Turning Hearts: Oliver Guy Johnson--Part Three

Early Married Life and the Army Years

At Christmas time I got up enough courage to give my sweetheart a ring and we set the date for April of 1917. I also applied for and was granted a permit to graze ten head of cattle in Logan Canyon. This was also the year I registered for the Army Draft in the first part of April, because the U. S. had entered the World War I.

I was married on April 25, 1917, to the most wonderful girl in the world, Vilate Nyman from North Logan. Her parents were Carl and Albertina Nyman, Mormon pioneers. I had worked with her brothers on the threshing machine. We were married in the Logan Temple by Willard Young, a son of Brigham Young. I didn’t sleep much the night before and I was up early and hitched the horse to the buggy. I then went to North Logan and got my sweetheart and took her to the Temple. I tied the horse in a lot where the hospital now stands. [The hospital was on the northeast corner of the intersection of 200 North and 300 East.]

We went to Salt Lake City on our honeymoon and moved in with my folks. In July my name was drawn for the draft and I was called for my physical exam which I passed.

I got notice in August to be ready to leave for the army on October 3, 1917. I left home the night of the 3rd and got on a troop train at Cache Junction and went to Camp Lewis, Washington. I was at Camp Lewis for about six weeks and then I volunteered to go to Camp Kearny, California. There I was put in the 145 Field Artillery which was made up of National Guard boys from Utah and I was with a lot of boys I knew from Logan. I had my wife come down and live in San Diego and I would be able to get a pass on weekends and stay in town with her. We rented a small apartment. My wife got a job in a grocery store and that helped her pass the time away. I soldiered in that camp from November 1917 to August 1918, when we were ordered to France. We went by train from Camp Kearny to New York and left New York in a convoy of seventeen troop ships. We were on the water twelve days and then landed at Liverpool, England. We stayed in a rest camp called Knotty Ash a few days and then went by train to Southampton. We went across the English Channel in the night to LaHarve, France. I stayed on deck all night and sat with my back against the smoke stack to keep warm. We wore life preservers for we were in danger of submarines. Nobody could light, so this was pretty hard on the boys that smoked. When day light came we were in LaHarve. We went from one camp to another until we came to a large Army camp called DeSauge. The day we marched into this camp was the hardest day I had ever put in. We marched all day with our full packs. There were a lot of the boys that had to drop out. We lived in brick barracks but the flu hit us and we moved outside in the pup tents. I got the flu and was taken to the hospital for five days. Then I had to leave to make room for some of the other boys. I got over it and went back to my pup tent. We did some final training and were issued our combat equipment and were under orders to be ready to go to the front. Then November 11 came and the war was over.

Now the next question was when will we go home. We finally got orders to move to a smaller camp. It was cold and wet and we had snow. We went to another camp with nothing to do but try to keep warm when we learned this was by Bordeaux and we were to ship out from there. So the night before Christmas we loaded on the ship then we had to wait for high tide to sail out. In the morning we were out in the Bay of Biscay and it was rough and in the afternoon I was so sick I had to stay in my bunk. I was sick for about five days and then the sea was calm and I could go on deck and sit in the sun. We were on ship twelve days and when we got in New York Harbor it was zero weather, but the Statue of Liberty sure looked good.

We stayed in Camp Merritt for a few days. I went to Coney Island one night with my buddy, Walter Barrett, and I met my nephew, Carl Baker Nyman, who was stationed in that camp and he asked me to tell his mother that he is all right. This I did when I got back home.

We left New York by train and came direct to Logan. When we got home all the people had masks on for the flu was at its worst. My wife, Vilate, was in bed with flu at her mother’s home in North Logan, but this I didn’t know until I got home.

We marched from the Depot in Logan to the College, up Center Street via the Boulevard to the college and the people were lined up on both sides of the street to greet us. It was a few days before I could get a pass to go see my wife who was still in bed with the flu, but was recovering. Then I got a pass to go down and see Mother and Father.

We were discharged on January 23, 1919. The boys that were not from Logan marched down to the depot and boarded a train for home. My commander ask me if I would carry his grip to the station and when I said yes, he gave me the first discharge in the company and told me I could go and meet him at the station which I did. I was able to say good bye to all the boys, many of them I have never seen since. I was home again.

In the spring of 1919, I took my wife in a covered wagon to Blue Creek and she stayed with me for the summer and helped me with the work. I fenced some of the farm. She drove the team on the wagon and I would toss out the posts. She helped me haul water and she also harrowed with four head of horses. She would ride a horse behind the harrow and drive the four head.

In 1920, I bought a home on Main Street (537 North Main Street, Logan, Utah) where our first son, Nyman Oliver, was born. He was named after his mother’s maiden name.