Sidney D. Light's WWI Diary, Postcards & Letters, 329th Battery Book Accounts

Sidney Dewitt Light was the third of eight children born to Charles and Harriet Light, and grew  up in Saginaw, Michigan.  The Light family had a long history of serving in the military, from the Revolutionary War through the Civil War.  Miraculously, all those who went off to war survived.

At the time Sid joined the Army he was 24 years old. He was in one of the first groups of enlisted men to report to Camp Custer, the camp being newly opened and still under construction.  By then, Sid’s older sister, Charlotte, was already serving as an Army nurse, having arrived in France on July 31, 1917.  His brother Frederick, two years younger, would join the Air Service, 41^st Observation Squadron on Nov 1, 1917.  All three siblings would return home safely from France.

Before the war, Sid had worked in Saginaw for his father, who taught him the trade of steamfitting and boilermaker.  Sid met Alberta Douglas while selling boilers to the Railroad (she worked in the Detroit Railroad office).  The two corresponded through the war years.

(Sid Light on left)

Sid and fifteen other  men assembled in Detroit, and left for training at Fort Custer near Battle Creek, MI in Sept of 1917. This group formed the initial detachment of Battery "B" of the 329th Field Artillery.  Sid was known by his fellow soldiers as "The Saginaw Kid".  He was promoted to Corporal at Camp Custer on April 15, 1918. He would later be promoted to Sargent.

Alberta Douglas visits Sid at Camp Custer, chaperoned by her office manager and his wife

After stateside maneuvers, Sid's detachment left for England on June 16, 1918 for field training before being sent to battle.  Following training in England, he left on August 11, 1918 for Le Havre, France then to Coetquiden for 8-weeks additional artillery training.  On October 22, 1918 he left for active duty in the Toul, France area, where he was involved in several battles.  When the Armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany on November 11, 1918, he was in Bouillionville.  He remained on duty on France until March 26, 1919 when he left Brest, France for the trip back to the United States.  Sid arrived in Hoboken, NJ on April 2, 1919, and was mustered out of army on 23 Apr 1919.

His service record confirms he was involved in battles in the Thiacourt Toul sector Nov 2-11, 1918.

While Sid came back from France expecting to continue his father's work in Saginaw,  Alberta's family decided steam fitting was not a proper occupation for a future son-in-law, preferring to bring him into their family business.  Sid went to work as a salesman for MBBC (Michigan Book Binding Company) while he took correspondence classes to become an accountant.

Sid worked with his father-in-law to build MBBC.  During the depression Sid's salary was cut from $400/month to $200/month. Alberta was twenty-six years old and the two had just bought their first house. To make ends meet, Alberta gave art lessons out of her house and painted door stops for Encott Stores (high class specialty items).  My mother remembers being able to machine-stitch a straight line at age eight and helping her mom sew together books for MBBC, probably when the company was still based in the Douglas family garage.

Two to five years later, as the auto industry recovered, MBBC moved into its own building.  After the move, Sid continued selling but he also began inventing machines to take over the manual work, often staying up late at night to sketch out his plans.  These patents all remained with MBBC, so Sid and Alberta never saw any royalties.  My uncle saw two or three of his father's jerry-rigged models, but says he was too young to understand what the finished machines would do.  Sid also went to New York and got a franchise for spiral binding.  This was the introduction of spiral binding to the Detroit area.

Always a healthy man, in 1940 Sid took suddenly sick, dying within less than a week after taking to bed. Legionaires disease may have been the culprit, though there was no knowledge of the disease in those days. My mother, his eldest child, had just started her freshman year of college. 

Sid lived  to age 47, deeply saddened to watch the build-up for another world war in the months before his death. Glued to the radio for news from Europe, he lamented over and over, "We fought to put an end to wars." He did not live to see his son,  son-in-law, and youngest brother enlist in the military.  Perhaps he would have been comforted to know that the Light family tradition continued, and all those who served their country in WW II returned home to their loved ones.