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.


JEFFERS, LAMAR

  • Captain, U.S. Army
  • 326th Infantry Regiment, 82d Division, A.E.F.
  • Date of Action: October 11, 1918

Citation:

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.
General Orders No. 46, W.D., 1919
Home Town: Anniston, Alabama

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