Clemmer, Jay Frank

Jay Frank Clemmer

One of the young men occupying the lethal area around the Somme River basin in August 1918 was 23-year-old 2nd Lt. Jay Frank Clemmer Jr. of Augusta County.

Clemmer was the youngest son of a prominent local family that lived near Middlebrook in a home known as “Silverbrook.” Clemmer, a bright, well-liked young man, attended Staunton Military Academy and Washington and Lee University before graduating from Virginia Tech.

It was there that he attended a training school for Army officers. When the United States entered the Great War, Clemmer said goodbye to his family and boarded a train bound for basic training at Fort Myer, Va. He would be shipped overseas with the 318th Infantry Regiment, never to see his family again.

In war-torn France, as Gen. John J. Pershing moved his army east from the Somme, action broke out near Cambria in the Second Battle of the Somme. During fighting along this sector, Clemmer was struck by a piece of shrapnel and died three days later. A friend and fellow soldier later reported that Clemmer “was a soldier to the end—completing his given task before he collapsed.”

Clemmer was solemnly buried in a temporary grave. His body was flag-draped and a simple service was concluded with the playing of “Taps.”

“I really can not realize he is gone,” his best friend, W.A. Huggins, wrote in a letter to Clemmer’s mother. “He was loved by every man in the company and every officer in the regiment. He had more friends than any man I ever knew, and if he had any enemies I never knew of them.”

A memorial service was held at his former home, “Silverbrook,” on Sept. 27.

After the war, Clemmer was re-interred at the Somme American Cemetery at Bony, France.

There is some confusion about the date he was killed. The cemetery lists it as Aug. 2. His friend Huggins’ letter is dated Aug. 4, which would support the Aug. 2 date—but all official reports that came in after Clemmer’s death gave the date as Aug. 12. Whatever the date, Clemmer is regarded as the first Augusta County resident killed during the Great War.

Text from the Staunton News Leader, 10 May 2019, https://www.newsleader.com/story/news/local/history/2019/05/10/stauntons-american-legion-post-celebrates-centennial/1165269001/

• Ancestry.com
• 1918 VPI Bugle, Virginia Tech Special Collections
• United States Federal Census U.S.
• World War I Draft Registration Cards
• 1917-18 Augusta County
• Virginia Births 1886-96
• History of the Eighteith Division AEF in World War I: The Blue Ridge Division, compiled by Russell L. Stultz and edited by Lee S. Anthony, Walters Printing and Mfg. Co., Inc, 2004, pg. 244.
• History of the 318th Infantry Regiment of the 80th Division, 1917-1918, William Byrd Press, 1920.
• Staunton News Leader, 10 May 2019, https://www.newsleader.com/story/news/local/history/2019/05/10/stauntons-american-legion-post-celebrates-centennial/1165269001/