CAMP SHERMAN LOOKBACK: When enemy aliens tried to infiltrate the Army
On Saturday afternoon Jan. 12, 1918, attorney Frank Coleman entered the lobby of the Warner Hotel on North Paint Street carrying a bulging suitcase, just as he had done for several weekends in a row now. He inquired about renting a room but was told none were available. After a brief discussion with the hotel management staff, however, arrangements were made for him to use the hotel business office.
Shortly after, several Camp Sherman soldiers of Austrian descent joined Coleman in the small office. The attorney wasted no time in explaining to the soldiers that they were “aliens and had no right to be inducted into the United States Army.” He opened his suitcase revealing 70 signed affidavits from other Camp Sherman soldiers swearing they had “a father, brother, uncle or relative in the Austrian army.” For $135, Coleman promised, he would take their affidavits too and begin the process of getting them discharged from the army.
Lingering just outside the door of the office and eavesdropping on the conversation inside was Lt. R. E. Flora, head of the Camp Sherman military police. Once Flora was convinced he had heard enough, he opened the office door and calmly announced that Coleman was under arrest for “conspiracy to obstruct the selective service draft.”
When draftees began arriving at Camp Sherman in early September of 1917, officers were surprised to learn they included approximately 2,300 enemy aliens.
Enemy aliens were immigrants from countries America was at war with. Until they completed the naturalization process and earned American citizenship, they were technically subjects of an enemy nation and exempted from serving in the American army.
Local civilian-led draft boards, for the most part, were successful in making sure immigrants from Germany were exempted. However, they were likely confused about whether to exempt immigrants from Germany’s main ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. America did not declare war on it until Dec. 7, 1917, months after draftees began reporting for training.
No matter the reason, Camp Sherman officers were puzzled about what to do with Austro-Hungarian immigrants in camp.
Initially, the War Department ruled the enemy aliens had waived their claim to an exemption when they “failed to protest their induction on the ground of being alien enemies at the time of their enlistment.”
Frustrated Camp Sherman officers, however, withdrew the enemy aliens from their regiments, including 143 Austrians from the 330th regiment alone, and gathered them all together into the 158th Depot Brigade and waited for further instructions.
It was these Austrians that attorney Coleman was targeting when he was arrested at the Warner Hotel and dragged to the Ross County jail and held without bond.
Coleman consistently maintained that defending the rights of the Austrian soldiers was his main motivation and not financial gain. He was released after sitting in jail for five days when Camp Sherman authorities reluctantly admitted they did not have “sufficient grounds for holding Coleman.”
A couple of weeks after Coleman’s release, however, the War Department finally empowered Camp Sherman’s division commander to discharge the enemy aliens at his discretion. They were immediately offered honorable discharges and a ticket back to their local draft boards.
Despite a free pass out of the army, though, the Scioto Gazette reported that more than half “voluntarily expressed their desire to serve the land of their adoption,” and “pleaded to be recalled to their original units.”
Camp Sherman officers, who had come to know the soldiers well, were not surprised and attributed it to their ‘remarkable expression of loyalty.”
Many Americans would probably be surprised to learn that of the approximately 4 million soldiers who served honorably in the American army in WWI, nearly 20 percent were foreigners.
Camp Sherman was proud to train some of these future Americans, including many from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Tim Vollet is a local historian who writes monthly about the Camp Sherman days.