John Franklin Shain was born June 14, 1886, at Michigan Bluff, Placer County, California. He was of a roaming disposition and traveled all over the United States and parts of Canada. Always of a jolly disposition he made friends wherever he happened to stop. During this time he followed no certain trade, but was continuously employed, sometimes in logging camps or box factories, at others in restaurants or tending bar. On the 18th of September, 1917, while working at Luning, Nevada, he answered the call for Mineral County men and entered the Service at Hawthorne. He was assigned to Company C, 346th Machine-Gun Battalion, 91st Division at Camp Lewis, Washington. On the 11th of November following, he was transferred to Company C, 164th Infantry, 41st Division, with which unit he went overseas, December 15th, 1917.

The 41st (Depot) Division at once began supplying replacement contingents to the combat divisions. Private Shain went with one of these units to Company G, 18th Infantry, 1st Division, on the 9th of January, 1918. With this division he went into the front lines east of St. Mihiel, where the division was stationed from January 18th until the 2d of April. In the meantime he had been made a Private, First Class, (February 7th). After leaving the St. Mihiel Sector, the 1st relieved two French divisions on the front near Montdidier (April 25th), which was the third time the division had been in the front-line trenches.

With the exception of an interval of time between May 11th, and August 18th, 1918, when he served in the 1st Division Train, Private, First Class, Shain was a member of Company G, 18th Infantry, until the time of his death. A brief list of the battles in which he took part will serve to show how noble he did his part in the struggle: May 28th, the 1st Division captured the heights of Cantigny. “The enemy reaction against our troops at Cantigny was extremely violent,” says General Pershing, “and apparently he was determined at all costs to counteract the most excellent effect the American success had produced. For three days his guns of all calibers were concentrated on our new position and counter-attack succeeded counter-attack. The desperate efforts of the Germans gave the fighting at Cantigny a seeming tactical importance entirely out of proportion to the numbers involved.”

July 18th, the 1st Division, together with the 2nd, drove eastward from the west side of the Marne pocket, fighting four days, in which the 1st captured Berzy-le-Sec and the heights above Soissons, with 3500 prisoners and 68 field-guns from seven German divisions opposing.

August 7-23, 1st Division in front-line trenches east of St. Mihiel.

September 12th, 1st Division took a leading part in St. Mihiel Offensive, in which the bulging sector, fortified for four years by the Germans, was wiped out, and 16,000 prisoners and 443 guns captured.

October 1-11, November 6-11: 1st Division employed in Meuse-Argonne Offensive, in which the German armies were beaten and forced to plead for an Armistice, and in which 26,000 prisoners, 847 cannons, 3000 machine-guns, and a vast amount of material were captured.

During its campaigns the 1st Division lost 4411 killed in action, 17,201 wounded and captured 6469 German prisoners.

Private Shain’s foreign service terminated on July 21st, 1919, when he was returned to the States. A month later (August 26th, 1919) he died of disease at Base Hospital No. 1, Hoboken, New Jersey. He was buried in the National Cemetery at Presidio, of San Francisco, California.

The gallant soldier who had fought through all the hardest battles of the war, gave up his life on native soil with the Flag still above him. Him military career had been long and brilliant, and the grave he now occupies now in National ground is sacred to the memory of a hero. His mother, Mrs. Ida Josephine Shain, of Taft, California, and two brothers, Ed. M. Shain, of Kelso, Washington, and Norman N. Shain, of Taft, survive him.