Sinclair, Robert Elwood

Ambulance driver, 314th Sanitary Train, 89th Division. Died of pneumonia in France, on November 11, 1918.

Biography supplied by the chapter at Knox College:

ROBERT ELWOOD SINCLAIR (1919)

Gamma Deuteron’s first Gold Star member died in France in 1918 of pneumonia and a broken heart, mere weeks after his service in an epic World War I battle against Germany

A gifted and thoughtful young writer able to express “the beauty of his character in many noble sentences,” Robert Elwood Sinclair left his home in Galesburg and went to France in June of 1918 to serve in the U.S. Army at the end of World War I. He died of pneumonia there on Sept. 30, 1918, less than five months after he enlisted, less than three months after his arrival in Europe and just 44 days after he turned 21 years old.

Sinclair was among 660 Knox College students and graduates (82 of them members of Phi Gamma Delta) who served in WWI. It’s simply amazing today to consider that by the end of that war, in 1918, nearly one third of all then-living members of the Gamma Deuteron chapter (founded in 1867) – 82 of 256, or 32 percent – had served in the “Great War,” according to a detailed list published in the chapter newsletter that year and other sources.

Among the 16 Knox servicemen who made the ultimate sacrifice and died for their country in WWI, Sinclair was the lone casualty from the Gamma Deuteron chapter of Phi Gamma Delta. World War I ended Nov. 11, 1918, only 42 days after Sinclair’s death.

A U.S. Army private, Sinclair was an ambulance driver and likely contracted his fatal illness while on duty as a member of the Army Expeditionary Forces (AEF), 314th Sanitary Train, 89th Division. In his brief time in the European theater, Sinclair served in “several” battles, according to researchers, and had recently served on the Western Front in the successful Battle of St. Mihiel, France (Sept. 12-15) – a major onslaught involving 216,000 American and 48,000 French troops against an undermanned German army that marked the first use of the term “D-Day” by the U.S. military.

But Sinclair fell ill after the Battle of St. Mihiel and passed away just two weeks later at the U.S. Army base hospital in Langrés, France. Robert Elwood Sinclair is buried at the St. Mihiel American Cemetery at Thiaucourt, France, along with 4,152 other American heroes lost in battle.

Born on Aug. 17, 1897 in Pontiac, Ill., Sinclair was a Galesburg High School graduate who had entered Knox in 1915, a member of the Class of 1919. On Dec. 10 of his freshman year, he was initiated into the Gamma Deuteron chapter of Phi Gamma Delta, which at the time was raising money for a new chapter house that would be built in 1920-21 at the southwest corner of Cedar and Tompkins streets.

Sinclair attended Knox for one year, but by 1916, he had withdrawn from the college to assist in the business of his father, Robert Gordon Sinclair, described by researchers as a Galesburg ice cream maker. The junior Robert was the eldest of five children and he adored his mother, Maude, while looking out for his younger siblings.

It is unclear whether Sinclair intended to resume his Knox studies, but he made determined efforts to maintain his fraternity connections before he went to war. Prior to his enlistment, he had frequently visited the undergraduate brothers, as recounted in a poignant remembrance published in the December 1918 issue of the G.D. Fiji chapter newsletter after his death:

“His departure from college and entrance upon a business career, however, did not lessen his interest in his fraternity,” reads a G.D. Fiji memorial for Sinclair. “He often visited at the house and always kept in touch with the Chapter’s welfare.” After going to war, “[e]ven though far distant from the Chapter, through correspondence he displayed a keen interest in the affairs of the Chapter and the fraternity as a whole. His last letter to the Chapter contained advice with regard to rushing and also a recommendation for a Freshman entering another college.”

In that same December 1918 G.D. Fiji is a photograph of the undergrads taken sometime earlier in 1918. We know the photo is earlier because among the Fiji members, right in the middle of the group photo, is Robert Sinclair – even though he had discontinued his Knox studies in 1916 and joined the army in May 1918. He was obviously close with the undergrads until he enlisted.

According to Knox researchers, Sinclair had apparently replied in May 1918 to a call for Galesburg-area enlistments by Maj. John D. Bartlett, who was stationed at Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas. Bartlett wanted to form a Galesburg unit in the ambulance service and asked for “horsemen, blacksmiths, litter bearers, dressing station workers, ambulance drivers and more,” according to a 1918 article in the Galesburg Republican-Register. (Many WWI battlefield vehicles were horse-drawn.)

“If Galesburg could get eighty men down here in this battalion it would make one company, a Galesburg company,” Bartlett implored. Sinclair answered the call and departed Galesburg to join Bartlett at Camp Funston, perhaps even before the call for recruits was published.

Sinclair enlisted in the army on May 8, 1918 and trained at Camp Funston. Seven weeks later, between June 24 and June 26 (accounts differ), he sailed from New York for Europe and arrived on July 11.

His brief stop in New York was notable, however, as the U.S.S. Galesburg, a 380-foot freighter designed as a war supply ship, was christened in New York on June 24. A photo from the dedication shows Sinclair, in full uniform, posing with other Galesburg-area dignitaries on the wooden dock. However, the city’s namesake ship did not enter service until Sept. 10, more than a week after Sinclair died in France.

