Among the headstones in Rollinsford’s New Town Cemetery is an unusual grave marker. Featuring a photo of a rather serious-looking young World War I soldier, the flat square stone lists the battles in which he played a part. A handful of his wartime letters have survived and tell us something of his experiences in that conflict.
Cyril Vincent Finnegan, the young man in the photo, was born in 1895 in Rollinsford, where his father owned a shoe and clothing store on Front Street in the village. The family lived on Stevens Street and after his father’s death in 1903, they moved to Main Street where his mother took in washing. When the US entered World War I in 1917, Cyril was a clerk at a mill in Massachusetts but still listed his home address as Salmon Falls, NH.
22 year old Cyril enlisted in the US Army on July 21, 1917. Friends visited the new recruit in camp in Massachusetts and a snapshot (below) shows a smiling Cyril in front of his tent. By September, he was in France with a medical detachment of the 101st Infantry, part of the famed “Yankee Division.”
During the war, patriotic Americans supported the troops overseas by writing letters and sending parcels of food, clothing, and other items. Cyril and other family members belonged to the Rollinsford Grange and some of Cyril’s letters to his Grange friends have survived. In January 1918, Cyril sent his thanks for a package sent by the Grange:
I received the Grange Box recently and have written to Clara thanking the Grange for remembering me. It sure was a great Box and was very much appreciated by the fellows as well as myself.
Cyril’s letters were necessarily short on details about military action (soldiers’ letters home were censored) but he sought to provide reassurance to his friends:
You can imagine what it is to write a letter when you have a lot that you would like to say but can’t. Nevertheless I try and put a lot of words together just to let you know that I am well and in the best of health.
Despite his cheerfulness, a wistful tone sometimes crept in:
I have heard of Dan’s cider through several letters, and sometimes I can almost taste it. But we have to be content with French wine & beer. You know that the water over here is very poor and the natives use very little of it. When in France do as the French do so you can imagine the rest. Would have been glad to have been at Dover with you and the bunch because I know I would have had a good time.
Cyril even managed to write with good humor about the privations of life in the trenches:
Nov 7, 1918
Dear Kath, Your most welcomed letter was received this week and it sure hit the good old spot… if the inhabitants of my clothes and skin will keep quiet long enough I’ll endeavor to scribble you off a few lines. Am now waiting for the water to get boiling to take my first bath for 2 months. Have to put a stone or something on my underwear (when I take it off) so it won’t disappear… Bed bugs are heaven to the cooties and German bugs take it from me. A bath only gives them a drink because tomorrow at this time I’ll have just as many and perhaps more if my partly clean clothes have any in them. They are just like the women it is impossible to live with or without them…Tried to find your letter to answer a few of your questions but I must have used it for a more precious purpose as it has departed . . .
Four days after Cyril wrote this letter, World War I ended with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. But it would be several more months before he would return home. At the end of the year, he was in Germany with the 121st Machine Gun Battalion of the 32nd Division when he sent a German New Year’s post card to a friend back in Rollinsford:
Dear Jack,
Just a card from Germany for old times sake… This is a great country Jack but nothing like the good old U.S.A. Just got so we could talk to the frogs and now we get this stuff to listen to. I suppose the things at the Grange are in full swing again this winter and I hope I’ll be able to be with you all next year to enjoy myself. Wishing you and yours a Happy New Year.
Five months later Cyril got his wish. He arrived safely back in Boston on a troop ship in May 1919.
After the war, Cyril picked back up with his life. He married Hilda McClintock in 1921 and together they had four children. Cyril worked as an insurance agent in Dover and Portsmouth in the 1920s and 30s, and was later employed at the Navy Yard. He died at home in South Berwick in 1951 and was buried in the family plot in New Town Cemetery. We owe Cyril and the many other Rollinsford veterans, living and dead, a debt of gratitude for their service to our country.