira. 

As the Otranto carried John Guy Coppage and others from South Georgia, the ship encountered a storm. Another troopship rammed the Otranto off the Isle of Islay. 

Four-hundred-and-seventy people were killed aboard the Otranto.

“That disaster off of the coast of Scotland, took the lives of 25 Berrien County men in one day,” according to an earlier article in The Valdosta Daily Times. “No other county in Georgia suffered so great a loss of life during World War I.”

The loss led to Nashville, Ga., ordering the first “Spirit of the American Doughboy” memorial statue. Berrien County residents ordered the statue of the American doughboy soldier before it had been manufactured, according to the E.M. Viquesney Doughboy Database. The statue lists the names of those 25 men lost.

It does not name John Guy Coppage of Hahira but he died, too, Oct. 6, 1918, in the Otranto disaster.

Six days later, Joe Coppage was killed by a machine gun bullet in the Argonne Forest. 

Less than a month later, World War I would end.

 

Armistice Day

Nov. 11, 1918.

They gathered in the streets. They thanked God. They wept. They rejoiced. They prayed for loved ones still overseas.

They remembered the loved ones who would not be coming home.

“When victory or Armistice Day finally came, the frenzied celebration that followed will never be forgotten; a wild feeling of frantic happiness spread through the land with lightning rapidity,” according to “History of Lowndes County: 1825-1941,” a book by the General James Jackson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

“People wept and cried with joyous acclaim. Strangers hugged and kissed each other on public streets; horns blew and bells rang out the glad tidings. Never was there such a joyous occasion in all the history of our country. What a colossal achievement.”

One-hundred years ago, on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918, World War I ended.

The war wouldn’t officially end until the Treaty of Versailles was signed a year later but hostilities concluded Nov. 11, 1918 — the armistice.

Armistice Day became Veterans Day — a day to honor American veterans.

Valdosta-Lowndes County played its part in World War I, known as the Great War, and even the “war to end all wars.”

A dozen pages of double columns in the Lowndes County history book list the names of officers and enlisted men from the Valdosta area who served during World War.

Additional pages list more than 150 Lowndes County sailors and soldiers who died in World War I.

Some died like John Guy Coppage in awful accidents such as the HMS Otranto. Some died like Joe Coppage, shot and killed in combat. 

Many died from disease and illness, said Donald O. Davis, Lowndes County Historical Society director.

A Valdosta resident would save many other military members and people from illness. 

 

The Great Flu

As millions died in the war, influenza – the flu – killed millions of people worldwide and hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The 1918-19 flu pandemic killed more people worldwide than were killed in World War I. It killed more people than the Black Death of the bubonic plague in the 1300s. It is considered the most devastating epidemic in recorded human history, killing as many as 40 million people.

Meanwhile, Frank Bird saved lives. 

Dr. Frank Bird, a Valdosta physician, operated a Valdosta hospital in the first half of the 20th century in Downtown Valdosta. The building neighbors the Historical Society Museum. The Society acquired the former hospital in 2016.

Tony Smith of Cartersville, who lost a grandmother to the flu pandemic, provided the museum with a story of Dr. Bird and the Great Flu epidemic several years ago.

As Bird was returning home from the war by ship, many troops got the flu, according to Smith’s account, which was published in a 2005 edition of the Historical Society newsletter.

“Dr. Bird observed that most of the officers died and most of the enlisted men lived. The enlisted men got no cool fresh air, no cold compresses and no cold drinks, so that their fever was not artificially reduced.”

Bird used the observation to treat patients upon his return to Valdosta. His Valdosta patients were kept under blankets so as to maintain a high fever.

“Other Valdosta doctors said he was crazy and inhumane, but their patients (who got fresh air and cold compresses) died, while Dr. Bird’s patients lived,” Smith notes. “Then other doctors copied Dr. Bird and said that he was brilliant.”

Rozzie Bird, Dr. Bird’s granddaughter, donated his World War I uniform to the Lowndes County Historical Society several years ago. A complete World War I uniform is considered a rare acquisition, especially to find a pair of the trousers, which ballooned or puffed to the sides at the thigh.

It is one of several pieces in the Lowndes County Historical Society World War I collection.

 

A significant collection

Amy Brown is in charge of items such as Bird’s World War I uniform at the Historical Society Museum.

She oversees textiles at the museum — everything from flags to cocktail dresses to formal wear and uniforms that have been donated or acquired by the museum.

Online, she has prepared and continues preparing virtual tours of photos and information about various pieces in the Historical Society collection. Under the Collections header on valdostamuseum.com, there is a Textiles category which then has a Military header and one for World War I.

There, visitors can find photos and information regarding Bird’s uniform and his life as well as information about the World War I uniforms and experiences of other Lowndes County soldiers.

— Staten Felma Moore’s “razzle dazzle” helmet is on display. The helmet is a doughboy helmet painted green, a dark color and red in what looks like an abstract painting of jigsaw puzzle pieces. The color and pattern are believed to be an early form of camouflage, Brown said.

