The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 28

THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR- SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1937 War hero preferred life of unknown soldier B-4 i Hoosier let courageous deeds do talking for him r-r. mm V-ik 2 WtSMW rKMmr M2Tfx7 znA (mi mU A a tt wis wi jL.Ii i imrr 7' 'v few 1 ifm Woodfill returned to rather uneventful service. Once, when the note came due on the farm he owned and where his wife lived, his commanding officer gave him three months of leave to work on a dam being built below Fort Thomas to earn money to pay off the mortgage. E.F. Albee, head of the Keith Theater circuit, heard of the problem and launched a campaign that raised $10,000 for the mortgage and an Insurance policy.

Woodfill was mustered out with a pension after 33 years of service. He worked as a handy man and on his Indiana farm, going back to the land and the furrowed soil he had left as a boy to go soldiering from the Arctic to the Argonne. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, Woodfill, then 58, volunteered to help the Army train officers at Fort Bennlng, Ga. After World War II he returned to Indiana. Details of his life what happened to his wife, for instance were muddy until his death brought a brief resurrection of his exploits.

When he died he owned the apartment house in which his body was found. Woodfill had followed two ideals. He had advocated the forming of rifle clubs throughout the nation to train boys and girls in shooting and street sports as well as defensiveness. And he had opposed communism. A simple man, Woodfill put his philosophy of world politics simply: "Atom bombs are terrifying, but ideas are worse." Faces of a hero: Samuel Woodfill wears his World War I uniform (right), demonstrates his aim in 1942 (top), and relaxes on his farm in Jefferson County (above).

6939 Kentucky Ave. (Hwy 67) Super XL Automatic 20" While Supplies By FRED D. CAVINDER STAR STAFF WHITER When paraders march, drums strike up and wreaths are put down this Veterans Day, few Hoosirrs will pause to salute Samuel G. Woodfill. the Indiana farmboy who was called the greatest hero of World War I.

And that's probably exactly as Woodfill would prefer It. Tall and taciturn, unassuming. reluctant celebrity. Wood-fill preferred to march to his own beat. While in France one day in December 1918, he never even told buddies in his unit that he was going to Chaumont to receive the Medal of Honor.

He was the only man from Indiana to get that medal In World War I. Only the famed Sgt. Alvin C. York and MaJ. Charles S.

Whittlesey of the Lost Battalion matched Woodfill's honors. Out to Woodfill the fuss exceeded what was called for. He was- uneasy watching the stock exchange close for three minutes in honor of his visit; meeting Gen. Marshal Foch; being cited by the French army and navy, the Italian army and the Montenegrin government: and receiving ovations in the New York theater. He was more at home on the battlefield or on a plowed field in Jefferson County.

The photo of his dead mother, which he had carried In the inside pocket of his uniform throughout the war, was more precious to him than his medals. Being a pallbearer for the burial of the Unknown Soldier In Arlington National Cemetery was merely a duty. Serving as a pallbearer in 1948 for Gen. John Pershing, the commander who had dubbed Woodfill the greatest hero of them all, was Just a Job that had to be done. "Every man in the AEF.

(American Expeditionary Force) was just as much a hero as I am. The opportunity Just didn't present itself for all of them to display the gallantry which would win decorations," said Woodfill. He died as he had served alone with his thoughts, unsung, undiscovered for several days. Jefferson County Sheriff Ora Scudder found Woodfill, who and taciturn, unassuming, a reluctant celebrity, Woodfill preferred to march to his own beat. been seen for several days, dead in his apartment at Vevayon Aug.

13, 1951. It was a poignant scene which might have recalled, to i those who knew, the 1918 October day when Woodfill. not yet recognized as a hero, was huddled In a shellhole, expecting oblivion rather than honors. On the back of his wife's picture, as shells and bullets whined, he had scrawled: "In case of accident or death it Is my last and fondest desire that the finder of my remains please do me a last and everlasting favor to please forward this picture to my Darling Wife. And tell her that I have fallen on the field of honor, and departed to a better land which knows no sorrow and feels no Jpain.

