“It was Sunday morning in the Argonne. There was a gap to the left of the “Wild West” section. Two companies of the engineers went in and over the top, driving the Boche before them. Lieutenant Lester B. Pickering, ’17, led his men through the red hell of machine gun fire. A bullet pierced his right leg, glancing off the bone. Adjusting his own first-aid, and neglecting the advice of his fellow officers, he continued the advance.” (TYEE, 1918, pg. 46.) He had to be ordered to fall back and recover from his wounds at a base hospital where he developed pneumonia following a bout of influenza and died on October 15, 1918. Originally buried in France, Lester was reinterred at Novelty Cemetery, in Duvall in 1922. (bit.ly/uw_pickering)
Lester Bert Pickering graduated from the UW in 1917 with a degree in civil engineering. He was selected for the first Officers’ Training Camp at the Presidio, and was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in May of 1917, and then assigned to the 316th Engineers, with the 91st Division. The third of ten children born to English-immigrant Alfred Charles Pickering and his wife, Adah Jeanette Long, Lester was a native of Novelty, Washington. He married Lela Ada Thayer, of Monroe, in Los Angeles, California on December 19, 1917. American Legion Post No. 102 was named in honor of Lester B. Pickering when it received its charter on January 30, 1922.