Moore “entered the army on June 23,1918, and was attached to the 489th Motor Truck Company as an ambulance driver in France,” according to the Lowndes County Historical Society. “He returned home to the Valdosta area in 1918 and worked as a farmer. Staten Felma Moore married Tressie Mae Copeland in 1922 and they had nine children.”

— Visitors can view the World War I Marine blouse of and French honors bestowed upon Claude G. Godwin.

“Claude Godwin, a Valdosta native, was in the 2nd Marine Division attached to the 6th Regiment of the 64th Marine Guard during WWI,” according to the Historical Society. “He fought heroically as a gunner and rifleman during the Battle of Belleau Woods. He was severely wounded by shrapnel and gas while under heavy fire.

“He survived these wounds and was awarded a fourragere by the French for heroism. While he was stationed in France, he kept a diary. Though his son, Dr. Claude Godwin, has possession of the original diary, he allowed the museum to transcribe and retain a copy and to photograph the original front of this small diary.”

Most of these items are also physically on display inside the museum located on Central Avenue.

A few years ago, when a World War I Commission representative visited the Lowndes County Historical Society Museum, he deemed its World War I items as a “significant collection,” said Donald O. Davis, museum director.

“During 2016, the museum had a visit from Dr. Lamar Veatch who was researching for the Georgia WWI Commission,” according to a 2017 Historical Society newsletter article. “Dr. Veatch is a retired Georgia State librarian. Now as a Georgia WWI Commission associate he is diligently gathering information on Georgia WWI soldiers, especially casualties, and Georgia events. He understood special items in our collection and made note to us concerning them.

“Our museum has been recognized by the Georgia World War I Centennial Commission with the following description on their website, ‘This museum contains a rare collection of WWI artifacts and displays …”

Among the collection is information and an item, developed by a Valdosta resident, that had a significant impact on the war.

 

Trench Shotgun

“The trench shotgun is America’s greatest contribution to the war,” according to an Oct. 26, 1918, article in the El Paso Herald Post.

“An improvement on the short barrel gun that did yeoman service in the Bad Lands; Germans fear shotguns more than all Allied weapons of warfare; hit hand grenades in air,” a headline boasted.

The trench shotgun was a short-barreled, modified version of the Winchester 1897 pump shotgun used by American Expeditionary Forces during the war, according to Historical Society information.

“Credited with saving Paris from the onslaught of the German army in June 1918, the weapon was an important factor in winning the war,” according to the Historical Society.

William G. Eager of Valdosta proposed the idea.

A consulting engineer and vice president of Valdosta Lighting Company, Eager suggested the use of a modified shotgun to the U.S. Army in September 1917.

Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing approved the engineering report on the trench shotgun.

The New York Sun broke the story April 23, 1918, of American troops using the trench shotgun. Many articles credited its engineering to Eager.

“The 12-gauge pump gun holds six shells which can be rapidly fired,” according to the Historical Society.

It could fire 50 cartridges a minute, according to the El Paso article.

“These shells contained three-and-a-half grams of smokeless powder with nine pellets of 00 buckshot in each,” according to the Historical Society. “The gun was very effective in stopping troops attacking Allied positions within 75 yards and in ambushing the enemy patrols at night.”

 

Snapshots of a war

Few soldiers had a personal camera during World War I.

Capt. Jefferson Lamar Newbern Sr. was one exception.

Newbern would become head coach of the Valdosta Wildcats for two years, 1919 and 1920; he began Valdosta First Federal, Davis said.

Overseas, during the war, he took numerous photos of fellow soldiers and situations. The Historical Society has an album of Newbern’s war-time pictures.

The photos mostly reveal soldiers in moments of relaxation or preparation.

One photo shows a Red Cross ambulance, written in cursive across the bottom of the photo: “Bringing in the ‘gassed’ patients.”

Another photo reveals the soldiers’ gallows humor. As they load ordnance into an artillery piece, a cursive caption notes: “Another ‘peace offering’ for Fritzie.”

Davis said the album is a rare collection that illustrates the story of World War I on a personal level.

 

War to end all wars

Perhaps, Newbern hoped to show future generations what war looked like.

At the time, the staggering deaths and casualties, the colossal scale of war being waged by numerous countries on multiple continents led many to believe it would be the last war.

The war to end all wars.

The Treaty of Versailles officially ended the war but it left too many loose ends. It left too many issues unresolved and imposed harsh penalties on the nations that capitulated.

“This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years,” French Marshall Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Allied Commander during World War I, said upon seeing the final draft of the Treaty of Versailles.

The words proved prescient.

More than the descriptions of a “wild feeling of frantic happiness” written in the Lowndes County history book.

It should be noted, too, that the chapter on the war is simply titled “The World War.” There is no Roman numeral I affixed to the war’s name.

Because the book was published in 1941 — as battles already raged again in Europe and in the months prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

 One world war was finished but its ramifications had set the stage for a second world war.