Oliver Ames, Jr., April 8, 1895-July 27, 1918

OLIVER AMES JR. April 8, 1895 - July 27, 1918 Not in his noble death but in his way of life will our memory live and be always green. The bloody summer of 1918 was rich with sacrifice, as if God walked with men upon the battlefield to make them smile at death. To many a man this sudden giving of all he had was a peak, unexpectedly revealed at the end of life,-high ground in his being the existence of which neither he nor those nearest him dreamed; it was the flowering of a supposedly barren soul, the momentary filling of life. But it was not so with Ames. His death beside the Ouroq was rather the epitome of his whole life, the summing up in the briefest moment of time of all that had gone before. His Commanding Officer, who had hurried forward to steady a bitterly engaged group of his battalion wrote: "Amea came running up behind me to look out for me. I ordered him back, but he just smiled and said he was going to stay with me. He came up and lay beside me I half turned, and as I did, a sniper's bullet struck Ames in the ear. He died instantly." There is much more than devoted bravery in this death; something which, like Sidney's act on the field of Zutphen, summons to the mind the entire life of which this was the perfect end. As he died, he lived. He had an instinct for the true things in life; and kept his simplicity untarnished. Wealth, which taints so many, could not spoil him; at twenty-two he was as sincere, as earnest, as devoid of the false views and values with which luxury and affluence so commonly disfigure men, as when he was a child. To the soldiers who served under him