Single shell killed two York countians in World War I
Some post-Veterans Day fast facts:
More than 6,000 York County residents served in the American military in World War I.
One hundred and ninety-five residents did not come home.
They served in the Armed Forces or worked in military support roles and died from battle casualties, the Spanish influenza epidemic and other illnesses.
Pvt. William A. Myers, who entered the service at 16, was perhaps the youngest of those who did not return to the farm from Paree. The teenager, killed in front-line fighting, received a posthumous Distinguished Service Cross for valor under fire.
“He was just a boy in years, but he played a man’s part,” a historian wrote.
German farm boys were not the only ones to lose their lives… .
Jeannette Zinn, valedictorian of her York High School class several years before, died from pneumonia in Britain while on her way to do YMCA war relief supervision in France. Pvt. George Wood, a black serviceman from York County, died in France serving in a machine gun unit.
While thousands of friends and relatives mourned these losses, perhaps no one felt the pain of death more than Daniel H. Withers of York. His two sons, Harry and John, were killed by the explosion of a single German shell in France.
