Sometime before his fourth birthday, Henry's parents moved to the "old Miller place" nearby, on land owned by Eb's mother. After Eb had been elected county Register of Deeds (before 5 September 1898), the family rented houses in Greeneville, the county seat -- first a small frame house at 218 Unaka Street (still standing in 1988), and then another frame house at 313 North Main Street owned by the Doughty family. The North Main house was flanked by the Willis Doughty home toward town on the left and the George Doughty home on the right. Henry remembers brick­burning on site for construction of the George Doughty home.

As we noted earlier, Eb began to buy land about this time near Brown's Bridge on Moon Creek, and he moved his family by the end of 1903 to the old Frank Snapp log house which stood on the west side of the creek about a half-mile from the river. Between early and mid-1905, they moved to the old Brown house across the creek from the Snapp cabin, and sometime in 1906 Eb bought the Ramsey place, a two-story frame house about a mile up the road from Brown's Bridge.

Early Years on the Nolichucky

Henry was the oldest of eight children which came to Eb and Nannie at intervals of about thirty months. By the time he was fourteen the family had moved six times. An infant brother died when Henry was ten years old, and his mother died when he was seventeen -- six months after the arrival of his youngest sister, her mother's namesake.   Henry spent much time at his grandfather Gid's farm on Hopson Branch while his parents were moving about and otherwise diverted by the business of birth and death.

The younger children had little or no personal memory of these tribulations, but hard times surely left a mark on the collective soul of the family. Nannie, the baby, spent many of her childhood days in the home of her Uncle Jim Sentelle, and Agnes stayed with her Uncle Ike (Isaac) Broyles. Both of them remember Macy and Lucy, the older sisters, tending to them as mothers. The older children learned to take care of themselves, and all of them early became acquainted with mortality and human frailty.

Perhaps these sad circumstances explain a stoicism remarkable among the children, a calm submission to the vicissitudes of life and a quiet appreciation of simple pleasures.

    I spent a lot of time over at my granddaddy's.    . . .   Over across the river, one of the worst things there was, was a Catholic.
    But when I was in the service, over in France, some of the nicest boys in the outfit were Catholic. I went to mass with them a few times.
    They were just as serious about their religion as anybody.

Early school days. Henry began his formal education in the modern Greeneville school at the northwest corner of College and Church Streets, two blocks from the Doughty house his father was renting on North Main. He remembers classes under Miss Edith McInturff in the corner room nearest the street intersection. Sometimes in walking about the room, Miss Edith would spot Gideon Sentelle driving a buggy into town down Church Street. "Look, look," she would call to Henry. "Who is that coming there?"

      And Henry would reply, "Why, that's my granddaddy!"

Henry Sentelle (ca. 1898)

Education in human foibles. In any event, Henry spent much time with Gid and Rachel, and he was no doubt influenced somewhat by his youthful uncles still living at home. He remembers Jim chasing a calf across the fields while the family looked on from the porch of the old homeplace. Long after a sober person would have given up the chase, Jim continued running, sweating, and yelling. The calf, for its part, whenever Jim closed in, would suddenly balk and gallop lightly away. Unsuspecting, Gid watched his son from the porch shade, and wondered aloud why Jim persisted in an effort so obviously futile. "Jim cain't catch thot thare calf," he said. And then he said again, as if agreeing with his own earlier assessment, "Now, Jim cain't catch thot thare calf."

Human foibles were seldom, if ever, open to discussion in the Sentelle home, and Jim's erratic behavior was in turn a source of humor, concern, or puzzlement according to the private insights of each observer. So it was in later years when Jim, by then a county magistrate, walked the city streets and held to a straight line by keeping one foot on the pavement and one on the sidewalk -- and no one commented on such a peculiar habit.

One time sister Macy and her two girls were riding with Uncle Jim. "He ran up one bank and then up the other. He ran Jack Bowman out of the road, and then cussed him out for hogging the road. Jack never said a word back to him. Why, I never thought about him being drunk."

"Macy, didn't you think he was acting funny?"

"Well, I wondered why Jack Bowman didn't say anything back to him. He cussed Jack good. And Jack never said nothing. Uncle Jim ran Jack off the road and then got out and cussed him."

