Horn, Otto J.

Birth: August 5, 1893

Death: December 25, 1935

Location: Lot 62, Section 5, Outside the Old Cemetery

enlisted March 4, 1918. he was attached to a medical unit that left an American port April 14, 1918, on the United States vessel Von Steuben, formerly a German raider, the Crown Prince Wilhelm. This ship was a part of the great northern convoy, and was attacked by a German submarine when about three days off the coast of Ireland, but reached Brest France, on April 20, 1918. Two days later Mr. Horn left Brest for a casual replacement company at Blois, France, where he was assigned to Ambulance Company No. 2 of the First Division. This company was sent to the front on May 27th, to the sector known as Death Valley. While Mr. Horn was busy performing his dangerous duty of helping carry off the wounded to the rear, his protective mask was shot off his face by shrapnel, when the second mask was shot from his face he was nearly overcome by the enemy’s gas that he hardly had strength to stagger to the form of a soldier already dead. He adjusted a third mask his face but then lost consciousness. For eighteen hours he lay undiscovered, then was rushed to a hospital where he was a patient for five weeks. He was then transferred from the ambulance company to Company D, Sixteenth Infantry, First Division, which was sent on July 18, into the memorable fight of Chateau Thierry. Again he was wounded by shrapnel and being injured in three places, was carried from the field and for seven weeks lay in a hospital recovering from his injuries, when he was again sent back to his old organization. On September 17, while making preparations with his company for the big drive on St. Mihiel, he fell on the field from shell shock and lay there for three days before he was discovered. Again he was in the hospital and remained there until November 21, when he found himself sailing for home on the ship Nansemond, which arrived at Hoboken on December 7, after a stormy voyage. He was sent to Ellis Island Hospital and on January 21, 1919, was discharged on the surgeon’s certificate of disabliity, at Plattsburg, New York.

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