George L Cooker
Kentucky Post, Friday, 14 August 1918,
page 14
George L Cooker, who fought with the famous Old Sixth of Ft Thomas at San Juan Hill in Cuba, has been killed in action in France. His home was at Sixth and Bridge streets, Riverside, Cincinnati and when America went into the war, he figured it was up to him, a veteran of another war, to get in again, although he was 40 years old.
Army doctors at first rejected him because he was too stout. So he went to Washington and told of his San Juan record, in which he was one of five of his company of 112 who were not wounded or killed. They took him finally because he was so determined and sent him to Ft Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis, assigned to Twenty-eighth Infantry. While at Indianapolis he married, so in the casualty list his residence is given as Indianapolis.
He was killed in the July offensive, after he had fought in the battle of Cantigny, American's first real battle in this war, and helped capture Cantigny, the first village taken by American arms. "We have the Germans on the run," he wrote to his brother, Frank A Cooker, 1528 Linn st. (Cincinnati) after the Cantigny battle. "I had the honor of being one of the first Americans to go over the top. We went over on May 27 at 6:45 pm and gained our objectives 45 minutes later. It sure has been busy in the trenches, where I have been for about three months."
In 1870 Cooker's father fought the Germans in France, not far from the battlefield of the Marne on which the son fell.