![]() Lamar Jeffers Major, United States Army Member of Congress |
![]() |
Courtesy
of the U.S. House of Representatives:
Representative from Alabama; born in Anniston,
Calhoun County, Alabama, April 16, 1888; attended the public schools and
the Alabama Presbyterian College at Anniston; served with the Alabama National
Guard, 1904-1914; clerk of the circuit court of Calhoun County, taking
office in January 1917; resigned that office in May 1917 and entered the
U.S. Army, serving with the Eighty-second Division in France; was awarded
the Distinguished Service Cross by the United States Government; promoted
to rank of Major of infantry; elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-seventh
Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Fred L. Blackmon; reelected
to the Sixty-eighth and to the five succeeding Congresses and served from
June 7, 1921, to January 3, 1935; chairman, Committee on Civil Service
(Seventy-second and Seventy-third Congresses); unsuccessful candidate for
renomination in 1934; resided in Daytona Beach, Florida, until his death
there on June 1, 1983; interment at Arlington National Cemetery.
The Distinguished Service Cross is presented to Lamar Jeffers, Captain, U.S. Army, for extraordinary heroism in action neat St. Juvin, France, October 11, 1918. On the night of October 10 - 11 Captain Jeffers reconnoitered a badly damaged bridge, and early in the morning of the 11th he supervised its repair, being continuously under an intense machine-gun fire. He later led the leading company of the battalion over this bridge and across an open and level terrain, where all of his officers and almost two-thirds of his men became casualties and he himself was seriously wounded. He continued to lead his company forward until
he fell, shot through the jaw with a machine-gun bullet.
Updated: 3 December 2000 Updated: 8 March 2003 Updated: 23 October 2005 |
![]()
|