Military Monday: WWI Veteran Ormond Brosius

 

By US government related, H.R. Hopps 1917 http://www.dhm.de/lemo/objekte/pict/pl003967/index.html [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Halfway through the year, it finally dawns on me that this year is the one hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I. And so, rather belatedly, but fortunately not too late, I have decided to do a series of short posts on members of my family who served in that war. Some posts will be much shorter than others due to lack of information, but I feel I ought to share what I can.

This week I thought I would start with my great-uncle Ormond Brosius, because he seems the least distant from me, being the only WWI veteran in my family who I actually met. Granted, I don’t recall the meetings, having been a newborn at the time, and then again when I was about a year old, but I do recall his cabin up in the Grand Tetons. We visited there when I was seven or eight years old, years after his death. And my whole life my dad has delighted in sharing the wild second- and third-hand stories he remembered about his uncle. But today the focus is on his service in WWI.

In April of 1917, just a couple weeks after the United States declared war on Germany, Ormond enlisted in the U.S. Army. In 1979, he recounted the experience in a conversation with his brother Lowell. Oh, and I better warn you that there is some profanity in this transcription.
 

Ormond: Yes. I had to lie.

Lowell: Stay young, that’s the way.

Ormond: There was three of us. When war was declared there was three of us.

Lowell: Yeah, I know. Ma told me.

Ormond: Frank Geller and myself and Burt Sheridan. We got on the Missouri-Pacific and went up to Wichita to enlist. Well, they told their right age. I was 16, see, and they was 18. So we got in this line. They didn’t ask…

Lowell: That’s where the old bullshit started flying, huh?

Ormond: These boys was in the league of the [infantry?]. Ol’ Burt says, “I’m 18.” This old boy wrote it down. “Go on.” And Frank Geller was a-next. And they told him—

Lowell: Was this Mrs. Geller’s—

Ormond: Yes, Mrs. Geller that you was reading about. She just lived across the street. When they come to me, I told the truth. I said, “16.” And he said, “Young man, you come back in a couple of years.” So, the next morning I got right in this line, and when I got there I told them, “18.” “Go right ahead.” See? That’s how that happened. See. Boy, it pays to be a liar sometimes.

Lowell: Yeah, sometimes it does.

Ormond, in his mother's handwriting, "the day he inlisted."

His enlistment date was 24 Apr 1917. Presumably, the most part of the following year was spent in training. He was initially assigned to the 18th Field Artillery, and was already a sergeant by the time he sailed aboard the Aeolus from the port of Hoboken, New Jersey on 23 Apr 1918. He is said to have served in five major campaigns. Based on the units in which he is known to have served, these campaigns seem to have been the Second Battle of the Marne (15 July-6 Aug 1918), for which the 18th Field Artillery received the Croix de Guerre. This battle seems to have been broken up into three separate campaigns in which Ormond might have been engaged: the Champagne-Marne Offensive (15-18 July 1918), the Battle of Champagne (15 July 1918), and the Aisne-Marne Offensive (18 July-6 Aug 1918). He was also likely at the Battle of St. Mihiel (12-15 Sept 1918) and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive (26 Sept-11 Nov 1918).

The war ended on 11 Nov 1918. Ormond recalled his experiences following the armistice in his continuing 1979 conversation with his brother Lowell. My mom, Sugar, also got in on this part of the conversation a little.

Ormond: They put us, you know, we was regular army. And after November the eleventh, they quit fighting, you know. And they took us, we went in there, and all them little towns, Bulge, Kottenheim, [Main?] and all of them. They were only about three or four kilometers from one town to the other, see. And I was a sergeant. And I had twenty-six men. And they told me to put one man in a village, you know, a house, and I stayed in a house. And if I told you how many children or kids that old lady had, you wouldn’t believe me, so I won’t tell you. But I lived with them. And I didn’t know no more German than that horse that’s over there.

Sugar: Ha ha! What horse?

Ormond: So when I sit down to the table, all them kids. Now, she had [zweif swanson?]. Can you tell me what that was?

Lowell: I’ll tell you something, you know something. I can understand German now, and I can talk. I can eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben. But to talk it anymore, I can’t… ’Cause I used to have to, you know, when I was young. Oh yeah, that’s Swiss, it’s the same thing. There’s high and low German.

