Lee Roy "LeRoy" Appleton

Submitted by: Ethel Lee Douglas Lawson (niece)

Lee Roy "LeRoy" Appleton served in World War One with the United States Army. The dates of service are: Known 15 May 1917 - 23 Nov 1917.

 

My Uncle LeRoy Appleton served in WWI as a private in Co. G of the 144th U.S. Infantry. He was 25 years old when he enlisted May 15, 1917.

Many years ago my mother, Ethel Mae Appleton Douglas, told me an interesting story about my Uncle LeRoy and my father, John Albert Douglas.

My mother and her brother had been very close all of their lives, since the death of their mother at an early age. When my mother had not heard from her brother for a very long time, she became extremely worried for fear he had been killed or wounded so badly he could not write letters. After unsuccessfully trying to console my mother, my father decided to get on the train from Texas to New York. That’s where the troops came in from the European war zone and where war records were kept.

 My father searched and searched, finally finding Uncle Leroy in a hospital so “doped up” that he had no awareness of what was going on around him. My father was told that Uncle LeRoy’s entire unit, troop (or whatever it was), had all died from disease or gas poisoning. My uncle was expected to die too, but hadn’t died yet, so he was just being kept “doped”, expected to die at any time.

My father checked Uncle LeRoy out of the hospital and took him home, where my family cared for him and got him off the drugs. Uncle LeRoy married one of my mother’s best friends and lived into his eighties.