Sargeant, Grandville Le Moyne

Born January 7, 11897 at Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. Son of William A. and Ella Jolly Sargeant. Educated Pittsburgh High School, Mercersburg Academy, and Washington and Jefferson College, Class of 1919. Joined American Field Service, March 12, 1917; attached Section Sixteen until September 14, 1917. Returned to United States. Enlisted United States Aviation Service, January 12, 1918; attached Radio School, University of Pittsburgh. Died of pneumonia, April 16, 1918, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Buried beside his mother in Beaver, Pennsylvania.

"A MAN can't live in a country of fighters and not become a soldier. He feels down in his heart he is not doing his part." This Grandville LeMoyne Sargeant wrote in April, 1917, already planning to enter aviation when his six months' Field Service enlistment should end. He went on: "The more I see of the French, the prouder I am to be descended from them." This French ancestry explains the ease with which he entered into the life about him in France and his eager desire to serve her. With his sincere love of the people about him went a clear-sighted belief in their cause. The two were knit inseparably together into the very fabric of his being and gave strength and endurance to his will. "Many have been killed and more will be. It is up to the cultured and civilized people of the entire world to get in this and get in it quick." It was, he said, "one of the best moments of my life . . . . . when I learned that the United States had at last seen her duty, gone ahead, and declared a state of war. A man cannot stay in France a week without realizing that our place is in this war with the Allies and the sooner the better."

LeMoyne's character, prophetic of his later manliness, was apparent in his boyhood. "He was," wrote his school principal, "one of the finest high school boys I have ever known . . . . . Such a clean-cut gentlemanly fellow and of such sterling worth." From high school in Pittsburgh LeMoyne went to Mercersburg. Academy and then to Washington and Jefferson College. A fraternity brother wrote of him: "To an attractive personality was joined a fully matured mind and a disposition that was seldom ruffled. At times he was really too easy going but at all times he was the best of fellows." The College Secretary spoke of LeMoyne's being liked by his fellows and of his pleasing personality, and "regarded him as a young man of high principles." "A type," said a business associate of his father's, "that is unfortunately rather rare."

"A fine sturdy young fellow," an older friend called him, and a teacher mentioned particularly, "his quick responsive mind and energy," qualities which stood him in good stead when he left college in his sophomore year and went to France in the American Field Service. He went to the front with newly-formed Section Sixteen, serving in the Argonne. "When America enters the war," he wrote, "practically this entire service will enlist, I think. Some are signing up with the Aviation Corps and others with the French heavy artillery. As for me I am going to study the question for the six months I am in the field and at the end of that time I shall have made up my mind what course to pursue."

He decided for aviation and returned home, enlisting immediately after his twenty-first birthday. He was sent for instruction in radio work to the University of Pittsburgh. There he became ill with scarlet fever, pneumonia developed, and LeMoyne died on April 16, 1918, before he had been given his chance to fight for France. But he had served the country he loved, he had fought his good fight bravely, and achieved a goal of duty well performed.

Telling of their last meeting in Paris a friend gives LeMoyne's words: "Butch, I am going to try to get into aviation and come back, but if I am out of luck and don't make the grade, you and I know it's been a grand old scrap," and himself adds, "In that single idiomatic sentence LeMoyne Sargeant gave me the sum total of why we loved him and why his memory is honored."

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