Hunting and trapping. Henry and the neighborhood boys set rabbit traps in the fields behind the old Snapp house.   These were narrow boxes with a trap door which slammed shut when an animal disturbed the piece of apple or other bait left inside. Fred Haney had a habit of thrusting his hand blindly into the sprung traps. One time Fred plunged his hand into a trap and a cat grabbed him. Fred screamed and desperately swung his arm, together with sprung trap and clawing cat, in wide vertical circles. "That big tomcat 'bout ate him up before he could get loose."

Henry remembered Fred, and he always looked before he put his hand in a rabbit trap -- or anywhere else.

They hunted rabbits with shotguns in the fields over behind Tusculum, and often allowed game to scamper away unharmed so as to conserve the one or two shells each carried. "If you didn't have anything to hunt with, you might as well go home. As long as you didn't shoot, you could hunt all day."

Going to town. Trips to Greeneville were an all-day affair for the family traveling by horse and wagon.   They started before daylight and returned after dark over the five miles by the Tusculum road and then across Frank Creek to Moon Creek and home.

There was a place to hitch horses down below the jail on Water (College) Street. "But when there was a circus in town, you sometimes had to hitch your horses 'way out on Tusculum Boulevard." This would have been Bradford's field, where Greeneville High School sits today. There were a lot of fields thereabouts where wagon teams could be tethered for the day.

Eb sometimes took Henry to eat at the Smith House on the northwest corner of Depot and Irish Streets where you could eat all you wanted for twenty-five cents.

In later years there was an open-air theater on Main Street between Depot and Church, and Henry would ride a horse into town with Brainard Doty to see a movie for twenty-five cents. "Used to be a dime."

Farming. Henry has pointed out to us fields on both sides of the Nolichucky from the mouth of Camp Creek to Ripley Island where he plowed, hauled hay, or tended tobacco. When he was in his midteens he carried water for road work crews by bucket and on foot for seventy-five cents a day.

Preparatory school. As the children grew older, they attended Doak School at Tusculum, locally known as Weed Hill Academy. From there they spent three or four years in the Preparatory Department at Tusculum College. About the summer of 1915, Henry registered in the high school department at Maryville College south of Knoxville where he went to classes for two years and played football. "Somebody said you could go over there cheap," he explained. He was going to Maryville when the call came for volunteers for the Army.

Military Service

At Camp Sevier

The young men were somewhat proud of their status as early volunteers since their enlistment was the result of neither accident or chance.²  

In training. For about a month in the fall of 1917 Henry was stationed at Camp Gordon in Chamblee, Georgia, and he was then moved to Camp John Sevier between Greenville and Spartanburg in South Carolina. This was the training camp of the 30th Division, called the "Old Hickory."

He was assigned to the Machine Gun Company of the 117th Infantry Regiment, but he had the early good fortune to transfer to the regimental Sanitary or Medical Detachment.³   The officers of the unit came from Athens, Tennessee, for the most part, where cousin Sam Broyles had been in school at the time he enlisted. Sam had a hand in getting several of his friends changed over to the Medical Detachment, among them Bob Hice, Earnest Carter, and Joe Johnson.

Henry tells us that his unit, "had the easiest time of anyone in the war.   Sometimes we didn't get up for reveille. A dentist in the outfit had two assistants. I never saw them do anything but take out his instruments and polish them."

The men at Camp Sevier lived in pyramidal tents formed in rows along company and battery streets. Each tent had a tiny inverted-funnel Sibley stove which kept the quarters fairly comfortable when it was given plenty of wood and constant attention.⁴   Once in a while the fire got out of a stove, and sometimes the entire tent would go up in flames. Henry shared one of these tents with Hice, Carter, and Johnson.

The food was plain, but it was good and plentiful. Henry recalls fondly the satisfaction of his first meal after the hungry soldiers had arrived at Camp Sevier when they were served generous helpings of corn­bread and beans covered with syrup.

The 30th Division was situated on a plateau about three miles southeast of Paris Mountain. The area was mostly virgin pine forest, and troops cleared the ground as additional space was needed.

