Lines, Howard Burchard

Born March 5, 1891, in New York City. Only son of Dr. Ernest Howard and Elisabeth L. Lines. Home, Paris, France. Educated Anglo-Saxon School, Paris; University of Paris, Sorbonne, "baccalaureat" 1908; Dartmouth College, Class of 1912; Harvard Law School, 1915. Joined American Field Service, September 8, 1915; attached Section One to December 30, 1915 ; reenlisted September 17, 1916; attached Sections Eight and One. Died at the front, of pneumonia, December 23, 1916. Buried Christmas Day, La Grange aux Bois, Argonne. Croix de Guerre. Body now in American Military Cemetery, Suresnes, near Paris, Seine.

"RAINY" LINES,---as he was known by his classmates at Dartmouth and Harvard, and by many of his friends in the Field Service,--- died while on active duty at the front, December 23, 1916, and was buried on Christmas Day, with all military honors, in the little town of La Grange aux Bois, in the Argonne.

Educated in France, and loving intensely her people and her traditions, Lines was prepared from the beginning to make any sacrifice for her cause. "Devoted and courageous," read an Army Order of the Day, "he was sent to the rear, ill. He returned again eagerly to the front after his recovery, contracted a grave malady, and died for France."

On graduating from the Harvard Law School in the early part of the summer of 1915, "Rainy" Lines enlisted in the Field Service and was attached to Section One, then working under unusually hard conditions in the neighborhood of Dunkirk. "What a comfort it is to have Lines with us," wrote one of the directors of the Field Service. "His work is always well done, he is never rattled, and, at the same time, he has a quick, cheerful, and sympathetic nature from which others draw encouragement."

In the summer of 1916 he was operated upon for appendicitis and an abdominal injury. He also was compelled to spend several weeks in the hospital suffering from chicken pox complicated by an attack of grippe. Only those who saw him at this time can know how much he chafed at this enforced withdrawal from active service, how he coaxed the doctors to permit his return to the front, and how eagerly he resumed his work.

This time he was temporarily attached to Section Eight, where, as in Section One, he soon became at home, and did sterling work, but he was insistently reclaimed by his old Section, and to Section One he was presently reassigned. Lines made many friends, both among his fellow volunteers and among the French with whom his work constantly brought him in contact, and with whom he loved to spend his time when off duty. Just before his death he was recommended for the Croix de Guerre. It had also been decided to appoint him Sous-chef of the Section, for every one was coming to rely more and more upon his experience, his steady sense, his ability to co-operate with the French authorities, his enthusiasm, and his qualities of leadership.

The immediate cause of death was cerebral meningitis following an acute attack of pneumonia. Four of his comrades in Section One acted as pallbearers; the funeral services were read by a Protestant clergyman serving with the armies as a stretcher bearer; and the interment was witnessed by his father, mother, and sister, who had, been given special permission by the Ministry of War to proceed from Paris to the front; by Robert Bacon, formerly American Ambassador to France; and by A. Piatt Andrew, Inspector General of the Field Service.

None of the little group of Americans who stood that Christmas Day by the open grave of this volunteer could foresee the future, but in retrospect they will always. think of " Rainy" Lines as the advance guard of the formidable thousands of their countrymen who, two years later, hallowed with their blood the valley of the Meuse and were laid to rest, as he was laid to rest, beneath the white crosses which dot its hillsides.

Lines was one of the first Dartmouth men to join the Field Service, and a Dartmouth bed at the American Ambulance at Neuilly, endowed by college friends, was dedicated to "Howard Burchard Lines, son of Dartmouth, a sympathetic, loyal, generous friend, whose death befitted his life and who needs no words to pay him honor."

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