Sergt. Robert Dunn, WWI Casualty

Sergt. Robert Dunn - World War I Casualty

Utica Saturday Globe, July 20, 1918

 

 

Sergeant Robert Dunn

Among the first in his eagerness to get into the war against Germany, "Bobbie" Dunn as he was affectionately known to his hundreds of friends in the city was the very first from Norwich [Chenango Co. NY] to make the supreme sacrifice for liberty while fighting in the air.

 

It was on Sunday last that his mother told a sympathetic visitor that he was safe for she had received no word of any harm to him. But on Tuesday came the brief message from the War Department at Washington that he was killed in an airplane accident on July 6.  The startling news came to the mother while her youngest son, William, corporal in the regular army at Plattsburg, was visiting her.  Her oldest boy, Thomas, left Tuesday for Rochester, having been voluntarily inducted into the service as a machinist. Another son, John, is now in France, presumably fighting in the front lines against the new German offensive.

 

Sergt. Robert Dunn was one of four sons of Mr. and Mrs. Martin Dunn, of Hubbard avenue, all of whom volunteered their services. Sergt. Dunn had many thrilling experiences in his attempts to get into the air fighting overseas before he was taken into the American division after the United States got into the fray.

 

Utica Herald-Dispatch

July 17, 1918

 

Norwich:  Norwich relatives received word late yesterday that Sergt. Robert Dunn was killed in France July 6 as a result of an aeroplane accident.  Sergeant Dunn was 26 years of age.  Three brothers are in the service.  He is also survived by his parents and a sister.  He enlisted in 1917 at Binghamton in the ninety-seventh Aero Squadron and was sent to Kelley Field, where he was in training two months.  He had been in France about a year.  He attempted to enlist in the Royal Flying Corps by going to England, but was rejected. Sergeant Dunn was well known in this city and his death is sincerely mourned.