Gone for Soldiers: George Logan "Pete" Slater (1886 - 1957), Marine Corps

Perhaps inspired by recruiting posters like the one below, my maternal grand uncle Pete Slater* enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in Denver, Colorado, on December 1, 1915, at the age of 29 and underwent his basic training at Mare Island, in Vallejo, California.

[U.S. Marines - "Soldiers of the sea" Good pay - foreign travel - congenial employment, c1914;

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. ]

[By Unknown or not provided (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]

[Courtesy of Olive Kennedy]

By May of 1916, Private Slater was on his way to Pearl Harbor on the transport ship "Thomas" where he remained for a few months.** Then he got sick and was transferred back to Mare Island in November of that year via the USAT "Sherman." 

["USAT Thomas" Kentucky Historical Society Photo]

["USAT Sherman" Viola (Grilnberger) Connelly Collection; Presidio Army Museum, National Park System.]

By the end of 1916, Pete was in the U.S. Naval Hospital, at Fort Lyons,*** Las Animes, Colorado. But although Pete still wasn't well, he must not been diagnosed with T.B. because he was soon transferred to the several different posts on the East Coast before being sent back to Mare Island, where in October of 1917 he was promoted to Corporal.

[Ancestry.com. U.S. Marine Corps Muster Rolls, 1798-1958 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. Original data: Muster Rolls of the U.S. Marine Corps, 1798-1892. Microfilm Publication T1118, 123 rolls. ARC ID: 922159. Records of the U.S. Marine Corps, Record Group 127; National Archives in Washington, D.C.]

After several more transfers around the U.S. (and almost certainly more training) Pete was sent to France as part of American Expeditionary Forces in France.

[Pete Slater, 1918; courtesy of Olive Kennedy]

Next time I will try to sort out what Pete did during his service in World War I.


*The oldest child of my great grandparents Lewis Logan Slater (1855-1905) and Rufina Ellen Tomlinson (1863-1943).
**From the U.S. Marine Corps Muster Records it doesn't appear that he ever made it to the Far East.
***Which operated as a tuberculosis treatment center from 1906 to 1922.


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