The trees were fifty feet or so from the ground to the first branch. One day when the men were out grubbing to clear more land, some of them climbed the pine trees to see who could go highest.

Joe Johnson climbed higher than anyone else. But when the champion reached the ground, he slumped over on the spot.   "They brought in an ambulance and carried him out. When they found out he had spinal meningitis, the entire outfit -- about fifty men -- was placed in quarantine for maybe two months. We kept getting reports on Joe from the field hospital.   They wrote him off for dead several times."⁵  

The major and the mule. The recruits in the Medical Detachment trained in the handling of mules for supply transport, a skill in which Henry was already well grounded from his life on a farm.

        They would say, go curry these mules. The boys had never been around mules before. They didn't know that you have to start gently around the head and neck and work back a little bit at a time. They would take a broom on a long stick and touch it to the mule's hip. Why, that scared the mule. And when you get an animal scared like that, why you don't know what he'll do.

    We had a Major [William C. O.] Driscoll over the company. When you went in to see the major and saluted, he'd say, "Aw, I don't care for any of that shit!"
            And the next time when you didn't salute, he'd get all over you.

        One day the major said to load up a mule with some trunks of medical supplies. I says, now that mule won't stand for that. He's not used to that kind of treatment, and he's scared. But the major said we'd handle him.   He put six or seven men on the mule to hold him still while they strapped the trunks to his back.
            I began moving away when I saw what they were doing. A mule will run over you if he gets scared.
            When the bottles began rattling, the mule took off. Nobody could hold him. He bucked, and ran, and rolled over. He tore the trunks to pieces. They had bottles and pills scattered as far as from here to the barn.
    They were lucky somebody didn't get killed.

    The major never said a word. He didn't go overseas with us. We got all new officers when we went overseas.

George H. Wilhoit from Greene County came by to visit at Camp Sevier. He would cry like a baby, and say, "Henry, I'm never coming back." In a few months, George would die in the initial Hindenburg offensive, 29 September 1918.

Crossing the ocean. The regiment left Camp Sevier by train on 2-3 May 1918, and arrived at Camp Mills, Long Island, two days later.

They departed New York City on 11 May. The Medical Detachment sailed with the Headquarters, Supply, and Machine Gun Companies in the Orduna, a converted British cattle transport. Other units of the 117th were berthed on the Northumberland and Anslem.⁶  

These vessels were joined off Halifax by the Elpenor and Canada to form a convoy for the Atlantic crossing. At sea, the transports were picked up by a fleet of American destroyers which "circled and played about the convoy like pointer dogs in a wheat field," darting in and out among the ships, "rising on the tips of the waves and then plunging down almost out of sight, only to appear again on a succeeding wave."⁷  

This was the first ocean voyage for most of the soldiers, and many of them suffered from nausea and other symptoms of motion sickness. The strange British food was a source of protest. Mutton seems to have been served at least once every day. Henry remembers picking rabbit hair out of a serving of jackrabbit.

In heavy seas, the Orduna groaned and cracked like a barn in a gale, but the British sailors seemed to take no notice of all the ship noises, and after awhile the Americans came to accept them too.

The men slept on deck whenever they could to avoid the stale air and close quarters below. No lights were permitted after dark for fear of German submarines. Even cigarettes were banned once the sun had set.

The convoy reached the Mersey Estuary on the west coast of England on 23 May.   The regiment was transported by train from Liverpool to Folkestone on the Channel coast.

Training in France. Henry could hear reports of artillery on the front from Dover. The shellfire looked like distant flashes of lightning on the horizon.

The company crossed to Calais on 24 May and three days later they traveled by train to the Eperleques Training Area west of St. Omer. The capacity of the boxcars in which they rode was posted "Hommes 40, Chevaux 8," and both men and horses were crowded into the car that Henry rode to the training area.

The soldiers left the train at Audruicq, and were billeted at Nortbecourt⁸   for the duration of their training at Eperleques.   They lived in civilian homes which were typically joined directly to a barn. "We slept in the barn loft," says Henry. "Them French people thought the Germans would clean us up."