I will prepare a place and be waiting at the Golden Gait of Heaven for the arrival of my Darling Blossom." Then he wrote her address, near Fort Thomas, Ky. The irony of a gallant man's Uife didn't even end with his I death. Buried in a county church 'cemetery at Hebron in Jefferson Woodfill's grave went 'unhonored for several years un- til his headstone was discovered Lby'Phllip Cole, a reporter for the Madison Courier. A campaign was begun to buy 'a memorial, but when Washington found out what had happened to the hero of Cunel. it was decided that his remains be moved to Arlington National Cemetery.

The reburial was Oct. 17, 1955. as Woodfill's sister, Mrs. May Chambers' of Madison, watched. Today Woodfill's grave Is less than 50 yards from the grave of Pershing.

It was Pershing who brought the spotlight on Woodfill. Said the leader of America's forces: "Deeds of valor were too numerous to mention here. Outstanding was the heroism of Lieutenant Samuel Woodfill, 5th Division, in attacking single-handed a series of German machine-gun nests near Cunel and killing the crews of each in turn until reduced to the necessity of assaulting the last detachment with a pick, dispatching them all." Woodfill wiped out 19 enemy soldiers. When they called him to Chaumont to be honored. Wood-fill asked only for a three-day pass.

"They used to say up in Alaska in the old days that the only way they'd ever get me would be by hanging. Maybe there's something in It," he told reporters. In truth, there never was a bullet with Woodfill's name on it. It was a heart attack that got him. Woodfill was born in January 1882 at Belleview.

north of Madison. His father, John Woodfill, had wed Christina Haveline when he was 50. He suffered a bayonet through the arm in a charge at Mexico City in the Mexican War. but escaped the Civil War unscathed. War stories inspired Samuel to join the Army "as soon as I was old enough to be accepted.

The first thing I can remember were stories about war and He learned shooting at the side of his father, who died when the boy was 12. "He taught me to be a straight shot. Squirrels and rabbits gave me most of my rifle practice while I lived on the farm," Woodfill was once quoted as saying. Woodfill served In the Spanish-American War, was stationed at Manila and returned to Indiana from the Philippines in March 1904. He quickly re-enlisted at Columbus, Ohio.

"The Army fever was In my blood." said Woodfill. He was sent to Alaska, where the military activity was boring but the hunting was good. Wood-fill honed, with live and artificial targets, skills of aiming and range finding. "I was beginning to know Just what I could do with a rifle and what I couldn't." he said. Most of his recollections were told by Lowell Thomas, the famed radio commentator who went to school in Indiana.

Thomas set down Woodfill's first-person account of his exploits in Woodfill of the Regulars. "He is a soldier's ideal of what a soldier ought to be," wrote Thomas in a foreword to the 1929 volume. "Tall, broad-shouldered, stralghter than the proverbial ramrod, snap In every movement, with the eye of an Indian scout, and a weather-beaten face that might have been hewn from granite." Woodfill left Alaska in July 1912. He gave up corporal stripes to head south, but he hadn't been home in nine years. In two months back in Indiana, Woodfill met Lorena Wiltshire, his first real flame.

But the military called again. Joining the Army at Fort Thomas. Wood-fill served in Texas along the Rio Grande in the U.S. tussle with Pancho Villa. "Well, Sam, you better save that huntin' eye of yours till Uncle Sam Joins the big show over in Europe," said one of Woodfill's buddies, laughing.

It was 1915, and the war In Europe seemed far away. At San Antonio. Woodfill. temporarily made a second lieutenant, trained recruits. In 1917 his furlough romance resulted in marriage.

The next spring he went overseas on the SS Philadelphia. In France he experienced his first shelling. But he was a veteran in the military and the situation called for leadership. "It was up to me to appear calm, whether I was or not. So I just took another spoonful of stew," he said of his first shell barrage.

There were days on days of marching through the rain. "You got so numb you didn't even notice the cold and wet." he recalled. On a reconnoltering mission. Woodfill and others were pinned down in a trench 14 inches deep. Three bullets struck his pack.

