The young soldier from Glidden, Iowa, among the first three Americans to fall in combat in World War I.
Merle David Hay was born in 1896 on a farm near Glidden, in western Iowa, and enlisted in the U.S. Army after America entered World War I.
On November 3, 1917, he was one of the first three American soldiers killed in combat in the war, during a German trench raid in France. The news made him an early symbol of Iowa's wartime sacrifice.
Hay's death was mourned across Iowa, and his name endures in Des Moines on Merle Hay Road and Merle Hay Mall, with a memorial in his hometown of Glidden.
He is remembered as one of Iowa's first fallen of the World Wars.
The young soldier from Glidden, Iowa, among the first three Americans to fall in combat in World War I.
Merle Hay was from Glidden, Iowa.
1896–1917.
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Portrait: Wikimedia Commons (public domain or freely licensed).