This information is offered FREE and taken from http://www.okgenweb.net/~okcaddo/ If you have arrived here using a pay site please know that this information has been donated by volunteers in a joint effort to provide FREE genealogy material online. ================================================== Caddo County Oklahoma - WW I submitted by C.C.G.S. volunteer email ccgs73005@yahoo.com *************************************************** The Anadarko Tribune November 28, 1918 ANOTHER SOLDIER DIES Guss Cannon, Whose Mother Lives in Anadarko, Dies of Wounds Received in Action in France The sad word reached Mrs. S.E.V. Cannon, 115 East Oklahoma avenue, Monday, of the death of her son, Guss Cannon, in France, October 17, 1918, from wounds received in action. The information was official, coming from Washington. He entered the military service in January last from the state of Montana, where he had been working. The deceased was a member of Co. C, 318 Field Battalion, American Expeditionary Force. It would appear that he was one of the boys whose route pointed to France very soon after his entrance into military life. His death will be a source of grief to his mother, who is 66 years of age, and to the three sisters and two brothers who survive him; but the heroism of that death will modify, to some extent, the enormity of that grief, let us hope. We are informed that the mother is the beneficiary of the ten-thousand dollar insurance policy which the fallen son had taken through the government in her name, and that she will draw on it at the rate of fifty dollars a month until its exhaustion, which will not have been reached until the lapse of sixteen and two-thirds years. The mother, we learn, is in need of this boon, and none will regard it as an extravagant compensation on the part of the government for the loss of the hero son for whose life and public service she is entitled to the credit that was conceded the Spartan mother of old. ----------------- The Anadarko Tribune February 6, 1919 PVT. GUS CANNON Mrs. Sarah E.V. Cannon of Anadarko has concluded, since receiving definite information concerning the disposal of the remains of her son, Pvt. Gus Cannon, who died October 17, 1918, in one of the admirable hospitals at Rouen, France, and which were buried in St. Sever cemetery, to notify our government that she prefers that they be permitted to rest there for all time. She takes this view, because she believes that there they will continue undisturbed, while, on the other hand, she expects not to live very many years, and if her son's remains were to be sent back here to her it would only be a little while that she could be sure of their receiving permanent attention. The concluding paragraph of a letter recently received from W.R Castle, jr., Bureau of Communication, American Red Cross, reads: "There is a growing sentiment that the bodies of all these brave men should be gathered in a field of honor in France - a fine memorial for all time of the part America played in the war. If you feel that you want your dead to lie in this sacred ground, we hope that you will communicate your wishes to the Office of the Quartermaster General, Cemeteral Branch, War Department, Washington, D.C." DESCRIPTION OF ST. SEVER'S CEMETERY, ROUEN The Tribune believes that, besides Mrs. Cannon, there are hundreds of its readers in Caddo county and elsewhere, now that the subject is uppermost, who will be disposed to thank us for affording them the opportunity to read this description of St. Sever's cemetery. It can scarcely be that any wife, mother, sister, brother, sweetheart or lover or any other relative or friend of a soldier who fell over there can be callous in the matter of learning the exact nature of the eternal resting ground that is offered to those Americans who fell for the liberty of all mankind. But to the description of St. Sever's cemetery: (it should be borne in mind that there are other cemeteries over there devoted to this same patriotic object): October 18, 1918 - Today I visited the cemetery where the Americans are buried. It is a most lovely and peaceful spot, situated on a high plateau above the city of Rouen and the valley of the Seine, and surrounded by beautiful forest covered mountains. It is a part of the city cemetery of St. Sever, as this section is called. Passng through the older part of the cemetery where both Roman Catholic and Protestants are buried, and their graves marked with beautiful monuments, we come to the newer part where rest thousands of English and other allied dead. The crosses stand row on row; some of the temporary wooden crosses have been already replaced by monuments of marble. Everywhere is beautiful fresh green grass and all the graves are covered with blooming flowers, chiefly asters, marigolds, chrysanthemums and sweet alyssum. On further we come to a still newer section where the grass has not yet been planted, but the whole section is one vast flower garden and the air is heavy with the perfume of flowers. White and yellow and purple are the prevailing colors just now, and the whole ground is covered between the well laid out roads. The ground of the cemetery is dry and gravelly and this is carefully overlaid with about a foot of rich garden loam. The whole grading and planting is done by a wonderful organization of young British women who made this care of the cemeteries their special work. They are working there all day long and have produced wonderful results. The American officers and enlisted men have a special section by themselves and that is as carefully cared for as the British section. I have never seen more reverent care in the conduct of funerals. The strange thing over here seems to be that men and women do not become hardened to suffering and death as one might suppose, but that they become more and more tender as the years go by. The graves of all except the Jewish boys are marked with a cross, bearing the name, rank and cause and place of death. Very careful records are kept in the books of the cemetery, each grave being numbered. It is said that the American government expects to remove to America after the war all the bodies of the American dead, but I think that if the friends could see these beautiful cemeteries, they would wish to have the boys sleep here with their comrades in the land where they fought so splendidly and died so bravely. Faithfully yours, Arthur B. Rudd American Red Cross Chaplain