After his voyage across the Atlantic, Sinclair wrote several letters home during the brief 50 days between his arrival and his death. But back home in Galesburg, tragedy struck. His mother, Maude R. Thompson Sinclair, died suddenly at age 47 on Aug. 2, just three weeks after Sinclair arrived in France. When Sinclair learned of his beloved mother’s unexpected death, he thought not of his own dismal plight, ravaged by war and beset with disease, but of his family and four siblings back home.

Knox researchers found a newspaper account describing Sinclair as “gentle, pure and kind, helpful to all with whom he came in contact, and leaving the most wholesome impressions on everybody.”

The 1918 article continued: “There was a diffidence about Robert which in a way prevented the fuller expression of his very high mental and original qualities. In his letters to home there shines out a very peculiar and noble quality of mind, while the beauty of his character is revealed in many noble sentences in these letters.”

When he learned of his mother’s death, Sinclair typed a pained, yet eloquent, letter to his eldest (but younger) sibling, Clyde, still a teenager, whom he addresses as Tad. In the midst of his grief, Sinclair also comforted and advised his siblings:

“Our very best friend has gone to her Heavenly Father,” Sinclair typed (or had someone type for him, as he was hospitalized – there are handwritten corrections on the typed manuscript). … “In such grief, my absence makes me numb. …

“What a gentle moderator we had. The Divine purpose is beyond comprehension,” wrote Sinclair, a devout Presbyterian, of his understanding of God’s plan for his mother. “How we shall progress in that steady access to her delicate ethical sense toward our daily lives and actions, with that unswerving code of moral conduct she stood for, is beyond compass. I know her immortal love and oversight, in so far as such be possible, is our heritage.”

Of his military service, Sinclair admitted: “I do not consider what I am doing the unusual, but if it be in accord with any half-expressed injunction of hers, I will vindicate her trust, and in no mean way. Something of her gracious spirit must be ours. I am under no delusion. I am an altered man, thanks to her great example. Her goodness shall be inevitably rewarded.” (It’s possible that Sinclair may have been referring here to his religious mother’s possible objections to his engagement in military operations and war.)

And then, Sinclair assures his brother that their mother was still looking down on them: “You must be ever be watchful that her correcting and inspiring of person has been removed to loftier fields. Something of her gracious spirit must be ours I know. May God guide the family in the new sphere created. May my sisters and brothers be led under the auspices she held so close to her heart.”

Finally, Sinclair’s letter portends a cruel foreshadowing of his impending fate: “I go on knowing the most cruel blow has been struck, but with complete realization of where my duty lays.”

That tribute to his mother and guidance to his siblings was written on Aug. 18, perhaps from Sinclair’s hospital bed, only three days after the St. Mihiel offensive ended. It is among the last known words he wrote. Twelve days later he was gone.

The army chaplain who was at Sinclair’s deathbed wrote to the dead soldier’s father, who was now grieving two recent losses: “[M]y hopes were high for his recovery for several days. Then the pneumonia seemed to take a fresh hold, and there came with it a delirious condition.”

It’s possible, given this information, that Sinclair was actually a victim of the 1918 Great Influenza epidemic, aka “Spanish Flu,” a worldwide pandemic that started in 1918 and often resulted in pneumonia and death. It killed at least 25 million people and perhaps twice as many, or more, by 1920. (Camp Funston, in Kansas, where Sinclair completed basic training in June 1918, was the site of an early outbreak of the “Spanish Flu” in March 1918, but if Sinclair was infected with influenza, it happened in September 1918 in France, not in Kansas, although fresh troops from America to France could have transmitted the virus.)

Sinclair’s letters home reveal his efforts to express himself about his mother’s death, isolated from family across an ocean and now mortally infirm himself. The army chaplain, J.A. Nesbitt, wrote to Sinclair’s father: “It was this sorrow that was consuming him when he came (to the base hospital). But I am very happy to tell you that our talks together took the darkest of those clouds away, and his face became bright with peace and assurance. … To see this dear boy go has made me shed tears of sorrow.”

Maude Sinclair is buried at McDowell Cemetery in Dwight, Ill. And in the northeast corner of that sacred ground is a cenotaph inscribed “At Rest in France” in memory of her faithful son, Robert Elwood Sinclair, Gamma Deuteron’s first Gold Star hero.

“Forevermore the members of the Chapter shall hold our glorious service flag with reverence and devotion,” reads a passage in the December 1918 G.D. Fiji. “It shall be an incentive for us all to strive even more diligently and sincerely for the high ideals of Phi Gamma Delta. And Brother Sinclair’s gold star shall shine as a beacon light for us all. It shall constantly glorify to us the life of one who lived a full life, one who always strove for higher and nobler goals, and one whose life of sacrifice and thoughtfulness of others will always serve as a beautiful example of a true and loyal Phi Gamma Delta.”

On June 8, 1919, seven months after the end of the war, a large contingent of Knox veterans returned together on the train to Galesburg. Thousands of locals lined the track and station platform, a “veritable sea of humanity,” proclaimed the Republican-Register. More automobiles clogged the streets of Galesburg that day than any previous day in history, it was reported. The next morning, a memorial flag pole with two bronze plaques was dedicated in front of Old Main at Knox College in honor of the war dead. The flag was raised by Robert G. Sinclair, the father of Gamma Deuteron’s gifted and thoughtful hero, Robert Elwood Sinclair.

From the 99 Lives Project (99 Lives (knox.edu))