Herbert Hammond Renshaw

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The Wall Street Journal May 22, 2017 By Scott Calvert

Missing WWI Servicemen Getting Full Recognition With 'Doughboy MIA' Project The case of a seaman who fell overboard during a naval patrol in 1917 is the biggest success yet of the citizen-led effort.

A Century Later, Sailor is Saluted
One of the earliest American casualties of World War I will soon have his name etched in stone at an overseas U.S. military cemetery, a century after the 20-year-old sailor's death. Seaman Herbert Renshaw fell overboard off the coast of South Carolina during a naval patrol on May 22, 1917, weeks after the U.S. entered the war. But probably due to a clerical error by Navy officials, he was never listed on a monument to the missing at Brookwood American Cemetery in England.

That is about to change after Robert Laplander, a Wisconsin songwriter-turned-historian, documented the omission with help from a biology professor in Maryland. The federal agency responsible for U.S. cemeteries and memorials overseas says it will correct the oversight. "We want to make sure every American is appropriately commemorated," said Timothy Nosal, external affairs chief at the American Battle Monuments Commission. Its acting secretary last month approved engraving the seaman's name, possibly this summer.

The Brookwood chapel's interior walls are inscribed with the names of more than 560 U.S. soldiers, sailors and Coast Guardsmen lost at sea during World War I, many near the U.K. and France. Though Seaman Renshaw perished far from European shores, he died in "outside waters" in wartime and was technically on the battlefield. Seaman Renshaw's 70-year-old niece, Gail Renshaw Blackwell, was born 30 years after her uncle's death and didn't know there was a memorial to the missing in England. Still, she said she is grateful his name will be added. "I just really appreciate it," she said.

For Mr. Laplander, this is the biggest success yet of the Doughboy MIA project, a citizen-led effort he launched in 2015 to investigate cases of the 4,223 service members listed as missing in World War I. About half died on the battlefield, the rest were lost at sea. While the Defense Department has a unit dedicated to accounting for missing personnel, that effort applies only to conflicts since World War II. One goal of Doughboy MIA - doughboy was a common term for troops deployed to Europe - is to put a name to soldiers buried in graves marked unknown. In the Renshaw case, it instead found that one of the missing never received his due recognition.

"It's a different kind of discovery, but we look at it as being a major victory since the job is to remember them, and here we've done it," said the 51-year-old Mr. Laplander, who lives in Waterford, Wis.