Private First Class Roy Brem

Roy Brem volunteered for the Missouri National Guard on February 12, 1917, six weeks before America entered the war. German U-Boats were attacking American merchant ships. Civic leaders in St. Louis, as in other American cities, were campaigning for "preparedness."

Roy was not yet 20 years old.  He lived with his family at 1216 North Newstead and worked as a shoer of horses at the Wagner Electric Company. His meager salary supported his widowed mother Anna and his younger sister Ruth.
 
 

The Joffre Regiment

America entered the war in April, 1917. Four months later, the Missouri National Guard was assigned to the U.S. Army. Along with thousands of other National Guardsmen from St. Louis, Roy Brem became part of the 138th Infantry. 

Brem's unit was known as the "Joffre Regiment" after the French commander, General Joseph Joffre ('The Victor of the Marne') visited St. Louis and presented the new regiment with an embroidered silk flag. 

The regiment initially drilled every Wednesday and Sunday in Forest Park, near the Jefferson Memorial. Later the soldiers moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where they trained for 8 more months, before embarking for France in April 1918. 
 

 
Six days in the Argonne.

Roy Brem was killed in September, 1918, during the first wave of the American offensive in the Argonne Forest. 

Another soldier from St. Louis wrote of that battle: 

Passing through these woods in inky darkness we had to keep our gas masks on and walk with one hand on the the fellows shoulder ahead, for the Germans were pounding the woods around us with gas shells with every kind of "smell " in them and we would have choked without our masks.

Reaching the dugouts, we remained in them while our artillery units started a barrage which lasted from midnight until 5:45 on the morning of the 26th which was the "zero" hour for us. 

Promptly at 5:45 a.m the big guns were as silent as if they had all vanished and we came up out of our dugouts and with our bayonets on the end of our guns, many smiling and with a cigarette in their mouth, we went over the top after the "Heines", through a fog of shell smoke, glare of rockets and signals that would have been a credit to any Fourth Of July celebration. 

Taken from Diary of Allen C. Huber. Transcribed by Robert Huskey

Roy Brem was wounded at Cheppy, France on September 26th, the very first day of the offensive. He died two days later. 

The 138th continued on for five more exhausting days, capturing Varennes and Very, and helping to persuade the German High Command that the war was lost. On September 29th, the German Generals told their government to sue for peace.

Ultimately 313 members of the 138th lost their lives in this Argonne offensive, while another 1,222 were wounded. 

Post War Transitions

Survivors of the138th Infantry returned to St. Louis and participated in the parade down.... on May 9, 1919.  Three days later, they were discharged.

Roy Brem's body was returned to Missouri in 1919 and buried in Memorial Cemetary.

His mother, Anna, went to work as a saleswoman in St. Louis, while his sister Ruth worked as a telephone operator until her marriage to Edward Gittins in 1920.
 
 

Research assistance from Matt Schoonover and Lilo Whitener.
Additional Sources: Souvenir Program and History of the 138th  and the 1937 reunion booklet. Missouri Historical Society.