Celebrating Peace on Thanksgiving Day
These images of a menu booklet and postcard of Thomas Somers (at the far left) with two fellow officers are in the Thomas Somers Letters, 1917-1918, circa 1970. Somers was a Milwaukee native who was drafted into the Army near the end of World War I. He was stationed at Camp Greenleaf in Georgia and was still training there when Armistice was reached on November 11, 1918. He was discharged in December.
Included in the booklet is a quote by Abraham Lincoln from his second inaugural address given just before the end of the American Civil War.
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with a firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right - let us finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds, and for him who has faced battle and for his widow and orphan, and obtain a just and a lasting peace with ourselves and with all nations.
The booklet is one that celebrates the war’s end and gives thanks for peace. Somers and the other officers at Greenleaf enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving Day feast with all the trimmings and commenced in what was an accepted after-dinner habit of the time, smoking cigars and cigarettes.
The image on the front of the menu has the name H. H. Stratton, Chattanooga, Tenn. They printed postcards and other souvenirs especially related to the military.
UWM Mss 197, box 1, folders 9 & 14