American Legion posts: the men behind the names

By Joe Fohn

Anvil Herald Reporter 

Hal Jones

Aguinaldo Pruneda

Joseph W. Weiss

Oscar Wurzbach

American Legion posts in Hondo and Castroville have adopted those four names to honor the memory of deceased local service members from World Wars I and II. Veterans’ graves are specially marked at almost all Medina County cemeteries (Hondo’s Oakwood Cemetery honors 90 of them on a special commemorative stone), but the four honored warriors named above – three soldiers, one sailor – also distinguished themselves either in battle or by being among the first to step forward when their nation called for volunteers. 

Their stories have been dimmed with time and the passing of friends and military buddies of their generations, but they deserve to be re-told. This article highlights the exemplary service of Hal Jones and Aguinaldo Pruneda of Hondo, and Joseph Weiss and Oscar Wurzbach of Castroville.

Source material for this article came from the American Legion posts, the U.S. Naval Institute,  and “War Activities of Medina County 1917-1919,” by Annie Laurie Duncan.

HAL SHEROD JONES, of Hondo, was a 22-year-old student when the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917. In July of that year, when the U.S. government began building an army to join with France and Great Britain against Germany, Jones was among the first group of men called to service from Medina County. 

He entered active duty as a second lieutenant in an Army Light Cavalry unit and was sent to basic training at camps at Uvalde, and possibly near Leon Springs near San Antonio. Following basic he was assigned to Company B, 142nd Infantry, 36th Division, at Camp Travis, near Austin. The 36th Texas Division was destined to win fame in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign of 1918, when American troops joined with French and British soldiers to push the Kaiser’s army out of France.

But Lt. Hal Jones’ destiny was not to fight on the hellish battlefields of France and Belgium, nor would he return to Hondo to march in a victory parade. He did come home, but only to be buried. In 1918 Mrs. Margarite Jones received notice of her son’s death from bronchial pneumonia while undergoing advanced training at Camp Bowie, near Fort Worth. Less than a year after the war ended, the first American Legion Post in Hondo was formed in 1920.  Lt. Hal Jones’ former buddies named Post 479 after him. His enduring, if unwanted, fame is for his status as perhaps the first Hondo serviceman to die in World War I.

JOSEPH WILLIAM WEISS, born in Castroville, was 25 and farming in southeast Medina County near Devine when he enlisted in the Texas National Guard at Castroville on the Fourth of July, 1917. 

His volunteer paper was Number 1 for Medina County. Joe and two of his friends, Albert Karm and Oscar Liber, underwent basic military training at Uvalde through July and August. 

Like Hal Jones, Joe was transferred to Camp Bowie, near Fort Worth, where he remained until mid-July, 1918. His National Guard unit was absorbed into the Army and Private First Class Weiss was assigned to Company C of the 141st Infantry, 71st Brigade, 36th Division. His outfit was sent to New York and then via ship convoy to France, where the war had bogged down into a costly, deadly stalemate. The American Expeditionary Force sent 1.25 million soldiers overseas to break the deadlocked trench warfare and force the German Army across the Rhine River. 

By July, 1918, barely a year after he had enlisted, Weiss was in France, holding the rank of corporal. His unit was preparing for the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, which began on Sept. 26, 1918. It would go down in history as a pivotal battle that broke through German lines and ultimately led to the 1919 Armistice that ended the five-year conflict. 

It also would be the costliest battle in American military history. Casualties exceeded 117,000 – including, unfortunately, Corporal Joe Weiss. He was killed in action on Oct. 8, 1918, in the St. Etienne sector of the momentous battle. His parents received a Citation of Valor signed by President Poincaré of France and a Croix-de-Guerre medal with a Silver Star. His body was returned to Castroville in October, 1921.

OSCAR E. WURZBACH was born June 25, 1891, in Rio Medina. He was a member of the Medical Corps, in the Army’s 90th Division. He was comparatively old at 26 and was making a living farming when he was inducted into the Texas National Guard at Hondo on Sept. 19, 1917. Following training, Private Wurzbach was assigned, to the Medical Corps, Army 360th Field Hospital Battalion, and soon was sent overseas. He served in France from June 28, 1918, treating wounded U.S. Army soldiers, until he himself was killed in action during the Meuse-Argonne offensive on Oct. 25, just 17 days after the death of Corporal Joseph Weiss.

AGUINALDO PRUNEDA earned his place in Medina County military history a generation after Jones, Weiss and Wurzbach. A native of Hondo, he enlisted in the Navy after Pearl Harbor and became a coxswain aboard the USS Borie, an aging 1920s-era destroyer that was pressed into service to guard Atlantic supply convoys against a deadly network of German submarines.

On a chilly and overcast Halloween night in 1943, the Borie engaged U-405 amid frigid waters and 40-foot waves, in a shipboard fight to the finish that rivaled the swashbuckling days of John Paul Jones.

An article by Howard R. Simkin in the U.S. Naval Institute magazine recounts the story of the overnight duel in which U.S. and German sailors fought each other with torpedoes, depth charges, deck guns, rifles, pistols and even thrown knives.

After damaging one U-boat with depth charges, the Borie found itself being stalked by a second sub. The two vessels traded torpedoes and depth charges; the Borie was faster, but U-405 was more maneuverable. Eventually, Borie’s 30-year-old commander set his ship on a collision course, aiming to split the U-boat in two. But the submarine’s skipper turned so rapidly that the old destroyer struck it at a 30-degree angle, then rode a wave over the top of the surfaced sub, and the two were locked together. German gunners sprang to the deck to aim the sub’s deck gun pointblank at the hulking destroyer. Meanwhile, Borie’s powerful guns couldn’t be pointed downward far enough to hit the submarine. Instead, sailors along her port rail shot at the sub’s exposed deck gun crew with automatic rifles, shotguns and pistols. One sailor even threw a knife that wounded a German crewman. All the while, the old destroyer, damaged in the original collision, was leaking badly. 

The trapped sub managed to pull loose and tried to escape while the destroyer, despite flooding engine rooms, chased it all night in high seas and cold winds.

The U-boat surrendered on Nov. 1, but before any prisoners could be brought aboard, the captain of the sinking Borie gave the abandon-ship order. A U.S. Navy vessel pulled alongside, but many German crew members and more than two dozen of the Borie’s exhausted sailors drowned trying to climb aboard.

Coxswain Pruneda was among those lost. His body was not recovered, but his name is memorialized on a naval war monument in Tunisia, and also in the Oak Wood Cemetery in Hondo. He was awarded the Purple Heart. 

When World War II veterans founded a new American Legion post in Hondo, they adopted Aguinaldo Pruneda’s name in honor of his sacrifice, his service and his participation in an epic World War II sea battle.