The American Second Army Corps, ultimately consisting of the 27th and 30th Divisions, was under British command -- part of the British Third Army. Arrangements called for British supply and equipment of these units. All equipment except for the clothing which each man wore was exchanged for British equipment at Calais.⁹   "We had our own medical supplies and medical staff, but the British furnished all of our equipment," Henry recalls. "We would have been an ambulance company on the American front, but we were on the British front. The British were all horse-drawn."

In the Canal Sector. On 2 July, in extreme heat and with heavy packs, the division began a three-day march eastward to a sector of the front dominated by the Canal d'Ypres. The troops reached Rubrouck on the second day of march, and the following day -- July Fourth -- they marched into Belgium, the first American division to enter that kingdom.

As they crossed the border, the men could plainly see artillery flashes and hear the pounding of heavy guns. "They're not really fighting," the soldiers were told. "They're just celebrating the 4th of July." Then a shell exploded among them killing several men, and the troops knew better.

        An immense amount of trench and wire construction was done. Complete plans and orders were issued for the occupation of the East and West Poperinghe Systems by the 30th Division . . . The Division received training as individuals, then by platoons, and lastly by entire battalions.

        On August 17th, 1918, the Division took over the entire sector occupied by the 33rd British Division . . . This was known as the Canal Sector and extended from the southern outskirts of Ypres to the vicinity of Voormezeele, a distance of 2,400 meters.¹⁰  

Henry sometimes passed through the village of Poperinghe which had been entirely vacated by its civilian population. He remembers the eerie silence broken occasionally by a shell passing overhead, and the craters in the streets large enough to hold a house. The roads were hidden from enemy observation by miles of screen.

Airplanes could be heard low overhead during the night hours, often seeming to barely clear the tree tops. Sometimes a plane would be caught in searchlight beams, and its pilot performed spectacular acrobatic maneuvers escape before the gunners got his range.

No lights were ever permitted after sundown, for even the glow of a cigarette might invite enemy bombs or artillery fire.

Henry recalls the German observation balloons, seven or eight in a row, anchored behind Kemmel Hill in the Canal Sector. Sometimes these aerial posts were hit by ground fire or attacked by aircraft, and the German observers scrambled out of the gondolas to parachute to safety.   Often they drew gunfire on the way down.

The 117th Regiment was not on the front when the division took the city of Voormezeele, Lankhof Farm, and Lock No. 8 on the canal in its first combat action on 31 August and 1 September 1918.¹¹   The captured territory was about one square mile in area.

On 5 September the entire division had been relieved by the British 35th Division.   The Americans boarded a train near Proven and arrived in the St. Pol area just north of Amiens on 7 September. The 117th Headquarters Company was stationed at Siracourt, west of St. Pol.¹²   The time here was spent in training to remedy the weaknesses revealed during the recent combat in the Canal Sector.

On 17 September, the men moved to the Puchevillers Area north of Amiens, and the division was transferred to the British Fourth Army for action on the Somme front between Cambrai and St. Quentin.

The troops moved by bus to the Tincourt Area on 22 September, and on the night of 23-24 September the division relieved the 1st Australian Division in the Nauroy Sector, directly west of Bellicourt.¹³  

Assault on the Hindenburg Line. This sector faced the formidable German defense system known to history as the Hindenburg Line.

        The enemy line opposite the Thirtieth Division was one of great strength, combining skillful use of natural terrain features with every artificial aid in the shape of heavy belts of wire, dug-outs, machine gun emplacements, and a most complete trench system. The Germans' greatest advantage was a natural feature, the St. Quentin Canal, which was the key to the whole system and which, in large measure, accounted for the impregnability of the Hindenburg System, here known to the Germans as the "Siegfried Line."
    Cambrai and St. Quentin are connected by a continuous waterway. From Cambrai to Le Catelet this waterway is known as the Canal de l'Escaut; from Le Catelet to Bellicourt, as the Canal Souterrain; from Riqueval [just south of Bellicourt] to St. Quentin, as the Canal de St. Quentin. From a point about 1200 yards west of Le Catelet to Riqueval, the waterway runs under-ground and is here generally known as the Bellicourt Tunnel, the construction of which is attributed to Napoleon.