"A cootie started a slow promenade down my spine. I didn't even dare scratch." he recalled. When the shelling began Woodfill scrawled his last wishes on the back of his wife's picture. But the shelling eased, and he was unharmed. The morning of Oct.

12. 1918, he was back with his unit, advancing near Cunel. "The Germans were givin' us the whole works before we could even see anything to shoot at," he recalled. Men in his unit fell under, withering fire. "To order them straight ahead into the face of that would mean wiping out the whole company.

The only thing to do was to find out where that first machine gun was and get it," he later recalled. First he had to silence a gun- ner in a church tower, which he did with shots that either killed the sniper or chased him away. Then Woodfill began advancing from shellhole to shellhole, encountering mustard gas along the way. "I had a gas mask with me, but I knew if I put the blamed thing on I couldn't see well enough to shoot," he related. So he continued forward until he came within sight of one of the machine-gun positions.

isn't much difference between stalkln' animals and stalkin' humans. I was usln' the same tactics I had used in big-game huntin" in Alaska U) years before," he said. Confronting a machine gun. Woodfill picked off four men as. one by one, they sought to replace the men at the trigger when they were killed by the Hoosier.

He shot a fifth as the German tried to crawl away. "No time to reload. Another man was leaving the machine gun, this time on the run. I got him with the automatic (pistol)," Woodfill related. A German who appeared to be dead leaped up and grabbed Woodfill's rifle, throwing It into the air.

Woodfill shot him with his automatic, then took the dead man's Luger. Meanwhile, the men of his unit, free of the machine-gun fire, were moving up. "I kept on through the trees and brush," said Woodfill, crouchin' and runnin' dashin' from one point of cover to another." The second machine-gun nest contained five men. Woodfill shot them as he had the first machine-gun crew. Surprising three Germans carrying ammunition, Woodfill disarmed them and sent them to the rear to be captured by his advancing comrades.

The third machine gun was difficult to approach over the rain-soaked terrain. "I simply wallowed In soup for 30 feet until I could get a better view," said Woodfill. "Once more I picked off five men with a clip of ammunition." Leaping into a trench. Wood-fill surprised three Germans. He shot one with his automatic the quarters were too close to use a rifle.

The pistol jammed. So Woodfill killed the other two with a pick-mattock he found stuck into the side of the trench. "We (Woodfill and some of his unit) were back of the German lines and surrounded," said Woodfill. "We might get out and we might not. Anyway, we could give 'em a hot time before they got us.

We opened a sniping fire on every German we saw, and dropped them all around. Whether they were dead or only wounded, we never knew." The unit dug in. Later they got orders to pull back and they returned to the point from which Woodfill had begun his assault. During the retreat, Woodfill leaped into a shell hole that was too small for his legs. Shrapnel struck his left calf.

"That was just another piece of luck. A small piece of the shrapnel had penetrated the legging, mud and all, and just grazed the skin. It dropped out when I went back and crawled down into a dugout to see what had happened," said Woodfill. The battle of Cunel was history, and Woodfill was a legend. Mustered out after World War Woodfill, without any experience besides the Army, re-enlisted.

Interest in his heroism revived in 1921 during preparations for burying the Unknown Soldier. Pershing, choosing pallbearers from a select list of 100 men, came across Woodfill's name and remarked: "Why, I've already selected that man as the outstanding soldier of the AEF." A new spate of publicity surrounded Woodfill, but after having his portrait painted, attending banquets and being a guest of the New York Supreme Court, 1 6" Saws from at 856-8880 Our unique system of design and -building will provide you with easy access to all your necessities. At no obligation, an expert designer will come to your home and create an organized closet interior to suit all your needs. Call the "World Class" closet company for the ultimate in space utilization. Doubles your hanging and storage space Fully adjustable and removable One day installation Spotless clean-up after completion Custom do-it-yourself kits Finest wood products Fully guaranteed 7021 CORPORATE CIRCLE (317)297-1203 e5 2 ft ft iff 856-8880 6939 Kentucky Ave.

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