William McIlwain took the long way to heroism. Born in Indiana in 1858, he taught school in Kansas, decided at 40 to become a doctor, and settled in Lone Wolf, Oklahoma, in 1901 to practice medicine. When the United States entered World War I, he was 58 with nothing left to prove. He enlisted anyway, at 59, and shipped out as a regimental medical officer.
On August 14, 1918, near Bazoches, France, the 77th Division was under machine-gun fire and soldiers were falling in the open. McIlwain, now 60, walked out into it to dress their wounds. Bullets pierced his overcoat and shredded his dressing bag. He escaped without a scratch. Fellow soldiers remembered him as the idol of the Doughboys, a man who gave everything for the troops around him.
McIlwain came home to his practice, received the Distinguished Service Cross at Fort Sill in 1929, and died in 1939 at 81. He rests in Lone Wolf Cemetery, a short drive northwest of Lawton. Do you know of a Southwest Oklahoma veteran whose story deserves to be told this Veterans Day? Share it with us.
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Local Lawton
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