Cache Is Not At The Posted Coordinates
Mr. Toot is the mascot not only of the North Iowa Band Festival, but also for Mason City as a whole. His image has appeared on everything from T-Shirts to business cards to city light poles. Now his image also appears on the geocaching map just south of Mason City Iowa. Each of these puzzles will include a fact or story in theme with the art series. Some may also include a question or two for you to answer correctly to find the coordinates.
Mason City
A brilliant moon lights up the ugly gashes that are trenches in the Chamois sector of Lorraine, France. It is 4:30 - an hour before dawn of March 5, 1918. In the trenches silent sentries scan anxiously the contours of No Man's Land for the attack they know is coming. Suddenly the whole north seems to rise up in flame and hurls itself forward. With a thunderous roar it falls upon the Chamois, raining steel and destruction. The earth trembles with the concussion of bursting shells that churn the trenches into gaping craters. Thus was the German high command's murderous answer to the report the Americans were there. The 15th Bavarian Sturm Battalion had rehearsed for the maneuver and Hindenburg himself was waiting to review the attacking troops and to parade the Yankee captives.
The proud Bavarians were repulsed, but the American suffered heavy casualties. One shell landed on a Stokes mortar crew and wiped out the entire group of seven. Among them was Clifford J. Worden of Mason City. Seventy-five feet away, almost at the same instant, Robert Clausen, another Mason Cityan, was killed. Taking part in the first battle fought by the 168th regiment of the Rainbow Division in World War I, Worden of Headquarters Company and Clausen of D Company were Mason City's first casualties in that great struggle.
Clausen and Worden, from whom the local post of the American Legion was afterwards named, were among 128 Mason City men to reach the front with the famous Rainbow Division. They and their buddies had been members of A and D Companies of the 2nd Iowa Infantry of the National Guard, which had returned from Mexican Border duty in March, 1917.
N 43 02.809 W 93 10.894