Elmer Schlangen
World War I
Elmer Schlangen was one of the original members and founders of American Legion Post 326. He was born at Carleton, NE, on July 10, 1900, to Frank and Emma Schlangen. He had two siblings — Mabel and Otto, the latter also a WWI Navy veteran who was featured in this column earlier.
According to the information I found when researching his brother, Elmer’s parents moved to Osmond in 1913. Elmer lived on the farm with his parents until his enlistment in the U.S. Navy Reserve Force on July 10, 1918. He was stationed at Great Lakes near Chicago and served as a Fireman 3C.
According to the information I found on the U.S. Naval Reserve Force, it was initially founded to ready America for potential involvement in World War I, and was first only open to Navy veterans — within a year, however, general enlistment requirements were constructed and the public’s involvement skyrocketed. Its approximately 8,000 reservists were quickly put to work, many of them tasked with hunting German U-boats. By the end of WWI, the Navy Reserve had grown to nearly 250,000 reservists and made up 54% of the American naval force at that time.
Elmer was discharged on Sept. 30, 1921, although he was already listed as being in the household of his parents in the 1920 U. S. Census. He moved to Colton, CA, in 1923, and married his wife, Anna Lindberg, the following year. The couple had one son, Oscar.
In the 1930 census, Elmer’s occupation is listed as electric welder at a steam rail yard. Later that year, he was called back to Osmond for his father’s funeral and stayed for about a month.
At that time, he had shown no evidence of the mental affliction that made it necessary for him to receive treatment at a sanitarium a year later. He had returned to Osmond and upon arriving here, he was found to be in an irrational state and needed hospital attention.
He was placed in the Norfolk sanitarium for a short time and then returned to California and lived at the state hospital until his death. According to his obituary, a few days prior to his death, a letter had been received notifying local relatives of the condition of the patient and “while his condition was such that every hope of recovering his mental faculties was excluded, there was no intimation of an imminent fatal outcome in his case.” The letter spoke of him as being up and about and being afflicted with a general paralysis of the brain.
Elmer died April 22, 1932, at the very young age of 31. He left his wife and young son, Oscar, as well as his mother, Mrs. Emma Schlangen of Osmond, sister Mabel and brother Otto.
Elmer’s is such a sad story, as was that of his brother Otto, who took his own life at age 58.
Following military rites by the Colton American Legion, Elmer was buried in the Hermosa Cemetery at Colton, CA.
Both Elmer’s and Otto’s sons also served in the U.S. Navy.
