Family Tales--Grand Uncle Bill--A Memorial Day Tribute, May, 2008

  It’s Memorial Day weekend and no matter what your views on war, it should be a day of reflection on this nation’s past—not for recrimination of half-remembered events, not for a show of false emotion or false pride, not for a day of rest bought and paid for with the blood of others.  The day should be to honor those who did what they were called upon to do, whether they wished to or not, to die or not, to fight or not.  In many American families there is a legacy of military service.  Perhaps not career service, not service stretching over decades; but service that arose out of patriotism or necessity or conscription.  This legacy weaves its way down through the generations.  Descendants can look back finding mementos, family stories, and an inherited sense of duty to one’s country. Thus it was with my father’s family. 

   Prior to 1860, the family history is a bit patchy; but one family patriarch served in the Civil War (our family are Yankees, so it’s not War Between the States), his son in the Spanish American War, one of his sons in World War I, and from the greatest generation, my dad in World War II.  This story is about Grand Uncle Bill (William Harold ----) and his service in World War I.  Uncle Bill passed away before I was born, but my mom knew him and admired him.  His sage advice helped her to cope with the effects and pain of rheumatoid arthritis. ‘Keep working, keep moving, stay on your feet, even if it feels like you are walking on nails’   He was a doctor, a family practitioner in a small mid-west town.  After he retired, he lived in southern California and he died of a heart attack at 55 while working in his garden.  I remember seeing an old photo of him, in his later years.  Heavy but not fat, a mustache, white hair, wearing a white summer suit holding a panama hat and laughing at the camera.  Mom said he drank too much but she never held it against him.  The family knew why.

  He was born in 1885, July 14^th—which is also my birthday-- and by 1914 he was a doctor.  By October of 1917, he was in the U. S. Army Reserve. I have one of those pictures that soldiers have taken when they join up.  His bearing and maturity at 32 come through the photo; he was beautiful. He was sent to Liverpool, England.  He, along with about 7000 other doctors, was loaned to the British government.  Bet you didn’t know the United States did that. You hear about the Americans volunteering to fly in the French air-force; but never about our other boys who served early over there.  Uncle Bill was attached to the British 5^th Army Corp.  Here is a quote from his obituary:

     “When in the spring of 1918 the German army overran and destroyed the 5^th Army Corp he remained in charge of an advance field hospital and first aid station attending to the wounds of several hundred men.  The German wave of infantrymen overran the area and he was taken prisoner.  Although wounded and gassed he remained on duty and a day or two later the British counterattacked and retook the position.  Dr. ----- was then sent to England and upon recovery was decorated by King George at Buckingham Palace, receiving the military cross decoration and three chevrons….”

  In 1919 he was discharged; he came home and finished raising his three daughters.  Families have their stories and while the obituary from the town where he practiced was dutifully proud, they didn’t know the details like the family did.  The paper didn’t tell about how, when the Germans were coming, most of his aids ran away leaving him alone.  The paper didn’t tell how, when the enemy infantrymen tore into the hospital—mad with battle and death and gas, began murdering the wounded.  How a lone doctor, fought them off among the dead and dying until an officer arrived and restored some sanity to them all.  You are thinking, ‘he must have picked up a rifle, a bayonet or knife, perhaps a pistol.’  No, you are wrong, terribly wrong.  This was a field hospital, this was before antibiotics, this was a tent was half-buried in mud and bits of the dead.  Grabbing up an amputated leg from a pile of severed limbs and swinging it as a club he beat infantrymen back. He made a deal with the German officer.  He stayed at the field hospital, no one was to enter or leave, he worked without sleep two days and 3 nights.  He was a soldier's doctor.  He was just a small town family doctor-- in America.