World War I
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World War I
Before the United States formally joined the conflict, many intellectuals in the nation’s major universities, including Columbia’s president Nicholas Murray Butler, were opposed to U.S. intervention. Once Congress declared war in 1917, any previous ambivalence about the war was replaced by a commitment to national service. President Butler established the Student Army Training Corps to support the Army; it was housed in Hartley and Livingston Halls. He also created a smaller campus-based Naval training unit.
The University supported students’ leaving campus to join the war effort by allowing them to receive full credit for courses in which they had enrolled. Bennett Cerf, who later founded Random House, wrote in his memoirs about signing up for extremely difficult courses such as advanced geometry in the term in which he knew he would be leaving Columbia for Officers’ Training Camp. He said that he did this to receive credit for coursework that he would otherwise never have passed.
The University awarded a Bachelor of Arts Certificate for Academic Record and National Service in June 1918 to fifty-seven members of the Columbia College Class of 1918 who had left their studies to join the military. In conferring the degree, President Butler declared that the students were “admitted forever to the roll of graduates of Columbia College,” even though they had not completed their prescribed course of studies. Among the recipients was Chandler Waterman, who had died of wounds in April of that year.
In 1915, even before America officially joined the war, forty-nine graduates of the School of Nursing volunteered to serve with Allied forces in Europe. After the United States declared war in 1917, Columbia medical personnel, in collaboration with Presbyterian Hospital, established the first American base hospital. In addition, a large number of Columbia doctors and nurses deployed to Etretat, France, where Base Hospital No. 2 was established. Some of these Columbians served in a mobile unit, a specially equipped convoy of automobiles that served as a surgical hospital to supplement the existing field hospitals which were often too far from the rapidly shifting front lines to provide effective care to the wounded.
Altogether, more than 2,600 Columbia students, alumni, staff, and faculty served their country during the war. These included more than 350 faculty members and administrators and almost two-thirds of the graduates of the Law School from 1910 to 1918. As many as a third of the graduates of 1918 missed commencement because of military service. Most strikingly, the Dean of Engineering had only one graduate present to receive his degree; the rest of his class had left for the war.
More than 200 Columbians are known to have lost their lives during the conflict. Among the dead were two brothers. James Vedder (Columbia College 1919) was killed in September 1918 in an action that would posthumously win him a citation of bravery. Two months later, his older brother, Harmon Vedder (Columbia College 1918), died just one week before the armistice. The dead also included Amabel Scharf Roberts (Nursing 1916), Columbia’s only female casualty of the war.
Alumni who perished in this war
A - Architecture | J - Journalism |
CC - Columbia College | L - Law |
ENG - Engineering | PH - Pharmacy |
E(NAVY) - Engineering (Navy) | PS - Physicians and Surgeons |
EXT - University Extentsion | TC - Teachers College |
GR - Graduate Faculties | UNC - Unconfirmed |
Name | School | Class Year | Date of Death |
Agar, John Giraud | PS | 1919 | October 21, 1918 |
