Miller, Walter Bernard

Born November 9, 1893, in New York City. Son of Bernard and Valeska Hager Miller. Educated New York schools. Enlisted U. S. Navy, 1911; attached U. S. S. Des Moines and U. S. S. Leonida. Honorably discharged, 1914. May to August, 1916, International Mercantile Marine Lines, cadet officer, S. S. Siberia and Philadelphia. Joined American Field Service, December 2, 1916; attached Vosges Detachment until June 2, 1917. Enlisted French Aviation, June 10, 1917. Trained Avord, Juvisy, and le Plessis-Belleville. Breveted October 10, 1917. Transferred to U. S. Aviation. Commissioned Second Lieutenant, April 1, 1918; attached First Observation Group. Killed in aerial combat, August 3, 1918, north of Château-Thierry. Buried there.

IN 1916, before this country had declared war against Germany, Walter Bernard Miller, a lad of German parentage but a citizen of the United States, volunteered to serve France and went to drive an ambulance on French soil. His action embodies the great triumph of the cause of democracy --- the supremacy of an ideal over all racial prejudices.

Son of Bernard Miller, Walter was born in New York City where he received both his elementary and high school training, being orphaned by the tragic death of his parents in the Slocum disaster. Upon the completion of his schooling, he enlisted at eighteen in the United States Navy. During his four years of service he was present on the U. S. S. Des Moines at the scene of several West Indian and Central and South American revolutions and pseudo-revolutions. He was in Tampico, Mexico, during the critical times of 1914, and on the U. S. S. Leonida he went out with the Naval Survey. Something of a soldier of fortune, yet first, last, and always, he was, in the best sense, a soldier, and a soldier of the highest standing. Lieutenant Hinricks, his division officer on the Des Moines during 1913 and 1914, testifies that . .. . . . . Miller never neglected his duties or the less thrilling routine ship's work, and did everything he was called upon to do, cheerfully."

He received his honorable discharge, and entered the International Mercantile Marine Lines in May of 1916. Miller was a cadet officer on the steamships Siberia and Philadelphia for three months, shortly thereafter joining the American Field Service.

December 2, 1916, he sailed on the Rochambeau for France and upon his arrival was, with six of his countrymen, organized into the Vosges Detachment, which continued in Alsace the work begun by Section Three. Here for six months he labored, driving his ambulance over some of the steepest and most dangerous mountain roads of the western front. Joseph R. Greenwood writes of this work: "While the Vosges Detachment made no records for 'number of kilometres run' still it played its part . . . . . It kept alive in the minds of the Alsatians the knowledge that America was with them in spirit even before we entered the war . . . . . ..

When the term of his enlistment expired, America had entered the war and Miller sought more active service. He enlisted with the Lafayette Flying Corps and received his training with the French. When United States aviators arrived in France he transferred to the 1st Observation Group as a Second Lieutenant. A comrade writes of him in the history of the Lafayette Flying Corps: "Those of us who lived in the same barrack with Miller will never forget him --- his gaiety, his optimism, his generosity, his fine careless courage. On dreary evenings . . . . . it was Miller who cheered us with his inexhaustible repertory of songs and stories . . . . . On the front he earned the reputation of an indefatigable flyer, aggressive, determined, and brave as a lion."

On August 3, 1918, in the fighting between Soissons and Fismes, Lieutenant Miller, with eight companions met a squadron of thirty Fokkers, and was shot down. A fellow aviator says that he was "the oddest, drollest, and most likable of men. His life was a kaleidoscopic succession of adventures by land and sea; surveying the coast of Central America, running shells through the submarine blockade to Archangel, driving an ambulance on the Western Front, piloting an aeroplane in some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and meeting death in an epic combat against thirty enemy machines."

Walter Bernard Miller is mourned as an individual by those who knew and loved him, and by generations to come he will be honored as one who helped lay the cornerstone for the foundations of a real brotherhood of men.

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