When the 94th Military Police Company returned from Iraq recently, our Maine soldiers were met with an enthusiastic reception. When the Yankee Division returned from the battlefields of Europe after World War I, their reception was also an emotional one.

The war ended in November of 1918, but it wasn’t until the following spring that the soldiers began to return home. In April, area residents turned out in full force to celebrate the defeat of “the hordes of a mad emperor” and welcome back their own.

For many, celebration began at St. Patrick’s where the young men of the 101st entered as a unit and took their place at the front of the church. Following Mass, Monsignor McDonough told the worshipers that the soldiers’ safe return was cause for thanksgiving. “Every man who was in the service was under sentence of death,” he said. “Those who went across the seas were introduced into the death chamber itself.”

The monsignor talked of the transition the men would have to make from soldier to citizen. “There are terrible dangers in the wake of the upheaval that must follow such a war,” he warned.

“What remains now to be done is the work of plain men, who may rise to be leaders.”

Later, 1,500 soldiers marched along the cobblestone streets of Lewiston, beneath the white flowing Victory Arch on the North Bridge and the flagged street lamps of Auburn as four bands interspersed between the companies provided marching music.

Leading the parade were cars full of soldiers too wounded to march. Behind them were the ranks of olive drab and then the blue of the Navy. Veterans from the Spanish War followed, and a group of elderly Union Army veterans riding in automobiles brought up the rear. Measured beginning to end, the parade was nearly a mile long. Thousands of well-wishers from all over Androscoggin County watched what was a stirring, yet surprisingly solemn affair.

“It was the aftermath of war,” observed a journalist for the Lewiston Evening Journal. “Grimly impressive, earnest, business-like.”

Yet emotions ran high as family, friends and neighbors watched unit by unit march by. A small gray haired woman studied the faces intently as they passed.

“Oh My God!” she cried suddenly. “Jimmie!”

Jimmie, who had been overseas for a year, caught his mother’s eye and saluted her.

“Oh Jimmie,” she said again, smiling now. “My boy,” she explained proudly to those around her. “Don’t mind me. But doesn’t he look grand?”