|
a.
|
Note: N117 * Still standing, Aug 2018, as the Mount Auburn International Academy, a charter school.
He entered the U.S. Army (Ohio National Guard per OFFICIAL ROSTER OF OHIO SOLDIERS, SAILORS AND MARINES: WORLD WAR 1917-18, vol 12) as a private in Troop C, First Squadron, Ohio Cavalry, 23 March 1915. In the summer of 1916 they trained at Camp Willis in Upper Arlington, a Columbus suburb. "In June 1916, the Upper Arlington community became an armed camp, Camp Willis, as 8,000 National Guardsmen trained here for duty on the Mexican border. Upper Arlington residents were subjected to military security and were required to have passes to enter their own homes." -- ua-archives.cdmhost.com
From a history of the First Ohio Cavalry at http://www.firstclevelandcavalry.org/history.html
"Relations with Mexico became strained and when the regular army [under Gen. John 'Black Jack' Pershing] was needed for a punitive expedition into Mexico [in pursuit of Pancho Villa], the National Guard was needed for border duty. Cavalry was the logical arm for this duty.
"The First Ohio Cavalry Squadron served in the emergency from 6 July 1916 to 28 February 1917. Border duty was performed along the Rio Grande from the New Mexican border to Torcer, Texas, a stretch of almost 100 miles.
"The squadron left Columbus early in September [1916] for El Paso, Texas, after spending a hot and monotonous summer encamped at Camp Willis, Columbus. To add insult to injury, the squadron was without horses during the Camp Willis training period. [. . .]
"At Camp Pershing, El Paso, training began in earnest. [. . .] Training was sufficiently advanced by late October for actual border patrolling to begin. Each troop was off on its own for considerable periods of time, living in the field. [. . .]
"Thanksgiving and Christmas passed with festive celebration and rumors of going home. But January [1917] found the squadron still on active duty. [. . .] In February [1917], Gen. Pershing's punitive expedition returned from Mexico. It seems strange now, in light of this relatively small operation against Mexico, to realize that Pershing's force (10,000) was the largest body of men assembled under one command since the Civil War.
"[. . .] At Fort Benjamin Harrison [Indianapolis], the squadron was mustered out of federal service on 28 February 1917. The country was indeed fortunate to have had so many of its National Guard units on active duty during the Mexican campaign just prior to World War I.
"Congress ratified [President Woodrow Wilson's] Declaration of War with the German Empire on 6 April [1917]."
On 15 July 1917, Sam re-enlisted (accepted a commission) in the 136th Field Artillery, Battery E. The 136th was part of the 62nd FA Brigade, in the 37th Division. In September 1917 the 136th was sent to Camp Sheridan outside Montgomery, Alabama. "The camp was nothing more than an open expanse of cotton fields and waste land. Actual construction of the camp began 24 July 1917 but was not completed until December 1917. Construction work and training went on concurrently. As the 37th prepared itself for battle, instructors stressed familiarity with new arms and new methods of fighting." --http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/147thinf.htm
On 6 Nov Sam was promoted from sergeant to second lieutenant, per Louis Coffin, <I>History of the 136th F.A. Regiment, U.S.A.</I> (1928), p 353. When he was home on leave in December 1917 he got married.
On 21 June 1918, his unit arrived at Camp Upton, Long Island, by train from Montgomery to be "finally equipped for our journey across" (Coffin, p 360). A week later they arrived in Baltimore, where they boarded the <I>S.S. Titan,</I> a British freighter, and headed to Halifax, Nova Scotia, arriving there 4 July. After taking on provisions and water, they sailed that same day for Liverpool, England, as part of the American Expeditionary Force, the U.S. army in Europe. On 15 July they docked in Liverpool, where they "were marched through the cheering crowded streets to the station, where we left at 7:30 p.m. on queer English trains for Winchester." On 18 July they embarked for Le Havre "on a channel boat, a side-wheeler looking much like the Island Queen [a Cincinnati pleasure-boat]." They spent "the happiest week we have had in the army" in "the quaint and beautiful village of Gradignan, where everyone [was] scattered in little billets or chateaux. An oasis was found at the Cafe de la Lune. Breakfast at nine, supper at five with unlimited omelettes in between, and bathing in a small stream flowing through town. This is the place to fight the war" (p 362). Then it was on to Camp de Souge for a training course in firing French 105-MM and 155-MM cannon. In the Foret de Facq on 14 Oct, as part in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, "Battery 'E' sent the first shot of the regiment whistling over No Man's Land, Major Jeffrey pulling the lanyard of 'Cincy's Pride.' "
But a ship's manifest at Ancestry.com shows him sailing from Montreal with the 136th FA on the <I>Victoria</I> 28 June 1918.
The war ended 11 Nov 1918, but Sam and his unit didn't head for home till March 1919, sailing on the <I>U.S.S. Vermont</I> from Brest to Hampton Roads, Virginia. After a week at Camp Stuart, Newport News, Virginia, they stopped in Youngstown en route to Cincinnati, arriving there at 2 a.m. on 4 April 1919 "with a huge crowd and royal welcome awaiting them. All Cincy boys dismissed for the night to go to their homes. Paraded at 10:30 a.m. and accorded the grandest welcome imaginable." They had to leave the next night for Columbus and on to Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, where they were discharged from the Army on 10 April.
By January 1920 he was working as a traffic manager for Procter & Gamble, Cincinnati. By February, he and Lou were living in Dallas (per Census taken 12 Feb, which lists his occ as clerk, soap co.--i.e., P&G). They were still there in May, per an Enquirer item about a trip Lou took with her father and Maude to the Panama Canal Zone, and they're listed in the 1921 Dallas city directory, which shows Lou working as a stenographer in addition to Sam as chief clerk, P&G.
In 1922 he was "chief, supplies section, Veterans' Bureau" at Court and Vine streets, Cincinnati. The Official National Guard Register of 1925 lists him as a captain in the 147th Infantry, How Co, Cincinnati. Around 1926 he and a partner started a construction business, but the Depression put an end to it and by 1931 he was working for the Veterans' Bureau again. By Oct 1933 he was commander of the American Legion's Robert E. Bentley Post Drum & Bugle Corps (a leisure-time activity, not a job).
Still with the VA, he moved to Huntington, West Virginia (address: 8 Mortimer Place), ahead of his family around 1936. From there the family moved to Northampton, Mass. (119 Prospect Ave.), in the summer of 1938; then to Silver Spring, Md. (address in 1930 Census: 1206 Garfield Ave), in Dec 1939; then to St. Petersburg, Florida, in June 1940 (1941, 1942 city directory: 855 20th Ave N; 1944: 6167 Seventh Ave N.
At Bay Pines VA hospital in St. Pete, Sam's title was vocational rehabilitation officer.
They returned to North Bend in March 1946. Sam's job title in 1951 was chief of the VA's Cincinnati Vocational Rehabilitation and Education Division, per an Enquirer article, 'Time Dwindling for Veterans Wanting Education at Federal Expense' (21 Jan 1951, p 67).
He was retired by July 1958, when he was one of three men-in-the-street asked his opinion about the Mideast crisis by an Enquirer reporter.
In retirement he was choir director of Church of the Resurrection (later named St. Luke's), Fernbank, Cincinnati.
|
