The long journey home for one Utican soldier

Memorial Day has very special meaning for native Utican George Henry Humphrey Jr. His “homecoming” had been delayed for this well-known young man. This is his fascinating trip back home.

George was a teenager when his prominent Utica attorney father passed away, leaving a widow and two sons: George and Orville. The latter lived in New York City. Winifred, the widow, continued living at 1223 Seymour Ave. in Utica.

By all accounts, George was a handsome six-footer with brown hair and eyes. He attended local schools, graduating from Utica Free Academy when he was 17. He possessed an “unimpeachable character,” according to one account.

Work in local businesses followed high school, including a responsible office position with the New York Telephone Co. and later the agency for the New England Yarn Co.

When George was 28, his life took a dramatic turn. September 1917, he and several other area men walked into Utica’s Mann Building and volunteered to become U.S. Marines. America was at war, and millions of similar young men would soon be going “over there.”

George was sent to Parris Island, S.C., for train- ing and remained there until July 1918, when he was transferred to Quantico, Va., remaining there about a month. Then the orders came to get ready to embark on the greatest and most dangerous adventure of their young lives.

It was a Saturday morning in the second week in October 1918. A blue star service flag proudly hung from the front porch of 1223 Seymour Ave. Inside, Winifred was confined to her bed with a severe illness. That fateful morning, a brief telegram arrived. It contained a mother’s worst nightmare.

For weeks she had anxiously waited for news from her son, who had “cheered her time and again with cheerful words.” She knew from an Aug. 25 letter that he had arrived safely in France. After that, only two letters followed, both expressing “his eagerness to get into the fighting.”

Soon Winifred would have to replace the blue star flag on her porch with a gold one.

America entered World War I in 1917, three years after war began in Europe. In the following 19 months, the United States rapidly mobilized its industries, military services and home front. Eventually, two million Americans were fighting in France and elsewhere.

One of the American divisions in the St. Mihiel offensive that began Sept. 12, 1918, was the 2nd Infantry Division, which included the U.S. 6th Marine Regiment. In that regiment was 1st Sgt. George H. Humphrey.

Humphrey was killed in action Sept. 15, 1918. Thirteen months later, a fellow Marine who had witnessed Humphrey’s death wrote an account of it and sent it to George’s brother, along with a crude map of the burial site near the French village of Rembercourt.

Twenty-seven days after his death, Humphrey’s mother received a brief telegram from Brig. Gen. Charles Long: “Accept my heartfelt sympathy in the loss of one who nobly gave his life for the service of his country.”

For nearly 90 years, George Humphrey’s body lay undisturbed where it was hastily buried, on the battlefield of northeast France. But the story wasn’t finished. After a French relic hunter uncovered the remains of an American World War I soldier, a team from the U.S military’s Joint Prisoner of War/Missing In Action Accounting Command visited the site in October 2009 and excavated the remains. They found a marksman’s badge with Sgt. Humphrey’s name engraved on the back. The Accounting Command confirmed his identity using dental records.

The beautiful blue sky and white wispy clouds made an idyllic and quietly peaceful setting for the solemn ceremony in June 2010. On a hillside overlooking Washington, D.C., with full military honors, including a color guard, firing party, bugler and the President’s OwnMarine Band, the U.S. Marine Corps laid to rest one of their own at Arlington National Cemetery.

Sgt. George Humphrey’s body was home at long last. This native Utican will rest eternally in American soil.