Thomas Henry Jodon

Thomas Henry Jodon was born on October 2, 1895, as the eighth of nine children. His father, Francis (Frank) Jodon (emphasis on the second syllable), was a laborer in a coal mine and a descendant of French Huguenots who had fled France in the 1700s.

Although he was born in Clearfield County, Thomas's family moved to Barnesboro (Cambria County) by the time he entered high school. Barnesboro being a small mining town, Thomas's first job opportunities would have also been working in the mines, so he left high school after one year. He took a job with Barnes & Trucker Coal Company.

The United States joined World War I in April 1917, when Thomas was 21, so he dutifully filled out his draft card that summer. In July 1918, he became one of the 2.8 million men who were drafted for the war. [Source]

After less than two months of training, Thomas was sent off to France in September 1918. Because the First Division had sustained over 7,500 casualties during the second phase of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, "the division was placed on the priority list for replacements and re-equipment. More than eight thousand men poured in to fill the ranks. Most of them had been inducted into the service in July, and they had been afforded little opportunity for training."
[Source: History of First Division in the World War 1917-1919.]

Thomas was assigned to Company M in the 18th Infantry Regiment. After a short rest and refit, the First Division cyled back to the front line, for what would be the last week of the war. It was during this time that it was responsible for what could have been one of the biggest embarrassments in military history. The desire to capture the prestigious city of Sedan led the First Division commander to cross the boundary lines that were put in place to prevent accidental fratricides.

The overnight march BG Frank Parker directed infuriated the soldiers. Because of the the preceding days’ marches, they were already bone-tired. So when “columns of infantry, artillery, ammunition, and supplies crashed into one another at crossroads in the dark,” it caused “tremendous confusion. Everyone had his orders and was determined to get through. Wagon drivers cursed and lashed whips at one another. Men got into fistfights.” P298/494
“A little later, a 1st Division detachment, confused by BG Douglas MacArthur’s unorthodox attire, decided that he was a German general and arrested him.” –from To Conquer Hell

In MacArthur’s words, the miscommunication within First Division, “narrowly missed being one of the great tragedies of American history.” [Source]

The war ended on November 11th, 1918, but the First Division did not return to the U.S. right away. Rather they were assigned a role in the occupation of the Rhineland – specifically, the Koblenz Bridgehead. According to the terms of the armistice, The Allies would control territory on the east bank of the Rhine in a 30 kilometer radius around the the bridge in the center of town.
First Division finally received orders to return to the U.S. in August 1919, after the Treaty of Versailles was signed. It took part in parades in New York and Washington, DC, but Thomas was not in them – his vessel, the USS Mount Vernon, did not arrive until the day of the parade on September 18th.

By the 25th, he was discharged from the Army, and returned to civilian life.

As of the 1930 census, he was still single and living at home, but sometime around 1935 he married married Marie Elizabeth Brick. They had one son together, Thomas F. Jodon. She passed aay in 1956 from nodular hepatitis, and he married Florence Tacket McCardle in 1958. Florence passed away in 1980; Thomas followed in 1991 at age 96.
(Seated in front of Thomas is his mother, Nancy Watkins)

While Thomas had an interesting life, his experiences have not really impacted mine in any meaningful way. I didn’t even realize that our lives had overlapped until recently. But there is, perhaps, one contribution worth mentioning.

Thomas’s next older sibling was named Mary; she was four years older than him. And while it might be purely conjecture, he was apparently a good enough younger brother that Mary felt Thomas was an acceptable name for her first-born son. Thus, Thomas Jodon’s nephew was named Thomas Jones. Thomas Jones was my grandfather, making Thomas Henry Jodon my great-grand-uncle.