Ormond: Well, that’s the way… And we’d sit down at this table, you know, with all these kids around. This is a big old lady. They didn’t have nothing to eat over there but kartoffeln, or potatoes, see.

Lowell: Rutabagas is another one that they...

Ormond: Yeah, and carrots, and stuff like that. And I’d point at something. We had a schoolteacher there, that stayed with them, old lady and them kids. And I’d point at something, and the kids would all tell me, you know. It didn’t take me long and I was talking—

Lowell: You can pick that up. It’s not that hard.

Sugar: If you wanted your food, you said it.

Ormond: Yeah. So one day they sent an orderly down from headquarters after me, for me to come to headquarters and I didn’t know that there was anybody there that understood English. And it made me mad, and I got to cussing and this schoolteacher, she was a German woman, but she’d been in Chicago one year teaching school. And she was there on a vacation. And they kept her, see. And she could talk English as good as I could. But I didn’t know it. And she could tell what I was saying. And she told me I ought to be ashamed of myself.

Eventually Ormond was sent back to the U.S. He traveled from Brest, France aboard the U.S.S. Madawaska to Brooklyn, New York, on 12 Aug 1919, arriving on 23 Aug 1919. His recorded release from service date is 22 Aug 1919, which seems curious given his date of arrival. I am not yet proficient enough in WWI research to know whether that is a regular procedure or a likely error.

Ormond, age 18, in Army uniform

Sources:

Find A Grave, “Find A Grave,” database and images, Find A Grave (www.findagrave.com : accessed 9 Nov 2009); Ormond John Brosius (Memorial #39305605); record added 10 July 2009 by Lovell Cemetery.

Ormond Brosius (Portland, Oregon), recording of conversation with family and friends by Sugar Brosius, Aug 1979; audio cassette, digitized to mp3 format privately held by Amber Brosius.

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, “U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS [Beneficiary Identification Records Locator Subsystem] Death File, 1850-2010,” database, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 13 Apr 2015), entry for Ormond Brosius; citing Beneficiary Identification Records Locator Subsystem (BIRLS) Death File. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

“U.S., Army Transport Service, Passenger Lists, 1910-1939,” online images, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 Jun 2018), manifest, Aeolus, 23 Apr 1918, entry no. 40, for Ormond J. Brosius, service no. 1,042,684.

“U.S., Army Transport Service, Passenger Lists, 1910-1939,” online images, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 Jun 2018), manifest, U.S.S. Madawaska, 12 Aug 1919, entry no. 1, for Ormond J. Brosius, service no. 1042684.

Isabella Cock’s parents

Now that I have explained my reasons for believing the parents of George Amos to be Abraham Amos and Isabella Cock, and have explored the paternal side, it is time to look to the maternal side. Against all odds, the maternal side has proved the easier to research in many respects.

Isabella Cock’s parents were Simon Cock and Mary Gurney. Their marriage was a bit tricky to prove without access to original records, but I am pretty satisfied with the conclusion. They were married on 24 Dec 1812 in Sturry, Kent, England. Mary’s birth location in later census records is given as Sturry, so the location, being the bride’s parish makes sense. The Tyler Index to Parish Records, one of my sources for the marriage, records that Simon is “of Tilmanstone.” Since Tilmanstone was where their family was raised, the groom also makes sense. 

Church of St. Nicholas, the parish church of Sturry, where Simon Cock and Mary Gurney were married.
pam fray [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Their first child, a son, William, was baptized on 13 Feb 1814 in Tilmanstone, Kent. My 3great-grandmother Isabella herself was next, baptized on 24 Apr 1815. Then came John on 17 June 1816, who must have died quite young, as another John was baptized the following year on 20 June 1817. (I have not, however, located a death or burial record for the first John.) Next came Simon on 27 Jan 1819, but he also passed away very young, and was buried on 3 June 1819.

There is a strange duplication of records for a baptism which took place on 26 Jan 1820; FamilySearch has records for both a Simon Edward and an Edward Simon on that date. It is possible that two sons were born twins and given identical names in reverse order, but I think it far more likely that it is an error introduced during transcription. Since I have not yet been able to examine the original records, I can state nothing with certainty. However, I am proceeding on the assumption that it is one child. 

