Roy Henry Wilson (1882-1966) was born near Peoria, Illinois and farmed in Kansas, Montana and Oklahoma Territory. In 1918, Wilson enlisted as a private in the US Army at Camp Funston, Kansas. After an initial assignment to the 28th US Infantry at Fort McDowell on Angel Island near San Francisco, Wilson was transferred to Company H of the 31st US Infantry. On April 5, 1918 the 31st embarked to Manila, where the reorganized regiment was to be based. Wilson, by then part of the regiment's new Machine Gun Company, left Manila with the regiment on August 14, 1918, bound for Vladivostok, Russia as part of the Allied mission to stabilize Russian ports in wake of the Bolshevik Revolution. After strenuous drilling and occasional guarding of German, Austrian and Turk prisoners, Wilson spent several days in the Allied Hospital's surgical ward for treatment of a rare hand disease. Wilson left Russia on December 4, 1918 for Manila and eventually arrived at San Francisco on January 17. After a short stay in an Army hospital, Wilson was discharged from the Army at Camp Funston on February 22, 1918 with the rank of Private First Class. Wilson returned to farming and moved to rural Richland County, Montana where he lived most of the remainder of his life. Roy Wilson died in May 1966, and is buried in Enid, Oklahoma.
From the description of Journal of Pfc. Roy H. Wilson, 1918-1919. (Pritzker Military Library). WorldCat record id: 259148916
