Thursday, February 8, 1945
Our Army and Navy Boys
Sergeant Ira Lee Jeffries, son of Mr. and Mrs. M. F. Jeffries, of Marlinton, was one of the 511 prisoners freed in the American and Philippine Commando raid on the Japanese prison camp at Cabanatuan in Eastern Luzon last Thursday. He had been reported missing since the fall of Bataan nearly three years ago. He was serving in the Army Tank Corps. His parents had received four prisoner cards from him. They were unaware of the location of the camp.
Harry R. Cochran, of Marlinton, son of Mr. and Mrs. Harry R. Cochran, is a member of the 800th Port Company of the United States Army Transportation Corps. These men have helped unload war supplies which decided the battle of Normandy. Now at a vital Belgian port, these men supervise thousands of civilians in unloading war supplies in general to supply the armies now invading Germany.
Private Buford Doyle is in a hospital in England for treatment of wounds received in action.
Staff Sergeant Thomas E. Pritchard has recently been awarded an Oak Leaf Cluster to his Air Medal for “courage, coolness and skill” while participating in bombing attacks against military and industrial targets in the Reich and enemy installations in the path of the Allied Armies in Western Europe. Sergeant Pritchard, 19, is the radio operator-gunner of an Eighth Air Force B-17 Flying Fortress in the 385th Bombardment Group. He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. C. M. Pritchard, of Dunmore.
Mrs. Jake Sharp has received word that her son, Corporal Esco C. Johnson, of the Marines has landed safely at his station somewhere in the Pacific.
Private First Class Wesley Doyle is fighting with the 7th army in France.
Minnehaha Hotel Burns
Early Sunday morning, the big hotel building at Minnehaha Springs burned down with all its contents.
The caretakers barely escaped. It is not known how the fire started. The loss of the big building with its nice furnishings and equipment of a big summer camp for boys is very heavy; partially covered by insurance.
The property is owned by the Doctors Jarrett, of Richwood and Charleston, and Edgell Dean, of Richwood. They purchased it about a year ago and last summer held their first summer camp for boys.
The hotel building was 123 x 32, two stories high with about 24 bedrooms.
It was built more than thirty years ago as a summer resort hotel.
FIELD NOTES
During the few clear evenings since Christmas, I am sure you have paid some notice to the dazzling star in the Western sky. This star is the planet Venus, and it has been the evening star since late summer. By October, it could be noticed the star was growing larger and setting a little later each evening. By the last of January, it was not setting until after ten o’clock.The reference book says Venus will continue to grow brighter until March 10. After that it will grow dimmer, until the middle of April, when it will disappear from the evening sky. A little later it will appear as the morning star, rising a little before the sun. It will reach its greatest brilliancy about May 21, and continue to be the morning star until about the first of February, 1946.
Like the earth, Venus travels around the sun, but she is a much faster stepper than our own staid good old earth.
Editorial
I read in the papers of a new antibiotic that may prove as great as penicillin. They call it streptomycin, and it is a product of the mold-like matter which gives newly plowed earth its distinctive smell. In test tubes, this new drug has destroyed the germs of tuberculosis, leprosy and rabbit fever, tularemia. It is expected that within a year, there will be enough of this new drug for a thorough try out on people. It was an old saying in these mountains when I was a youngster, that the smell of newly plowed ground was known to have cured consumption. When I read about the new antibiotic which comes from the mold-like substance, which gives new turned earth its smell, destroying the bacilli of tuberculosis, I recalled the old saying….
Taking a look in the old book, “Primitive Physics, An Easy Natural Manner of Curing Most Diseases,” by the late John Wesley, M. A. London, June 11, 1484, on page 56, I found. “Every morning cut up a little turf of fresh earth, and lying down, breathe into the hole for a quarter of an hour. I have known a deep consumption cured thus…”
The passions have greater influence on health than most people are aware of. All violent and sudden passions dispose to, or actually throw people into acute diseases. The slow and lasting passions, such as grief and hopeless love, bring on chronical diseases…
Under the Golden Rule, and because they were not safe but extremely dangerous, Dr. Wesley omitted (along with antimony) the four Herculean medicines: opium, the bark, the steel and most of the preparations of quick silver…
Instead, he recommends such remedies as air, water, milk whey, honey, treacle, salt, vinegar and common herbs.
As for “the bark” and “steel,” I had to consult authority for their meaning. The bark is none other than cinchona bark from which quinine is now made; steel is tincture of iron; quick silver is mercury; antimony is arsenic.
BIRTH
Born to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Arbogast, of Boyer, a daughter, name Bonnie Louella.
DEATH
S. B. Wallace, aged 65 years, died at his home in Marlinton on Tuesday morning, February 6, 1945, after a long illness. On Thursday afternoon, the funeral will be held from the residence by his pastor, Rev. J. C. Wool. Interment in the family plot in Mt. View Cemetery.
Mr. Wallace was a leading business man of Pocahontas County. Forty-two years ago, he came to Marlinton to engage in the retail drug business. Soon he branched out in the wholesale drug business and established the firm of S. B. Wallace & Company…