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By Tim Ruzek

After more than a decade in Austin’s state park, the World War I cannon – believed to be a captured German weapon – was discarded at the city’s wastewater plant.

Soon after in 1942, however, the 105mm cannon was called back into action again for World War II but in a much different way.

Austin’s city council approved scrapping the 10,000-pound steel cannon for reuse in America’s war industry.

Given in 1926 as a “war trophy” to Austin’s Boy Scouts, the deteriorated cannon with wheels caved in was “going to once more play a part in a second world war,” the Austin Daily Herald wrote May 25, 1942.

World War II ended in 1945, and it’s not known how the cannon’s metal was repurposed.

Similar to many U.S. cities, Austin had requested a World War I memento. Locals specifically asked for a captured German cannon but – despite Austin being the first in its congressional district to ask – it did not get one for about six years.

Government officials said Austin’s request got “lost amid the mazes of government red tape,” claiming it wasn’t received until the 1924-25 winter.

In spring 1925, a German cannon was assured for Austin. The Scouts then organized and sold about 900 tickets for a showing of the film “Abraham Lincoln” to raise money to cover the cannon’s $150 freight cost ($2,800 today).

That fall, the Mower County Board approved the Scouts’ request to place the cannon on the courthouse lawn in downtown Austin.

On the morning of March 29, 1926, the “long-awaited trophy of war” finally arrived in Austin. Covered in camouflage paint, the cannon had a wooden structure badly in need of repair.

For reasons unclear, locals instead placed the cannon near Horace Austin State Park’s entrance along North Main Street.

News described the “souvenir” as a “captured German cannon,” serving as a “memento to the valor of the American troops in France,” the Herald wrote in 1927. A postcard at the Mower County Historical Society lists France’s Argonne Forest as the site of the cannon’s capture.

When given to the U.S. government for scrap in 1942, however, articles noted some believed the cannon to be Russian.

“Whatever it was, its steel will be melted to do its share in the defense of the democracies,” the Herald wrote in 1942.

By June 1927, the city council heard a request to build a concrete platform for the cannon with a cinder-block walk to it from Main Street. This was met with some negativity.

One councilman said he didn’t have much respect “for the old gun anyway, and if he thought it ever killed an American boy, he would blow it up,” the Herald wrote. Another said World War veterans – not the Scouts – should make decisions for it.

A platform was completed within a few weeks for the cannon.

During Austin’s Independence Day celebration in 1927, a boy used the cannon to shoot a skyrocket that went through a car’s rear window, struck the dashboard, bounced back and burned front-seat cushions just after a businessman, his wife and their child stepped out of it at the Fox Hotel (today’s Wells Fargo Bank).

For that holiday season, the cannon was decorated and moved slightly to make room for a Christmas Tree.

“At Christmas time, disarmament is a reality,” the Herald wrote Dec. 20, 1926.

The newspaper wrote the “grim war trophy is camouflaged by the foliage of pine but not camouflaged to better permit the delivery of its message of death. It is concealed by the green of pine and the glow of red lights to permit the delivery of the message of Christmas, the message of ‘peace on earth.’”

Moving the cannon spurred debate on its position. In April 1927, a local man said the cannon originally was pointed in the “proper direction by accident” (to the east toward Germany) and should have been left like that.

A service truck helped the Scouts pull the cannon onto a new cement platform.

“The gun was set in position with the muzzle pointing out over the state park (to the north). This was possibly done to prevent any more Fourth of July accidents by the use of the muzzle to shoot skyrockets from.”

In summer 1939, the city opened its first outdoor swimming pool next to the cannon, where the pool remains today.

By that fall, the cannon was moved across the Cedar River to new concrete pad in American Legion Park near the Hormel Foods plant (today’s Honor Guard Park).

“The cannon’s wheels, however, have deteriorated to such a state that new ones will have to be obtained,” the Herald wrote Nov. 9, 1939.

Within two years – it’s unclear when – the cannon was moved to the city wastewater plant.

Then the cannon was called to action in spring 1942 as scrap metal for World War II. Several months later, Austin pushed a citywide “scrap collection day” to support the war.

“Pile It Up” read the Herald headline Sept. 30, 1942. Trucks collected materials from business sidewalks, and Scouts gathered items from porches and curbs.

“No matter what else you might have to do,” the Herald wrote, “put a collection flag out in front of your place of business early tomorrow and pile scrap salvage material around so that the collectors will not have to wait for your contribution.”