Gordon Woods / Journal

Above: Clinton American Legion Unit 103 Auxiliary leaders and American Legion Post 103 leaders met briefly in Memorial Cemetery on Wednesday to mark Flag Day by honoring Welby Crang, the first soldier from Clinton to die in WWI. 

CLINTON — In August 1914, the assassination of an Arch Duke of the decrepit empire of Austria-Hungary, while visiting the relatively obscure region of Serbia, set in motion Germany’s juggernaut, The Schlieffen Plan, and The Great War was off to a bloody and horrific start.

On Wednesday, Clinton American Legion and Legion Auxiliary leaders met in Memorial Park Cemetery to honor the first local death in that war.  Aero Squadron member Sgt. Welby Crang died of pneumonia in France while awaiting deployment.  In fact, even with the enormous death toll in WWI, a war in which 100,000 troops or more were routinely killed or wounded in a single engagement, more died from the worldwide influenza epidemic in 1918 than in battle.

Crang was a 1910 graduate of Clinton High School.  He briefly worked at a local shoe store before accepting a pharmacy apprenticeship in Chicago.

Later, however, Crang was back in the shoe business in Colorado, where he lived when he enlisted in the Army.  He became part of the 51st Provisional Aero Squadron, stationed in San Antonio, Texas.  

The squadron disembarked for Liverpool, England on October 29, 1917.  Two months later, December 28, Crang was dead from pneumonia, never making it into combat.

Crang’s illness was attributed to the freezing cold, wet conditions of his unit’s quarters.  

In 2018, the Legion will honor another local WWI casualty, Artie Bennett.  The Clinton American Legion Post is named for Crang and Bennett.