Grave Tales: Two Soldiers Become Brothers in Arms—and Brothers-in-Law

Like most Geneva residents, I’m planning to spend the Fourth of July socializing with friends, savoring burgers and bratwurst hot off the grill and knocking back a cold one or two. But Clement A. Trott and. Herbert I. Harris attended an entirely different type of party on Independence Day in 1917.

At that time, both were on their way to France—Trott, an 1899 West Point Military Academy graduate, as captain of the 45^th Infantry in the Fifth Division, and Harris, a New York doctor who earned his MD at the University of Buffalo in 1898, as a first lieutenant in the 6th Division medical reserve corps.

Trott quickly rose in the ranks, becoming the 5th Division’s chief of staff overseas. The French government made him an officer in the Legion of Honor and awarded him the Croix de Guerre with Palm for meritorious service.

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal. His citation reads, “For exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services. As chief of staff of the 5th Division through his intimate knowledge of staff duties and the requirements of troops of the line, he organized a staff which insured efficient co-operation in combat. His ability was shown in sound tactical directions to his division, which insured success in four offensive operations.” He retired as a major general in 1941, just a few months before the U.S. entered World War II.

Harris’s military service left far fewer traces in historical records. He must have served with distinction, since he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel before he retired from the Army. But he won no major honors, and there is no record of him serving in the military after World War I.

How did these two disparate military men come to rest beside each other in Oak Hill Cemetery? Each of them married one of the Wright sisters of Minneapolis: Clement’s wife was Leah and Harris married Jessie. They both moved to Geneva to be near the third Wright sister—Nelle Wright Fabyan, the recent widow of Col. George Fabyan.

And while they slogged their way through France, Col. Fabyan was at home in his palatial estate on the Fox River, inventing the U.S. military cryptography system that might well have saved the lives of his brothers-in-law.