LAMAR BROTHERS, KILLED IN FIRST WORLD WAR, BURIED IN ARLINGTON

This is the story of two brothers.

Both were born in Lamar County-not quite three years apart, and not many miles. They were inducted into the Army again only a few days and a few miles apart. They were assigned to the same outfit, and they died of wounds on the same day. They were buried near the French border, about 100 miles from each other.

Today they lie, with only two graves between them, in Arlington National Cemetery.

Roy Joe Brown was born in Frisco community, north of Paris (Lamar County, Texas), April 25, 1893, and Winfield Franklin Brown, Feb. 22, 1896, at Ambia. They were the only two of seven sons of the late William D. H. and Victoria Ann Willis Brown, who were in service in World War I.

They grew up here and at Antlers, Okla., the family home being in Paris when the call to the colors came for them. Roy was working in Hugo, Okla., at the time, and Winfield in Paris. Winfield was inducted Oct. 10, 1917, and Roy a few days earlier.

At Camp Travis, San Antonio, they were assigned to the 358th Infantry, with which they went overseas.

Late in September, when the Allied offensive closed in on the desperate German forces along the French border, each brother was wounded--in the leg. Winfield wrote his mother a letter from Base Hospital 18 that in spite of his wound he was getting along all right, and that Roy was all right, too. But officially, Roy had been missing for two days--since Sept. 26.

On Oct. 21, Mrs. Brown was notified by the adjutant general that Winfield had died, Sept. 29, of his wounds.

It was not until April 1, 1919, that the War Department officially announced Roy Brown's death: And it was June before the full explanation was received.

Meantime, Mrs. Brown's inquires through all official channels, including the Red Cross, had been fruitless. On April 24, the adjutant general's office wrote her that her son "had not been reported dead or a prisoner, and is otherwise unaccounted for," adding that the matter was being referred to the commanding general of the American Expeditionary Forces for investigation.

Then in June, the Bureau of Prisoners Relief sent a copy in German and the faulty English translation of a bulletin, forwarded through the International Red Cross.

In this, the Prussian Ministry of War in Berlin, March 27, 1919, reported:
'Notice of the death of an American in Field Hospital 192 Ara (Mons): Bron Ron J soldier 358 Infantry Born Sept. 19, 1893 at Pavis, Texas: died Sept. 29, 1918 as a result of shrapnel wound in left thigh at the hospital. Buried in the soldiers' cemetery at Ars, Grave No. 534. Chief Surgeon.' His body was taken from this German cemetery in Belgium, and reburied in St. Mihiel Cemetery at Thiacourt, Meurthe et Moselle, until it was disinterred for return to the United States. Winfield had been buried in the American Cemetery at Clermont Ferrand, north of the French capital.

Mrs. Brown was notified that Winfield would be reburied in Arlington, June 30, 1921, and Roy, Aug. 1; actually, they were buried in the national cemetery at the same time.

Their mother, widowed in 1914, lived in Muskogee, Okla., for a time, returning to Paris soon after the war. She died here at her home, 134-4th NW, July 31, 1935.

She was honored as a Gold Star Mother by the American Legion Axillary of the post which had been named for Winfield because he was the first Lamar County man reported to have lost his life in World War I.
+++From an undated, unknown newspaper article+++
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