The Great War: May 24, 2017

An article on the front page of the Hudson Evening Register for May 24, 1917, announced: "A tremendous campaign throughout Columbia county to get recruits for the "F" company of Hudson is about to be launched." An article on the back page of the paper presented an argument for why young men should volunteer now instead of waiting to be drafted.

If there are depleted ranks in the "F" company of Hudson after the Federal military census is taken on June 5, no man in the first quota drafted for military duty from Columbia county will be assigned to the Hudson unit of the Tenth regiment.

The foregoing information, coming from reliable sources, was obtained to-day by the Register. The National Guard is still strictly a volunteer unit, it was pointed out, and the men who will be drafted from Columbia county will be sent to federal concentration camps. There will be no opportunity to pick one's regiment, it would seem from present indications. To the contrary, the individual will be assigned to a contingent where he is most fitted.

Much significance can be attached to this information. It infers that a young man drafted from Hudson might be sent to a concentration camp in the south with men whom he had never seen or heard before.

Therefore, it appears, the man who is holding back, thinking that if he is drafted he will eventually be placed in the Hudson company, is laboring under a wrong impression.

There is but a faint possibility of the enactment of a law which would send Columbia county men to fill up the depleted ranks of company F, it was intimated to-day.

Young men, there are now many vacancies in the "F" company. Why not join it now VOLUNTARILY and when you go out to fight to help sustain the integrity of Old Glory, and battle for a noble and just cause, you will be shoulder to shoulder with a Hudson boy?

COPYRIGHT 2017 CAROLE OSTERINK