On Wednesday, October 18, 1933, a wheat farmer from Arbon Valley took the witness stand in the federal court at Pocatello and told a jury what he had been through in the Argonne Forest fifteen years before. The case was Park Lusk vs. the United States, heard by Judge C. C. Cavanah. The Pocatello Tribune called it a war risk case and reported the day's testimony the next day on its second page.
The soldier from Pauline
The Tribune gave only the name Park Lusk, but everything it said fits Edward Park Lusk of Pauline, born at Malad on Christmas Day 1895 to John W. and Annie Lusk, whose family ranched at the north end of the valley. The valley papers of the time name no other Park Lusk (his uncle Perry Park Lusk of West Fork also carried the name, but the papers always called him Perry and never reported him in service), and the paper's description of him as a sergeant in a machine gun detachment matches what the American Falls Press had reported during the war.
He was called in the draft of September 1917 and was one of seven valley men honored at a social at Central Hall before they left, as an earlier post tells. Within six weeks the Press reported that he had been made a corporal in A company, 347th machine gun battalion, and then second duty sergeant. In April 1918 he came home from Camp Lewis on furlough, newly a sergeant, and by the family history married Erma Bailey, a daughter of J. R. Bailey of Arbon, while he was there. In February 1919, three months after the Armistice, the Press printed this:
Mrs. Park Lusk received word that her husband was in a hospital in France wounded, but does not know how serious. Several of the letters she had written to him were returned with the word wounded written on them.
By August 1919 he was home. Erma died of pneumonia at Pauline in February 1922, at 21, leaving two little sons, who by the family history were raised by his brother Dave and her sister Anna, as The Lusk brothers and the Bailey sisters of Pauline tells. The Pauline School News column shows him at ordinary valley work in the spring of 1924, when he and Joe Doman went down by Rooster Rock to grade the road.
In the courtroom
The Tribune did not set out what Lusk was claiming. What it reported of the testimony turned on whether he had been gassed, how long the effects of gas take to appear, and his shortness of breath. The paper itself was careful to say the gassing was alleged.
His story started on September 26, 1918, the day the Ninety-first Division opened its drive with his detachment in its ranks. He took the jury through it in order: rain-soaked soldiers on the ground until the signal came, a ravine where their own division's guns shelled the leading companies, a canal waded under fire, and later a captured village where German machine gunners cut his company to pieces. He compared the trees the guns brought down in one forest to a field of lucerne, the older name for alfalfa. At one point he could not go on, and the court waited several minutes for him. The reporter could only guess why.
The day's laughs came from Dr. Ellis Kackley of Soda Springs, who had served in the same campaign and testified for Lusk; under cross-examination he stood firm against the government's attorney on how long gas takes to show its effects.
What is not known
The Tribune expected the jury to get the case late on October 19. No report of the verdict has been found, and no published court decision under his name has turned up. Nor does any source say whether the wound reported in 1919 was the gassing he described in 1933.
Park Lusk died in March 1960, at 64. His obituary in the Salt Lake Tribune gave his home as Fort Hall, noted his service in the First World War and called him a farmer at Arbon for many years.
On this site: Edward "Park" Lusk and Erma Bailey, the Lusk family, and the Stories entry Wounded in France.
The story as reported
Pocatello Tribune, October 19, 1933, page 2. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
Park Lusk's war risk suit against the United States came before Judge C. C. Cavanah in the federal court at Pocatello, and on Wednesday, October 18, the jury heard from Lusk himself and from a physician out of Soda Springs.
Lusk farmed wheat in Arbon Valley. In the World War he had been a sergeant in a machine gun detachment, and he was said to have been gassed during that service.
His testimony began with September 26, 1918, the morning the Ninety-first Division went over the top in the Argonne Forest with his detachment among its units. Before the order came, he said, the men of his company lay waiting on the ground with their clothes soaked through by rain. Once the advance was under way, the division's forward companies came under the shells of the Ninety-first's own artillery as they crossed a deep ravine, and he described the carnage that mistake caused. He traced the rest of the route: through a German barrage, across a canal on foot, and on toward the far slopes, where American guns were still firing. At that point in his account Lusk fell silent, and it was a few minutes before he could go on.
Later in the advance, he told the jury, the Americans took a village from the Germans, and there enemy machine gun fire cut down man after man of his company. An orchard red with American blood figured in his account too, along with the day afterward known as Bloody Sunday. When the division moved through a forest, artillery and machine guns brought the trees down around them "like a field of lucerne."
The physician was Dr. Ellis Kackley, who had served in the war as well and appeared as Lusk's witness. He knew the ground: in those days he was on duty in the Argonne front line himself, close to the place where the gassing was said to have happened. The government's attorney, cross-examining him, seemed surprised that a witness would question the American government's own authorities on how long a gas case takes to develop. Kackley's reply was that he had taken a dose of the gas himself, which was more than the government could say.
His best line came while he was discussing how short of breath Lusk was: the farmer, he said, could never hold down the government attorney's job, for "it requires too much wind." Jurors laughed at that, and Judge Cavanah was plainly amused, smiling widely.
The Tribune expected the case to be handed to the jury late on Thursday, October 19.
Sources
- Pocatello Tribune, October 19, 1933, page 2
- American Falls Press, September 18, 1917, page 1
- American Falls Press, September 18, 1917, page 4
- American Falls Press, October 30, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, April 9, 1918, page 3
- American Falls Press, February 7, 1919, page 6
- American Falls Press, August 1, 1919, page 2
- American Falls Press, March 10, 1922, page 4
- American Falls Press, April 3, 1924, page 4
- Salt Lake Tribune, March 24, 1960, page 31