Pvt. Ovila Caisse (1895-1918): Gardner’s First Fatality in World War I

During World War I, one of the first American units to arrive in France was the 26th Division, a New England National Guard unit more commonly known as the Yankee Division. In the spring of 1918, the Yankee Division was placed along a nine-mile stretch of trenches in northeastern France. Their trench system, located near the city of St. Mihiel, was known as the Ansauville sector.

A week after the Yankee Division settled into the muck of rain soaked trenches, the Germans staged three attacks at the extreme left of the Division’s position at a section called Bois Brule. The German attack was successfully repulsed with accurate artillery fire combined with hand to hand combat. One New Englander who lost his life in this engagement was Ovila Caisse, who was killed by an artillery round. (There is some dispute over the spelling of Ovila Caisse’s last name. Some relatives claim that it should be spelled “Case” which is an Anglo-Saxon version. However, early records show the name is spelled “Caisse” which is the French derivative.) Caisse died on April 10, 1918, at the age of twenty-three. He was the first of twenty-one Gardner residents to lose their lives during World War I.

Ovila Caisse was from a large family of seven brothers and five sisters who lived on Park Street. He had an active interest in baseball, alternately pitching and playing the outfield on three different teams in town. Caisse played ball for the Napoleon Club, the playground association, and on a team composed entirely of members of his own family. As an active member of the Napoleon Club, he also played in the club’s drum corps.

Just prior to his leaving with the American Expeditionary Forces, the Napoleon Club, of which Caisse had been an active member, gave him a reception. At the reception there were addresses by club members, including a member of the board of selectmen, and Caisse was presented with a gold ring. Caisse was killed in combat a year and a day after this reception.

It was more than three years before Ovila Caisse’s body was returned from France to Gardner. Caisse’s casket was delivered to his father’s home on Park Street on June 18, 1921, and a funeral was held the following day. One hundred members of American Legion Post 129 were formed in ranks outside the Caisse house as the casket was removed.

The funeral procession went over Park, Vernon and Parker Streets and down Nichols Street to Holy Rosary Church. The pall bearers included five former friends of Caisse who had served in the Yankee Division, one of whom had been nearby when Caisse received his fatal wound. After the church service the body was taken to Notre Dame Cemetery where an honor guard shot a volley over the grave. This was the largest funeral ever held in Gardner to that time, with Holy Rosary Church filled to capacity.

A year after the funeral, the Gardner Veterans of Foreign War post was formed and named in honor of Ovila Case (using the Anglicized spelling). The new post had thirty-five charter members but its active membership was much smaller. Meetings were held in the Commercial House which was then located in Lafayette Square at the junction of Parker and West Streets.

The Ovila Case Post remained relatively small and struggled for economic survival until after World War II. Returning veterans of this war increased the membership to 300, which forced the post to seek new and larger headquarters. As a result, a building on West Street was purchased and remodeled. In 1949, twenty-nine years after the inception of the Ovila Case Post, the membership moved into their new and present headquarters.

By the end of the 1960s the Ovila Case Post reached the pinnacle of its growth. At this time the post’s membership exceeded 1,300, making it the largest V.F.W. post in New England, New York, and New Jersey, and the 27th largest post in membership throughout the country. Simultaneously, the post’s prestige zoomed when its first commander from World War II veterans, Joseph Scerra, became the national Commander-in-Chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

On Memorial Day, in 1973, Gardner’s Veterans of Foreign Wars Post placed a memorial stone on Ovila Caisse’s grave site. The marker reads: “Ovila Case PVT. Inf. 26 Div. April 10, 1918. First Soldier in Gardner killed in World War I action, for whom the Ovila Case Post No. 905 Veterans of Foreign Wars was named.”