Alexander, Arthur Douglas | CC, L | 1909, 1912 | April 21, 1919 |
Allen, Jr., Clarence Emir | L | 1916 | July 15, 1918 |
Apgard, John Giraud | PS | 1918 | October 21, 1918 |
Baer, Paul Howell | CC | 1920 | March, 1918 |
Baldwin, Julian Wadsworth | PH | 1910 | July 28, 1918 |
Baldwin, Morgan Smiley | L | 1917 | October 9, 1918 |
Barker, Prescot Erskine | CC | 1916 | September 29, 1918 |
Barry, Vincent | EXT | ||
Bartow, Lathrop | CC | 1909 | December 9, 1918 |
Batten, Charles Albert | CC | 1918 | August 28, 1918 |
Battey, Louis Le Garde | L | 1914 | October 13, 1918 |
Baush, Richard Oliver | E(NAVY) | 1916 | February 14, 1918 |
Betowski, Paul Eugene | PS | 1906 | July 2, 1918 |
Beverly, Benjamin Sloan | ENG | 1914 | October 13, 1918 |
Bising, Albert George | PS | 1896 | November 2, 1918 |
Bissell, Joseph Bidleman | PS | 1883 | December 2, 1918 |
Blake, Harold Rockwood | TC | 1916 | March 19, 1919 |
Blatt, Samuel Charles | PH | 1910 | September 29, 1918 |
Blount, James Henderson | L | 1890 | October 7, 1918 |
Blume, Samuel | UNC | Summer 1918 | |
Bostwick, Henry Anthon | CC | 1885 | July 25, 1917 |
Bourke, John Francis | PS | 1905 | July 28, 1919 |
Bradley, Jr., Wayles Baker | ENG | 1917 | February 4, 1918 |
Brand, Stanley Oliver | EXT | June 14, 1917 | |
Brotherton, John Gardner | GR | October 14, 1918 | |
Brown, Henry Warren | A | 1910 | Spring 1919 |
Bruce, Parker | EXT | 1916 | September 12, 1918 |
Buermeyer, Herbert Arthur | CC, TC | 1916, 1916 | July 2, 1918 |
Burdick, Harold Stacey | E(NAVY) | 1917 | January 16, 1919 |
Burke, Frank W. | ENG | 1913 | August 25, 1918 |
Burrows, Jr., Lorenzo | PS | 1889 | October 29, 1918 |
Butler, Lyman Collins | L | 1913 | June 20, 1917 |
Caldwell, Eugene Wilson | PS | 1898 | June 20, 1918 |
Campbell, Duncan | CC | 1915 | November 1, 1918 |
Cantor, Daniel | PH | 1920 | November 7, 1918 |
Chamberlin, Maxwell Eugene | CC | 1919 | September 28, 1918 |
Chapman, William Harmon | PS | 1917 | September 26, 1918 |
Cohn, Meyer | J | 1915 | October 18, 1918 |
Coleman, William Carithers | GR | 1911 | October 7, 1918 |
Colquhoun, William Wallace | ENG | 1914 | September 15, 1917 |
Cooke, Albert Samuel | PS | 1901 | February 1, 1915 |
Cowperthaite, Harold Frederick | CC | 1915 | October 10, 1918 |
Cudlipp, Jerome Moore | CC, L | 1916, 1918 | September 23 1918 |
Cullen, Robert Emmett | L | 1919 | October 15, 1918 |
Deutsch, Sigmund | PS | 1902 | November 29, 1917 |
Dixon, Jr., Ben Franklin | L | 1906 | September 29, 1918 |
Dowd, Arthur King | L | 1917 | March 25, 1919 |
Dowd, Jr., Dennis P. | L | 1911 | August 11, 1916 |
Dryfoos, Arthur David | UNC | 1899 | August 23, 1918 |
Dunn, Walter Emory | CC | 1916 | October 28, 1918 |
Edwards, Frederick Trevenen | CC | 1915 | October 5, 1918 |
Eisner, Moses Nathanial | PS | 1917 | |
Evans, Alfred Winter | ENG | 1906 | October 12, 1917 |
Everson, Robert Kenneth | CC | 1917 | January 20, 1919 |
Fahnestock, Clarence | PS | 1900 | October 5, 1918 |
Farrell, Raymond F. | A | 1914 | August 8, 1918 |
Felbel, Frank Julius | CC, L | 1911, 1913 | January 13, 1919 |
Féry, Alfred Lucien Pierre | CC | 1917 | September 26, 1915 |
Fisk, Clinton Earle | CC | 1902 | October 18, 1918 |
Fitz-Gerald, Edward M. | CC | 1917 or 1920 | |
Friedman, Israel Joseph | CC | 1911 | October 28, 1918 |
Goodglick, Samuel | PS | 1916 | November 8, 1918 |
Gregory, Gordon Clark | CC | 1914 | |
Griswald, James Brown | PS | 1890 | October 1, 1917 |
Gudebrod, Jr., Frederick C. | EXT | 1915 | October 12, 1918 |
Guiteras, Julian George | ENG | 1913 | October 12, 1918 |
Guiterman, Henry Rosenwald | CC | 1919 | October 4, 1918 |
Gurry, Edward A. | PH | 1914 | October 20, 1918 |
