Allein Post #3 is one of the oldest, active America Legion Posts in Mississippi, having been chartered on July 2, 1919. Our Post is named after the Allein brothers, Henry and William: two brothers, from the same hometown, killed in the same war, days apart.
William enlisted in the Army in November 1917. On October 6, 1918, 11 days into the Meuse-Argonne Battle, at Exermont, Private First Class William Allein was in combat with a ground artillery crew of the 5th Field Artillery. He was killed instantly by a bursting shell when his crew drew retaliatory gunfire from a machine-gun nest on the opposite slope. He was 17.
Henry Allein had been drafted into the service in April 1918. He became a pilot with the 28th Aero Squadron, 3d Pursuit Group, American Expeditionary Force. On October 27 1918, he died in a crash while attempting to make an emergency landing in his French bi-plane, a Spad XIII, on a U.S. landing field near Clermont after being wounded during a dogfight with a German plane. He was 21.
William was killed in the first month of the Meuse-Argonne offensive; Henry was killed in the second month—just 21 days after, and less than 15 miles from where William fell. The Armistice was signed in the third month—15 days later on November 11, 1918.
The monument in the Rose Garden was placed in 1923 and depicts a sailor, a soldier, and a bi-plane. William T. Gifford was the first Warren County man killed in the war when a German torpedo sank the USS Jacob Jones on December 6, 1917; Vicksburg’s VFW Post 2572 is named for him. William Allein, among other Warren County men, was a soldier. The bi-plane represents a Spad XIII, Henry’s plane.
