Suckley, Henry E.M.

 CITATION À LA 66^ème DIVISION

Le Conducteur SUCKLEY, H., de la Section Sanitaire Américaine N° 3, sujet Américain

A de nouveau fait preuve d'un dévouement digne des plus grands éloges en assurant nuit et jour, pendant quinze jours, avec un parfait mépris du danger, l'évacuation de nombreux blessés sur une route de montagne constamment battue par les projectiles ennemis.

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Born February is 1887, in Orange New Jersey. Son of Robert Bowne and Elizabeth Montgomery Suckley. Home, Rhinebeck, New York. Educated abroad, Phillips Academy, Exeter, and Harvard University, Class of 1910. In business, New York City. joined American Field Service, February 12, 1915; attached Section Three; Sous-chef, May, 1915 to September, 1916. Recruited for Field Service, in America, September to November, Commandant Adjoint Section Ten, November, 1916. Croix de Guerre. To the Balkans. Wounded by avion bombs , March 18, at Zemlak. Died March 19, 1917, at Koritza, Albania. Buried in Koritza.

These boys who have gone, taking our colors and our spirit into the outposts of civilization, will one day be honored and remembered as having deserved well of their country and having by their example and their sacrifice kept alive a noble tradition and a true American spirit . . . . . In a dark period, perhaps the darkest in our whole history, it is the example of boys like Suckley which gives us hope even in despair.

Editorial, "New York Tribune," March 28, 1917.

HENRY SUCKLEY, one of the first Field Service men to reach France and participate in the work at the front, was mortally wounded on March 18, 1917, at Zemlak, Albania, while in the active discharge of his duties as Chef of Section Ten. He died a day later in a hospital at Koritza, where he was buried with all military honors by a Protestant chaplain, in the Allied cemetery, among the remains of many of the soldiers for whom he had given his life.

Speaking by his grave the senior French officer present said: "Henry Suckley always joined to the highest qualities of a leader the humble patience of a soldier, believing that the best way to obtain obedience was himself to set an example in everything." And one of the directors of the Field Service wrote when he heard of his death: "Of the many hundreds of Americans who have come and gone in this organization, he was one of the three or four on whom we depended the most and who was the most liked and trusted by those who worked with him or for him."

Suckley joined the Field Service in February, 1915, and in May of the same year he went to the front with Section Three. He remained continuously with that unit, on the Alsatian, Lorraine, and Verdun fronts until September, 1916, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for gallantry in action, and appointed Sous-chef of the Section. He then made a short trip home to recruit men and collect money for the Service, and returning in November to France was put in command of Section Ten, the money for the organization and support of which had been contributed by the New York Stock Exchange.

Section Ten was ordered at once to join the Army of the Orient at Salonica, and, when it was given work to do at the front, began immediately to make an enviable reputation. But Suckley, to whose influence as leader so much of its success was due, did not live to receive his share of the credit, for on March 18th there was an enemy air raid over Zemlak, where Section headquarters had been established, and he was mortally wounded by a fragment of a bomb.

He was carried in one of the Section's ambulances to a hospital in Koritza where he died quietly the next morning. He retained consciousness all night and gave directions about the work of the Section and said repeatedly to everybody who saw him, "Don't bother about me."

To the lot of Henry Suckley, while a volunteer in the Field Service, fell many tasks,---to work and to wait in the rear while the foundations of the Service were being laid, to be one of the first to take part in active battle operations at the front, to return to the United States and interest others in the vital work which was being done in France, and, finally, to assume his first command upon a distant front amid strange and perplexing surroundings. He met each demand that duty made upon him with a success and a modesty which won the affection and the admiration of his fellows, and he will always remain with us, noble in memory and in influence.

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

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Suckley was awarded the Légion d'Honneur (Chevalier degree) posthumously on November 11, 2011.