Front Porches to Front Lines: One Small Town’s Mobilization of Men, Women, Manufacturing and Money during World War One

World War One and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic. Two events which will always define the 1910s, a decade which saw great political and social change; a long list of disasters and a realignment of the global stage, something which would help define many of the subsequent events of the twentieth century. When the United States declared war on Germany on April 2, 1917, it was just the first of two major calamities which would in someway impact just about every American man, woman and child during the latter half of the 1910s. The second of these wars, the Spanish Influenza of 1918, came right on the heels of the Great War’s conclusion on November 11, 1918 as many of the returning soldiers came home with the influenza virus, having caught it either in Europe or sometime during the journey home from France. Front Porches to Front Lines tells the story of how the citizens of one small New England town, came together to confront these two wars and in doing so became one of the most generous towns when it came to contributing to the war effort in the form of Liberty Loans, war gardens and war supplies as well as dozens of soldiers, Red Cross nurses and civilian workers, such as machinists.