Henry Agustus Coit was born in Concord, New Hampshire on 28 May 1888, the son of Joseph Howland and Adeline Balch Coit.  Henry was no doubt named after his uncle, who was the first rector of the St. Paul’s school in Concord.  Henry’s parents later moved to New York City, where they lived at 52 Broadway. Henry spent two years at Harvard University.  He was 6 feet 2 inches tall and rather athletic. At Harvard he as the captain of his rowing crew. After Harvard he struck out on his own to work for the Long Island Railroad.  He then worked as a ranch hand in the Pacific Northwest. 

In December 1915, Henvry traveled to Montreal and enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force on the 17th of that month. They assigned him to the legendary Princess Patricia Light Infantry Regiment, the Princess Pats. He ws the only American member of that unit. When asked why he, as an American, was getting into the war he replied simply “Our fight, too.” Given his background, he could easily have become an officer. However, Henry chose to remain a private. “I am longing to get to France,” he wrote to his parents, “and I’ll do my bit as best I can.”

Coit was one of 5,000 Canadian troops to convoy from Halifax in March 1916. He served in the trenches starting in June 1916. Unfortunately however, he was hit by a truck. He was brought to the Remy Siding Clearing Station, which was at the site of today’s Lijssenthoek War Cemetery. Henry’s injuries eventually led to the amputation of both of his legs, but that did not stop the infection from spreading. As he lay dying in the hospital he replied to the sorrow of one of his nurses with a smile. “Never mind, sister,” he said, “It’s all in the old game.” Upon learning of his injuries, his parents immediately set sail for Europe. They got as far as London, and were able to talk with him by telephone, but they could not get closer to him by the time of his death on August 7 (at the age of 28).

One of Henry’s doctors wrote, “He was the gamest lad I have ever seen in all my experience with boys,” one of his doctors wrote, “a standing rebuke to those silly persons who suggest that Americans are lacking courage. Sisters, surgeons, all of us loved that lad. In spite of suffering he always smiled.”

For a number of years after the War, Henry Augustus Coit was held in equal esteem in American popular culture with other soldiers we still know about today. His portrait was included in a gallery display in New York City in 1919 along with those of the flyers Quentin Roosevelt, Kiffin Rockwell, Norman Prince and Hamilton Coolidge, and the poet Alan Seeger of the French Foreign Legion.

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Jerome Sheridan wrote this biography with information provided by Chris Dickon, as well as information from the Commonweatlh War Graves Commisison and the Canadian Great War Project.