‘The last surviving World War One Medal of Honor winner.’
New York Times
ON 22 APRIL 1919, Corporal Thomas Pope was sufficiently recovered after being gassed in July 1918 to be back with the 131st Infantry when it paraded at Larochette in Luxembourg in front of the AEF commander-in-chief, General Pershing. At this parade, Pershing finally acknowledged the Hamel battle by awarding the Medal of Honor to Tom Pope. At the same medal ceremony, Pope was presented with his British Distinguished Conduct Medal and his French Medal Militaire and Croix de Guerre.
On this occasion, too, General Pershing presented the 131st’s other Medal of Honor winner Jake Allex with his medal, for his valour in the taking of Chipilly Ridge. Because the 131st had again been under British command at that time, in his memoirs Pershing would also skip over the Chipilly Ridge fight and Jake Allex’s courageous act, just as he all but ignored the Battle of Hamel.
The 131st was about to go home, and five days after Pope and Allex received their Medals of Honor the regiment commenced a transfer by rail to the French port city of Brest. From another French port, Le Havre, which was the centre of British Army evacuation from Europe, Major-General George Read of II Corps worked as General Pershing’s appointee in administering the withdrawal and repatriation home to the US of all American troops. Read’s major command of the war, II Corps, would have several notable commanders during the 1940s, Generals Omar Bradley, Mark Clark and George S. Patton.
Tom Pope, his CO Colonel Sanborn and the rest of the men of the 131st sailed from Brest that April aboard the USS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, a confiscated German ocean liner. Back in Chicago, Tom moved in with his brother J. J. on Overhill Avenue, in Norwood Park West, immediately south of Edison Park, and resumed work for the Cook County Highway Department, now as district foreman.
In 1923, Tom became president of the Combat Medal Men, an organisation made up of Medal of Honor winners across the United States. At no time did Tom court publicity or interviews. It was enough to share his experiences with his fellow soldiers in the exclusive Medal of Honor club. After the Veterans Administration was founded by the US Government in 1930, Tom joined the VA as a contract officer and adviser, a post he held for the rest of his career as he focused on helping fellow vets. Later in life, following retirement, Tom settled in the Los Angeles, California suburb of Woodland Hills, to be closer to family members – his daughters had given him a clutch of grandchildren to dote on.
Tom moved back to Chicago later in life, and ended his days in the Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Administration Hospital in the suburb of Maywood, where he passed away from congestive heart failure on 17 June 1989. He was ninety-four years of age – which would surely have surprised the doctors who treated him in 1918 and 1919 for serious gas inhalation, which usually resulted in life-shortening lung problems. Pope in fact long outlived most of the other heroes of Hamel. As a Medal of Honor winner, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, the burial place of presidents and heroes, with full military honours.
When he died, Tom Pope was the oldest surviving US Army World War One Medal of Honor recipient, being literally the first and the last member of this elite club. His passing earned him obituaries in the Chicago press and both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. The latter said, in part, ‘Although he saw action for only two days in World War I, Pope received commendations from four nations as well as the highest honor his country could bestow … He became one of ninety-five US soldiers to receive the Medal of Honor in the war and was the last surviving one.’285
Tom, one of the heroes of Hamel, was survived by three daughters, eight grandchildren, and eleven great-grandchildren. He is remembered in his Chicago birthplace Edison Park via a plaque on a marble pillar in Monument Park, which lists Pope and other locals who served their country.
As for Tom’s colourless, churlish and unimaginative commander-in-chief General Pershing, he served as America’s most senior soldier until his retirement in 1925, ending his career with the extremely high rank of General of the Armies – technically, a six-star general. He died in 1948. Today, Pershing sits high in the US military pantheon, remaining officially the second-highest-ranking general in American history after George Washington, and ahead of illustrious later American generals such as Patton, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur. In his 1931 memoirs, Pershing mentioned the Australians once. This was the reference to the Australian 5th Division in his misleading account of the Bellicourt Tunnel assault. Never once did Pershing refer to General Monash, nor to any other Australian commander or soldier.
It is possible that Pershing played an influential role in the organisation of the 1929 burial at Arlington National Cemetery of Private Henry Johnson, the black US soldier who was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravely fighting off a German patrol and saving a comrade whilst on guard duty when attached to the French Army in the Argonne on 14 May 1918. As Johnson at the time of his death had not a single US gallantry medal to his name, nor even a Purple Heart in recognition of the wounds he received, it is astonishing that in 1929, with segregation rife in the US, Johnson, a black man, was buried at Arlington, and with full military honours. This leads to the conclusion that either Pershing or Johnson’s former regimental commander, the liberally-minded Colonel William Hayward, who became US Attorney for the District of Southern New York after the war, or both men, could have been instrumental in Johnson’s Arlington interment.
As fate would have it, in 2015, after a decades-long campaign led by Democrat senator for New York Chuck Schumer and others, President Barack Obama awarded Henry Johnson a posthumous Medal of Honor for his May 1918 actions. Ninety-seven years after the event, this posthumous award put Johnson ahead of Battle of Hamel hero Thomas Pope as the first US Army awardee of the Medal of Honor in the First World War.