The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1920-12-31
ELOQUENT WORDS OF EMINENT
DIVINE AT FUNERAL or MAU.
.. ny COUNTY HERO.
Would Have Us Return to the Spirit.
ual Elation That Characterized the
People Of America During the Great
Wa. tes
(Frof Fridays Daily Herald.)

The Herald, who died on the field OF
battle August 20, 1918, who was buried
here last Monday, DR.. James |. Vance
Of Nashville, who officiated, said:
We have come back home with our
hero to lay his body hurt to death by
honorable wounds to its final rest, to
place with loving hands in a soldiers
grave all that is mortal of one whose
brave and valiant and valorous spirit
went from the battlefield in France
to join the immortals. .. n'.t
There comes back to me at this
service a wintry day In February,
when | stood by Capt Frierson's grave
overseas We had left the shell-ruin-
ed city of scissors behind us, and
climbed the winding hill to what had
once been the little picturesque vii
lage of Juvigny, and then little past
it to the cemetery where slept some
hundreds of our soldier dead. Just in.
side the gate l came to a long row
of captains graves. The third was
his, and for his mother ! placed some
flowers there, and then gathered the
little groups of friends who had ac.
cOmpanied me for a prayer, in which
we thanked God for our young cap
tain, and prayed for those far away
whose hearts were there.
But there is loneliness about a
grave in foreign land. There is, to
be sure, beautiful sentiment in the
thought of having our soldiers mingle
their dust with the soil of France, the
country for whose protection they
fought and died. But there is per-
haps more beautiful sentiment in
the thought of having your body rest
in the soil of your own country. This
was the plan when our boys went off
to that awful war. Said one of our
generals when he reached France.
I'VE have come to help, and when we
return home we shall go empty hand
ed, save that we shall carry back
with us our dead 3D..
The heart clamors for a grave near
by, where love can minister to the last
resting place. 1t helps the wounded
heart to care for the grave, to lay a
flower for memory's sake, and ever and
again visit a spot which is loves
shrine. n,
when death inexorable has bereft us,
And all we can is done, and all is said,
What other only solace is there left us,
What comfort save the caring for our
dead?"
Captain Frierson seems himself to
have had this desire about his last
resting-p place. Here is a paragraph
from one of his last letters home: 81
have seen almost all France l have
been at the most famous resort in all
Europe. have seen many things
that people go thousands of miles to
see, and have been at the front.
have seen the German lines ablaze
for miles with our artillery. | have
seen airplanes fall from the Skies,
and many other wonderful things, but
Ia like sight of home a breath OF
America, if only for one hour And
then he added: There will be op,
portunities to return as an instructor,
but home | shall not see until the job
is finished"
I'D like sight Of home And so
we have brought his body home, to
lay it to it's rest yonder on the hill.
side. In sight of the scenes of his
close by the grave Of Lieu.
tenant Clarence Fry, one OF the dear.
est of his boyhood friends, and among
tlC pcOpiC Hc IOFcu UcSL.
In this service today do not want
to bring back the horrors OF the war.
| do not want to depress you by re.
calling the tense moods of those try.
ing months when. we said our heart
breaking farewells and waited, and
and sometimes feared to hear,
and sometimes had our worst fears
come true. Only God enabled us to
live through it all. 4ti SD
But | would to God could bring
back to my country the high ideals
of the war. Never was the nation
greater than in those days of splendid
We went in to help,
and our greatest contribution to the
allies was perhaps not the way we re-
their thin and hard-pressed
battle lines, but the hope we gave
them and the world of better day
a day when war would be forever be-
hind us.
1t is here that VIC have grievously
them. To them 1t seems
as though we had repudiated our own
standards. We fought with them dur
ing the war. and now during these
more difficult days of reconstruction