Lt David E Wheeler, Medical Det, 16th Infantry Regt, US Army.
From Buffalo, New York, David was a graduate of Williams College and Columbia University before becoming a doctor. He went to France shortly after the outbreak of war as a Red Cross worker, but soon decided that he wanted to see some action. He therefore enlisted into the 2e Regiment de Marche of the 2e Regiment Etranger on 7 February 1915 and saw action in the Champagne later that year. He was badly wounded in the right leg on 28 September 1915 but, finding many wounded on his crawl to the rear, he tended to many others (including a certain Sdt 2 Cl John Ford Elkington - the ex-Lt Col of the 1st Warwicks who had been cashiered following the affair at St.Quentin in 1914) before seeking attention himself - an act that was to gain him the Croix de Guerre.
Following a hospital stay, David was invalided out of the Legion and he almost immediately enlisted into the Canadian Army, gaining a commission and arriving back in France in 1916 as a battalion medical officer. In April 1917, following on from the US declaration of war, he gained permission to transfer to the US Army and became a medical officer attached to the 16th Infantry Regiment of the US 1st Infantry Division. Seeing service with this regiment in Lorraine, at Chateau Thierry and Cantigny, he was mortally wounded by machine gun fire during an attack on 18 July and died later that same day. He is now buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at Belleau (Plot B, Row 4, Grave 15).
18 July 1918
Research by David O'Mara, Croonaert Research Services.
