Photo of the Month

November, 2003

WORLD WAR I MONUMENT AT BERWICK

IN MEMORIAM

Erected by the Moses Van Campen Chapter

Daughters of the American Revolution

An article from The Morning Press reported that on November 11, 1923, Armistice Day, which we now called Veterans’ Day, a crowd of thousands filled the streets of Berwick for the unveiling ceremony of the World War I monument in front of Berwick City Hall on Market Street. The Moses Van Campen Chapter of the Daughter of the American Revolution spearheaded the campaign to have the monument erected. The bronze image of a charging American infantryman with a bayonet fixed to his rifle, stands atop a block of granite. The monument cost $2,000; the D.A.R. women along with other contributors provided the funds for its erection.

The memorial inscription on the bronze table reads: DEDICATED TO ALL MEN OF BERWICK AND VICINITY WHO FOUGHT IN THE WORLD WAR – TO THOSE WHO FOUGHT AND LIVED, AND THOSE WHO FOUGHT AND DIED, TO THOSE WHO GAVE MUCH, AND THOSE WHO GAVE ALL. Two women, Blanche Vought and Hazel Hess, representing two Berwick families who lost their sons, read the names of the forty-two soldiers who died. Not all of these individuals lived in Berwick; some were from parts of Columbia County north of the Susquehanna River with the exception of Bloomsburg and the townships of Scott, Montour, and Hemlock. They were the young men who had marched off to war with a contingent of recruits from Berwick.

In the dedication address given by Mrs. John Brown Hess, Pennsylvania State regent of the D.A.R., she reminded the audience that this event provides "an opportunity to offer to their surviving families our most sincere and heart felt sympathy in their great loss." In addition the speaker declared: "We should all make it our utmost endeavor to perform every duty to our country which our citizenship implies, and particularly we should, both men and women, try to inform ourselves on all public questions and thus be able to perform those civic duties intelligently and well. It is only by so doing that we shall do all within our power to make assurance doubly sure that these noble youths who sacrificed their lives for their country, shall not have died in vain."