John Becker, the WWI cenotaph, and fudged paperwork

The name “John A. Becker” is listed on the cenotaph at the Soldiers Memorial in downtown St. Louis.

Joseph and I visited the Soldiers Memorial in downtown St. Louis this weekend. We looked at the cenotaph with the names of World War I dead, and I saw “John A. Becker”. I wondered if this was my great-great-great-uncle John A. Becker, who was beaten and robbed in November 1917 while he was on leave in Chicago from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. He died a few hours later in a nearby building.

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