Onetime Taft man found to be 3rd Medal of Honor recipient with a Kern County connection
His name has been engraved on the Wall of Valor at the Kern Veterans Memorial in downtown Bakersfield for close to a decade.
But until now, veteran advocates and local historians didn’t know that onetime Taft resident Milo Lemert was a war hero.
Even more astonishing, Lemert was a recipient of America’s highest award for valor in combat, the Medal of Honor. This makes him the third soldier with a Kern County connection to have received that esteemed honor.
The discovery came through Bakersfield High School teacher and local historian Kern Hooper’s senior archiving class.
“When I read his bio, I
thought, ‘Holy smokes! This guy got the Medal of Honor,’” Hooper said.
The archiving class, working virtually at home, was building on work done by previous classes.
Jocelyn Ramerez, a senior in the BHS Driller Service Academy, is working on pulling the last 125 years of history for BHS off the online newspapers, but on this day she was working on Kern Veterans Memorial research, Hooper said.
“Milo Lemert is on the Wall of Valor as having a hometown of Taft,” he said.
Ramirez was placing a small Californian article from 1918 on the Find-aGrave website, and Hooper checked it for accuracy, as he always does.
“And that is when I read Milo Lemert’s biography,” he said. “I tracked Milo and his brother and his father living in Taft at some time.
“This would be a third Kern County man as a Medal of Honor recipient.”
Then Hooper really began digging.
According to Lemert’s Medal of Honor citation, the U.S. Army first sergeant with Company G, 119th Infantry, 30th Division, was killed in action at Bellicourt, France in the battle for the Hindenberg Line during World War I after storming four machine gun nests.
“Seeing that the left flank of his company was held up,” the citation reads, “he located the enemy machinegun emplacement, which had been causing heavy casualties.
“In the face of heavy fire he rushed in singlehanded, killing the entire crew with grenades. Continuing along the enemy trench in advance of the company, he reached another emplacement, which he also charged, silencing the gun with grenades.
“A third machinegun emplacement opened up on him from the left and with similar skill and bravery he destroyed this also. Later in company with another sergeant, he attacked a fourth machinegun nest...”
But Lemert was shot through his side as he reached the fourth emplacement.
“His courageous action in destroying in turn four enemy machinegun nests prevented many casualties among his company and very materially aided in achieving the objective,” the citation concluded.
According to a bio of Lembert published by the East Tennessee Veterans Memorial Association, and a Medal of Honor Society profile, Lembert’s widow, Nellie, was presented with her husband’s medal.
After being buried in a temporary grave in France, he was reinterred at the Crossville City Cemetery in Tennessee.
It seems Kern County in California has some catching up to do.