Remembering Uncle St. Clair, lost in the War to End All Wars

This flag hung on the front door at 805 S. McDuffie Street in Anderson, South Carolina, for several years a century ago.

It's a Gold Star Mothers Flag.

The Gold Star was for Anderson Machine Gun Company Private Victor St. Clair Minor.

He was a Blue Star until early on the morning of Oct. 17, 1918, when he went over the top and disappeared in a bombshell explosion somewhere near the border between Belgium and France.

My grandmother, Olive Patterson Cochrane Minor, sewed the Gold Star over the Blue Star when word came down from the Army that St. Clair had died in action.

She had sewn on the two Blue Stars when both her sons went in and over there.

The top one was for St. Clair, the bottom one was for Charles S. Minor Jr., her older boy.

Charlie was in the cavalry, and came home from the War to End All Wars.

Years later, St. Clair's few remains came home, too, and he was reburied in Anderson.

So on this Veterans Day 2014, I remember Uncle Charlie, who lived into the 1960s, and I think about Uncle St. Clair, who died 28 years before I was born, and I send them my thanks, my respects, my admiration and my salute.

Spec. E-5 John M. Betts Jr.
RA 12816683
U.S. Army Signal Corps, 1969-72