The interior of St. Andrew’s, the parish church of Tilmanstone, where the children of Simon Cock and Mary Gurney were baptized.
John Salmon [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The next baptism for a child of Simon and Mary Cock appearing in the Tilmanstone records is for Frederic, on 26 Oct 1827. Last is Elizabeth Dorothy on 30 June 1829. There is, of course, a gap of nearly eight years between Simon Edward and Frederic. That is enough time for a few more children to have been born, but no records have been found. Perhaps there were miscarriages; Mary was by this time nearing the age of forty, and perhaps childbearing was becoming increasingly difficult for her. Perhaps Simon and Mary were separated from one another for some reason—Simon traveling elsewhere for work, maybe—and they quite simply had no opportunity to conceive any children during this time. Perhaps they moved to another parish during that period and I simply haven’t discovered the records.

In 1841, census records begin. The family is still living in Tilmanstone, and the census finds Simon and Mary with their children Edward (Edward Simon or Simon Edward of 1820), Frederick, Eliza (Elizabeth Dorothy). Also in the household are two younger children: Mary, age 6, and William, age 1. William is the illegitimate son of Isabella, and thus Simon and Mary’s grandson. Mary is likely also a grandchild, but her exact relationship has yet to be determined.

They are still residing in Tilmanstone at the time of the 1851 census. This is one of the censuses which helped in deciding that the marriage record in Sturry was the correct one, as Mary’s birthplace is recorded as Sturry. Simon’s is Ringwould, Kent. This census also brings the somewhat startling news that Simon is a pauper. That is, he is probably receiving “outdoor relief,” or money, from the local poor law union. He is in his late 60s at this point, so quite possibly he was unable to work. Simon and Mary’s children Edward and Elizabeth are still living with them, as is a granddaughter named Mary Ann (who is ineligible to be the mystery Mary of the 1841 census, as she is only four months old). Edward is working as an agricultural laborer, so perhaps he helped supplement the family’s small income. 

The former Eastry Union Workhouse and its attendant chapel.
Nick Smith [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

By 1861, times seem to have gotten even harder. Simon and Mary have relocated to the Eastry Union Workhouse. Their birth places are again recorded, and Simon’s occupation is listed as an agricultural laborer. Only two months after the census enumeration, on 15 June 1861, Simon passed away in the workhouse. His death certificate pdf arrived just yesterday. His cause of death was old age and bronchitis. Mary seems to have lived a while longer.

Death certificate of Simon Cock, who died in 1861.

Sources:

“England Marriages, 1538–1973,” database, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org : accessed 3 Dec 2017), entry for Simon Cook and Mary Gurney’s 1812 marriage; citing Sturry, Kent, England, reference item 4 p 180, index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City; FHL microfilm 1,737,093.

St. Nicholas’ church (Sturry, Kent, England), Kent, England, Tyler Index to Parish Registers, 1538-1874, entry for Simon Cook and Mary Gurney’s 1812 marriage; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 Dec 2017).

“England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975,” database, FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org : accessed 8 Oct 2017), entries for William Cock’s 1814 baptism, Isabella Cock’s 1815 baptism, John Cock’s 1816 baptism, John Cock’s 1817 baptism, Simon Cock’s 1819 baptism, Edward Simon Cock’s 1820 baptism, Simon Edward Cock’s 1820 baptism, Frederic Cock’s 1827 baptism, and Elizabeth Dorothy Cock’s 1829 baptism; citing Tilmanstone, Kent, England, index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City; FHL microfilm 1,835,794.

“England Deaths and Burials, 1538-1991,” database, FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org : accessed 9 Oct 2017), entry for Simon Cock’s 1819 burial; citing Tilmanstone, Kent, England, index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City; FHL microfilm 1,835,794.

1841 census of England, Kent, Tilmanstone parish, District 5, Eythorn, Thanington civil parish, folio 10, page 16-17, household of Simon Cock; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 Oct 2017); citing PRO HO 107/470/14.

1851 census of England, Kent, village and parish of Tilmanstone, folio 474, page 16, household of Simon Cock (No. 60 of householder's schedule); digital images, Ancestry.com Operations Inc, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 11 Oct 2017); citing PRO HO 107/1631.

1861 census of England, Kent, Eastry Union Workhouse, Eastry civil parish, folio 113, page 8, Simon Cock; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations Inc, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 11 Oct 2017); citing PRO RG 9/539.

England and Wales, death certificate for Simon Cock, died 15 June 1861; citing 2a/416/451, Apr/May/Jun quarter 1861, Eastry registration district, Sandwich sub-district; General Register Office, Southport.