Watching news from Ukraine I am reminded of an old Kirk Douglas movie, Spartacus. The real Spartacus was a former Roman soldier who deserted and was punished by enslavement. He was eventually sold as a gladiator. He escaped, and with other fugitives, began organizing a slave rebellion.

Rome, the most powerful nation on earth, sent three armies against the escaped slaves. Each one was defeated. A fourth expedition, consisting of 8 legions, was victorious, after betrayal by pirates who promised to evacuate the slave army by sea. Survivors of the final battle were crucified. The body of Spartacus was never found.

Though not historically accurate, in the movie the Romans give their captives a chance to save themselves. They offered to let the prisoners resume their lives in slavery if they identified Spartacus. After a moment of reflection, Spartacus stood to say “I am Spartacus” to save the others. Before he could speak, another man stood and said “I am Spartacus” to save his leader. More and more of the prisoners stood, echoing the call, thereby sealing their fate, since the Romans couldn’t tell who was who.

The reaction of Ukranians to Russian subjugation crystalized for me in the response of their leader, Volodimir Zelensky, to an offer of evacuation: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

He’s staying. The lady with chipped fingernail polish and an AK-47 is staying. The boxer, the beauty queen, they’re all staying. Against all odds, everyone is Spartacus. They may share that ancient gladiator’s fate. As I contemplated all this I was drawn to a time when the people of Marshall came together in a time of crisis.

In 1917 the local newspaper was filled with news of The Great War. Germany was blockading the British Isles by sinking without warning any ships bound there, trying to starve Britain into submission. The Lusitania, with over 100 American civilians killed, was collateral damage in that blockade, as was an English ocean liner, the Arabic. The Germans also invited Mexico into an alliance, offering to help them recover Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, if the United States entered the war.

When war came, Marshall responded. The News Messenger of Lyon County published the names of 160 who either volunteered for service in the 151st Field Artillery, Battery E, which was Marshall’s National Guard unit, volunteered for another assignment, or were drafted. Two nurses also volunteered: Myrtle Holo and Prudence Vergote. Four Marshall High School seniors enlisted before the end of the school year, something the paper discouraged.

Not to be outdone, The high school held mass meetings to encourage support for the war effort, and organized the Junior Red Cross, whose job it was to supply warm clothing and other needed supplies. Boys in shop made knitting needles, and 25 of them formed a knitting club. An hour per week of class time was devoted to Red Cross activities. A third grader kept herself busy making wash cloths.

There were scrap drives of all sorts. Another third grader, Rodney Chittenden, proudly contributed 20 cents earned from selling rags. Students and teachers bought $3,550 worth of Liberty Bonds, the equivalent of $66,097 today.

Our boys in Battery E were with the 4th American unit to Land in France, part of the Rainbow Division. Douglas MacArthur gave the unit its name, since it was made of National Guard units from 26 states and the District of Columbia, like a rainbow over the nation. Among it number were Dakota Indians from the Standing Rock Reservation, and the Harlaam Hellfighters, a black New York regiment that saw more continuous combat and suffered more casualties than any other U.S. unit in the war. Hellfighters were not allowed to march in the farewell parade going to France. Their commander was told black is not a color in the rainbow.

Upon arrival they took up position at Baccarat, known for its crystal, to finish training. There they lost George Benjamin, from Marshall, and Walter Buckley, of Delano. Both were killed when their cannon exploded, wounding three others. Such was the pressure to finish training and get to the front that the exercise continued while the dead and injured were attended to.

Within about a month the division took its place in the front lines. One of the participants reported that no one who went through the experience would forget the mud of Lorraine: as far as the eye could see, constantly being plowed up by shells and bombs.

All winter it snowed and rained, causing trenchfoot for those who spent days on end standing in trenches amid the ever deepening mess. As the war was nearing its end, the regimental diary recorded “Most everyone is sick . . . so many unburied dead men and horses . . . .”

The boys of Battery E were in the thick of it, defending a road in the center of an all-out German attack, and supporting the Marines of the 2nd Division who made the final breakthrough of the German lines, capturing the transportation hub of Sedan and ending the war 10 days later.

Along the way they were exposed to french frys, as they spelled it, a new food which they preferred to eat with eggs. One of the guys repaired a damaged player piano in a smashed French village, bringing smiles to the passing G.I.s and wounded with the jaunty tunes it played.

They captured German positions, finding man traps (think bear traps) the Germans set in no-man’s land for allied patrols. The officers founded a last man’s club with a bottle of wine, to be drunk to the memory of lost comrades by the last survivor. At the end, chasing the Germans to Sedan, the horses pulling the cannons dropped in their tracks from exhaustion and the men resorted to pulling them by hand.

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, (Nov. 11th, 1918, at 11 a.m.) an armistice was declared, ending the war. The 151st, 12 of their original 24 cannons destroyed, 2 men dead, the rest sick or dead on their feet, were too tired to celebrate. The regimental band played a bit, and that was that.

They returned to a hero’s welcome, of course. The town turned out for the funerals of Luther Snapp and Earl Jackson, two Marshall soldiers who were brought back from France in 1919. Others, lost to influenza, pnumonia and poison gas, presumably still lie under the poppies of Flander’s Field. Sgt. Joyce Kilmer, a member of the Rainbow Divison who was killed by a sniper, wrote a poem about an engagement with the Germans on the day Battery E was gassed, sending 7 men to the hospital. The poem is The Wood Called Rouge Bouquet.

You would think all of that would be enough service for one lifetime. The doughboys and doughgirls had other ideas. In 1919 the American Legion was formed, Marshall’s post named after Luther Irl Snapp, the first man from the big bend in the river, as Marshall was nicknamed, to fall. I always thought of the Legion as the club, where you could get a drink or good meal.

They had a sweet corn feed in August, and a dance now and again. But it was the Legionaires who came up with the idea for Legion Field, and bought the 21 acres as a gift to the town and school in 1929. Until then athletics took place at Liberty Park, and sometimes there was nowhere to play.

In the shared misery of trench warfare, they stayed. The little girls making wash cloths, little boys with their 20 cent contributions, older boys in their knitting club, stayed with them in spirit. When the town needed them after the war, they stayed.

Perhaps just a shadow of what the Ukranians are going through, but I like to think there is a little Spartacus in all of us.

— Steve Nefstead is a 1971 graduate of Marshall High School and now resides in Jordan, Minn.