It Happened Here: Logan Wheeler, Yakima resident, killed in World War I

“We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years . . . and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in.”

— Gen. Colin Powell, U.S. Secretary of State.

Like 116,515 of his American brothers in arms, Logan Wheeler’s life was cut short on a European battlefield more than a century ago.

Wheeler’s legacy lives on in both Yakima and Pullman, where he went to school before enlisting in the U.S. Army to serve in World War I. His name adorns a veterans hall and a scrapbook of his time as a college student is preserved at what would have been his alma mater.

Wheeler was born May 17, 1894, in Yakima, the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Wheeler. Wheeler’s mother died when he was 2 ½ years old, and his father would remarry to Daisy Adeline Buttler.

Wheeler’s stepmother described Wheeler as “all boy and into everything.” He graduated from North Yakima High School — today’s A.C. Davis High — in 1913, where he was the editor of the student newspaper and business manager of the school yearbook.

One of his classmates said the yearbook was the best produced at the school because Wheeler sold so much advertising in it.

Wheeler went to college at what is now Washington State University, studying business and commercial dairy farming. He supported himself in school by selling clothes and pans.

Wheeler and another WSU student from Yakima, Ralph Sundquist, joined the newly formed Gamma Delta fraternity on campus, which today continues as Beta Theta Pi.

An avid photographer, Wheeler combined a scrapbook of both his high school and college year, taking pictures of people and sites on the Pullman campus.

With war approaching, Wheeler signed up for the Student Army Training Corps, the predecessor to today’s ROTC, training at what is now Joint Base Lewis-McChord in the summer of 1917.

Wheeler returned for his senior year frustrated with the training program, chafing at the military training and drill. Despite his friends and family’s pleas to stick with the program, Wheeler instead left school and enlisted Jan. 5, 1918, as an infantry soldier.

“They don’t want brains,” Wheeler said.

He trained with the Army’s 10th Battalion, 166th Depot Brigade at what was then Camp Lewis, before being transferred to the 364th infantry regiment.

On June 22, 1918, Wheeler married his childhood sweetheart, Taletta Cady, in Tacoma. Two days later, he shipped out for the battlefields, where he was promoted to corporal.

Wheeler and other soldiers in his unit went “over the top” during the Meuse-Argonne offensive in France on Sept. 26, 1918. By nightfall, Wheeler and his men were unable to rejoin their unit, and instead joined up with troops in the 140th Infantry Regiment.

After the following day’s heavy fighting, only Wheeler and another soldier from his group were left. The next day, they advanced again, facing sniper and machine-gun fire from within the woods.

While attacking a machine-gun nest, Wheeler was hit with a single shot in the head. As he lay dying, he gave a notebook to an Army chaplain that listed the casualties in his section of the division.

“Please give this to my superiors. I want this thing kept straight,” Wheeler said before dying.

He was 23.

An officer with the 140th Regiment said Wheeler “showed extraordinary ability and leadership. Personally, I have never seen a brave soldier and he clearly demonstrated his ability as a leader. He won the admiration of the officers and men of this company by his extraordinary courage.”

One of Wheeler’s comrades told Wheeler’s stepmother that” you sure had a son to be proud of, for a more brave and patriotic American never went into the battlefields than Logan.”

The American victory in the Meuse-Argonne is credited with getting Germany to sign an armistice agreement Nov. 11, 1918, effectively ending fighting in the war.

While Wheeler’s family was notified in December 1918 that he had died, the location of his grave remained unknown for a decade, due in part to the fact that Wheeler was not with his assigned unit when he died.

Wheeler is buried at Meuse Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial at Romange-sous-Montfaucon in France. His stepmother, along with other Gold Star mothers, was able to go to France and see his grave.

American Legion Post 36 in Yakima is named in honor of Wheeler, and the scrapbook Wheeler compiled is in the library at WSU and is available online.

It Happened Here is a weekly history column by Yakima Herald-Republic reporter Donald W. Meyers. Reach him at dmeyers@yakimaherald.com. Sources for this week’s column include Washington State University, Yakima Valley Museum, the American Battle Monuments Comission, familysearch.org, findagrave.com and the archives of the Yakima Herald-Republic.