|
Walter Horne Lockard was born May 9, 1893, to
George H. and Bridget
Horne Lockard of Scottdale, Pennsylvania, some 50 miles from
Pittsburgh. His father was a foreman at a local steel mill, and his
mother had emigrated from Ireland at the age of 12. Walter had
two younger sisters; Florence and
Grace.
Walter was a voracious reader, and
especially enjoyed stories of war and soldiering. He hoped to attend
West Point Military Academy, but the congressman who was to recommend
him died unexpectedly, ending his admission process.
With war raging in Europe in 1917,
23-year-old Walter and his best friend, Harry Reginald “Hump” Humphries,
went to Chicago to enlist in the Army Air Corps. Army doctors
determined that Walter had a heart murmur, probably caused by a bout
of typhoid at age 17, and rejected him as unfit for active military
service. Hump would not enlist without his friend, and they returned
to Scottdale very disappointed.
Soon after, Walter and Hump applied for
the Infantry, with a scheme to hide Walter’s heart condition from the
medical examiners. As they stood in line waiting for their physicals,
Walter asked the men coming out of the examination building whether
they had any papers as to their physical condition. When they said
they did not, he crossed over to their line, and sidestepped the
medical examination which would have kept him out of the war.
Walter served with the 28th Division,
112th U.S. Infantry (nicknamed the Iron Division by General Pershing)
in the Army Intelligence Section from 1918-1919. The unit saw action
in some of the major theaters of the war, including Chateau-Thierry
and the Argonne. Walter saw many of his childhood friends and
neighbors killed in the war, including his best friend “Hump”
Humphries. He was promoted to the rank of sergeant and honorably
discharged in 1919.
On his return to civilian life,
Walter
took a job in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, selling shoes for a factory
owned by the father of one of his Army officers. While visiting Scottdale, he paid a condolence visit to 21-year-old
Marie Patton, a
local beauty whose fiancé had been killed in the war. A romance
developed, and they married in 1921. They had three children, George
Humphries in 1922 (named for Walter's friend who died in the war),
Walter Patton in 1926, and Elinor Marie in 1933.
Walter worked at a number of different
jobs during his lifetime, mostly in the Pittsburgh area. He always
maintained a great interest in foreign affairs, and each Sunday would
purchase the New York Times to keep up to date. His two sons served in
the Navy in WW II. He died in 1975 at the age of 81.
Walter Lockard’s wartime letters,
photographs and other related items have been collected and preserved
by his family. (When his mother died, he found the letters she had
saved and threw them away. His wife Marie pulled them from the trash!)
They provide a lively account of the day-to-day events of World War I,
and more importantly, show the thoughts and mindset of the men who
fought in it.
|