Haines, Edward Joseph | ENG | 1905 | March 1, 1918 |
Hanlon, Joseph Thomas | ENG | 1916 | July 31, 1918 |
Harris, Lester Potter | CC | 1918 | July 9, 1918 |
Harris, Thomas Addis Emmet | L | 1915 | September 5, 1918 |
Harrison, Edmund Caskie | CC | 1902 | November 1, 1918 |
Hassinger, Philip Edward | CC | 1914 | September 14, 1918 |
Hays, John Elder | ENG | 1913 | October 16, 1918 |
Hazen, Conrad P. | ENG | 1914 | February 11, 1918 |
Healy, Jefferson Aloysius | CC, L | 1916, 1919 | August 11, 1918 |
Hegarty, Thomas Alexander | CC | 1918 | October 30, 1918 |
Henry, John Paul | CC | 1914 | October 21, 1918 |
Herr, Wilmer Edgar | L | 1919 | April 4, 1918 |
Hettling, Frederick Charles | CC | 1919 | October 13, 1918 |
Hines, Terrence G. | UNC | ||
Hirshler, Jerome Jacob | EXT | January 21, 1918 | |
Hobbs, Austin Latting | PS | 1911 | September 26, 1918 |
Holbrook, Newberry | CC, ENG | 1911, 1913 | February 16, 1918 |
Holliday, Jr., John Hampden | CC | 1908 | December 23, 1917 |
Holzman, Martin Maximillian | CC, PS | 1913, 1915 | October 20, 1918 |
Irving, John Duer | CC, GR | 1896, 1899 | July 1, 1918 |
Jabureck, Charles Cornelius | EXT | July 12, 1919 | |
Janeway, Theodore Caldwell | PS | 1895 | December 28, 1917 |
Jauss, Raymond Boyd | ENG | 1916 | July 15, 1918 |
Jewell, William Arthur | GR | July 22, 1918 | |
Joerg, Alfred Norton | CC | 1910 | July 25, 1918 |
Johnson, France Davis | ENG | 1906 | |
Johnstone, Malcolm McLaren | CC, ENG | 1917, 1919 | June 3, 1918 |
Jones, William Benjamin | PS | 1884 | March 1, 1919 |
Kalvio, George J. | EXT | 1914-1917 | October 24, 1918 |
Keller, Daniel Schneck | L | 1919 | September 25, 1918 |
Kent, Stewart | CC | 1920 | December 21, 1918 |
Kenyon, Nelson Townley | L | 1919 | November 9, 1918 |
Ker, David | CC | 1917 | September 12, 1918 |
Kilmer, Alfred Joyce | CC | 1908 | August 1, 1918 |
Kline, Louis A. | EXT | 1916 | October 1, 1918 |
Knight, Frank Henry | PS | 1899 | October 28, 1918 |
Name | School | Class Year | Date of Death |
Laccorn, Paul Eugene | PH | 1911 | October 16, 1918 |
Lahey, William Stewart | CC, J | 1913, 1914 | October 31, 1918 |
Lasher, Jr., John Kennedy | CC, L | 1914, 1916 | September 9, 1918 |
Lathrop, John Earle | ENG | 1913 | |
Leonard, Howard George | EXT | September 9, 1918 | |
Levy, Alwyn Gordon | CC | 1918-1920 | April 25, 1918 |
Lilley, John L. | L | 1915 | October 6, 1918 |
Lilly, Charles Castner | PH | July 19,1918 | |
Lowman, John Henry | PS | 1877 | January 23, 1919 |
Lucas, Anthony Fitz | CC | 1914 | |
Lunn, Jr., Robert | ENG | 1913 | October 1, 1918 |
Maas, Charles O. | L | 1892 | July 21, 1919 |
Marquard, John Murray | TC | 1915 | August 23, 1918 |
Mason, Frank Louis | CC | ||
Maurice, Benjamin Van Dyke | CC | 1917 | May 13, 1918 |
McCormick, John Kernan | CC, L | 1913, 1915 | October 17, 1918 |
McCreery, Sydney Francis | CC | 1917 | October 6, 1918 |
McDonald, William LaFayette | GR | 1916 | June 30, 1919 |
McGinley, John Joseph | CC | 1912 | |
McKnight, Locksley | TC | 1915 | Fall 1916 |
McPhee, Raymond Joseph | L | 1905 | March 26, 1918 |
Mead, Lewis Durant | PS | 1900 | June 14, 1918 |
Merrill, John Franklin | CC | 1918 | October 4, 1918 |
Miller, David William | ENG | 1917 | March 17, 1918 |
Mitchel, John Purroy | CC | 1899 | July 7, 1918 |
Mitchell, Edward Bedinger | CC | 1901 | January 22, 1918 |
Mitchell, Robert Freeman | L | 1919 | October 15, 1918 |
Moeller, Herbert Philip | CC | 1919 | September 28, 1918 |
Mulqueen, Gilroy | CC, L | 1916, 1919 | December 1, 1917 |
Nicol, Fancher | L | 1901 | September 1, 1918 |
O'Neale, Jr., James Sanders | CC | 1914 | August 25, 1918 |
Osgood, Harold Symonds | CC | 1915 | October 13, 1918 |
