A YOUNG CHRISTIAN SOLDIER: 1ST LT. LLOYD REUBEN BOUTWELL

The open unsettled prairie of north-central Missouri, in the mid-1850s, offered individuals opportunities to acquire land and businesses to expand, including railroads The Hannibal & St Joseph Railroad, first operational in early 1859, traversed 190 miles through 29 communities [1] One such community was Hamilton, founded by the Hamilton Town Company in the fall of 1854 By 1861, the community was composed of approximately 25 homes and businesses that held strong pro-Union sympathies during the Civil War

Following the Civil War, Hamilton grew rapidly By the 1900 census, Hamilton grew to have more than 1,800 residents with farming and coal mining the primary occupations

Less than 50 miles west of Hamilton was another small rural Missouri community known as Laclede where Lloyd Reuben Boutwell’s future military commander John J. Pershing resided.

Source: https://lccn loc gov/98688675

Boutwell, born on Oct. 26, 1889, in Hamilton, was the third of four children born to Reuben Wheeler and Pheebe (McFee) Boutwell. Boutwell’s mother died when he was 10, leaving his father, a farmer in Caldwell County, Mo., to raise the children.

After graduating from Hamilton High School in 1908, Boutwell earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Park College (now Park University) in 1911. While attending Park, he served as chaplain of the junior class; treasurer and president of the Lowell Club; president of the Oratorical Association; manager of the Glee Club; and was a trombone player in the band

Following Park College, he earned a master’s degree from the University of Missouri, Columbia, in 1913, and a medical degree from the Washington University (St Louis) Medical School in 1916 A few months prior to graduating from the University of Missouri, Boutwell enlisted in the National Guard of the State of Missouri on Feb. 19, 1913, in G Company, 4th Regiment, in Columbia. While at Washington University, he was engaged as an assistant in physiology and pharmacology, as a member of the Phi Beta Pi fraternity, and he served as treasurer of his third-year class and president of his fourth-year class.

After medical school, Boutwell moved to Kansas City, Mo., and opened a medical practice in the Hospital Hill area and was an interne at General Hospital. Following completion of the internship, he moved back to St. Louis to be an assistant surgeon at Barnes Hospital, which provided the opportunity for him to be closer to Elizabeth Kiskaddon, whom he had met while attending medical school. The couple married on Aug. 21, 1917.

Living the credo of Park’s motto fides et labor (“faith and labor”), Boutwell was under appointment by the Rockefeller Foundation in the spring of 1917 for placement as a second surgeon at Luchowfu in China. [2]

However, the entry of the U S into World War I changed his plans The Army Medical Corps inducted Boutwell on Jan 6, 1918, and he sailed to France, from New York City, on June 12, 1918, onboard the RMS Carpathia, just weeks before the birth of his first child, a son he would never see He was assigned to Medical Corps, 314th Engineers, 89th Division, U S Army, upon arrival in France

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS Carpathia)

The 89th Division, in early November 1918, was operating along the Meuse River near the town of Pouilly, France. Boutwell was mortally wounded on Nov. 8, 1918, on the battlefield of Grand Pre, France, while on volunteer service assisting surgeons of a hotly engaged infantry regiment.

The “infantry regiment fighting at the front was having its ranks decimated by wounds and death So great was the emergency that its surgical detachment could not give adequate first aid to the numerous wounded There was a call for volunteers Lloyd Boutwell’s regiment, not then engaged, did not at that time need his services Though warned of the danger by his own experience, and the cry for help from that fire-consumed, iron-swept, blood-stained field he volunteered Duty called him, but not with the stern voice of an imperious tyrant commanding the services of an unwilling subject He and duty loved each other, and she spoke to him in the gentle tones of intimate friendship. He was in the army not to slay but to save. It never entered his mind that he was doing anything heroic.” [3]

During Boutwell’s service at the Grand Pre field hospital, he rendered aid to bleeding wounds, shattered limbs, and conveyance of wounded from the battlefield. While engaged in this service, Boutwell was wounded in his side with one lung exposed, yet he continued to assist others until falling exhausted from the loss of blood. He was immediately conveyed from the field.

Though records indicate that the initial wounds may have not been mortal, his being moved to the rear occurred near an exploding German artillery shell, reducing him unconscious Due to his unconscious state and the confusion on the battlefield, Boutwell wasn’t brought to the hospital for more than 48 hours A chaplain came to the surgeons that were attending Boutwell and asked, “Have I your permission to go to Boutwell and pray with him?” The surgeons replied, “No, do not go to him and tell him he must die, for he firmly believes he will go to his wife and little boy and it would do no good to take that comforting thought from him As to prayer his life has been one continuous prayer ” [4]

As a surgeon, Boutwell probably knew his wounds were mortal so he requested from the surgeons his personal friends that they care for others, where timely attention might save their lives. Near the end he whispered to a friend, “I would like to get home and see my wife and child.” Boutwell died on Nov. 14, 1918, at Mobile Hospital No. 4.

While in the service, a son was born on May 19, 1918, named Lloyd McFee, a son he never saw. Elizabeth Boutwell, wife, mother, and widow, remarked upon notification of Boutwell’s death, “This is not a house of sorrow. I have kept Lloyd alive for service in the world in the birth of our son.” [5]

Boutwell, in 1921, was returned to the U.S. from the American No. 2 Verdun-Cheppy Cemetery where he was exhumed from grave No. 137, Plot 3, to be reinterned at Pleasant Ridge Cemetery in Hamilton. During a commemoration ceremony for Boutwell in 1921 J. C. Kiskaddon, Boutwell’s brother-in-law commented, “He so loved and sympathized with all his fellow men, that even those whose ideals were low and acts ignoble admired and loved him. He did not preach to them; he lived unsullied with them.”

World War I veteran and 1911 Park classmate, Alfred Westfall, suggested in February 1919 establishing a memorial to Boutwell [7] A small wall space in the Findlay-Wakefield Science Hall on the flagship Parkville, Mo , Campus recognizes Boutwell and the Boutwell Garden and Courtyard at the George S Robb Centre for the Study of the Great War memorializes his valor and service

Endnotes

[1] The two lines met at Chillicothe, Mo., on February 13, 1859.

[2] A previous biographical sketch mentioned Boutwell being appointed by the Rockefeller Foundation as chief of staff of the Man Tung Cho Hospital. Based on primary documents, from the Rockefeller Foundation, Boutwell had not been assigned to a hospital due to his lack of surgical experience.

[3] J. C. Kiskaddon, Lieut. Lloyd R. Boutwell, M.D.: A Tribute (n.c.: n.p., 1921), 6-7.

[4] The Park Alumniad, October 1921.

[5] The Park Alumniad, January 1919.

[6] J. C. Kiskaddon, Lieut. Lloyd R. Boutwell, M.D.: A Tribute (n.c.: n.p., 1921), 6.

[7] The Park Alumniad, February 1919