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This blog was updated on a daily basis for about two years, with those daily entries ceasing on December 31, 2013. The blog is still active, however, and we hope that people stopping in, who find something lacking, will add to the daily entries.

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Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: I still can't help but wonder what became of Pvt. Dilley

Lex Anteinternet: I still can't help but wonder what became of Pvt. Dilley:

I still can't help but wonder what became of Pvt. Dilley.

You remember Pvt. Dilley, at least if you followed this and our Today In Wyoming's History blog.

Drafted men boarding a train to a military camp for training.  Is Pvt. Dilley looking back at us?

I particularly wonder in light of the story of the Wyoming National Guardsmen of the 148th Field Artillery we discussed here the other day, and their proud service.

For those who might not recall. Pvt. Dilley was a young soldier who joined the National Guard when the Guard was recalled to service following the declaration of war against Germany.  In early August, he disappeared.  At first it seemed foul play or a tragic accident was involved.  It was suspected that he'd drowned in a stream, for example.

Well, soon after that, it appeared that Dilley had just despaired of military life and had gone AWOL, and that had grown into desertion.

He never reappeared.

His elderly father hoped for his return but felt that he had been murdered. Authorities didn't support that view and believed he'd simply taken off.

If he did, he took off into a country that would draft a 4,000,000 man Army and which became aggressive about "slackers".  It would have been hard for Dilley to remain out of uniform.

American medics treating a battlefield casualty, March 6, 1918.  Is Dilley on the stretcher?  Is he treating the wounded.

In 1917 it probably didn't seem that way. The country didn't have Social Security Cards at the time.  Most people didn't drive, actually and driver's licenses were mostly a thing of the future.  Lots of people had no birth certificates.  In short, "ID" was basically a thing in the American future.

If Dilley deserted, as the authorities believed, and was not murdered, as his father believed, staying out of the military would have been tough for a man of his age.  Some did manage, however.  Perhaps he did.  Perhaps he somehow simply managed to dodge service, although as noted that was far from easy.  Maybe he took a job in a shipyard or something of the type, which provided some of the few draft exempt occupations that were available during the war.

Did Dilley find work in a plant during the war that exempted him from service? And if he did, did he pass a sign like this everyday and feel guilty about his path, or relieved that he wasn't in France?

Some took the opposite approach, as we've read about before, and escaped the law by entering the service where they blended into the mass of men joining for World War One.  Dilley may have done that. Perhaps he just joined back up, or was drafted under an assumed name.

Its impossible to not to wonder what became of him.  If he did end up back in uniform, was his second experience with military life better than the first?  He was supposed to be a medic in the Wyoming National Guard. What did he end up in his second experiment with the service, he that occurred. A medic again?  A clerk? An infantrymen?  In the Army of 1917-18 non combat roles were much fewer than those in later eras.  Did he march in the mud of France carrying a 1917 Enfield on his shoulder at the Marine watching Renault EGs roll by wishing he'd stayed in the Guard?

We'll never know.

His father never found out.

But we wish we did.

American Renault EG artillery tractor towing a French made 155 howitzer.  Did Dilley end up marching past his former compatriots of the Wyoming National Guard and wish he'd stayed in (although being an artillerymen was dangerous enough in its own right).

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