. . . Along the line of the tunnel, communicating trenches led back into the tunnel exits, while the entire front line system was provided with concrete dugouts at fifty to sixty yard intervals. . . . few sectors were so well adapted for machine gun defense . . . ¹⁴  

The German lines were bombarded with gas shells the evening of 26-27 September, followed the next morning by high explosive and shrapnel which continued without letup until the assault.

On that Sunday morning, 29 September, when the tank and infantry attack was launched behind a rolling artillery barrage, Henry Sentelle was about three miles behind the front. "We were scared to death," he says. "It sounded like the end of the world." Aid stations and ambulance posts were rushed forward as the troops began to advance. The regimental band unit assisted the Medical Detachment in removal of the wounded from the battlefield.

The 117th Infantry during the morning crossed over the southern end of the Bellicourt Tunnel behind the 120th and cut to the south and south­east along the St. Quentin Canal to protect the division's right flank. By noon, the regiment had made contact with the British 46th Division on its right and the 120th Infantry Regiment near Nauroy on its left.¹⁵   The Australian 5th Division passed through the 30th and relieved most of the "Old Hickory" units during the night of 29-30 September.¹⁶  

During the two nights of rest after this first offensive, Earnest Carter gave his watch to Henry. "I'll never get back," he said. The second time to the front, two days later, Pvt. Earnest C. Carter died in action, 7 October 1918.

The mighty Hindenburg Line had been ruptured, and the Germans began a determined struggle to close the gap. The 30th Division moved back to the Herbecourt and Le Mesnil Areas expecting to have some time for rest and refitting. But the desperate Germans launched numerous counterattacks throwing some twenty divisions, many of them from reserve, against twelve British divisions.   The "Old Hickory" troops were ordered back to the front on 4 October after only two nights of rest.¹⁷  

"It made your hair stand up," says Henry. "You could see a line of Germans all across the horizon, sunlight glinting off their bayonets. And you knew they were coming for you."

The men were always carried to the front in lorries, but they returned to the rear areas on foot. There were few stragglers on the return, however, even though they were walking. "You could travel any­where on one of those lorries, but you had to catch them on a hill when they were going slow when you wanted to get on or off."

The division relieved the 2nd Australian Division the night of 5-6 October on a line from Beaurevoir on the left to Montbrehain. The 117th took the front on the left with the 118th on its right.   The British 25th Division flanked the Americans on the left, and the British 6th was south of Montbrehain on the right.

The fighting was continuous. On 8 October, the 117th Regiment advanced to a position beyond Prémont. During the afternoon, British cavalry charged through the infantry ranks in an attempt to break the enemy line. "They had some of the finest horses you'll ever see,"   Henry remembers. "They came back, one man leading five or six horses. The Germans cut them all to pieces."

Early one morning, he found bodies scattered about the place where he had spent the night. The battle had been so heavy that there had been no time to remove the dead of the previous day from the battlefield.

Henry often carried medical supplies or mail to the front with a wagon and a driver.   "They sent me up there with the mail for the regiment. We were right there on the front. Shells were falling all around us. They wouldn't come out of the bunker for the supplies, and I wouldn't leave the wagon. They called out and said just leave the supplies there. I said, 'Somebody's got to sign for these.' There were shells all round. After awhile some feller came out and signed the paper."

On the return trip that day the mule balked at taking a certain route, and Henry allowed the animal to pick its own way. Shortly after­ward, the intended road came under a saturation shelling. The instincts of the mule and Henry's farm-wise deference to those instincts saved their lives.

The Germans were now fighting a rearguard action. On 9 October the 117th Regiment had pushed by noon to the western outskirts of Busigny. The 119th then passed through and captured the village. The 117th remained in Busigny during 10-11 October.

The division was relieved the night of 11-12 October by the American 27th and remained in reserve until the push across La Selle River.

The bombardment of German positions east of La Selle was carried out on 16 October, and the 117th with the 118th on its left attacked in the vicinity of Molain on the following morning. The regiment swept across La Selle and entrenched well beyond the river. Most of the regiment was held in reserve on 18 October.

The following day, the "Old Hickory" Division came out of the line.

