King, Gerald Colman

Born November 22, 1878, in Bellows Falls, Vermont. Son of Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Cornelius Low King. Educated St. Mark's School, Southboro, Massachusetts, and Pomfret School, Connecticut. U.S. Army, Spanish-American War, as volunteer. Joined American Field Service, February 14, 1917; attached Section Eight. Invalided to United States, May, 1917. Died in hospital, New York City, September 27, 1917. Buried in Grace Church Cemetery, Jamaica, Long Island, New York.

To be obliged to fight the Spanish-American War as a bed-ridden fever patient, and then to end his effort in the World War on his back in a New York hospital, was the desolate lot of Gerald Colman King, volunteer in both of these wars.

Although he was permitted to strike no direct blow in either instance, it is doubtful if he could have contributed more to the final victory, and to the development of his own character, than he did by his fortitude, his loyalty, and his unembittered acceptance of what fate had in store for him. A grumbling victory is in no way preferable to a cheerful defeat.

Gerald King had his first taste of military service when he enlisted as a private in the American Army in the war against Spain in 1898. He was denied active service through contracting typhoid fever almost immediately, and was confined at Camp Chickamauga.

When America entered the War, King was too old to enlist in the regular army, so he chose at once the only other possible alternative for getting to France to aid that country for which he felt a very deep affection, fostered by blood ties. He enlisted with the American Field Service.

He had served with Section Eight at the front but little more than a month before he was taken seriously ill and sent to a hospital in Paris. In May he was invalided home to the United States. He was taken from the steamer direct to the hospital, where he died, September 27, 1917 --- no less a victim of the cruelty of war than those who fell in the front line trenches. He lies now in the little graveyard of Christ Church, Jamaica, where, for many generations, the members of his family have been buried.

Gerald King was born at Bellows Falls, Vermont, ,November 22, 1878. He was the son of Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Cornelius Low King, and grandson of Charles King, former president of Columbia College. His mother was Janet De Kay, daughter of James De Kay --- all of New York.

The Brattleboro Reformer paid the following tribute to Gerald King on learning of his death: "The old boys of Company I of Brattleboro, who, in 1898, when war against Spain was declared, volunteered their services to their country, just as thousands of a younger generation have been doing in the past few months, feel a sense of personal loss in the death, in a New York hospital, of Gerald King of Bellows Falls. Gerald was a soldier of fortune, a scion of a distinguished military family. He was only a youngster when he went with the Brattleboro boys to the fever-infested camp at Chickamauga, but he was possessed of an independent income, and when his little 'pink' checks arrived, he shared his patrimony freely with his less fortunate comrades.

"His good cheer and kindliness will always be remembered by those who were associated with him in the days when the young soldiers waited and waited in unsanitary conditions for orders to active service which never came. In recent years King has been well-known as an actor, but he turned aside from the stage to go to France as an ambulance driver, and while there was stricken with paralysis, which terminated in death in a New York hospital after he had been brought back helpless to this country."

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

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