100 years ago in Spokane: Lumberjack’s request granted, and he will fight for British in Mesopotamia

John Cohen, 34, a Jewish lumberjack, went to the British military recruiting office in Spokane and asked to serve in the British army.

“Send me direct to the kaiser’s palace and give me a gun,” declared Cohen, who was born in England, but came to America as an infant. “I don’t care where you put me. I’ll start tonight, and I only wish I could be in England tomorrow. I’m a little off in sight, but I can fight all right yet.”

He said he was inspired to sign up when he read that the British had captured Jerusalem.

The British recruiters were happy to grant his wish. They declared him fit for service and were sending him to Montreal and, ultimately, Mesopotamia.

Cohen suggested that he be put into the medical corps, because he had “spent eight years in the hospitals, recovering from injuries and illness and then I worked as an orderly until I was able to go out and get smashed up again.”

He had a “flattened nose,” where a falling tree struck him, and a dent in his jaw, the result of another accident.

From the food beat: Spokane’s ice-cream manufacturers agreed to a ban on sherbets and “water-ices,” as part of a wartime food conservation drive.

The manufacture of sherbets, “requires three times as much sugar as does ice cream.”