The division was then withdrawn to the Heilly training Area, near Amiens, for replacements and a well-earned rest . . .   Two weeks later, when orders for an immediate return to the front were expected daily, the armistice with Germany was signed November 11th, 1918. The fighting being over, the II American Corps was released from the British E. F. with which it had been associated since its arrival in France, and transferred to the American E. F. in the Le Mans area, where the first units of the 30th Division arrived . . . on November 21st.¹⁸  

With the fighting halted, the troops were allowed to go on liberty. Bob Hice was picked for leave, but since he had no money for travel he gave his pass to Henry.

About twelve of the soldiers accompanied by a sergeant crossed the Channel to London. They were billeted in the royal stables near Bucking­ham Palace "as guests of the king," and Henry took in most of the tourist attractions. He visited the Tower, and St. Paul's Cathedral. Trafalgar Square was nearby, and the men ate several of their meals there. Henry also saw Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament which were close at hand.

Their sergeant told them that the division had been transferred to Le Mans in their absence, and because of the change they returned through Paris. The men arrived in the City of Light late at night and hired a large open car at $2.00 each to see the sights. They drove under the Eiffel Tower and around Notre Dame.   Henry also visited the Musée du Louvre, and regretted that he did not have time to visit Versailles as well. They never slept or went to bed during their short stopover in Paris.

There was little to do after the fighting had ended. The weather was wet and cold. Many of the men were taken ill with flu and pneumonia as a result of continuing exposure and inactivity. There were several casualties from sickness after the armistice.

Cousin Sam Broyles, however, was sergeant of the officers' mess for Headquarters Company, and with his usual dexterity he arranged an assignment for Henry to his detail.

Henry spent the time with dish-washing chores and cleanup duties, and welcomed the opportunity to keep warm and get plenty of hot food.

The mess which served a dozen or so officers was located in a private residence occupied by a solitary old man.

The Frenchman frequently supplied wine for the meals from his own cellar, and the officers of the Headquarters Company ate and drank well. Henry remembers that they danced on the table tops on occasion, and afterwards in the wee hours they had to feel along the wall for support as they left. The mess crew then cleaned up and made preparations to serve breakfast in a few hours.

Return and discharge. The unit departed St. Nazaire on the Pocahontas   on 18 March and arrived 28 March in Charleston, South Carolina.¹⁹  

Henry was discharged at Camp Jackson on 8 April 1919.²⁰   His papers noted among other things that he had been in the Ypres Canal Sector 17 August-4 September 1918, and the Somme Offensive 29 September-2 October, 4- 11 October, 16-19 October 1918. He received the Victory Medal with Battle Clamp. His physical condition when discharged was "Very good." His character, "Excellent." Under comments and remarks we read, "No AWOL or absence," and "Services honest and Faithful Soldier . . ."

The veterans of the 117th Medical Detachment held annual reunions in Athens, Tennessee, and these became routine social events every March for many years.

When Henry returned to Camp Sevier in the fall of 1980, a concrete arsenal remained as the only visible evidence of the old National Guard training site from which the 117th Infantry had departed for New York and Europe some sixty-three years earlier.

He questioned three young men walking along the street beside the railroad where military warehouses once stood. "Yes," one of them said. "This is where Camp Sevier was -- all around here."

The men talked among themselves.

"World War I! Was that where they had Pearl Harbor?"

"No!   Pearl Harbor was in Korea."

"Shut up, fool!" said the third man. "I was in Korea, and Pearl Harbor was before that!"

After the War

Charlie White, the barber, tells us that Eb Sentelle kept a small safe at home. Unknown to Eb, Jack wrote the manufacturer and got the combination.

Eb kept a bottle of whiskey in the safe where he thought it would be secure. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but over a period of time the liquid seemed to diminish ever so gradually. Eb never raised a question about the evaporating whiskey since he never really doubted its security. But Charlie White assures us that Jack's father in his private moments puzzled over the matter at length.

The party-line telephone system along the creek operated by a code of long and short rings generated by the caller. Two long rings meant the call was for the Brown home. The Sentelle ring was two shorts and a long. And up the road, old J. R. Doty answered to two longs and a short. Of course, once a call went through, everyone else on the line picked up their phone to listen in. That was the beauty of a party-line, you could keep up with all the news in the community.   Jack would often ring up Mr. Doty, and when the old man answered, Jack kept quiet. He liked to hear Mr. Doty cuss, Henry explained. "Hello. Hello!" Mr. Doty would answer. Then in exasperation, "Who the hell is calling J. R. Doty?" he would yell. But Jack kept silent.

