After eight months of training in Dover, England, Sergeant Leo Francis Bennett sailed for home without ever having been called into action. His unit was one of the first AEF forces to be sent home after Armistice was declared. Leo, along with fellow members of the 834th Aviation Squadron, arrived in New York on December 11, 1918, aboard the Empress of Britain. He died just six days later of influenza, after an illness of fifteen hours, at Camp Mills, in Garden City, New York, on December 17, 1918.
Leo enlisted in the Air Service at Vancouver Barracks on December 17, 1917. At the time he registered for the draft in August of 1917, he was working as a machinist at a fish cannery in Kenai, Alaska. Born in Andover, South Dakota, Leo and his family moved to Tualco, Washington, near Monroe, in 1902. He graduated from Monroe High School in 1914, and attended the University of Washington for two years. While at the UW, Leo pledged Phi Kappa Fraternity and was active in the Stevens Debating Club.
Leo was one of seven children born to Telman Nestor Bennett and his wife, Lucy Halpin. His brother, Corporal Harry Telman Bennett, was with him at Camp Mills when he died and brought him home where he was buried at the IOOF Cemetery in Monroe. (bit.ly/uw_bennett)