Ohio 37th Served in Two Wars  

Veterans Day notifications remind me that every summer when I was a kid, we went to the Company A Reunion. It gathered WWI vets and their families from Crawford County environs. It was the one beer a year I saw my grandfather share. He wasn't a drinker. It was always a potluck until that year the guys cooked up a kettle of Slumgullion Stew for the assembled crowd. Excellent.

My grandad belonged to that first WWI "Buckeye Battalion." I grew up in his house and heard the references, rarely the stories. Serving in an observation tower above the trenches, he was not one of the wounded, though my grandmother said he never slept a full night's sleep after he came back. He persevered, worked, farmed, raised a family. And then again me. When he died, a letter came from President Nixon, expressing his deep condolences. 

My grandmother pursed her lips, as she was wont to do, and said, "Well, it would have been nice if they'd given him a pension while he was alive." WWI vets never got that pension. 

A couple of his Company A buddies kept in touch and shared visits right up into the late '60's when I moved on to college and ... life. They made an impression. One of them looked perfectly normal from the front, but seen in profile, the front of his forehead was missing. He'd been in the trenches. It didn't affect his thinking, his productivity nor his lifelong attachment to the other guys in his group. He comes back to my mind whenever "One" the film or rock saga was played. He had been lucky, even with a bit of skull missing. I think his name was Slater. It's a long time back.

My grandfather's WWI footlocker stored other stuff for some years, and then served as a storage trunk in two of his great-grandchildren's infancies. The slightly crumbling paper lining was re-upholstered with a bright red cotton poplin fabric. The kids are grown and more now. The footlocker still serves, it's end-side never painted over, still says "F.H.Fortney, Co. A." It's storing the cache of doughboy helmet, gas mask and mess kit, that it held in the old days. and the panorama prints of photos from Camp Sherman before they shipped out.

Nov. 11, 2026. Veterans' Day