The paper he carried home

Everything this Foundation has published about Thompson Hanes's war came out of other people's paperwork. A transport list written by his company commander. A census taker's column. The log of a German submarine. Good records, all of them, and not one of them his.

Two sheets of paper have now come out of the family's keeping. One is his honorable discharge, signed at Camp Pike, Arkansas, on January 16, 1919. The other is the enlistment record that goes with it. He signed that one himself.

What the discharge says

It names him, and it gives the number this site has been using to ask for his file: 2104693. His grade is Cook. His unit at the end is the 63rd Company, 16th Recruit Battalion, 162nd Depot Brigade — a demobilization unit at Camp Pike, not a fighting one. He was discharged by reason of convenience of the government, demobilization.

Then the lines that describe a man rather than a soldier. He was a farmer. He had blue eyes, light brown hair, a ruddy complexion, and he stood five feet eight and a quarter inches. At the bottom a quartermaster's stamp records $60 paid under the act of February 24, 1919, which was the bonus Congress voted for men leaving the Army.

And one line settles a question this site has carried since it opened:

Said Thompson Hanes was born in Natchez, in the State of Mississippi.

What the enlistment record says

The companion sheet is the one that fills in the war.

• Inducted September 18, 1917, at Colfax, Louisiana. No prior service.
• "A.E.F. from U.S. for foreign service August 24, 1918. Arrived at port overseas Sept 8, 1918."
• "From port overseas for U.S. Dec 24, 1918. Arrived U.S. Dec 30, 1918."
• Marksmanship: none. Horsemanship: no test. Wounds received in service: none.
• Married. Character: Very Good. No absence from duty.
• Due travel pay to Colfax, Louisiana.
• Signature of soldier: Thompson Hanes, in his own hand.

September 8

In September this site published what the Army transport list proves: that Thompson Hanes sailed from New York aboard the Persic with Company B of the 347th Infantry. Twelve days out, on September 7, 1918, the German submarine UB-87 put a torpedo into her off the Isles of Scilly. She stayed afloat, destroyers came alongside, about 2,800 American soldiers went down ropes onto their decks, and nobody was lost.

What that Dispatch could not supply was a record of his own. Here it is, in one line of a clerk's handwriting: he arrived at a port overseas on September 8, 1918. The day after.

That is what a soldier taken off a torpedoed transport by destroyer would record. It is not a muster roll, and it does not name him on the Persic's deck at the moment the torpedo struck. A record that does would close the last gap. But his own file now gives a crossing that began on August 24 and ended on September 8, and the ship he boarded was attacked on September 7 in between.

So the torpedoing stays marked partially confirmed on his page, and it is now the best supported partial claim on this site.

Natchez

Where Thompson Hanes was born has been the longest running disagreement in the family record. Two censuses give Louisiana. His 1984 obituary calls him a native of Catahoula Parish. His 1942 draft registration gives Natchez, Mississippi, and so does the family.

His 1919 discharge gives Natchez too, and it is the earliest of those documents by twenty-three years. The Foundation keeps Natchez, and keeps the disagreement on the page where a reader can see it.

The one it did not settle

Three records now give March 2 for his birthday and three different years for it. The marker on his grave says 1891. His 1942 draft registration, which he signed, says 1889. And the discharge gives his age at induction on September 18, 1917, as twenty-five and a half, which points to a birth about March 1892. The 1930 census, for its part, implies 1894.

Four candidate years, one day and month, and no source that outranks the others. The Foundation does not choose.

What the record proves, and what it does not

Documented: induction at Colfax on September 18, 1917; foreign service from August 24 to September 8, 1918; return between December 24 and 30, 1918; discharge at Camp Pike on January 16, 1919; grade, serial number, unit at discharge, character, description, and birthplace.

Partially confirmed: that he was aboard the Persic when she was torpedoed.

Still open: his birth year, and what he did between landing in September 1918 and sailing for home in December.

What comes next

• His Veterans Administration claim file. A claim number is written in pencil at the top of the discharge, which means a file was opened. His obituary calls him a disabled veteran of the First World War. Claim files were kept apart from the service records that burned in the 1973 fire at St. Louis, so this one may well survive.
• Tyler County, Texas. The enlistment record carries a clerk's note that the discharge was recorded in the Soldiers' and Sailors' Discharge Record, volume I, page 26, of Tyler County. A county copy may exist. It also places the family in the county where his son Homer was born at Woodville in November 1919.
• The rest of the papers. More of his file is in the family's hands and is being photographed.

Sources

• Honorable Discharge from the United States Army, Form No. 525, A.G.O., for Thompson Hanes, Camp Pike, Arkansas, January 16, 1919. Original held by the family; read from photographs.
• Enlistment Record, companion sheet to the above. Original held by the family.
• Army Transport Service passenger list, Headquarters, Port of Embarkation, Hoboken, New Jersey: Company B, 347th Infantry, 87th Division, transport Persic, sailed August 26, 1918.
• Ships hit by UB 87, uboat.net.
• Obituary of William Thompson Hanes, The Times, Shreveport, April 25, 1984, p. 14.