The beginnings of Memorial Day are
a bit confused. Apparently, the May holiday began as Decoration Day on May 5,
1868, three years after the conclusion of the Civil War as a time to decorate
the graves of the war dead with flowers. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs, “Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared that Decoration Day should be
observed on May 30. It is believed that date was chosen because flowers would
be in bloom all over the country.” Cities in both the north and the south, however, claim
to have begun celebrating Memorial Day in 1866. President Lyndon B. Johnson, in
1966, declared Waterloo, N.Y., as the birthplace of Memorial Day. In 1971,
Memorial Day was declared a national holiday and its celebration was also moved
from May 30 to the last Monday of May.
Although we decorate the graves of
our deceased loved ones on Memorial Day, it is significant that this holiday
was created to remember those who gave their lives protecting our nation and
our freedoms. To my knowledge, I have only one relative who died during any of
America’s major conflicts, but strangely he was not killed in action. My father
served in World War II, arriving in Europe during the Battle of the Bulge. He,
of course, survived the war unharmed, stayed for part of the occupation, then
returned home to graduate from college on the GI Bill, marry, and start a
family. He is now 95 years old, definitely a member of the Greatest Generation.
Yesterday we visited him and took him to the North Ogden Cemetery, where we placed
flowers on my mother’s grave and the graves of a few of her ancestors. It was
her family that settled the rocky bench in North Ogden in the nineteenth
century, the place where I grew up.
Today, my sister, who has recently
retired and moved from Columbus, Ohio, to Hurricane, Utah, visited the graves
of our father’s parents and a few of his siblings who are buried in southern Utah in Washington,
St. George, and Enterprise. She left flowers in Enterprise on the grave of an
uncle neither of us ever knew, our dad’s older brother, Amos.
In December 1941, shortly after
the attack on Pearl Harbor, Amos told his parents that he had enlisted in the military.
“I joined the army to help my Country in a time of need,” he wrote to them in a
letter. One thing he had said to them some time earlier troubled them greatly,
however. “I feel like I will meet my death by murder.” After completing his
basic training, Amos was apparently stationed near Blythe, California, in 1943.
Blythe is due north of Yuma, Arizona, and east of Palm Springs. It has a hot
desert climate with scorching summers and mild winters. Amos wrote to his parents
regularly from Blythe, while they were serving a temple mission in the St. George
Temple, until, at some unspecified time, the letters suddenly stopped. This
worried his parents. In the meantime, my dad was also inducted into the army,
having turned 18 in April 1943.
In summer 1943, Frank and Eunetta
Terry received a letter dated July 12, 1943, from LeRoy Radford, commanding
officer of Battery A in the 195th Field Artillery Battalion, informing them
that their son, Private Amos F. Terry, 19011982, was “absent from his organization
without proper authority.” In other words, he was AWOL. Radford assumed he had deserted
while the company was on maneuvers in the desert. My grandfather wrote Lt. Radford,
letting him know that Amos would have never deserted, so he must be the victim
of foul play. In August, Radford responded that “your son is missing and not
dead. That he has merely become divorced from the Military Service by his own
action.”
My grandparents were convinced
this was not the case, and, although they were very poor, they traveled to
California to search the area where Amos had gone missing. They didn’t find
anything. But on February 26, 1944, a young man named David Mott, who was
hunting rabbits about four miles north and a little west of Blythe, found the
skeleton of a soldier. The remains were identified by the tags that were still
in his clothing as Pvt. Amos F. Terry. He had died from a gunshot wound that
entered his skull a little above and behind the right ear and exited near his
left eye. According to the coroner, his head had been beaten after he had been
shot.
After much trouble, the remains
were shipped by rail to Modena in Southern Utah, where they were met by my dad,
who had been sent home from Ft. Riley, Kansas, to accompany his brother’s body
to Enterprise, where he was buried. My dad then returned to Ft. Riley before
being shipped overseas.
Some time after the funeral, my
grandparents traveled to California again because the army was trying to deny
them Amos’s back pay. While there, they tried to learn more about how Amos had
died. They spoke with the district attorney, who told them, according to my
grandfather’s account, “Mr and Mrs Terry We know enough about murder to know
that your son was not killed on the spot where his remains were found and we
know enough about murder to know that he was not shot from close up.” My
grandfather also recorded this: “On this trip to California we had stopped for
lunch at a Café[.] A Young man eating by my side upon learning the nature of my
trip informed me that the day before seven soldiers (7) were brought in there
that had been found in the desert all had been shot in the head I also was told
of Eleven (11) others who were found on a knol almost Covered in sand all shot
in the head[.] No doubt some of those branded with desertion to swell the ranks
of the California armys AWOL list (Be it here known that I can only state these
matters as they were told me) True or untrue I know not. but the weight of
evidence and suspicion seems heavily to prove that some one was sabatogeing on
our boys in the army and in the seldom traversed desert region.” Grandpa recalled
hearing on the radio some time before Amos’s disappearance that more soldiers
deserted in California than in the rest of the army combined. He now wondered
how many of them had merely disappeared in the desert with a bullet hole in
their skulls.
Grandpa’s personal history also
recounts the following: “We did much correspondance with various branches of
the military also with our sons Buddies in the army And this we learned from
the boys who were his close chums That Amos Franks superior officers had for
months heaped upon him many unreasonably difficult tasks after long days of
endurance tests in the deserts and upon this particular night They had come
into Camp after mid night and sargeant Chauncy B Creason ordered him to take
cary a heavy machine gun and its equipment over a mountain and set it up.
Amos Frank Jr Feeling this to be an unreasonable request said ‘I will take a
light truck and another man and we will set it up,’ The Sargeant replied ‘No
you go alone Understand. No one with you’ Did he want to get him alone to
murder him or not why not be reasonable you answer? To Carry this load our son
felt he could not and he replied ‘Sargeant you know that this is an
unreasonable request’ The sargeant replied ‘Terry Ill deal with you’
And our son was immediately put under arrest[.]
“The next morning our son was
missing and the sargeant was the first man on the ground to announce that ‘Terry
was missing’ This information from one Sanford A Perry a buddy to Amos Frank Jr
The two being the Champion Boxers in the army they often Put on Boxing
exibitions. From appearances Amos was dealt with.”
My grandfather tried to get the
military to investigate his son’s murder, but they had a war to prosecute and
didn’t seem very enthused to look into incidents like these. So my grandparents
never learned what had happened to their oldest son. I’m sure the heartbreak
lasted until they died, Frank in 1967 and Eunetta in 1968.
So today, Memorial Day, some 77
years after Amos’s murder while serving in the U.S. Army in California, I am
thinking about the uncle I never knew, the only relative I know of who died
during a war, but he was not killed in action. He was murdered, perhaps by his
commanding officer. His death was never investigated.
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