February 17, 1919 was a quiet Sunday for Lieutenant Paul Appleton, the administrative officer making his rounds at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He reported as follows:

Inspections: Guard: 12.30 a.m.; 9 a.m.; 2.30 p. m. Prisoners verified,
12.45 a. m. Meals: Mess Hall No. 1,

Mess Hall No. 2, Quartermaster: Satisfactory in quantity and quality.
Unusual occurrences: At noon mess,
Mess Hall No. 2, two civilian teamsters eating dinner without authority. Twenty-eight pounds of fresh cabbage found on garbage wagon, concealed by same teamsters, with a view to removing same without authority. Capt. Masters, Adjutant of Post, preparing Investigation of this irregularity.

Wards: 8.30 a. m. Inspected preparation of body of Sergt. Burton K. Muschlitz, Det. M. D.

Burton Kneal Muschlitz was a Delta Upsilon brother at Pennsylvania State College, one of the names on the bronze plaques in the fraternity house in State College, Pennsylvania. In the report, we learn of the sad end to his story. In our project to remember those whose names are on the plaques, let us try to remember a little more about the all too brief life of Brother Muschlitz.

According to family history, they descended from nobility: Johann Heinrich Gottfridt Muschlitz, Burton’s great-great grandfather, was reportedly the illegitimate son of a Silesian nobleman. Johann came to America in 1753, and fought for the Colonies in the French and Indian War. The family settled in eastern Pennsylvania, and Burton was born in November of 1896 in East Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, the "Switzerland of America". He grew up in a modest twin home in this scenic mountain community on the Lehigh River, a town that we know today as Jim Thorpe. His father was a railroad engineer, married to Ida, originally from Connecticut. Burt was the oldest child. A younger brother Kenneth lived just two months, and sister Mildred came along 14 years after Burton was born.

Burt enrolled at the Pennsylvania State College in the Fall of 1916, and won a place on the freshman basketball team. He is missing from the 1917 fraternity photo, but appears in the group shot in the 1919 yearbook, listed as a sophomore. World War I had broken out several years before, but it was not until Congress voted to declare war on Germany on April 6, 1917 that the United States got involved. Burt apparently tried several times to enlist, but was turned down because of flat feet. Eventually he was successful, and two days after Christmas with his family in 1917, he put his studies on hold to enlist in the Medical Corps of the US Army.

The year 1918 was full of training and travel – first for induction and examination in Fort Slocum, New York, which processed over 140,000 recruits between 1917-19. Burt then took the train to Georgia, to begin his medical training at Camp Greenleaf, which sprung up at Chickamauga National Battlefield Park under an Army program that used national parks as training sites. Camp Greenleaf was used “to prepare medical officers for work with motor field units, mule-drawn units, evacuation hospitals and base hospitals, additionally including veterinary and dental training.” He then moved on to Camp Joseph E. Johnston near Jacksonville – a training center for Army quartermasters who are responsible for providing food, equipment and supplies for the men and animals in an army unit. In September he took the train from Florida to New Haven, Connecticut to learn laboratory work at Yale University, where he was assigned to the Sanitary Corps, precursor to the Army’s Medical Service Corps. “The organization enrolled newly commissioned officers with "special skills in sanitation, sanitary engineering, in bacteriology, or other sciences related to sanitation and preventive medicine, or who possess other knowledge of special advantage to the Medical Department.” Burt’s studies at Yale included “laboratory procedures, … tests for meningoccus, diphtheria, pneumonia, meningitis, tuberculosis, and infection by hemolytic streptococcus as well as routine urinalysis, blood counts, malaria tests, blood cultures, and preparation of urethral smears for the diagnosis of venereal disease.” Completing his work there, he passed the exam for 2nd Lieutenant.

The war ended with the armistice on 11-11-1918, but Burt had enlisted and was still in training. In January, 1919, he shipped out to Camp Taylor outside of Louisville, Kentucky, at one time the largest WW I training camp. His stay was brief as he received orders to return east to Walter Reed Hospital Laboratory in February. The hospital was filled with soldiers who like Burt had been traveling all over the country, intermingling with thousands of others, including returning combat veterans who had been living in squalid combat conditions and picking up the germs from the soldiers of France and Britain and Germany on the battlefields of Europe. The biggest killers of World War I – influenza and pneumonia – struck down Burt on February 15, 1919, as it had to 30,000 other American soldiers who never made it to France.

His body was returned home and he as interred at Evergreen Cemetery in Mauch Chunk, overlooking the town where he spent most of his short life. His grave is well marked and tended, and he rests with his brother and his parents, with his sister and her husband nearby. He saw his duty, he left college and enlisted at age 21, he trained, and ultimately gave his life to his country. In remembering him, we honor his sacrifice.

Doug Humes
PSU 1977