Published in the Intermountain Farm & Ranch on November 11, 2011
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 an armistice between Germany and the Allied nations came into effect. On November 11th, 1919 Armistice Day was commemorated for the first time. This day was originally intended to honor veterans of World War I. However, World War II required the largest mobilization of service men in the history of the United States. American forces also fought in Korea. So in 1954 the veteran’s service organizations urged Congress to change the word “Armistice” to ‘Veterans”. Congress approved this on June 1, 1954, and November 11th became a day to honor all American veterans, where ever and whenever they had served.
Lloyd Crystal, my uncle, was born in 1896, and as a child, moved to Idaho with his family. He was raised on a farm in the Garfield area, where his father farmed with horses. From his father, David, and two older brothers, Ray and Vern, Lloyd learned how to take care of the horses and loved working them.
War was going on in Europe in 1917 and on Tuesday, April 3, 1917, Lloyd volunteered to enlist in Company M. Second Idaho Infantry National Guard. He was one of the first from Jefferson County to volunteer his services as a soldier. On April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson declared war. August 17, 1917, this entire Idaho Regiment was given a National Guard honorable discharge and the Company transferred into the federal service.
At Christmas time, 1917, while stationed in Camp Merritt near Tenafly, New Jersey, he wrote the following to his sister: “Dear sister: Old Santa Claus was a pretty good sport to some of us fellows for he came while we were asleep and hung our socks on the foot of our beds with a piece of wire. They were filled with any old thing that came in handy. I found two bottles of ink belonging to the office, a hob-nailed shoe, two hammers, and the stove crank.”
On the Night of January 9, 1918, Lloyd’s Company received orders to prepare to leave early in the morning. They traveled to the White Star Line Docks and boarded the British ship Olympic. They sailed to Liverpool, England, then on to France where the battalion was split up at Sells-sur-Cher and were sent as replacements to the front. Lloyd with some others was sent to Headquarters Company of the 120th Machine Gun Battalion, 32d division.
His letters home were few and far between and the return address read “somewhere in France.” In July, 1917 his folks received a letter in which he had attached a postscript: “I will write again in a few days, Mother, as it is nearly another birthday.” That birthday, his twenty-second one, was the last day he lived. The next day he was sent to fill the company’s water cart. He managed his horses in the way he was taught – with love and kindness, working and talking with them like old chums. On that day, June 27, 1918, with the shells bursting, the deafening roar in the distance and the air filled with flying shrapnel, he walked along beside his horses to his death.
Lloyd Crystal was the first World War I fatality from Jefferson County and was buried in the Arlington Cemetery in Virginia.
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