Peltier, Paul Desnoyers | PS | 1918 | April 1, 1919 |
Perkins, John Richard | CC, PS | 1915, 1918 | October 9, 1919 |
Petersen, Leo Smith | PS | 1911 | October 21, 1918 |
Peterson, Chester William | CC | October 12, 1918 | |
Peugnet, Charles Paul | ENG | 1895, 1897 | February 22, 1918 |
Pickering, Howard Vincent | TC | 1912-1914 | October 26, 1917 |
Pinkus, Irving J. | EXT | August 30, 1918 | |
Polhemus, George Weeks | CC | 1912 | September 3, 1919 |
Prouty, Theodore Rentrope | GR | 1913 | October 23, 1918 |
Pulsifer, Adlebart E. | TC | 1915-1916 | October 2, 1918 |
Purchas, Jr., Albert E. | CC | 1919 | July, 1918 |
Putnam, James O. | L | 1910 | August 25, 1919 |
Rapoport, Philip | TC | 1913 | September 5, 1918 |
Ream, Ward Hall | TC | October 1, 1918 | |
Roberts, Amabel Scharff | UNC | January 17, 1918 | |
Roosa, Elting W. | PH | 1915-1917 | October 25, 1918 |
Rosenbaum, Abraham | PH | 1917 | September, 1918 |
Rotgard, Isidore | CC | 1916 | August 27, 1918 |
Rothenberg, David Meyer | CC, PS | 1915, 1917 | October 5, 1918 |
Rust, Sidney Ruffin | UNC | November 3, 1918 | |
Satterlee, Edward Lansing | A | 1899 | December 4, 1918 |
Schlottman, Gustave | CC | 1913 | October 19, 1918 |
Sellers, Lee West | J | 1919 | June 2, 1919 |
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley | EXT | August 23, 1918 | |
Shilliday, Rexford | CC | 1919 | May 22, 1918 |
Smith, Bert Rice | ENG | 1917 | June 18, 1917 |
Smith, Henry C. | ENG | 1917 | December 21, 1918 |
Smith, Joseph Clovis | L | 1917-1918 | June 22, 1918 |
Smith, Leighton V. | TC | 1915 | October 23, 1918 |
Solovei, Samuel | PS | 1917 | October 15, 1918 |
Spiegelberg, Sidney Lehman | CC, PS | 1902, 1906 | August 18, 1918 |
Sprague, Russell W. | ENG | 1917 | December 23, 1917 |
Starkweather, Courtney Nash | PS | 1920 | October 4, 1918 |
Steinhoff, Karl Ludwig | PS | 1918 | October 11, 1918 |
Stevens, Floyd Alonzo | GR | 1915 | June 11, 1918 |
Stillman, Walter Martin | CC, L | 1915, 1917 | January 7, 1919 |
Straight, Burr Dexter | TC? | 1917 | October 3, 1918 |
Strunz, Gilbert Jarecki | CC | 1913-1914 | October 7, 1918 |
Talley, Allen Williamson | GR | October 7, 1918 | |
Tate, Jr., James A. | L | 1917 | March 21, 1919 |
Taylor, Ermond A. | CC | 1920 | February 19, 1919 |
Thacher, Clifton Otis | CC | 1918 | November 22, 1918 |
Thomas, Clarence Crase | E(NAVY) | 1916 | April 28, 1917 |
Tichborne, Herbert M. | ENG | 1917 | December 23, 1919 |
Tucker, Dudley Gilman | L | 1910 | July 8, 1918 |
Vedder, Harmon Boultbee | CC | 1918 | November 5, 1918 |
Vedder, James Outwater | CC | 1919 | September 29, 1918 |
Waite, Alan Frederick | L | 1918 | September 29, 1918 |
Walker, Russell Tracy | A | 1912 | July 1, 1918 |
Ward, Galbraith | L | 1919 | December 17, 1918 |
Ward, Walter Lester | A | 1917 | October 6, 1918 |
Waterman, Chandler | CC | 1918 | April 5, 1918 |
Weaver, John Howard | CC | 1915 | August 26, 1920 |
Weil, Richard | CC, PS | 1896, 1900 | November 19, 1917 |
Weir, Horace Garner | PH | 1907 | March 31, 1918 |
West, Ralph O'Neal | CC | 1919 | September 15, 1918 |
Wheeler, David Everett | CC, PS | 1895, 1898 | July 19, 1918 |
Wheless, Hubert Chapelle | L | 1918 | |
White, Sidney W. | L | 1917 | October 31, 1918 |
Willard, Charles Bunnell | L | 1914 | June 4, 1917 |
Williams, Harry Clay | L | 1918 | November 6, 1918 |
Williams, John Edward | PS | 1913 | |
Williams, Spencer Charles | CC, L | 1917, 1919 | May 21, 1918 |
Winans, Chester Buttre | CC | 1918 | September 12, 1918 |
Wood, Francis Appleton | CC | 1916 | September 13, 1918 |
Wood, Jr., Charles Lewis | GR | August 18, 1918 | |
Wupperman, Carlos Domasso | CC | 1907 | April 15, 1919 |
Zion, Lewis | PS | 1915 | October 31, 1918 |