Harry Mates

Harry Mates was born to Isaac (1867-1933) and Ida Balter Mates (1874-1949) on 4 June 1894/5 (or 27 May 1894) in the Russian Empire. He was the second of eight known children, Benjamin (1893-?, or 1892), Canamiel (1897-?), Robert (1900-1973), Julia (1901-1976), Jacob (1902-1945), Hymen (1905-1975), Rebecca (1908-?), and Ruth (1909-1998). Any inconsistencies above are due to differences in Isaac Mates’ Naturalization Record from other records (Census, Marriage Certificates, etc.).

According to that same record, the family emigrated to the United States via Antwerp, Belgium on 18 February 1901, arriving in New York aboard the vessel Zeeland. Settling on Townsend St. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Isaac Mates owned and operated a butcher shop into the 1930s. Few details are known surrounding the Mates children’s early education.

In the 1910s, Harry Mates worked as a stock boy at Kaufmann’s Department Store, later becoming a buyer and manager. Mates lived at 1321 Clark St., Pittsburgh, at this time.

Mates enlisted in the U.S. Army on 4 December 1917 in Pittsburgh, and was assigned to 155^th Depot Brigade. On 23 March 1918, then-Supply Sergeant Mates was assigned to Co. M, 163^rd Infantry Regiment, 41^st Division until 8 June.

Mates was made Private on 20 May 1918 and transferred to Co. H, 9^th Infantry Regiment, 2^nd Division. He was listed as a Sergeant when he and Co. H left the United States on 27 February 1918.

Mates received the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions on 3 October near Blanc Mont Ridge, France;

“The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Private Harry Mates (ASN: 246456), United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in action while serving with Company H, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2d Division, A.E.F., near Blanc Mont Ridge, France, 3 October 1918. While acting as company runner Private Mates carried messages under heavy shell and machine-gun fire. When a machine-gun nest caused a temporary halt in the advance of his company he attacked the nest, capturing three prisoners. He assisted wounded men, applied first aid, and removed them through heavy shell fire to the dressing station.”

Mates also received the Croix de Guerre with Bronze Palm and Medaille Militaire, both citations unknown.

“The veteran leaned his elbow on a pile of soft comforters, quilted in brilliant colors, while the reporter pried out of him, little by little, the account of what happened in a wooded ravine, out Champagne way, Oct. 3 1918, near Blanc Mont ridge.

The dogged remnants of Co. H, Ninth infantry, hugged the ground in this gulley while German machine guns 200 yards up the slope attained a perfect range and held it. The regiment was a unit in the famous Second division of the regular army…Sixty men were all that remained of 250 of H Co., after three days’ fighting. It had been intended that the Second division should not go forward that morning, but another division had been decimated, and the Second was ordered in.

…Mates remembers how the twigs from the trees along the ravine fell as the machine gun bullets clipped the branches like pruning shears. He was a runner. Men volunteered for that post. Duration of life for the runner was less than average for the front lines. The runner asked the lieutenant if it wouldn’t be all right for the company to move to the flank, out of the death pocket in the ravine. The lieutenant was a comparatively new officer. Mates can’t recall his name, but he knows that he was a brave man. He carried the lieutenant to the rear on his back that afternoon. Co. H had 27 different commissioned officers and a turnover of 750 men during the war. Mates and two others were the only ones not wounded out of the 750.

The lieutenant said his orders were to hang on and that he couldn’t move. Mates then suggested an advance. The officer said his orders were to hold the ravine. Mates then requested the lieutenant to let him take a few men, and promised that he would capture the machine gun nest. Again he was turned down.

So the young soldier from Pittsburgh crawled out by himself, like some scout of the old pioneer days. Foot by foot he edged forward on his stomach. The Germans didn’t see him until he leaned over the edge of the emplacement and fired down at the gunners with his automatic. The Germans came up with their hands in the air. Those out of the original 30 who had survived the defense. The balance of H Co. rushed forward with bayonets swinging.

…’I guess I was as pale as the prisoners’ Mates said. ‘I wouldn’t do it now, I’m getting a little bald’, he laughed. ‘You had your heart and soul in it then, you know, and we were desperate. I didn’t know what I was doing when I captured the machine gun nest’.

…The veteran tried to change the subject again when the talk drifted around to an affair on the Meuse River, for which he was awarded the Medaille Militaire of France…Mates was a Corporal, but found himself second on a fearful night when the men of his company assisted the engineers in laying pontoons. The lieutenants were all gone. So were the sergeants.

The corporal carried a lieutenant back from the river bank to a dressing station through a tornado of shell fire. He kept the men moving, unloading pontoons. Next day they buried 300 soldiers in one grave. The runner remembers when he lay in the Argonne beside a Lieutenant O’Brien. The two concluded the spot where they crouched was a bad one. Mates moved a few yards in one direction and the lieutenant rolled over to the other side. A few minutes later a shell crashed on the spot where they had rested.”

Mates was promoted to Corporal on 15 October, finally, Sergeant on 15 November. Sgt Mates returned to the United States on 6 June 1919, and was Honorably Discharged at Mitchel Field (now Mitchel Air Force Base), NY on 11 June.

Upon his Honorable Discharge, Mates lived with his parents and several siblings in Pittsburgh; he returned to his job as a buyer at Kaufmann’s. On 17 October 1922, Mates married Jean Ehrenwerth (1902-1983) in Pittsburgh- they had one son, Stanley Robert (1924-1982). In the 1930s-1940s, the family lived in the Wendover Apartments, Hobart St., in the 1950s, 1201 Inverness St.

Mates was an active member of the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Committee, Rodef Shalom Temple, B’nai B’rith, and Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association.

“Harry Mates, who served in the World War as a private and sergeant, winning three decorations by the American and French armies, doesn’t want another war. Mates, a Pittsburgher, says: ‘We should stay out of foreign wars if we possibly can do it’. Mates knows the horror of the war…he never was wounded, he adds, although several of his buddies, who also were runners, were wounded or killed. Of that job, he said: ‘If you had a little luck, you got there. If you didn’t have any luck, you didn’t get there’.

Mates is opposed to America’s participation in the World Court and the League of Nations, saying: ‘You can’t rely on the statesmen over there. And the Court and the League have been failures. When Japan wanted Manchuria, she took it; when Italy wanted Ethiopia, she got it, and the League didn’t stop them’. Because our trade is linked with that of European nations, however, Mates thinks we should co-operate with them. He adds: ‘We don’t have to go to war with them, but we should co-operate with them. There is no need to turn a cold shoulder to the rest of the world. If this country can help to make peace by disarming, I think we should do it’.

Describing this experience, he says: ‘Usually you are standing in your trench waiting the signal to go over. The enemy is shelling your position with light shells. The machine gun fire sounds dangerous. It all has a bad moral effect on a soldier who knows that any minute, he may have to spring out in the open and face all this shellfire without any protection’.”

Mates retired in the early 1960s, he and his wife lived at the Park Plaza Apartments, Craig St., Oakland, Pennsylvania.

Mates died on 9 December 1973 at the Sewickley Valley Hospital, Sewickley, Alleghany County, Pennsylvania of an unknown illness. He is buried at West View Cemetery, Rodef Shalom Congregation, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.