Kelley, Edward Joseph

Born March 19, 1889, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Son of Joseph H. and Mary Reuss Kelley. Educated Philadelphia high schools; Rock Hill College, Ellicott City, Maryland; and University of Pennsylvania, Class of 1911. Automobile business, Philadelphia. joined American Field Service, August 26, 1916; attached Section Four. Killed by shell at Marre, near Verdun, night of September 23, 1916. Croix de Guerre. Buried at Blercourt, Meuse.

EDWARD KELLEY belongs to that small and heroic band of American youths who gave their lives for France while their own country still hesitated to take issue. In the summer of 1916, while employed in the service department of a Philadelphia automobile manufactory, he read a magazine account of the work which Americans were doing in France. On August 26th, he sailed as a member of the American Field Service, with the intention of devoting to the cause the expert knowledge of automobiles which he possessed.

He had expected to remain in Paris, as may be gleaned from letters written home shortly after his arrival, but an opportunity presented itself almost immediately of joining Section Four at the front and he eagerly hailed this chance to see active service in the field. Section Four was at the time one of three sections located in the Verdun sector, whose work lay in the region of the famous Mort Homme.

His term of service was to be short. Six days after joining the section, on the night of September 23, 1916, he was making his first trip to the dressing station in the little ruined town of Marre, and was being shown the road by a veteran of the section named Sanders. They had almost reached their destination, a heavily protected cellar, when a German shell struck about three yards in front of the ambulance, sending its fragments in all directions. Kelley was instantly killed and his companion seriously wounded. They were carried back in another ambulance, which was waiting at the post, to Blercourt.

He was buried there with military honors, just a month from the day he had sailed from New York. Mr. Andrew, the commanding officer of the Field Service, wrote a few days later to Kelley's sister, describing the scene: "Imagine a sunny, warm September morning and a village street sloping up a hillside. In the open entry of one of the houses, the front of which was hung with the black and silver drapery of the church and the tricolor of France, the coffin was placed, wrapped in a great French flag, covered with flowers and wreaths, at the head a small American flag on which was pinned a Croix de Guerre with a gold star, the tribute of the Army Corps General to the boy who had given his life for France. Six French soldiers bore the coffin and then followed representatives of our sections, each carrying wreaths, then the General, a group of officers, and after them the fifty or more Americans surrounded by a detachment of soldiers with arms reversed. The scene was one which none there could ever forget."

Short as his stay had been with his comrades at the front, the place he had made for himself among them is more than evident in the following extract from a letter sent back to America and signed by every member of the section : "We do not know that it is as he would have wished, since he had much to live for, but we do know that the sacrifice, great as it is, was made ungrudgingly. On us who have served here at the front with Edward, his sincerity and strength of purpose, his never failing willingness to help out, no matter what the assistance needed, no matter at what hour of the day or night, his earnestness in the work to which he had put his hand, his cheerfulness under all conditions,---on us, proud to feel that we were his comrades, these qualities have made a profound and lasting impression. Always we shall hold it a privilege that we served with him, and that it was as one of us that he met his heroic end."

• Tribute from Memorial Volume of the American Field Service, 1921

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Kelley was awarded the Légion d'honneur (Chevalier degree) posthumously on November 11, 2011