Born February 6, 1897, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Son of Oscar Leon and Rosa Mills Watkins. Educated Shortridge High School; Wabash College, one year, and Harvard University, Class of 1919. Joined American Field Service, May 23, 1917 ; attached American Staff, Boston Office. Mission to France, July-August. To America, and returned to France, October 3, 1917, in U. S. Aviation. Trained Foggia, Italy. Commissioned Second Lieutenant, May 18, 1918. Trained in France, Tours, St. Maixent, Issoudun, and Cazeau. Assigned 94th Aero Squadron, First Pursuit Group. Died October 23, 1918, of pneumonia on way to the Front, at Bar-le-Duc. Buried Bar-le-Duc, Meuse. Body to be transferred to Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis, Indiana.
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: http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/AFShist/Mem7.htm
In May, 1917, he left Harvard to enter the Boston office of the American Field Service. He went to France in July, traveling steerage in order that a poor woman and her sick child might have his cabin, and spent a month there on a Field Service mission, returning in August: On October 3, 1917, he sailed again for France and joined the American Air Service, writing to his family, "If you do not approve you have only yourselves to blame for teaching me in my childhood to love and honor --- first God, then my country, and then my family." He became a keen, daring flyer, and all his fellow officers are agreed that he would have made an admirable fighter. One of them who came particularly to love and admire him wrote to his father, "We all have our ideals of what a man, a Christian, should be, and Osric approaches as near to that ideal as it is humanly possible to come . . . . . Sympathy, generosity, fidelity, humility, a general lovableness of disposition which one can not begin to describe,--- all of these were his and more."
In October, 1918, at Bar-le-Duc, when at last on his way to the front assigned to the 94th Aero Squadron, First Pursuit Group, A. E. F., as a chasse pilot, he contracted influenza and later pneumonia from which he died on the morning of October 23d, calmly and serenely, justifying the promise made to his family, "I will face all things unafraid, both physical and abstract, as I have always tried to do in the past." It was not the death that he had dreamed,---glorified death in battle, fighting. And it was a higher courage that could meet it smilingly. "I will face all things unafraid!"
Contributor: ET (47514618) • [email protected]
-----------------------
: http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/AFShist/Mem7.htm
In May, 1917, he left Harvard to enter the Boston office of the American Field Service. He went to France in July, traveling steerage in order that a poor woman and her sick child might have his cabin, and spent a month there on a Field Service mission, returning in August: On October 3, 1917, he sailed again for France and joined the American Air Service, writing to his family, "If you do not approve you have only yourselves to blame for teaching me in my childhood to love and honor --- first God, then my country, and then my family." He became a keen, daring flyer, and all his fellow officers are agreed that he would have made an admirable fighter. One of them who came particularly to love and admire him wrote to his father, "We all have our ideals of what a man, a Christian, should be, and Osric approaches as near to that ideal as it is humanly possible to come . . . . . Sympathy, generosity, fidelity, humility, a general lovableness of disposition which one can not begin to describe,--- all of these were his and more."
In October, 1918, at Bar-le-Duc, when at last on his way to the front assigned to the 94th Aero Squadron, First Pursuit Group, A. E. F., as a chasse pilot, he contracted influenza and later pneumonia from which he died on the morning of October 23d, calmly and serenely, justifying the promise made to his family, "I will face all things unafraid, both physical and abstract, as I have always tried to do in the past." It was not the death that he had dreamed,---glorified death in battle, fighting. And it was a higher courage that could meet it smilingly. "I will face all things unafraid!"
Contributor: ET (47514618) • [email protected]
Born February 6, 1897, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Son of Oscar Leon and Rosa Mills Watkins. Educated Shortridge High School; Wabash College, one year, and Harvard University, Class of 1919. Joined American Field Service, May 23, 1917 ; attached American Staff, Boston Office. Mission to France, July-August. To America, and returned to France, October 3, 1917, in U. S. Aviation. Trained Foggia, Italy. Commissioned Second Lieutenant, May 18, 1918. Trained in France, Tours, St. Maixent, Issoudun, and Cazeau. Assigned 94th Aero Squadron, First Pursuit Group. Died October 23, 1918, of pneumonia on way to the Front, at Bar-le-Duc. Buried Bar-le-Duc, Meuse. Body to be transferred to Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis, Indiana.
-----------------------
: http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/AFShist/Mem7.htm
In May, 1917, he left Harvard to enter the Boston office of the American Field Service. He went to France in July, traveling steerage in order that a poor woman and her sick child might have his cabin, and spent a month there on a Field Service mission, returning in August: On October 3, 1917, he sailed again for France and joined the American Air Service, writing to his family, "If you do not approve you have only yourselves to blame for teaching me in my childhood to love and honor --- first God, then my country, and then my family." He became a keen, daring flyer, and all his fellow officers are agreed that he would have made an admirable fighter. One of them who came particularly to love and admire him wrote to his father, "We all have our ideals of what a man, a Christian, should be, and Osric approaches as near to that ideal as it is humanly possible to come . . . . . Sympathy, generosity, fidelity, humility, a general lovableness of disposition which one can not begin to describe,--- all of these were his and more."
In October, 1918, at Bar-le-Duc, when at last on his way to the front assigned to the 94th Aero Squadron, First Pursuit Group, A. E. F., as a chasse pilot, he contracted influenza and later pneumonia from which he died on the morning of October 23d, calmly and serenely, justifying the promise made to his family, "I will face all things unafraid, both physical and abstract, as I have always tried to do in the past." It was not the death that he had dreamed,---glorified death in battle, fighting. And it was a higher courage that could meet it smilingly. "I will face all things unafraid!"
Contributor: ET (47514618) • [email protected]
-----------------------
: http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/AFShist/Mem7.htm
In May, 1917, he left Harvard to enter the Boston office of the American Field Service. He went to France in July, traveling steerage in order that a poor woman and her sick child might have his cabin, and spent a month there on a Field Service mission, returning in August: On October 3, 1917, he sailed again for France and joined the American Air Service, writing to his family, "If you do not approve you have only yourselves to blame for teaching me in my childhood to love and honor --- first God, then my country, and then my family." He became a keen, daring flyer, and all his fellow officers are agreed that he would have made an admirable fighter. One of them who came particularly to love and admire him wrote to his father, "We all have our ideals of what a man, a Christian, should be, and Osric approaches as near to that ideal as it is humanly possible to come . . . . . Sympathy, generosity, fidelity, humility, a general lovableness of disposition which one can not begin to describe,--- all of these were his and more."
In October, 1918, at Bar-le-Duc, when at last on his way to the front assigned to the 94th Aero Squadron, First Pursuit Group, A. E. F., as a chasse pilot, he contracted influenza and later pneumonia from which he died on the morning of October 23d, calmly and serenely, justifying the promise made to his family, "I will face all things unafraid, both physical and abstract, as I have always tried to do in the past." It was not the death that he had dreamed,---glorified death in battle, fighting. And it was a higher courage that could meet it smilingly. "I will face all things unafraid!"
Contributor: ET (47514618) • [email protected]
Gravesite Details
burial: JUL 30,1921
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