Lead up to the Memorial Day Weekend

As many of you know, I've been "seeking my roots" this past year or so and my search has turned up some relatives I had no knowledge of even having. Within the confines of my nuclear family, only my father has served in the military, dispensing his ROTC obligation as Captain in the Army between the Korean and Vietnam wars. His father was exempted from the draft in WWII as he was employed manufacturing vital wartime supplies (mostly parts for Navy ships) in the family foundry.

With Memorial Day coming - I wanted to honor the "new" members in my family that served. These are family members ... I never knew.


Great-Uncle James McClurken
Pennsylvania
Cpl, Company D, 34th Infantry, 7th Division
November 5, 1888
March 6, 1958

The best I can tell, my great-uncle served on a "Sanitary Train." These were ambulance trains that were used to move injured soldiers from field hospitals to rear areas for transport back to the states. They were fully equipped and could handle surgery as well as care for the critically wounded.

After the war, my father's mother's father's brother worked for Abbot's Dairy as a chemist, making ice cream.


Cousin Elmer Mousley
U.S. Navy - World War I
October 25, 1897
April 23, 1975

Elmer was an electrician in the Navy during WWI, and he served in Brest, France, and on the US Navy Repair Ship Bridgeport. After the war, he worked for Western Electric, installing automatic telephone switching stations.

---Missing Gravestone*---
Cousin Russell Mousley
April 15, 1893
September 1960

Russell was machine gunner 315th Infantry, 79th Division and was wounded in the Meuse-Argonne offensive that effectively ended WWI. He received a Purple Heart and recovered from his injuries. He became a Philadelphia Committeeman and later a Clerk in the city's Prothonotary Office.

*I've made no progress with getting his headstone (re)placed.

I knew my mother's father, but he died when I was 13 years old. I was at his side with my mother and grandmother - the only family to make it the hospital "in time," and watched him die without waking from a coma-like sleep.


Grandfather John R. Bush
Oct 29, 1896 - March 1974
1M 2/C U.S. Navy
World War I

My mom's father served as a radio-telegraph operator on a destroyer during WWI. A young boy from Calera, Oklahoma, he too sailed to Brest, France and then onwards to Boston, Massachusetts (where he met my grandmother). He got seasick easily and rarely, if ever, got back on a boat after the war. He operated a automobile service garage in Boston until he retired long before I was born.