OBIT: Herbert Price JONES, 1943, Meyersdale, Somerset County, PA

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Meyersdale Library.
Transcribed and proofread by: Richard Boyer.

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HERBERT PRICE JONES

Taps Sounded for Herbert P. Jones of World War I
Well Known Legionnaire of Somerset Succumbed In Veterans' Hospital After Long 
Illness

  Herbert Price Jones, veteran of World War I, passed away last Sunday in the 
Veteran's Hospital in Aspinwall, where he had been a patient for 14 months, 
suffering from paralysis resulting from wounds received in battle and hardships 
experienced as a prisoner of war.
  Jones was a member of Company C, 110th Infantry, the pride of Somerset County 
in World War I, which received the brunt of the German's attack at the beginning 
of the second battle of the Marne at Conde en Bria, July 14, 1918, in which 
almost the entire company was killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
  Jones, then a sergeant, was taken prisoner along with scores of other members 
of the company, including Captain W. Curtis Truxal, and taken to a prison camp 
in Germany where they were held until Jan. 6, 1919, almost two months after the 
armistice of Nov. 11, 1918.
  While the prisoners were loading loot taken by the Germans on a prison troop 
train enroute to Germany, Sgt. Jones slipped and fell while carrying a heavy keg 
of marmalade up a ramp during a heavy rain.  He was knocked unconscious and 
kicked in the spine, by a German officer as he lay helpless.  Throughout the day 
he lay in the heavy rain, close to the prison train.  He was loaded on a cot by 
some of his comrades, and the following day carried to a farmhouse, and placed 
on a bed with bare springs.  His companions reported at that time, he was 
paralyzed, unable to move legs or arms for about four days.
  Prior to that he and Pvt. Lawrence J. Hartle of Meyersdale were lying in a 
trench in the front lines in France, when a German hand grenade exploded 
knocking Jones unconscious.  Hartle has since related that a German came to the 
trench to see what damage had been done, and seeing the unconscious Jones, hit 
him on the head with the butt of his gun.
  At another time, he was hit in the face and neck with flying shrapnel and 
carried both pieces in his body until he died.
  Jones remained in France along with other released prisoners of war until May 
12, 1919, and was honorably discharged from the army May 23, 1919 at Camp Dix, 
N.J., after which he returned to his home in Somerset.
  Subsequently he served four years as deputy sheriff of Somerset County, under 
Sheriff Martin L. Markel, one of his army comrades, and four years as deputy 
county treasurer under Treasurer Walter McNutt, another of his army comrades.
  In recent years he had been employed as a highway department inspector until 
forced to retire owing to his paralytic condition which gradually resulted from 
the wounds and hardships he suffered while serving overseas.
  He was born April 2, 1890, a son of Brinker R. and Bee (Walter) Jones, and is 
survived by his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth (Walters) Jones, and two sons, Pvt. Robert 
W. Jones, a musician in an Air Force band at San Antonio, Tex., and Fred at 
home.  Surviving also is a brother, Walter B. Jones of Somerset, and a sister, 
Mrs. Joseph Blackburn of Charleston, W.Va.
  He was a member of S.S. Crouse Post, American Legion of Somerset, which 
accorded him military honors at his funeral, at 4 o'clock, Wednesday afternoon, 
when he was laid to rest in Somerset Union Cemetery, after religious services 
held in the Hauger Funeral Home, conducted by Rev. Dr. I. Hess Wagner, of 
Trinity Lutheran Church.

Meyersdale Republican, November 11, 1943