my graduation and my Aunts told me that he was delighted with my reports for the Junior and Senior year.
Grandpa came down to see me at Camp Sevier just before I went overseas
in the early spring of 1918. I do not know how he knew I was due to go, over with
the advanced detachment, he must have just decided to come down to see me,
for he could not have had any information about our going. He told my aunts he
did not expect to see me again. He must have known that modern warfare at that
time was far more terrible even than the Civil War in which he fought. In the
providence of God I was sent back to the U. S. and Ianded in New York Harbor on
board the "Mongolia" on Labor Day 1918. The man who took my place in Battery
B was killed with my boots on in the St. Miehl drive shortly after I had reached
North Carolina, I had ,lust about an hour's notice that I was to be returned to the
states to be assigned as an instructor in artillery fire control. In my hurry I
overlooked in my packing a pair of very serviceable trench boots I had never
worn. He has killed by shell fire the first day he was in combat.
I think Grandpa felt things deeply even those he did not seem to find it easy to say much as to how he felt. It was a good bit of trouble at his age to come down to see me and I will always be grateful for his visit.
Grandpa never happier than when he would be surrounded by his children and grandchildren. We lived together quietly during the winters I was there. This was before I left to go to Westminster and Davidson. During the summers first one and then the other of his children came to visit with their families. I have many Happy memories of those visits. Of course Papa and our family did not get back until I was nearly through Davidson, but most of the others came for visits short or long. Aunt Fan was not married until 1905, so she and Aunt Annie Lardner with whom she made her home came nearly every summer with Aunt Annie. Aunt Annie was Grandma Moore's sister, Annie Gibbon, who married Richard Lardner, a cousin of the Gibbons. She lived on the corner of College and 7th St, in Charlotte, She helped Grandpa in many was since she had lost her husband and had no children. How well I do remember the crates of fine pineapples Dan McCarty, later to become, Uncle Dan, would send her. Uncle Dan at that time was raising pineapples as well oranges. These were choice ones of course and I have never seen or eaten any sweeter or finer flavored. After Aunt Fan and Uncle Dan were married, she came up nearly every year and most of the time she spent at least two months at Grandpa's. As the cousins, beginning with Anna Lardner, and young Dan came along, Aunt Fan began to spend most of the time as I remember at All Healing Springs just west of Taylorsville,