And then one day, instead of his usual yelling, Mr. Doty said in a matter-of-fact tone, "Ah, Jack! I caught you this time!"

"Oh, no, Mr. Doty!" Jack blurted out. "It wasn't me, Mr. Doty!" he said.

But J. R. Doty never had any more anonymous phone calls.

Jack finished college at Lincoln Memorial University in 1928,²¹   the same year Henry graduated from Milligan, and he took a teaching job at Chestnut Ridge, across the river from his home.

On Wednesday, 6 December 1928, his heart finally gave out. After school that day, Jack took a car trip to Limestone with friends.²²   They returned by the new Andrew Johnson highway, and he was talking about a Christmas treat for his students as the party crossed the high railroad overpass east of Afton about nine o'clock. Those were his last words. He collapsed behind the steering wheel, and the woman beside him stopped the car as it ran against an embankment.

Jack died before they reached a hospital. The cause of death was reported as heart disease, and the newspaper said he had been "subject to heart trouble."

Jack was laid to rest beside his mother in the Greenwood cemetery.

A trip to Washington. The three Sentelle brothers made a trip to the national capital one summer in the early twenties. They made the tour over the gravel roads and chert highways of the time in a Model-T Ford automobile with no more than fifty dollars among them. Henry had twenty-five dollars, and Bill and Jack each had about ten dollars in cash.

They carried bedding with them, and slept on the ground wherever they happened to be at the time.

The car brakes burned out in Georgetown, and three hours were required for a mechanic to repair them. In the meantime, the boys found a country-type boarding house close to the river where they could eat all they wanted for a quarter each. They were allowed to sleep there on the lawn that night.

They visited Echo Park and the National Zoological Park. "Bill said he wanted to see some wild animals. . . . They had a bird cage there big as this house."

They spent a half-day in the Smithsonian, and watched the printing of money at the Bureau of Engraving. "Bill said, 'It looks like somebody would steal that money.'"

They heard a concert by the Marine Band and saw the Lincoln Memorial.

Jack was scared by the elevator in the Washington Monument so much so that he went down the stairs rather than ride on the return.

Except for taxicabs, traffic was light in the District. They had no trouble finding space to park.

They drove around a circle in front of the White House.     

       I saw the gate to the White House was open, so I drove on in. Waved to the guards as we went by. Said "'Lo, Cap'n!"
    We hadn't gone but just a little ways when there were maybe twenty men all around the car. They wanted to know what we were doing there. I said that we were out to see what we could see. . . . The gate was open.
    They said, "Aw, you're not allowed in here at all."
    I says, "Well, we're already here!"
    They said, "Well, now, you'll have to get out."

Before beginning the trip home, the gate-crashers went back to the Georgetown boarding house and ate a good, heavy meal.

They visited Mount Vernon, and saw the place where Chesterfield cigarettes were made.   In Richmond, Virginia, they saw the state capitol, and crossed the James River on the 9th Street Bridge at the foot of the hill.

They went through Charlotte in North Carolina. At Davidson, they spent a night with Uncle Mark who was Dean of Students at the college. They spent a night also with Cousin Alva at Waynesville, then went on through Murphy, and Andrews, and back into Tennessee through Copper Hill and Ducktown.

Henry Sentelle (ca. 1925)

Milligan College

Life was moving along for Henry in the summer of 1924. Lucy, Macy, and Agnes had all married, and their oldest brother was still unattached at age thirty. On Middle Creek where the main road intersects with a road leading to Hopson Branch and the Gid Sentelle farm, an Odd Fellows chapter rented out the ground floor of their lodge hall for a general store. Henry was keeping this store that summer when Dale Alexander and Bert Waddell came to see him.

They were students at Milligan College, a small liberal arts school near Johnson City supported by the Christian Church. With them was another student, Francis "Dirty Foot" Derthick whose father was president of the college. Henry could play football for Milligan and go to college on an athletic assistance work program, they said. He would have to pay expenses for his senior year only.

