“And those boys! What an inspiring thrilling sight they made as they marched up that old Main Street, youths in years, but veterans of war. There was no mistaking the change in their souls that the hell fires of war had wrought, gold service stripes of overseas rating and wound stripes on the majority of uniforms telling the story. And among the vast hundreds of thousands there was not a soul so dead that it was not awakened to a frenzy of cheers as the gallant heroes swung up Main Street.” —Buffalo Times, April 1, 1919

April 1, 1919, was the date of one of Buffalo’s largest victory parades, marking the end of the World War. At 9:30 that morning, troop trains arrived in Buffalo from Camp Upton, carrying about 1,500 troops of the 106th Field Artillery and 108th Infantry of the National Guard. At their arrival, a salute of 100 bombs started their 10am march, which proceeded along Main Street from the Lehigh Valley railroad station to North Street, where the 106th turned east to the Masten Avenue Armory and the 108th turned west to the Connecticut Street Armory. In this photograph, taken by W. H. Brandel, the troops march—wounded troops are in automobiles—along Main Street at Genesee Street, the Buffalo Savings Bank visible in the foreground. A Buffalo Times account called the street, lined with 250,000 spectators, “a lane of cheering, crying, and sobbing people, and under a canopy of colors and flags, such as the city has never seen before.” For these Buffalo boys, at the conclusion of one of history’s most brutal and pointless wars, the ravages of poison gas, smashes of bursting shrapnel, clips of machine gun bullets, and nights in the shell holes could momentarily be forgotten.

Image courtesy of The Buffalo History Museum. Used by permission.