OBIT: Percy PAGE, Jefferson Co,. KY submitted by: Elizabeth Smith date: 3-25-1998 ************************************************************************ USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. ************************************************************************ Percy Sherman Page was my grandmother's brother. (They were the only two children of Thomas Louella Page and Sarah Elizabeth "Daisy" Gunn.)Percy was killed in action in France during WW I. He was the first boy from Jefferson Co., KY who was killed. After the war, his mother traveled to France by ship with other mothers who had lost sons in the War. My grandmother donated his medals and letters from France to the Filson Club. In one letter he wrote, the night before a battle, about a beautiful wheat field that was near their encampment, and lamented that it would soon be destroyed. "PERCY S. GAGE [sic] KILLED IN ACTION AT FRONT Percy S. Page, son of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas L. Page of Clark Station, was killed in action in France while fighting with the Marines on the second day of the battle which marked the turning of the German tide surging toward Paris, according to information received by friends here yesterday. The first news of his death was contained in a letter received by Mrs. P. B. Lanham from her son, Charles Turner Lanham, who was in the same regiment with Page. It was stated that Private Page was severely wounded by a shell fragment and died while being taken to a dressing station behind the lines on July 19. He was 22 years old and enlisted in Louisville last January, and at the time of his death was with the 6th Regiment, 82 Company. --The Louisville Courier Journal---------------------------- --"A Kentucky Hero" Short and simple are the annals of the private soldier, but often they are heroic and inspiring. Private Percy Page of the United States Marine Corps lived at Clark, KY in the neighborhood of Louisville. The first that Louisville heard of him was that he was one of the fatally wounded Marines in theaction at Chateau-Thierry or therabout, and that he died while being borne from the field. "He lived till they got him near the dressing station," writes a comrade in a letter to the boy's parents. "On the way he seemed in no pain and talked freely . . . and then he looked up and said: 'Well,boys, I'm going. Thank God, I've done my bit.'" Private Page's wounds and death were officially recorded, no doubt,the record to be forwarded in due course to his parents, but somewhere in the tangle of red tape that record remained while his parents received from one of their son's friends the information that their supreme sacrifice had been made. To die contented with the reflection that duty has been done is, in peace or war, to part with life upon the best terms obtainable. The span of a man's life is negligible, viewed broadly. The nature of his achievement rather than the measure of his success by commercial standards, or the degree of his fame or prominence, matters to him atthe moment of dissolution, if conscious, and should matter to others inmaking an estimate of him. If it is the sort of achievement that bridges the abyss of death with the calm of consciousness of duty done it amounts to more than estates or titles of honor. --Article from Sat., September 14, 1918 issue of The Louisville Courier Journal, reprinted in New York Times on Sunday, 29 September1918. Medals: 1 Aisne-Marne Battle Clasp (the highest medal given by France) 1 Defensive Sector Clasp 2 Bronze Stars Sharp Shooter MedalPercy S. Page, 83rd Company, 6th Regiment, U.S. Marines --Hearld--Thursday morning-------------------------------------- I have been told that Percy wrote this poem shortly before his death and that it had been published in _Stars & Stripes._The Song of the Volunteer Why didn't I wait to be drafted And be led to the train by a band,Or take out a claim for exemption,Oh! Why did I hold up my hand,Why didn't I wait for the banquet;Why didn't I wait to be cheered,Why didn't I wait for the big noises,While I only volunteered.And nobody gave me a banquet,Nobody said a kind word,the puff of the engine, the grind of the wheels was all the goodbyes I heard,then off to the training camp hurried, To work hard for half a year And lost in the shuffle, forgotten, forI was only a volunteer.And perhaps someday in the future,when my little boy sits on my knee,And asks what I did in the Great War And his little eyes look up to meI will have to look back in those eyes that so trustfully peer,and confess that I wasn't_drafted_, and that I volunteered How do you like this _Percy_ --Percy Sherman Page, probably written around May, 1918