And so it was that Henry entered upon his higher education as a right tackle for the Milligan Buffalos.

Initiation. In an early photograph, we see Henry and Anne Little with classmates Mary Sue Jaynes²³   and Brodie Thompson. "I got acquaint­ed with Brodie Thompson," says Henry.   "He knew everybody. They all looked up to Brodie."

The "M" Club was established at Milligan in Henry's first year, and the initiations began at a rigorous pitch and grew worse. We have been told by a veteran of these affairs that for all his fighting in Marine amphibious landings in World War II he never went through anything so rough as the "M" Club initiation.

Henry tells us that Rondy Hyder was blindfolded and told to jump into a swimming pool.   The pool was empty. Hyder jumped and was seriously injured. "I don't think he ever got over it," says Henry.

Henry was with Brodie Thompson when they came to initiate him.      

   I said, "Brodie, don't let 'em hurt me. I don't feel a bit good."
    "Oh," he says, "I won't let 'em bother you."
    They said, "We've got 'a initiate him."
    Brodie said, "You can't have him."
    They stood around awhile, and said, "Well, we'll just take you!"
    They got ol' Brodie down and whipped him good.

Anne Little. Most of the travel from Greeneville to Johnson City was by train in 1924, and on the train sometime during that freshman year Henry met his future wife. Anne Little was with her older sister Elsie, and Carrie Peters, their mother's young half-sister. Anne and Carrie were freshmen at Milligan that year, and Elsie was attending the Normal School (East Tennessee State) in Johnson City.

Elsie was immediately interested in the men, but Anne discouraged her. "You don't want anything to do with them," she assured Elsie and Carrie. "Those are old football players." And she spoke in a way to imply that nothing could be worse than old football players.

Elsie remembered the incident well because the next time she saw Henry, perhaps that same day in Johnson City, "Well, sir! There was Anne hanging on his arm, just as pretty as you please!"

Anne stayed close to Henry from the beginning. We see in the yearbook for that first year a notation that, "She's fond of famous men, especially 'O. Henry.'"²⁴  

Anne was out of school the following year, but in 1927 she and Henry are pictured among the Courters' Club.²⁵      And in his senior year we find beside his name that ". . . All of the girls admire Henry, but he seems a 'Little' partial toward one particular 'Little' lady."²⁶  

Work assistance. Henry has shown us the basement of the old gym at Milligan (now gone) where he mopped and cleaned toilets for his keep as part of an athletic work assistance program.

Students were required, however, to pay their own expenses for their senior year, and when the time came, Henry was duly approached by school officials. He claimed hardship and poor circumstances. But the school persisted, and after some reflection Henry noted that he had an old mule which he used for tobacco farming.   "I guess I could sell the mule," he told them. We have never heard the outcome, although Anne later said many times that Henry never paid a penny to Milligan.

For any financial straits, he was known as a dapper dresser and never wanting for basic amenities in the college crowd. He completed his senior year at Milligan, and graduated in the commencement on Tuesday, 28 May 1928.²⁷   The yearbook for that year notes that Henry had been in the Pre-Med Club, the Latin Club, the Foreign Language Club, and Student Council each for one year. He played varsity football four years, of course. "This blonde giant of Greene County . . ."²⁸   played tackle and was "Never injured."²⁹   He was in the American Literary Society all four years, and president his senior year. He was also a four-year member of the infamous "M" Club, and president of this group during his final year at Milligan.³⁰   "Under the leadership of Henry Sentelle," we are assured, "this club has reached a standing which is admired by all."³¹  

Anne always insisted in later years that Henry could have done anything he wanted, but he would never push his opportunities. "He could have been most popular boy in the senior class," she has said with some disgust. "But he refused to vote for himself!" We note in the yearbook that "Henry won a close 2nd place in the race for popularity among Senior boys."³²   And in after years he never seemed to suffer any regrets for the decision to refuse to grab first place with his own vote.

¹Henry Lee Sentelle, Tennessee Delayed Certificate of Birth (File No. D-313703). Issued 27 April 1945 on affidavit of father and original Bible record.